DwarfCast 163 – Re-Disc-overy: Series III DwarfCasts Posted by Jonathan Capps on 19th June 2023, 10:03 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes “The Gall of Gary Barlow” The third Red Dwarf DVD was released twenty years ago this November. It’s time for another voyage of re-disc-overy, as we cast our minds back to a time of the online retail wild west, blossoming friendships and intense fansite rivalry. Although in practice, we probably spend more time reminiscing about our early Dimension Jump experiences than anything else, thanks to the choice of extra to receive the commentary treatment this time round, Hattie’s DJ Diary. The surrounding, extremely waffley discussion takes in such topics as Red Dwarf‘s history with the AA, Craig Charles’s overdue royalty payments, and farting in Ronnie Corbett’s face. Each and every special feature is covered, we just hope that whatever you’re using to watch your DVDs these days can actually access the menus… DwarfCast 163 – Re-Disc-overy: Series III (118MB) Show notes Celebrity Home Secrets was the programme in which Craig Charles revisted his former houses, but we couldn’t find a copy online. Our Backwards Forwards commentary from 2013 Some Saturday morning quim for you Our Series III deleted scenes commentary, also from 2013 There are no further Series III trailers to be found on YouTube sadly, but here’s a link to Jim Lynn’s VHS Video Vault anyway. G&T’s 2003 report on the fake DVD cover, and the subsequent explanation.
I had to click around for the DJ diary, maybe worth putting in the show notes or episode description that it’s the cone? Luckily my DVD player at the time could read it, although I don’t think the captions came up, so like now it was a case of just randomly opening things to see what was inside. Never got a replacement so my dodgy 2003 original is still going strong.
My first DJ was the year before, same as Danny. We got to the hotel an hour after arriving in Coventry because Danny’s bag didn’t arrive at the station at the same time as us, and we’d had to wait about three quarters of an hour for it to turn up.
I was a pleb when it came to buying online so the only dvd I got from Amazon was VII cos I was too embarrassed to buy in person. My DVD player did struggle with the menu but I was able to watch it all with a bit of grinding effort. Having read The Man In The Rubber Mask years before the documentary was like a different take on those events. The DJ diary didn’t sell the convention to me. By this time Red Dwarf as an ongoing thing was dead in the water as far as I was concerned and even if the movie had been made I had no faith it would be any good after VIII. What did inspire my eventual return to DJ was discovering the Dwarfcasts and Back To Earth happening. Anyway, great cast and great to reminisce about these awesome rediscoveries.
Jumping two series ahead here, but… When you get to do Series 5 DVD, you could do either The Raw FX Footage or The SFX of ‘Red Dwarf V’ for the extra’s commentary. Ultimately it’s down to you lot to decide although, those two in-practically maybe a laugh to cover ;)
Jumping two series ahead here, but… When you get to do Series 5 DVD, you could do either The Raw FX Footage or The SFX of ‘Red Dwarf V’ for the extra’s commentary. Ultimately it’s down to you lot to decide although, those two in-practically maybe a laugh to cover ;) Sorry, I just checked what we’re down to do and it’s the ‘Bad Guys’ featurette.
Sorry, I just checked what we’re down to do and it’s the ‘Bad Guys’ featurette. Ah well, I look forward to you lot cover those two extra’s anyway… Keep these types of Dwarfcast’s a coming, they’ve been fun to listen too ;)
Fantastic, thanks guys, this was a great mood lift at the end of a downbeat Monday. – You remark on it each time, but it’s always a shame that the cast commentaries are such a weak link on these releases. To get a commentary on all existing episodes of a show was so rare, but more substantive commentaries on fewer episodes would have been a lot better. As you say, having fewer commentators per episode, including crew, getting the commentators to rewatch the episode before recording (individually), adding more structure… any one of those improvements could have worked wonders. – And I didn’t twig that Marooned only had 1 deleted scene due to missing master tape, so now I’m disappointed to not see the others too! Funny how easy it is to take the best comedy TV DVD releases for granted, and focus on how it could have been even better. – Wow, I never knew that was why the “Bonus Menu Animated” / “Bonus Menu Plain Text” options were there. I assumed it was like a convenience feature, for people who just wanted to get to the features without faffing about. This makes the special features DVDs even more out of place on the Series 1-VIII Blu ray set. Cappsy: “[Hattie] was never in a series with Blue Midget”. Marooned and Bodyswap: Ah well, I look forward to you lot cover those two extra’s anyway… Rest assured, there’s a >95% chance Cappsy was just pulling your leg. And if it’s the 5% chance that the Series V Re-Disc-overy ‘cast is itself the leg-pulling, I’m sure there’s still time to prevent the decision via the power of public shaming.
I adored and repeatedly listened to the cast commentaries, to the point where I’ll watch an episode now, and large swathes of it will pop up in my head for many scenes. I was a big fan of DVD commentaries in general. I’m still slightly surprised when I hear the less than positive reactions on the Dwarfcasts. The Dwarf DVD’s were released between the ages of 15-19 for me, maybe the callowness and less discerning taste of youth, coupled with the still-exciting novelty had something to do with it. Admittedly, I haven’t listened to them in years, probably well over a decade. I remember getting a bit weary of them by VII, reflected by Chris Barrie’s audibly wavering interest. Not sure I ever gave the overcrowded and tedious VIII commentaries a second listen. Anyway, I too experienced the issue with the bonus features menu on the DVD yesterday, using my recently acquired ASDA®️ player. Don’t recall have any issues at time of release, when I think I was playing it on a PS2. Helpfully, after the first ‘loop’ of the music, the arrow jumped from Jim Reaper to the DJ diary traffic cone for the second loop.
I too loved the commentaries, but I think unlike documentaries etc their rewatch value drops off very quickly. Especially with age. I think had their been more variety of commentators, with some from production, writing, directing etc people would be more excited to return to them but what we have is 4 giggly blokes stroking their own cocks over how great they were. Exciting on first release. 20 years later not so much.
I loved the commentaries on release, and have listened to them all a few times. Then I listened to the Bodysnatcher ones and Doug’s BtE one and realised how poor they are in comparison.
Great listen, as ever. Very pleasingly I’d just thought of Ray Stubbs doing Peter Und-lurrv when Ian said it :)
For my fragile adolescent mind, the “Bonus Menu Animated” / “Bonus Menu Plain Text” screen with Hattie’s thousand yard stare as Hudzen’s Theme played was the stuff of nightmares
In fact, here. Take a look for yourself at 1:08: BRR. Who thought that was a good idea? The IV one is a lot less uncomfortable but still slightly unsettling (1:10): Haha, on a lighter note I just realised they managed to capture the difference between the Manchester and Shepperton lighting even in CGI. Good attention to detail!
The fact those two consoles actually look different even though I never would have noticed it unless I’d sat and compared them next to each other, like what I did just now, is a level of attention to detail that I really appreciate. Would have been so much easier for them to render out one, use it twice and say “Fuck it, nobody will ever notice”. Really shows the level of love that went into those DVDs and how lucky we are to have them.
Somewhere there’s a behind the scenes shot of them working on one of the DVD CG sets, a woman using 3DS Max or something on an old CRT monitor, remarkably detailed wireframe. I’ve always been curious as to what they got in terms of reference. I’d look for it but it was on TOS and that’s still totally borked. The sort of thing that reminds you that Red Dwarf was actually pretty massive, like that bazookoid haha
This is a late reply, but thank you as always for this Dwarfcast. I am going through a really stressful situation right now as I’m resigning from my company, so it helps a lot to have things like this to listen to. One interesting thing about Backwards, to me, is that Doug mentions in the documentary about being inspired by Stephen Hawking’s book, but Rob talks in the Lockdown commentary about the episode coming from a novel that he was in the middle of writing. That’s not to say that both can’t be at least partly true, of course.
