As you’re reading this, 2015 is well in the process of getting definitively and entirely fucked off. In tribute to the year in which Marty McFly fell through the bar, we thought we’d take a look back at one of the most significant twelve months in the show’s long and smeg smeared history. So deck the halls with lack of Holly, queue up your favourite Christmassy booze and join us in our in depth inspection of G&T and Red Dwarf’s 2015.
The final episode of Red Dwarf XI has been recorded in front of a studio audience, for the first time ever. G&T were there. Wary of the fact that not being able to give too much away could make these reports a bit repetitive, we were planning on using this week’s as an opportunity to wrap up any little details that had not yet been covered, only touching briefly on the specifics of this episode. But having seen it, I think we’d be doing a disservice to the efforts of the cast and crew if we didn’t give it our full attention. This then is more of a spoiler-free review of undoubtedly the finest episode of Red Dwarf that I’ve ever had the honour of witnessing first hand.
A full episode of Red Dwarf has been has been recorded in front of a studio audience that included a G&T writer, for the first time since 2012. Despite G&T being there, it was only on a standby ticket, so we’d already asked our excellent long-time friend Kris Carter to do the honours. Ian’s brief thoughts are presented in a boxout, as are those of correspondent John Miller, but for now, over to you, Kris…
A full episode of Red Dwarf has been recorded in front of a studio audience for the third time in as many weeks. G&T weren’t there, and it’s a combination of those two facts that has lead us to do things a little differently this time. We’ve already covered virtually everything we’re allowed to talk about in terms of specific details, and we can assume that if things were set up in a certain way for the first two weeks, then they’ll be the same in the third week. So let’s turn our attentions to the realm of the subjective.
At this early stage in the lifespan of Series XI – a time when thousands of people are desperate to learn about things that only a handful of people have seen – it’s easy to fixate on the limited range of individual opinions available, so we’ve recruited a whopping four correspondents to tell us what they thought of this week’s recording. They are Dan Pendleton, Jed Shepherd, Jo Sharples and Niki Hutchinson. This will be a longer read than the last couple of reports, as we’ll be presenting the full gamut of their reactions and opinions, as well as a briefer summary of this particular episode’s idiosyncrasies. There’ll be some overlap, some contradictions and possibly some confusion – it’s up to you to take the four varying accounts on board and make your own mind up. So, without further ado…
This weekend, Craig Charles brought The Madness House of Fun Weekender to a close with his Funk & Soul Show. G&T regular Jonathan ‘Jonsmad’ Young was there, and shared a backstage area with Craig. At 1am on Sunday night/Monday morning, he was able to interrupt Craig’s search for cigarettes for seventy-six seconds in order to conduct a very brief interview about Red Dwarf XI so far. A huge thank you to Jonsmad for sharing this with us. Over to you…
A full episode of Red Dwarf has been recorded in front of a studio audience for the first time since last week. As will be the case more often than not for these two series, G&T weren’t there. But you’re in safe hands for this set report, as we’ve called in the professionals. To guide you through this studio comedy production, please welcome comedian Phil Pagett and television director Alex Scott, both of whom were kind enough to answer our probing questions about the second episode of the eleventh series.
A full episode of Red Dwarf has been recorded in front of a studio audience for the first time since 2012. G&T weren’t there, which as you might expect has had a slight impact on our coverage. But fear not, because we had some top secret special agents in the audience, namely Jo Sharples and Shelley Smith, both of The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club. We sent them a few questions, and they were kind enough to jot down their observations and opinions. So allow them to be your guides as we document their experiences of the first of twelve new episodes…
Do you remember a time, a few years either side of the turn of the century, when the internet was mostly comprised of auto-playing midi files and non-HD porn? Back then, if you searched Yahoo, or Alta Vista, or Lycos, you could find tonnes of Geocities-hosted web pages for each and every one of your favourite TV shows, which invariably featured the same handful of low-res jpegs, lists of quotes, episode guides and those ubiquitous auto-playing midi files. Then blogging came along, and we all realised that we could just write about our opinions on our favourite shows, rather than trying to provide a comprehensive mine of information, given that new-fangled things like Google and Wikipedia could do that much better.
So things like episode guides disappeared from fansites. Not entirely, but they were no longer an essential component. It was only recently that we realised that G&T had nothing even resembling such a guide – not even a list of episodes anywhere. When we started, in 2002, we launched an ambitious project of producing detailed “capsules” for every episode, but, well, you can see how that went. We got to thinking that it might be fun to try and write an episode guide now, and see where it ended up. As it turns out, it kind of got out of hand…
Welcome to the thrilling climax of Xtended Revisited – for which we turn our eyes away from material first released on a scruffy VHS in 1997 as per our first three parts, and instead turn to a nice shiny DVD release from 2006. And what we have here is a rather different proposition.
The story behind-the-scenes of Back in the Red is oft-told: planned originally as a one hour special to open the series, due to timing and budgetary reasons it ended up being split into a three-part episode. Doug was never happy with the result, and when the VIII DVD came along, as well as the broadcast episodes being included, the opportunity was taken to create a brand new edit – combining all the episodes into a single part, and adding some dialogue scenes which were cut from the broadcast version for reasons of time. And thus Back in the Red Xtended was born.
Welcome to our continuing series Xtended Revisited – taking a look at the differences between the broadcast and Xtended versions of the popular science fiction comedy series Red Dwarf. This time, we take a look at Duct Soup – an episode which not only contains problematic gender stereotyping, but also portrays Lister as a homophobic little shit.
You know the drill by now. Each section is transcribed, with Xtended material presented like this, followed by any technical notes, and then my opinion as to whether the extra material works or not. (Predictions on a fucking postcard, please.) Let’s get to it.