Video DwarfCast #5 - Are You Smarter Than A G&Ter? Byte Two featured image

We've set a lot of Red Dwarf quizzes in our time, but are we any good at answering them? Well, Part 1 of this video should give you a decent idea but unless we are still in any doubt, it's time to find out... again!

Want to play along? You'll find a big list of quizzes underneath the video - take them, then watch the vid, then tell us how you did. Oh, and you're probably better off clicking through to YouTube and going full-screen if you want to see what we're typing properly.

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Video DwarfCast #4 - Are You Smarter Than A G&Ter? Byte One featured image

We've set a lot of Red Dwarf quizzes in our time, but are we any good at answering them? Well, we already know that Cappsy isn't, but what about Ian and Danny? It's time to find out, as we put our reputations on the line by taking on a series of Sporcle quizzes that probe every aspect of our mental capabilities. Want to play along? You'll find a big list of quizzes underneath the video - take them, then watch the vid, then tell us how you did. Oh, and you're probably better off clicking through to YouTube and going full-screen if you want to see what we're typing properly. Byte Two coming soon!

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So What Is It? featured image

Repetition, Running Gags and Callbacks in Red Dwarf

We're once again opening our doors to long term G&T regular Dave, bringing us his latest deep analysis of one of the show's core elements.

Like all sitcoms of a certain age, Red Dwarf has a tendency to repeat itself from time to time.

I’m not talking about in-the-moment repetition like the White Hole sequence that gives this article its title, or the Terrorform gag about Kryten’s short-term memory being erased – those are deliberate repeated phrases that give a single joke the necessary rhythm and cadence. I’m talking about episode-to-episode and series-to-series recurrences of the same ideas, jokes, lines and structures, and the way that these have accumulated as the show has gone on.

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The State of Online Journalism in 2024 featured image

or: Why We Insist On Being Grumpy Bastards Every Time This Happens

If, like me, you're known amongst your more neurotypical friends, family and colleagues as "the Red Dwarf fan", you'll have received umpteen messages in the last couple of days, reacting to the "news" that new Red Dwarf has been "confirmed". These normies will then have been confused by your lukewarm response, before you have to tediously explain that nothing is actually official yet, and the articles that they've seen online are just discussing the rumours we've known about for months. "But look", they reply, "it says it right here, the Scrapheap Challenge guy announced it". At this point, you have to choose between launching into a full scale rant about the intricacies of television commissioning, or just saying "yeah, looking forward to it" in order to maintain the illusion that you're a well-adjusted individual like them.

It's especially frustrating when you can also see this happening on a much wider scale. Us lot - you, me and anyone else who'll visit a fansite for a sci-fi programme from the 1980s - know the score, but there are vast swathes of Dwarf fans who have a much more casual relationship with the show. They might love it every bit as much as we do, but they're not as obsessive about the details as we are, and are less likely to have been following the series of small scale leaks that we've been tracking. But all of a sudden, they're all over social media in the last two days, sharing their excitement at the confirmation of something that isn't actually confirmed. But here's the thing - it's not their fault. They're being let down by the people they trust to provide information.

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Video DwarfCast #3 - ChatG&T featured image

If there's one thing we like more than speculating wildly about all things Red Dwarf, it's pissing about with the latest silly internet fads. For our latest Video DwarfCast, we combine the two by using ChatGPT to answer all those burning questions. What is Red Dwarf: Titan going to look like? Who's going to play the young versions of our favourite characters? What would a redesigned Starbug look like? Or a redesigned skutter? How would Kryten do on Robot Wars? And can 2024 artificial intelligence do a better job of drawing Rimmer on the bog than Kryten can?

(As should be perfectly clear from the video itself, we in no way condone the use of A.I. as a replacement for human artistry in any way. It's a laugh, innit?)

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The G&T Review of the Year 2023 featured image
Screenshot from the Red Dwarf episode Better Than Life

Screenshot from the Red Dwarf episode Back in the Red: Part I

At the start of Red Dwarf's 35th anniversary year, things had never seemed grimmer for the health of the franchise. The protracted legal kerfuffle between the show's creators was dragging on into its third calendar year, with no indication whatsoever that it would end any time soon, and any possibility of new material dwindling with each passing day. But as 2023 comes to an end, despite there still being no solid news in terms of actual production, there has been so, so much to give us hope that Red Dwarf shall live again.

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G&TV Special: Whatever You Want (13/05/2000) featured image

Way back at the turn of the century, three Red Dwarf fans competed for not one but two money-can't-buy prizes. Whatever You Want was a Saturday night entertainment show, hosted by Gaby Roslin for four series between 1997 and 2000, and inexplicably not featuring Status Quo as the theme tune. It was part of a lineage of similar programmes, preceded by Jim'll Fix It and followed by Tonight's The Night with John Barrowman - Roslin definitely the most wholesome of those presenters - that strove to make ordinary people's dreams come true through the magic of television. While there were smaller items throughout each show, the main focus was a game show element that pitted enthusiasts with a shared interest against each other for the biggest prize of the night. And on 13th May 2000, it was Red Dwarf's turn.

The three superfans chosen to compete were called Vicky, Rob and Jane, the latter of whom later became the Chair of The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club. And the prizes were very special indeed. Firstly, a custom-built Starbug, made for the show by the legendary Bill Pearson, overseen by the equally legendary Jim Francis, both of whom had recently worked on Series VIII. Not only that, the lucky winner would also spend a full week on set, and have their name in the credits, of Red Dwarf: The Movie. This sets an ongoing world record for the longest delay between winning and receiving a competition prize.

After airing over 23 years ago, the programme was never repeated or included on any commercial releases. As it was a few years too early for catch-up services or social media, it never resurfaced online, and has been pretty much considered lost media. But guess what? Gaby Roslin's not the only one who can make Red Dwarf fans' dreams come true...

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BFI Screening Report & Red Dwarf Prequel news! featured image

Brace yourself for a bit of shock. G&T regular evilmorwen went along to the BFI screening of Backwards, complete with commentary and Q&A from Rob Grant, Ed Bye and Paul Jackson. They were kind enough to provide a full report, containing news that blew our minds. Rob Grant has been busy. Read on...

As previously reported, the BFI Southbank saw, on Sunday, as part of a time travel strand, a screening of the episode Backwards, along with the first episode of ITV2’s time travel comedy Timewasters. Your correspondent had not previously seen Timewasters - a sitcom which posits the question “What if Goodnight Sweetheart except Nicholas Lyndhurst was a jazz quartet, and they’d gone back to the 1920s?” The answer is: quite good, and your correspondent will be watching more of it on Prime later.

But I wasn’t there for that, and neither are you. We’re here for Red Dwarf.

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Video DwarfCast #2 - TOS Trailer Revisited featured image

Cast your mind back to the year 2000. Series VIII is only a year old, the inevitable Red Dwarf Movie is just around the corner, and an increasing number of people now have the ability to connect their computers to their phone lines, in order to receive midi approximations of popular songs, animated "under construction" signs and slow-to-load-but-very-exciting Macromedia Flash graphics. The conditions were just right for reddwarf.co.uk to begin its two-decade-long voyage of weekly updates, bringing us such features as Doug Naylor's regular blog, updates on the new GNP series Weird City and of course the animated remake of Asso: Spanish Detective.

Or at least that was the future promised by the interactive trailer that was published ahead of TOS's big relaunch of November 2000. With the current state of the official site, coupled with the fact that Flash itself has now passed on, we assumed that this small slice of Dwarf history had been consigned to the burning bin fire of lost media. But thankfully, during the process of building our unofficial archive, we uncovered the dusty swf file. You can access it here (providing you have a Flash emulator), or if you prefer to consume your important historical documents with a side order of sarcastic nerds making snide comments, here's your guided tour:

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The state of The Official Site and why we've created reddwarf.info featured image

On 25 February 2021 it was announced that reddwarf.co.uk would be moving hosting providers and this would involve "a short break in service". Four months later it returned, with the revelation that after 22 years the traditional weekly updates would be stopping. Also mentioned was that "it turns out that rebuilding a site that can comfortably re-house over two decades' worth of content was actually a much bigger job than we thought it would be" and "At the time of writing, we're still seeing a few 404 errors when it comes to some sections".

Well, it turns out that was a bit of an understatement as it doesn't take long for anyone trying to use the site after the migration to notice that large amounts of content, images and even whole sections are either entirely gone or unnavigable through normal means. It's all well and good saying that everything is pretty much back online, but what good is a 22 year archive of news updates when the archive navigation is entirely non-functional?

Well, to cut to the chase before I go on more after the jump, here at Ganymede & Titan we've come to the conclusion that this isn't getting fixed any time soon and so we've taken matters into our own hands. Using a cunning combination of the Wayback Machine, content that is still accessible on reddwarf.co.uk itself, and a great deal of finagling we've put together a totally fresh, and working, archive of The Official Site. Presenting...

reddwarf.info

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