Episode Orders News Posted by John Hoare on 5th December 2005, 03:03 A factual article from us again, rather than a rant? Yes, siree. A word of warning, however – most of this was originally written early last year (indeed, the draft that I’ve just finished off tonight because I can’t get to sleep was dated 12th January 2004). I abandoned it then because most of the information was taken directly from Time Hole, and I felt it was cheeky, and rather pointless. It probably still is. But never mind – it’s nice to have all the info in one place anyway, and I’ve tried to add a few asides. So, many apologies to Andrew. I’ll do some decent research of my own at some point. I do have a Contemporary Reaction to Series 1 article in the works… Now, does anyone want to do a detailed dissection of Men Behaving Badly episode orders?
Sorry to be nitpicky, but for Series 1 you’ve mixed up “Recording Order” and “Broadcast Order”. It should be the other way round.
You just won’t desist in your pedantry of not referring to the first two series as Red Dwarf I and Red Dwarf II, will you? Even though they’re called such on the video and DVD covers? ;-)
Very nice. A couple of points that were worth mentioning; the absence of Psirens in the ’94 repeat run and the fact that the continuity of the show makes no sense if Back to Reality airs first from V.
I see there’s no mention of the title of the second series VI vid – ‘Polymorph II – Emohawk’, which is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike the name of one of the episodes on there.
We do know about the episode that’s missing – it ended up being Krytie TV in the end, but Doug discusses in the script book having two episodes that were going nowhere – one which was “No Strings Attached”, about having guitars in prison, and the other which had all the sabotaging Ackerman’s quarters stuff.
I assume John does that because the roman numerals only arrived with series three or Red Dwarf III. ‘Red Dwarf I’ sounds stupid on so many levels (cf. ‘National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon 1’). I bet he calls ‘A New Hope’ ‘Star Wars’ too. ;-)
> the continuity of the show makes no sense if Back to Reality airs first from V. Doesn’t it? It wasn’t recorded to be last, and was for a long time planned to go out at the start of the run. What continuity gets messed up? Something that always tickled me about VI was that the studio for Rimmerworld happening before Gunmen – basically making the ‘sequel’ before the original. There’s also a part of me that would have preferred Rimmerworld to be shown directly after Gunmen, instead of putting Emhoawk between; as it is, Lister’s “that simulant ship we totalled a couple of weeks back” almost breaks the fourth wall… Re. Series VIII – the expansion of Pete happened at the script stage. Part one was delivered with no ending – it concluded with the Dwarfers being sent back in to face the T-Rex with the Time Wand. (“See ya in ten minutes” – more on this in the VIII booklet.) So they knew before the start of shooting that Pete was going to have a second part. But at that point it could have been a more Confidence/Me2, Gunmen/Rimmerworld, Epideme/Nanarchy situation – picked-up threads, but not a full ‘sequel’. It was only when it became clear that this un-named semi-sequel had to be made cheaply that it was decided to get the most out of what had already been shot to extend the beast. So most of what you see SHOT during part two (including scenes for part one) is based mainly on existing sets, cast and costumes. Had this decision not been made, I suspect Doug would have done a bottle show in the Duct Soup style – but it never came to that.
“Doesn’t it? It wasn’t recorded to be last, and was for a long time planned to go out at the start of the run. What continuity gets messed up?” The Red Dwarf ship supposedly disappeared after the run-in with the despair squid. So unless the entirety of series V was supposed to be some kind of flash-back, or part of a weird time-line, putting Back to Reality at the start of series V wouldn’t allow it to fit with the accepted reasoning of series VI properly.
Ah, yes, I see what you mean – it’s made discontinuityful by the future ep. Fair point. I guess I didn’t consider it because at the time when those repeats and videos were happening, there WAS no Series VII, so it didn’t matter.
Don’t they mention the despair squid in series VI? Perhaps they just say Lister lost the ship; I always remembered them saying stuff about the despair squid. Perhaps it was only in series VII then.
Nah, the events of ‘Back to Reality’ don’t get mentioned ’till Nanarchy when the Esperanto gets a name check.
>Had this decision not been made, I suspect Doug would have done a bottle show in the Duct Soup style – but it never came to that. Now I love series VIII…and I try to be vocal about that whenever necessary… But with the revitalized comic stride Doug found somewhere between VII and VIII I would have LOVED him to write a bottle episode. Oh yes yes.
The reason that Back To Reality worked best as the season finale was that some people might have thought that it was the end of Dwarf and that the crew really had been playing a game for years. Wacko Jacko even thought that at first. Obviously, if it was the season opener you would assume that they would be back on the Dwarf at the end. It’d be like killing off Harry Potter at the end of the sixth book when you know that there’s gonna be a seventh book called ‘Harry Potter and the Whatever’, you’d know he wasn’t really dead.
Good suggestions, all. I’ll add them in the next draft. I’ll try and stick my calendar review up tonight. Keep things going round here for a bit until the redesign. (Due soon, as I need a good portfolio piece for the web development company I’m starting…)
Oh, and if you want to be cunty about it, an episode order doesn’t necessarily mean that events happened in that order anyway, if there’s no episode-to-episode continuity between them. For instance, we have evidence that Demons & Angels happened after Backwards (ignoring obvious things like sets, costumes, etc) because Lister mentions he’s seen time running backwards. But there’s no evidence that the events the episode chronicles take place before or after any other Series V episodes. (Apart from the fact it happened before Back To Reality, as mentioned in this thread.)
Oh, and I would have loved a bottle show too. Partly because, as Phil says, I think it would have been entertaining (it’s interesting to note that by far the strongest bit of Only The Good… is the first half with the regular cast and sets, and only loses its way when expanding outwards) – but also because it would have really helped the budget for some of the other shows to perhaps be made better. Although, and I know it’s a tediously obvious complaint, but I do think its true – I’m just not convinced by the basic concept of Pete anyway. I actually like the Captain’s office stuff, and think there’s a decent one-part episode to be built around that – but the whole dino stuff just seems to be built around “aren’t dinosaurs great?” – which is pretty much confirmed in the scriptbook. This just doesn’t seem a strong enough idea for an episode – and with Dwarf‘s budget and situation with visual effects at that point, it also seems odd to even try and do it. I wish the budget had gone on a stronger idea. (Like, indeed, Earth, although I wonder whether that would be producable even saving dino money. With the video sales and ratings Dwarf gets, I find it absolutely bizarre the show wasn’t given a better budget.)
I’m sure if a new 6 episode series of Dwarf was done now it would get a decent budget, thanks to the success of the DVDs and, of course, Who, despite Who being nothing like Dwarf. Series IX or a special is something I pray for above anything else, including the movie.
“For instance, we have evidence that Demons & Angels happened after Backwards (ignoring obvious things like sets, costumes, etc) because Lister mentions he’s seen time running backwards. But there’s no evidence that the events the episode chronicles take place before or after any other Series V episodes. (Apart from the fact it happened before Back To Reality, as mentioned in this thread.)” I don’t like the Pot Noodles line in Demons & Angels because it contradicts Whitehole. Not quite sure why that was relevant.
> …but we can perhaps speculate that with Rimmerworld perhaps one of the weaker shows in the series, it made sense to stick it next to last anyway. Personally, I find that the weakest ep in Series VI was “Emohawk”. So in my view they should’ve kept “Rimmerworld” as fourth in the run, and “Emohawk” fifth.
Erm… I have no fucking idea. It’s the working title, sure, but I don’t know why I used it. I suspect I need help. Badly.
