VIII Preorder! News Posted by John Hoare on 24th November 2005, 00:27 It’s the beginning of the end, everyone. Both Amazon and Play are now taking pre-orders for VIII – and the Limited Edition with a Corgi Skutter toy is listed too! I suggest you all go over to DVD Details and start drooling again. I’m sure there’s a joke there, but I can’t be arsed. Release date for Region 2, as we know, is March 27th 2006. Region 4 release is not set yet, but will be around March/April – and the Region 1 is on May 2nd 2006 – with no decision yet announced on whether they will get the skutter. In other news, however – sadly the Movie IMDB page has disappeared. Hey, thanks for giving the rather snide message: Please do not contact us to say you’ve found a broken link from another site We don’t manage the whole Internet, we only manage imdb.com. Thank you. Erm, if you didn’t just delete pages willy nilly, then people wouldn’t have broken links to your site… Before anyone leaps to any conclusions – I wouldn’t take much notice of this. IMDB was never an official source of information about the Movie – that is GNP, and GNP alone. And they’re “adamant that the film is being made”, according to Andrew on the Webboard – and “As soon as pre-prod begins they’ll get it back up.” Quotes like that cheer me up, I don’t know about you…
That definetly cheers me up! :oD I just hope it’s worth the long wait, not that I doubt Doug Naylor or anything, but I do hope it’s not another one of those films where it’s obvious more time has been spent on “spectacular” CGI effects instead of the story.
>but I do hope it’s not another one of those films where it’s obvious more time has been spent on “spectacular” CGI effects instead of the story. Considering Doug’s spent about nine years or so with the story and not one minute yet on CGI, I’d say we won’t have to worry about that.
If I hadn’t already ordered it from play.com last week, I would have ordered it from play anyway – they can spell ‘skutter’…
This DVD will be rubbish. They should have put together a documentary on the remastereds for it. Fits with continuity.
I’ve been meaning to ask this for a while…are you guys going to point out further mistakes in the cast commentaries like you’ve done for I and II? Pedantic as all fuck, but I like it.
> This DVD will be rubbish. They should have put together a > documentary on the remastereds for it. Fits with continuity. Ignoring for a moment the idea that a DVD will be entirely rubbish if it doesn’t include a documentary on episodes that aren’t contained on the disc, wouldn’t it be smarter for us to do a doc about the remastering, y’know, on the remastered DVDs? (Should they happen.) Series VIII will be every bit as packed as the III-VII releases – I really hope it won’t be ‘rubbish’.
Okay well I wouldn’t say it’ll definitely be rubbish but I can see Dave’s point. I’d have at least thought the fan films would have been held back until series VIII since it’s the weakest series. It’ll be interesting to see how countries without the logo on the spine to complete will feel compelled to purchase it. “wouldn’t it be smarter for us to do a doc about the remastering, y’know, on the remastered DVDs? (Should they happen.)” I’d agree with this if: a) you hadn’t said in the past that the documentary for the normal second series might end up on the DVD of the remastered version, and b) it didn’t seem like the eighth series DVD might end up with substantially less content than the one for the seventh. I’d argue that the remastered documentary should indeed go with the eighth series as it fits in with the standard chronology, connecting with the “film effect” applied to series VII and the CGI ship in series VIII. The stuff about RD USA was on the series V disc, after all. Will it at least get a mention on the main documentary? All I really want to own of the remastereds are more before and after clips of significant alterations as appear on the A-Z programme, plus some twenty minutes or so of discussing motivations for the project. It’s not in my interests to buy the entire remastereds on DVD after getting the originals because they’re basically a novelty spin-off in my opinion. But they’re a fascinating part of the official chronology, influencing the style of series VIII and deserving a mention in that respect just as much as the USA pilot was mentioned on the documentary for its influence on the format of series VI.
To be honest, I think there’s *plenty* lined up for the VIII release. I confidently predict they had trouble fitting everything on the discs again. I can see both sides about the Re-mastereds – but overall, I’d prefer the time, money and disc space went on things directly related to VIII, if there’s a chance of a seperate release for them. I shall refrain from starting a VII/VIII debate…
I think they definitely needed a mention at some point, however brief. Personally, I wouldn’t buy the remastered episodes on disc as I think they’re an abomination. I can see why there’s an inclination to do it (to be comprehensive and to uh, make some money), I just don’t think they’ll be enough room in many people’s collection for two versions of 18 episodes. Especially when the 2nd version cuts out jokes and wonderful model shots. I guess another reason may be to have a chance to go back and redo the documentaries for I and II with episode-by-episode analysis. I’d question whether they really belonged on the DVD of a project that began 10 years after the episodes were actually filmed.
It’s less about them *belonging* there – in a perfect world, they’d belong on the original Series 1 and 2 releases. But if there’s a chance to do them now, I’m all for it. I a *very* hardcore Dwarf fan, and run a Dwarf site – so I’d obviously buy it anyway. Whether it would have broad appeal is a different question, however.
While I coudn’t give a crap about owning the remastered episodes of series 1-3 and personally applaud GNP for sticking to the broadcast versions on the DVD releases, I would gladly pay $25 just to see a full length documentary on each of series 1-2. The doco’s have been of an incredibly high standard so far and an absolute treat to watch.
“To be honest, I think there’s *plenty* lined up for the VIII release. I confidently predict they had trouble fitting everything on the discs again.” Does anyone know what these might be when the three discs for VII had the fan films, extended and remastered versions and IW on them? The alternative versions of the eps on VII actually involved inserting material – aren’t the alternative versions of Pete and BITR basically shortened ones, and won’t they be achieved with seamless branching? So *they* won’t take up any disc room. I suspect that there are more deleted scenes and smeg ups etc, but I consider them to be kind of standard extras rather than stand-out ones. What mega-bucks are lined up for series VIII?
As I recall, they’re not using seamless branching for the Xtended BITR and Pete – the reason being that it costs too much to author. So that will take up quite a bit of the space. Andrew has said that VII will be the best release of the lot. Still, VIII will have loads of great stuff anyway. For instance, deleted scenes might be “standard” for Red Dwarf releases, but not for a lot of DVDs – just look at the wasted opportunities on the Who boxset for proof of that. It just shows how good the Dwarf DVDs are when stuff like that is seen as standard… However, for stuff beyond that kind of thing, I’m personally looking forward to Bill Pearson’s effects featurette.
I reckon the cut together versions of BitR and Pete will be separate to the episodes, as branching is pretty expensive and it’s be quite complicated to pull off, anyway. I agree that VIII might not be totally stand out in the same way VII was (simply beacsue it wont have my wiggling arse on it) but that wont stop it being one of the best DVDs of 2006. Besides, we’ve not heard the full list of extras, yet. There’s loads of scope for interesting VisFX reels and a nice in depth feature about the production of the CG, we could have a big feature on Burden and his costumes or some sort of presentation of the unused Earth script. It’s got no less stuff to play with than VII did, really.
Oh, yes, I *do* hope there’ll be something good on Earth. I suspect it’ll probably just be in the documentary, though. If only they’d include a PDF of whatever was written of the script, but I imagine that’s unlikely, sadly.
> I’d have at least thought the fan films would have been held back until series VIII since it’s the weakest series. Two things – one, that’s incredibly subjective, as it’s also one of the most popular series. Secondly – what makes you think the fan films would massively strengthen the release? No offense to the makers, but they’re not exactly the top selling point to the general public. (Plus, actually, we didn’t have space for them on VIII. It was two on VII or none at all.) > It’ll be interesting to see how countries without the logo on the spine to complete will feel compelled to purchase it. I doubt it’ll make much difference. Everything we’ve got suggests that sales are consistent across the series, in all territories. Also, the spine logo isn’t playing anywhere near as big a part as a solid set of extras. Which VIII has. > “wouldn’t it be smarter for us to do a doc about the remastering, y’know, on the remastered DVDs? (Should they happen.)” > I’d agree with this if: a) you hadn’t said in the past that the documentary for the normal second series might end up on the DVD of the remastered version What I said was that I regretted not having the dosh to make doccos for I and II, and that as we can’t re-issue those two DVDs, maybe we could at least cover the ground with the remastered release, if it were to happen. Better than not covering it at all was my point. > and b) it didn’t seem like the eighth series DVD might end up with substantially less content than the one for the seventh. Either you haven’t kept track of the updates, or you got kinda dazzled by IDW and the Fan Films. Series VIII more than lives up to the III-VI standard. It has over four hours of bonus stuff, just like VII. I think it totals something like 6 minutes less content. (And it doesn’t have an ‘easy’ half-hour extra like the Japanese ep or Backwards Forwards, either.) > I’d argue that the remastered documentary should indeed go with the eighth series as it fits in with the standard chronology, connecting with the “film effect” applied to series VII and the CGI ship in series VIII. The stuff about RD USA was on the series V disc, after all. We’ve already had this entire conversation before. And if we thought the stuff was never going to be covered, maybe we’d have done it. But it’s not like RD USA – which will never, NEVER have its own DVD release, and so anything to be said about it has to be placed elsewhere by necessity. There’s a slight chance of a remastered edition. Which means we’d be morons to cover what that releases bonus material would cover. What then? We do a vanilla remastered release? Or just put the same featurette out again? That would be a crazily bad decision – for us, for fans, for marketing. Your argument, it seems to me, boils down to not wanting to pay for the remastered eps just to get the lowdown on its production, etc. I understand it – but from the point of view of the franchise, you surely get why that’s not the best idea for us? (If for no other reason that the argument is akin to saying ‘I don’t want to buy Series VI, but I want information on it. Why can’t they put the documentary about it on Series V? Then I don’t need to buy it. And hey, it’s relevant, cos it shows what Series V was leading to.’) If nothing else, there are a lot of fans who DO want this release. Will it happen? I don’t know. But if it does, I want to be damned sure that it’s of a quality to match the other Dwarf discs. And in all cases that means talking about the episodes that are actually there.
> I suspect it’ll probably just be in the documentary, though. If only they’d include a PDF of whatever was written of the script, but I imagine that’s unlikely, sadly. If only because there never was a script! I want to be very clear on this: to our knowledge, Doug only ever asked the effects questions. He never sat down and wrote an episode, an outline, anything. Earth was only ever in his head, and it may just have been the ending at that. The scripts all come in to GNP, and we have no such script on file. > I reckon the cut together versions of BitR and Pete will be separate to the episodes, as branching is pretty expensive and it’s be quite complicated to pull off, anyway. Correct. Also, we’re lucky – as with VII – that we were going to have to put the eps on two discs anyway. (You can only get 6 on a DVD before quality becomes a major issue.) So we kinda had that space to spare. Which means no pauses mid-ep (as on X-Men’s extended version), and a chance to make sure the new edits and clean and tidy. And don’t forget that BITR isn’t just feature-length, it’s Xtended. 10 minutes more stuff. > I agree that VIII might not be totally stand out in the same way VII was (simply beacsue it wont have my wiggling arse on it) but that wont stop it being one of the best DVDs of 2006. I think we’re victims of our own standards. By definition now a Dwarf DVD has a main docco, deleted scenes, outtakes, raw FX, raw music, booklet, eggs, commentaries, music featurette, gallery and at least one half-hour ‘special’ (A-Z; Can’t Smeg, Won’t Smeg; Settling The Score; etc.). Which means all that stuff gets taken for granted and we get people saying ‘okay, but what else?’ Seriously, compared to a regular TV release, doesn’t that list of ‘standard’ extras look better than ‘a bit rubbish’?
I did wonder whether a script for Earth actually existed or not. The only reason I expected there to be a script written is that the VIII scriptbook in the introduction to ‘Pete Part Two’ actually mentions a script (probably just a figure of speech) – and also seems to indicate that the decision was taken rather late on in production (which the production of BITR3 also backs up). Presumably Doug was cutting it fine with the script again…
You know, if there is no script for Earth, it would have been a cool idea to have a five minute segment where Doug talks on camera about his ideas for how that episode would have happened. Hell, the admission price would have been worth it just if we got to see him acting out the crash scene using the Corgi Dwarf model and making whooshy noises. Actually, make that a seperate release just by itself. I’d buy it. ;)
After these individual releases of series I-VIII I reckon it should be: a) Box set of series I-VIII with new documentaries for series 1 & 2 included and things like the missing smeg ups put back on. And with series VIII a mention of remastered with some before-after clips. b) Vanilla box set release of V-VIII “just the shows” c) Vanilla box set of I-III remastered. Everything covered!
The problem with that is I don’t think a vanilla box set of the Re-mastered series would sell – yes, I know not everyone hates them, but they *didn’t* go down particularly well with fans in the UK, and non-fans just aren’t going to buy *another* version. Stick some extras on there, and you’ve got something a lot more people would buy.
> You know, if there is no script for Earth, it would have been a cool idea to have a five minute segment where Doug talks on camera about his ideas for how that episode would have happened. This probably happens in the doco. Perhaps not for five minutes, but Doug usually goes into some detail about ideas that had to be abandoned.
>This probably happens in the doco. Doug usually goes into some detail about ideas that had to be abandoned. And indeed he does…
The only element of the remastering that’s relevent to Series VIII is the re-jigged Bug and Midget. Neither of those redesigns was done FOR eight, but, sure, did affect it in that one aspect – but only that one aspect. To do a full, detailed doc on remastering, we would have had to lose things that directly relate to VIII. It’s the Series VIII DVD, and focusses on that series – which I don’t think is unreasonable.
