DwarfCast 59 – Back In The Red Commentary DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 9th January 2015, 17:09 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes Nearly a decade ago, we embarked on a mission to record commentaries for every single episode of Red Dwarf. Progress is slow, and occasionally entire years will pass without an update, but we’ll get there eventually. However, getting a high proportion of G&T staffers in the same room at the same time is a rare, nay freak occurrence, and so when we actually get a chance to blabber through an episode of our favourite show together, we usually want it to be an episode we actually like. Luckily, two men with strong stomachs and erratic sleeping patterns are on hand to wade through the shit bits when all others have either gone home or fallen asleep… Join short straw merchants Ian Symes and Danny Stephenson as they dive head first into a steaming pile of Series VIII, with the feature length Xtended edition of Back In The Red. Well, it’s better to down a pint of piss in one go than it is to sip at three separate, smaller glasses of piss. Probably. DwarfCast 59 – Back In The Red Commentary (138MB) DwarfCasts will return… at some point.
[…] I object to Kryten being classified as a woman on the basis of not having a penis as if that’s what the definition of a woman is. It is a Space Corps directive. They do have form for being silly. (Plus “Not a man” should be the definition of woman in a Pawnee dictionary.)
I’ve always been uncomfortable with the gender stuff surrounding Kryten in VIII. If a lack of penis makes him a woman, surely a lack of vagina should make him a man. Obviously there’s a whole area of discussion around the difference between sex and gender here, but the “he hasn’t got a penis” thing really ignores the existence of trans- and a-gender people in want of a broad joke. Good old Series VIII Syndrome.
So that point was made in the commentary anyway. Ha. Three things I did notice though: Rimmer needs the events of Future Echoes explaining to him in Cassandra, yet he references them as one of his theories over dinner with the captain. Re: the Blue Midget dance being part of Cat’s dream-state – Lister asks him to do another dance when they think they’re out of AI, which suggests that he believe it’s still possible. Which is just nonsense. The idea of Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat being sentenced isn’t the part of the sentencing that baffles me most, it’s the idea that viewing confidential files gets you two years in prison, whilst bringing a cat aboard and endangering the crew only gets you 18 months in stasis.
Having remembered I actually use the series VIII script book as a mouse mat: Why would I need one unless somehow I lost both arms and there was an emergency situation to write my name in the snow. I can’t believe it. I used to be Kryten but now I’m Krysten. I sound like the title of an Ed Wood movie. Whatever that dialogue is, it isn’t ignoring transgender. Hang on, why isn’t Holly put in the women’s wing– *dragged away*
Man to Man or Woman to Woman or Man to Woman or Woman to Man with Birdman or Birdwoman. “it’s the idea that viewing confidential files gets you two years in prison, whilst bringing a cat aboard and endangering the crew only gets you 18 months in stasis” In terms of relative severity that sounds believable to me. In reality anyway (though I can’t speak for the UK or anywhere but the US) you can easily do time in Federal penitentiary for accessing / distributing classified documents without permission, whereas endangering others — reckless driving, pulling a knife — will only get you community service if it’s your first offense and / or you have a decent attorney. I’m not going to argue for the wisdom of that, but so it goes. That’s a legal perspective — which may or may not be the filter through which we should view the JMC — but even in business terms, I can guarantee I’d be fired if I was caught riffling through HR documentation for my coworkers, whereas just about any other infraction would merit a talking-to and a warning at best.
Just now got around to listening to this. Well done. Cheers for the mention. Although that version of BitR has been superseded by my combining and trimming down the entirety of Series VIII into a single 70 minute episode.
