DwarfCast 169 – Christmas Wafflemen Special DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 23rd December 2023, 16:28 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes “If it wasn’t shit, it would be perfect.” We thought we ought to do something slightly out of the ordinary for our landmark 169th episode, so here’s two specials in one – it’s time for some Christmas Waffles. Once again our lovely listeners slash readers provided us with a veritable smorgasbord of tasty topics, which we gobbled up whilst writing fan-fiction about the ship’s Secret Santa, sharing our ultimate Red Dwarf Christmas wishes, pondering the best box sets of all time, weighing up the current state of the fandom, and coming up with a really good idea for a Christmas special. Plus, like all great festive episodes, we end on a good old sing-song. We apologise for nothing. DwarfCast 169 – Christmas Wafflemen Special (46.8 MB) A very Merry Christmas from Cappsy, Danny and Ian to everyone who’s enjoyed and/or tolerated our stuff in 2023. Our annual review of the year will be along during the festive perineum, before DwarfCasts return to delight your ears and sometimes eyes in 2024. Show notes Our fellow Dwarfy podcasters / YouTubers: The Garbage Podcast, Everyone’s Dead Dave, Shipwrecked & Comatose, Better Than Life, Red Dwarf Nerd, Gallifrey Gals All the leaves are brown… Frank Kelly’s Christmas Countdown
What a lovely Christmas treat. Only 15 minutes in but now I feel like that Christmas special idea needs to be made.
What a lovely Christmas treat. Only 15 minutes in but now I feel like that Christmas special idea needs to be made. Right?!
On the H2G2 blu-ray boxset: I bought that VHS-styled set when it came out too, and the episodes do look pretty great in places. It’s one of the things (along with some of the Doctor Who blu-ray remasters) that got my hopes up for the Dwarf I-VIII blu-rays.
Wonderful, lovely and marvellous. Took a few listens to work out all of the lyrics at the end but very nicely done. Although I must confess, I had no idea where this was mentioned before and how people got their waffles to you. The questions I could have asked… Thank you for a lovely year of Dwarfcasts and a Merry Christmas to you all!
Cat would just get distracted with the box then run with it when Lister thinks Cat is gifting himself.
Also, on the subject of singing to theme tunes, “it is a casualty, it is a casualty…” etc. works very well with theme from Casualty.
That was my waffle about Re-Disc-overy. Good to know you’re planning on covering the Dave era. Just joshing about the TPL review :) Enjoyed that. Loved the song at the end but 11 what? Haven’t listened to the V Re-Disc-overy cast yet but that will have to wait til after Xmas now. Merry Christmas everyone.
That was discussed but I think we got caught up with the ‘9, 10 times if you count the time I had my spasm’ and then gave up.
This was delightful, a bit of a funny pressie indeed, better than a couple of hundred pairs of socks and some aftershave. However, is being available on Spotify a fairly recent thing? It’s my primary music/podcast consumption service of choice, but I’m sure I checked in the past (I admit it’s been a while) and couldn’t see any Dwarfcasts. I’ve just been downloading straight from G&T, and sadly therefore not contributing to any stat-boosting…
Waffles aren’t really a traditional Christmas food, but… oh, go on then, I’ll treat myself. Funny how the Series 1-VIII Blu ray set has gone done down in people’s estimations. When it came out the reaction was definitely more mixed, but now it’s been downgraded to just Shit. I bet the Smega-Drive is gutted to hear that. Also, I assume this was recorded before word got out about how comprehensive the new Blackadder Blu ray set turned out to be? Regarding the prospect of Patreon, although it might not be in my best interest to push G&T towards being anything other than 100% self-funded, I have to say: if what’s putting you off is the worry that having a paying subscriber base will turn this into an obligation, it doesn’t have to be that way. Patreon has an option to charge people per post rather than per month, you can choose which posts trigger charges and which don’t, and patrons can set the maximum a creator can charge them each month. So instead of feeling forced to deliver a certain number of articles and podcasts per month to stop your paying audience from feeling like they’re being ripped off, you can just continue exactly as you are, but get a bit of money from supporters each time you post a new thing. Worth considering in my opinion, although it’s fair enough if you think that having a financial incentive at all would ruin it. Agreed that the ending was great, and good job for recognising that you only need to say the different presents and not recite the entire thing. Happy holidays, folks. May the pan-dimensional liquid beast from the Mogidon Cluster leave you all untroubled tonight.
On the subject of other Red Dwarf related podcasts, whilst fun to listen to they’re not created in anyway that provides any relisten value. A bit like cast commentaries really. Dwarfcasts cover such a wide range of topics and get really in depth that that it is infinitely enjoyable listening to the discussions over again. Also, given just how fucking long they’ve been going they offer a great snap shot in time. As commentary podcasts are recorded over the life of the Dave era, alongside all the new episode Dwarfcast content. So yeah, thanks you smegheads. Merry Christmas
is being available on Spotify a fairly recent thing? It’s my primary music/podcast consumption service of choice, but I’m sure I checked in the past (I admit it’s been a while) and couldn’t see any Dwarfcasts. Not sure how long they’ve been available on there but I’ve been using Spotify for Dwarfcasts for a good while now, since before the book club at least. It’s a Wonderful Life on Red Dwarf is such a good idea. Now imagining a closing shot of the ship in a Stephan’s Quintet inspired starscape.
Funny how the Series 1-VIII Blu ray set has gone done down in people’s estimations. When it came out the reaction was definitely more mixed, but now it’s been downgraded to just Shit. I bet the Smega-Drive is gutted to hear that. Without reopening that can of worms, I think the Blu-Rays are fine and without the framerate issues on the original issuing, would probably be accepted as the (most) definitive versions. But they’re still not perfect, with one or two little niggling issued – and given that the set didn’t really provide anything that was new, making the episodes as good as possible is really the bare minimum we could have expected.
Regarding the prospect of Patreon, although it might not be in my best interest to push G&T towards being anything other than 100% self-funded, I have to say: if what’s putting you off is the worry that having a paying subscriber base will turn this into an obligation, it doesn’t have to be that way. Patreon has an option to charge people per post rather than per month, you can choose which posts trigger charges and which don’t, and patrons can set the maximum a creator can charge them each month. So instead of feeling forced to deliver a certain number of articles and podcasts per month to stop your paying audience from feeling like they’re being ripped off, you can just continue exactly as you are, but get a bit of money from supporters each time you post a new thing. Worth considering in my opinion, although it’s fair enough if you think that having a financial incentive at all would ruin it. I think the logical conclusion is that Ganymede & Titan becomes an OnlyFans account.
Nice holiday surprise! Hello from one of those longtime listeners/readers who only occasionally comments. As someone who co-hosts a (non-RD) podcast myself, I appreciated the candid but courteous look at other Red Dwarf podcasts. It’s purely personal preference and no offense to something like the new Better Than Life, but I do tend to prefer shows (like the DwarfCasts) where a handful of people express highly granular opinions about a subject they have a lot of specialized knowledge about rather than the breezy comedians-with-a-guest kind of thing. Put me down as someone else who would much rather have a nice “vault” style coffee table book with scripts and documents and production art than physical models and merch at this point in my life.
Indeed my waffle was depending on your age And yes I didn’t expect a 3rd option on being RD Theme, House Wallpaper !!! 😆 As ever, thanks for answering one of my waffles and do have a Happy Christmas and hopefully a good New “DwarfCastic” Year… Ya Smegers 👋🎄
I think the G&T Patreon should exclusively charge people for those wallpapers from the Downloads section.
Ooh this is a nice Christmassy treat. Looking forward to giving this a listen. Trying to teach my little boy his fruits at the moment and he keeps calling a banana an apple. We’re not quite ready to audition for “What’s My Fruit?”.
A lovely festive treat! Fans of that specific genre of “songs where you sing one line the whole time” would do well to check out Michael M on YouTube: https://youtube.com/@MichaelMphysics?si=Tv65xPU_eMF4i_PO
Them getting a shout out here after a few mentions on the forum finally pushed me to watch the Gallifrey Gals Red Dwarf reactions, and they’re honestly pretty delightful. They somehow managed to start watching it without even knowing it was a sitcom, let alone knowing about the first episode twist, and it was great to see genuine first reactions to that. Despite being 35 years and thousands of miles removed from the original target audience, they were hooked by the story and laughing along straight away. It goes to show how well made Red Dwarf is. I’ll even forgive them for initially thinking it had canned laughter. Watching them also confirmed that ‘The End’ actually is a great starting episode, and getting people into the show by showing them Holoship or something first is probably not necessary. Additionally it seems like ‘Backwards’ would have been a pretty bad starting point. Although it was a little annoying that they accidentally spoiled themselves on the fact that Kryten was a regular character, and so kept complaining throughout Series 2 that Kryten hadn’t come back yet. This isn’t a Snacky situation, after all – Kryten did in fact leave the ship at the end of his episode! I’m sure the 1988 audience weren’t puzzled that Kryten didn’t show up in Better Than Life.
Them getting a shout out here after a few mentions on the forum finally pushed me to watch the Gallifrey Gals Red Dwarf reactions, and they’re honestly pretty delightful. They somehow managed to start watching it without even knowing it was a sitcom, let alone knowing about the first episode twist, and it was great to see genuine first reactions to that. Despite being 35 years and thousands of miles removed from the original target audience, they were hooked by the story and laughing along straight away. It goes to show how well made Red Dwarf is. I’ll even forgive them for initially thinking it had canned laughter. Watching them also confirmed that ‘The End’ actually is a great starting episode, and getting people into the show by showing them Holoship or something first is probably not necessary. Additionally it seems like ‘Backwards’ would have been a pretty bad starting point. Although it was a little annoying that they accidentally spoiled themselves on the fact that Kryten was a regular character, and so kept complaining throughout Series 2 that Kryten hadn’t come back yet. This isn’t a Snacky situation, after all – Kryten did in fact leave the ship at the end of his episode! I’m sure the 1988 audience weren’t puzzled that Kryten didn’t show up in Better Than Life. You don’t actually see Kryten leave the ship though.
Will people generally check out episode 5×01 when considering a show? There were a couple of shows (Buffy, Farscape) that I happened to catch lousy episodes of and was converted to when shown good ones, but The End isn’t bad anyway (nor is any of classic Dwarf, only by our exaggerated standards).
You don’t actually see Kryten leave the ship though. Well, no, but you see him ask for Lister’s bike, and then get on and start the bike, after he had the earlier discussion about finding a planet to settle down on. I think it’s clear enough. When I first watched it I definitely didn’t think “I assume he’s just going for a ride to let off some steam, but will be back”, especially as at that point there was no precedent in the show for guest characters becoming regulars. And even if it were understandable to be surprised that Kryten wasn’t in Better Than Life, you probably shouldn’t be re-surprised for every subsequent episode in Series 2. I’m confident that in the GGs case it was just their minor self-spoilering that caused the expectation, not the episode itself.
The song, like the podcast, was a highlight of this Christmas time. Hope you all had a good one. I’m sorry I put you through that, but it was definitely worth it. Far better than the time I did Billy Joel does the anniversary. So I know what suffering it is to do podcast songs. I enjoyed clicking the frank kelly link also
When I first watched it I definitely didn’t think “I assume he’s just going for a ride to let off some steam, but will be back”, especially as at that point there was no precedent in the show for guest characters becoming regulars. When I first watched it I was a bit confused as we’d only seen Lister driving around the corridors on his space bike, so it wasn’t set up that it was a thing he could use to leave the ship altogether.
When I first watched it I definitely didn’t think “I assume he’s just going for a ride to let off some steam, but will be back”, especially as at that point there was no precedent in the show for guest characters becoming regulars. When I first watched it I was a bit confused as we’d only seen Lister driving around the corridors on his space bike, so it wasn’t set up that it was a thing he could use to leave the ship altogether. Yeah I don’t think it’s clear that bike is space worthy. Whilst you could read into it that Kryten leaves of his own accord, it’s not entirely unbelievable for people watching for the first time to wonder what happened to him
Facts that age you: we are now more years on from that episode than the episode itself was from Rebel Without A Cause.
I tried to watch Rebel Without a Cause the other day. Managed about 10mins. No wonder Kryten got distracted easily.
I tried to watch Rebel Without a Cause the other day. Managed about 10mins. No wonder Kryten got distracted easily. Lister is constantly trying to make Kryten watch all this hipster retro shit, it’d be nice if he occasionally just let him watch Terminator 2 or The Matrix or something.
Watching them also confirmed that ‘The End’ actually is a great starting episode, and getting people into the show by showing them Holoship or something first is probably not necessary. Additionally it seems like ‘Backwards’ would have been a pretty bad starting point. Haven’t heard Galifrey Girls, but I’m very split on this. I introduced an American to Red Dwarf with The End, and they barely murmured a single titter. Watching it through someone else’s completely fresh eyes made me realise how slow that first episode felt, and it was pretty excruciating to see someone possibly not be enjoying it, but she was curious enough to try and second and was laughing a lot more after that. (She went super nova by the time we got to Tongue Tied, and was laughing so much she missed half of it and was shrieking at me to spin on back and start it again). Thinking about it now, it reminds me a bit of the discussion around how poor all the Dave-era trailers have generally been, namely that Dwarf doesn’t clip well because it’s so many of the punchlines are character-driven (as well as not wanting to reveal certain plot points). It’s possibly she wasn’t invested in The End because she knew precisely nothing about the characters and had no expectations for any of it. By the time she was nauseatingly referring to Lister and Rimmer as “space husbands” and willing them to be gay with each other like a human Tumblr, she’d clearly made her mind up. In my own personal experience, I caught the end of a Series V episode as a child (having avoided RD on account of not having a bedroom telly yet / assuming from the title it was some kind of Tolkien/LOTR/goblins in caves fantasy bollocks), and immediately raided a relative’s VHS collection, starting my first episode proper with Backwards, which I subsequently introduced a load of school mates too, who all loved it even though none of us really did sci-fi. It’s just silly fun. Everyone I knew growing up who liked RD loved Backwards and cited it as their jumping on point.
Backwards is my least favourite that side of Emohawk, I might even like Emohawk a bit more for nostalgia. It might be one that’s better when you’re a kid, or when it’s the 20th century.
Backwards is my least favourite that side of Emohawk, I might even like Emohawk a bit more for nostalgia. It might be one that’s better when you’re a kid, or when it’s the 20th century. Yes, to be fair it certainly doesn’t quite hit the way it did when I was a teenager, now the bitter old cynic in me is more inclined to focus on the logistical inconsistencies. Still would rather it than Emohawk though, which has dropped even further from my youthful estimations.
Does Josh from the Youtube channel After Work Reactions deserve a mention? He’s been watching all of Dwarf from the start for the past couple of years and is almost on Promised Land (presumably has already seen it on his Patreon), and I love his appreciation for the show. He’s become a real fan and always has genuine big, booming laughs and theories/questions. as for a new fan’s intro, my first ever eps were Queeg, Marooned and Polymorph (watching the repeats and missed the ones in between), and then I somehow skipped to all of series 4-6 while reading the novels, not seeing the rest till I got the videos. But those 3 eps were enough to grab me.
I mean, if you’re going to stumble across three random episodes then you managed to pick some pretty good ones.
RE Emohawk, I like it because there’s a sense of foreboding ending through S6 (whether it was already there or I feel it now knowing it was the last RG series, I’m not sure) so for me, it’s like 3 classic moments from the show just popping up to say goodbye as the classic era draws to a close.
So I’ve listened to the first couple of episodes of Better Than Life The Podcast now, and yeah, it’s good fun. Despite how much I’ve watched these episodes before and how much they’ve been gone over in articles, podcasts and forum threads, new people can still find new ways to talk about them or new things to focus in on. It’s quite reassuring. I also enjoy that after they’ve had the chat with the guest, they have a section at the end where they discuss things with just the hosts. The only caveat is that I think I’ve been spoiled by DwarfCasts, in terms of memory for detail, behind the scenes knowledge, and matching taste. E.g. they said that Series VIII had its “ups and downs” and counted the Rimmer/Lister cell banter as an up, they knew that the show started in Februrary 1988 but weren’t especially confident or precise, they didn’t know about ‘Dad’ or its summarising in the opening crawl for Backwards, and most egregiously of all they didn’t know that “that unfortunate suicide business” was an implicit continuity error, which means that they didn’t remember the plot for the episode their podcast is named after. It’s a “lapsed fan/huge fan” pairing of course, and some of these moments were John, but Fergus wasn’t exactly jumping in to correct. Luckily these moments are infrequent and minor, so it’s never a real nuisance or anything, but it’s an interesting contrast. Maybe this is just what normal people are like. Also quite strange was the fact that both of the first 2 guests had not seen the Dave series, despite the guests specifically being self-described Red Dwarf fans. Like we’re starving for new episodes here, and these folks are just sleeping on 18 new episodes and a feature length special. I can’t imagine it. How are they not even curious? Bec Hill “binged the series in lockdown” but stopped after Series VIII??? Either stop after VI or go all the way, come on. I wonder if there’s just this unconscious cultural idea of Red Dwarf being a show of the 80s and 90s only, and so even if they know about the newer series, they don’t feel like they count in a way that matters?
It’s a fun podcast but definitely has you screaming at them internally for getting little details wrong. But it’s cool to hear other people’s reactions and interpretations to things and also glad they’re happy to discuss the show as a whole and not just stick to that weeks episode
