The Promised Trailer has Landed News Posted by Jonathan Capps on 20th March 2020, 09:08 First thing’s first, The Promised Land will be airing on Dave on Thursday 9th April, helping you kick off what will sure to be your perfectly normal Easter weekend that will be just like any other previous Easter, definitely. Second thing’s second, we’ve got our first full trailer and pardon me for saying that it’s a good ‘un. Cats in deerstalkers! Essentially the same (but good) joke made in the space of seconds! Great CG! Even greater music! RIMMER COSTUMES. Anyway, have a chew on that and no doubt someone will be along later armed with nothing but a snipping tool and a head full of dreams.
I like that this manages to be so funny, exciting and accessible in general while also including so many little fan-pleasing moments. And all in under a minute. I already like the Catty performance of Rodon too. This is going to be good.
The green Rimmer outfit, yay! I wonder if his VI/VII outfits get a cameo too? I imagine we are seeing them as Rimmer wants to change his look when meeting the new Cat race members so he looks impressive and Holly cycles through his various looks until he finds an unused one that Rimmer thinks is a good one to use.
The Holly joke felt abit series 8. you know the lets ask holly for advice for him to give a one liner thing. I dunno. All looks about the same to me. We will see.
Also landed, on my doormat, is the Red Dwarf issue of SFX magazine. Including an actual poster of the poster.
There’s so much going on in this, I love it. Rimmer’s uniform changes really have been intrigued, and they seem to have gone to the effort to get them as close to the originals as possible. Especially the series 3 one. This feels like it’s packed full of funny whilst having a great story to go along with it, one worth exploring over 90mins! I’m particularly interested in meeting the cats that have seemingly been worshipping Lister, and apparently have taken inspiration from his dress sense. I like the contrast between those and the Feral cats which is what I’d always imagined they’d look like. I know it’s easier to clip a one-liner, but I really do hope Holly has more to do than offer that sort of series 8 guff. Overall, this is keeping me excited :)
Overall, I like it. It doesn’t show much but since it’s for a trailer for what is essentially one long episode/film that’s probably a good thing. Concerning the Cats, the cleric Cat doesn’t look or sound particularly catty, aside from the fangs but that makes sense what with him being a priest of a religion that tries to defy feline nature and emulate Cloister the Stupid. Rodon on the other hand is very Catty even down to speaking in our Cat’s Americanish accent. He’s kind of how Cat would be if he were younger and more aggressive. (Maybe too much like Danny’s Cat? Possibly but it’s too early to tell, as we’ve just one brief snippet to go on. Since Cat and Rodon both revel in their feline nature it makes sense they’d be similar. This could be very interesting…) The look of the other Feral Cats is spot on. Rimmer outfits: nice call back. I’m guessing he will try a few things before adopting the silly body armour, although why he’d go for something that looks like Kryten’s shell, I’m not sure.
Oh, I didn’t think Holly’s joke was particularly Series 8. More something Kryten would come out with, but in Norman’s laconic style. (It’s essentially like the look out the window gag from a series or 2 (or is it actually 3. Red Dwarf series are like busses lately?) ago.)
Maybe Rimmer is glitching, which is why he cycles through his old outfits, and Lister pokes him with something that makes his light bee deactivate or something? Might have to wait until he’s in a soft light form before he can, like the I or III look. We do see what looks like his light bee hit the ground. When he is fixed and brought back online, that’s what his temporary new look is, Super Rimmer.
I like the trailer and am looking forward to the special, but the gags they included in this seem as tired as the ones in Back to Earth. I’m intrigued by the plot and the things they’re teasing, though, so the trailer’s effective.
I think what makes the Holly bit feel like series 8 as it sounds like Lister is giving Holly and open invitation to tell a one liner. What made Holly work on Skipper is that what he had to say was relevant to what was going on. While this felt more like Norman hasn’t said something funny in a while… Holly you got anything to add before we move on? Really it looks like an extended episode from series 11 or 12.
the gags they included in this seem as tired as the ones in Back to Earth I think what makes the Holly bit feel like series 8 as it sounds like Lister is giving Holly and open invitation to tell a one liner I think the nature of a trailer means that the humour has to be simple, either basic character jokes or very straightforward setup/punchline gags. With literally seconds for each one they’re inevitably going to feel simplistic. I don’t think it tells us much about the humour in the special overall.
I agree with you, Dave, absolutely. I’m still entirely on board with the special, I just found these three gags a bit poor. Actually, the first one made me smile. The line “you’ve barely mastered human” reminds me of the times in Dave where there’s a line similar to one from the earlier series but it’s not as good, except this is the third time I can think of off the top of my head they’ve used that sort of line. I think it’s Lemons where Rimmer says Lister’s barely mastered toilet training, and to me that sounded like a watered down version of his “only juuuuuust” from Kryten but with, uh, more words. I can’t stress enough how this isn’t putting me off the special, though, and I’m only judging the trailer, not the actual thing. I hope I’m not coming off as totally pessimistic. Just nicely misherable. I’m optimistic!
I’m noticing we’re conspicuously missing any close-ups of Starbug, or a shot of Red Dwarf itself at all. Am I to take it that this special takes place mostly off-ship, or just that they’re recycling the old model shots of Red Dwarf and would rather show off the new CGI? Considering the poster shows the regular Dave-era ship, they’re probably just going to reuse the model shots. Or, if we’re lucky, made new ones that are actually decent. I just don’t want to see That One Fucking Fly-by (patent pending) of the bigature from XI and XII opening this special. Considering there’s a Starbug crash in this (based on the poster, anyway) and that’s probably something to be done with models, we can only hope they’ve done some new shots with a competent team this time. I really don’t want to see this lovely CGI interspersed with XI / XII-quality model shots.
Can we just appreciate the job Ian Adrian (cinematographer) and the makeup ladies did on Norman as Holly in this compared to the corpse from last time?
Christ al-fucking-mighty, it’s night and day! The worst part about his appearance in Skipper is how the lighting really accentuates that weird little bump, mole he has at (our) top left of his head. It makes his head look square – seriously, cover it up with your finger and it looks… well, slightly better.
From the sound of it. On twitter Doug suggests he hopes for more 90 minute specials. It being the new format going forward.
I’m torn between wanting as much Red Dwarf content as possible, and wanting potentially higher quality Red Dwarf content
Id rather take the 90 minute specials if the quality is gonna stay in that series X/XI/XII standard. Drawback to that is if we get another timewave then thats a good 90 minutes of it.
Think I’d prefer 3 individual episodes rather than one 90 minuter. If the story doesn’t work for you (and the hit rate in X, XI and XII has been strangely wonky), at least you have two further cracks of the whip.
