1988. Margaret Thatcher is Prime Minister. The Last Emperor wins nine Oscars. The Only Way Is Up is Britain’s best-selling single, and on BBC-2, a brand new series starts. A series which features science-fiction, but is funny. A series set in space, but without aliens. A series that has already been turned down three times by the BBC, and then almost scuppered by a technicians strike, but which finally hits the airwaves on 15th February 1988 – the date which comedy goes beyond the final frontier.
We will, of course, be marking the anniversary in our own way later today; our twatty pedantry prevents us from publishing it before the actual time of the first transmission. In the meantime, we of course look to TOS to guide the way. Unfortunately, the only actual update is a purely functional piece about some foreign DVD releases. Shame there’s not a lovely article acknowledging the anniversary, but we do get something very intriguing…
A new splash screen has been added to the site (well, at least it has if you include the www. in the address – reddwarf.co.uk takes you straight to the normal front page) featuring a special 20th anniversary logo, the legend “Something’s Coming…” and a countdown. Crikey! We’ve no idea what this is counting down to, but it’s got to be something big in order for them to kick up this fuss – announcements of DVD releases and the like arrive with very little fanfare. Suffice to say, we’ll be hitting refresh constantly at 4:00pm on Monday, 25th February.
(By the way, we’ve been trying to hunt for some significance to that date, but the only thing we can come up with is the 9th anniversary of Back In The Red (Part Two) first being broadcast. Hmm.)
Somebody / February 15, 2008 at 2:30 pm / #
Probably nothing significant to the date except that that’s when whatever relevant contract kicks in/NDA clauses expire/something like that.
And http://reddwarf.co.uk/ now gives the 10d|1h|30m|etc countdown too.