I learned how to fly in Starbug 1989, I’m not used to the controls on Starbug 2016

Starbug always looks so sad. But don’t be sad, Starbug, you’re looking great.

Back in the distant past of Friday, the official Dave Twitter account posted this new picture of Starbug either landing, taking off, or having a nice little rest.

Now, we’re a little bit behind others on this one, so in depth analysis has already happened, but for some context of exactly what we’re looking look no further than Mike ‘Models’ Tucker for the deets.

First glimpse of the landing pad miniature that we built for the up and coming series of ‘Red Dwarf’ airing this September on Dave.
(Starbug model by the Magic Camera Co)

So the landing pad is a bona-fide Model Unit original, with the Starbug model itself being confirmed as a new build by The Magic Camera Company (note: they are probably not actually magic, that would be silly). There are undeniable differences, and Pete Tyler expresses a preference for the original in the comment thread to Mike’s FB post, but it certainly passes the visual test to mine eyes. It’s suitably worn, detailed and all the proportions are correct – it’s a lovely, lovely thing.

Further to this, as we saw in Series X, the quality of the actual model often only ends up being as good as the shooting itself. X used a spruced up original model, and you could barely tell a lot of the time due to the quality of the shots that made it to screen. We know from the previous reports that The Model Unit, while apparently not involved in this particular ship build, were on hand for part of the shooting so I’m expecting quite sizeable net gains on the overall quality of the model work that we’ll see in the finished episodes.

The official social media campaign is certainly gaining momentum now, so we’re likely in for a busy set of Fridays in the run up to September. I’d be uncontrollably excited if I was more confident in our ability to keep up with it all.

In other news, it seems from a couple of well connected sources, that ADR is currently happening, and Mr. Tony Blairs probably shouldn’t be involved with Brexit negotiations. Not much to say on this as it’s a perfectly standard, and fairly late on, stage of post-production but it’s exciting to think of actual near final cuts of the these episodes existing.

And finally, in Craig Charles breaking his foot news, Craig Charles has broken his foot. Not a brilliant moment in his life, to be fair, but when it comes to Mirror headlines it could certainly be worse.