Let’s Talk About Mechocracy (on Dave) News Posted by Ian Symes on 2nd November 2017, 09:00 Hello there, Dave viewers. I must apologise – I’ve already used up all my politics/election based metaphors during our Play-paced coverage. The good news is that you’ve got a brand new episode on your way tonight at 9pm on Dave. Do use this post for any thoughts this event inspires, and the same goes for all you UKTV Play viewers who want to make any last-minute points before the next ep – just do be mindful of what you’re giving away prior to broadcast. After you’ve watched the episode, you can study the results of our various exit polls: the Play-paced discussion thread, last Friday’s Live Instant Reaction DwarfCast, and Cappsy’s in-depth written review. Oh look, I did have one election joke left after all. Meanwhile, M-Corp is due to be released on UKTV Play at around 10:20pm, and our discussion thread for that will be here after Mechocracy has aired on Dave.
Yeah! Let’s keep the “I mean, even if Doug fumbles the ball in doing a Red Dwarf episode about politics, it’s got to be way better than Timewave, right?” hype train going! What I’m most looking forward to is that sweet, sweet < 1 hour period where I've seen the most recent Red Dwarf episode. Can't wait!
Thanks to certain other comedy forums’ lack of indiscretion I already know who’s turning up in this one. Y’know, outside of *other* guest appearances (that cat being long out of the bag). It made me appreciate the secrecy here a whooole lot more. There’s a third surprise guest cat still in the bag to enjoy tonight, right? Right? Man, the trials of seeing it a week later.
Things we learnt from Richard Naylor on Twitter tonight: – The Talkie prop is a replica, not the 1990 original. – They had to pay quite a lot to clear the clips from the BBC era. – David Ross recorded his lines at a studio quite near to where he lives. – There is a possibility the movie could still happen.
Hey… that was pretty good! The political element seemed pretty surface-level, so thankfully it wasn’t made purely uncomfortable by all the horrid real world political events that apparently are refusing to stop. Not the best episode, but it was an interesting concept, had lots of good character interactions, and it was quite funny, too. Scattered Thoughts: – This is an episode about the machines aboard Red Dwarf, so… WHERE. IS. SNACKY? – Really liked the Cat stuff in this episode. Cat/Rimmer is a rare pairing and always cool to see, and his newfound interest in studying (I guess felis sapiens smell-based books weren’t particularly educational?) was a lovely bit of character development. Shame that more wasn’t done with it, though I concede that The Cat becoming intellectual is like Rimmer becoming heroic: you can play with the idea but you always have to return to the status quo. – I’m glad that the names of Kryten and Rimmer’s political parties were pretty much just names. Kryten becoming Red Dwarf’s Nigel Farage is just not something I need in my life. I’ve already had Robert Llewellyn saying “we’re having a go at political correctness”. That quite enough, really. – I wonder how Taiwan Tony voted? – Nice to have Talkie back for a bit, but it feels like kind of a waste. Really there were only a couple of new jokes for him: Lister saying “would you like some toast?” and Talkie thinking he was genuinely asking him that, and the negotiation. The line where Lister lists every kind of toastable snack that he can think of in order to refuse them, only for Talkie to suggest one particular thing he didn’t think of, is just straight up copied and pasted from an earlier appearance. Not only is this lazy, but it doesn’t make sense given Lister should be trying to schmooze Talkie. – Another repeated joke: Cat being told just to pack bare essentials and him reacting by packing loads, from Future Echoes. – Very cool to see all those old clips, even if it is just fanservice. Gives the Dave era a nice feeling of continuity. (Even if it doesn’t make sense how they’d have all that video footage.) – Perhaps a missed opportunity not to have more with the machines on strike. They could have done all sorts of Queeg-style shenanigans, but they just turned everything off. – I bet Lister being Kryten’s running mate won the vote of that vending machine that was horny for him in Series X. – Can’t imagine the service lift from Give & Take or the vending machine from Only The Good… ever voting for Rimmer either, can you? – Really not sure how I feel about that deleting document/abortion joke. I don’t think it was offensive, but it didn’t really gel. The xenophobic vending machine was a better representation of a thing in modern politics than that. Anyway, pedantry aside, Mechocracy made me feel a lot more confident about M-Corp and Skipper.
> – They had to pay quite a lot to clear the clips from the BBC era. This does surprise me, I didn’t realise they needed BBC permission to play old clips. > – There is a possibility the movie could still happen.
Another repeated joke: Cat being told just to pack bare essentials and him reacting by packing loads, from Future Echoes. I actually really appreciated this, because they didn’t draw much attention to it, they didn’t make a big deal of it, and it was just a nice little bit of character continuity – it’s barely even a joke in the episode as I remember, as our focus is quickly pulled away from the Cat’s clothes and onto some fresh material. Also: They have the video footage for the same reason they have video footage of Series I in Thanks For The Memory – they got it from Rimmer’s memory files. Or onboard CCTV.
At least it is not one of those instances where people can see THEMSELVES in their own memories or something.
