Dwarfcast Idents

[Asclepius]

HELLO!

I spend quite a bit of my leisure time listening to Dwarfcasts from various years (whilst doing other stuff, obviously. I don’t just sit there staring at the wall…)

Anyway, I like the idents. They’re cute. I was wondering, has it ever been written of the experience of getting Craig, Chloe, Mac, Ed Bye, Hattie and the Pree actor to do them? Were they into it? Was it a fun experience for you?

Did you ever attempt to ask Chris, Robert, Doug, etc?

Were they all done at conventions, or elsewhere?

Just curious!

Topic

[clem]

Chris has done one, playing both Rimmer and Kryten. Rimmer cites a Space Corp Directive about DwarfCasts and Kryten tries to correct him.

[Dave]

Did you ever attempt to ask Chris, Robert, Doug, etc?

Chris has definitely done one in the past, old Dwarfcasts used to have him doing a Space Corps Directive gag (that essentially anticipated the one good joke in Timewave).

[Dave]

Ah, Clem beat me to it!

[Unrumble]

[Ian Symes]

Ooh, an excuse to wang on about myself. I’ll take it.

The original batch was done entirely by Seb at a Dimension Jump – I think 2009? He queued up on one of the autograph sessions and instead of getting stuff signed, asked them to record messages instead. Chris, Craig, Danny, Chloe and Hattie were all done in that initial session. I don’t know if any of the rest of us would have had the gumption to make the request at that stage, but that was Seb. 

Fun fact: the number that Chris uses for the Space Corps Directive is the ISBN of (I think) Primordial Soup, as that happened to be in front of him at the time. Seb only asked him to do the first bit, he then improvised the Kryten bit. We sometimes leave in the snippet of Seb’s surprised laugh at the end. I am convinced that the gag in Timewave was inspired by this ident, and I demand compensation.

Once we got that initial batch, it became standard practice whenever we had the opportunity (and remembered). We interviewed Rebecca Blackstone ahead of Fathers & Suns airing, so recorded the ident alongside. All we were going off was that one line of hers, which was in the trailer for the episode, but thankfully it lent itself very well to the concept. Mac’s were similarly bolted on to an interview. Both of them were more than game, and keen to make sure their reads were faithful to the lines we were riffing on – in Rebecca’s case having not seen a scrap of footage since she recorded it ten months earlier, in Mac’s case around 30 years after the fact!

Ed Bye was the most recent one, and that one was me, at Dimension Jump XX in 2018. I was Ed’s assistant/minder for the autograph session, so I grabbed it while we were waiting for the first batch of fans to be ushered in. It involved a lot of explanation beforehand, but he was amused by the idea. I actually recorded it as a video, simply because in my nervous fumbling I couldn’t find the voice note app on my phone, so that makes for a nice ending to all our YouTube videos that only about ten people get to the end of.

We could and should have grabbed a lot more over the years. I’ve had many opportunities to ask Rob, but I’m too much of a chicken around him and Doug. I got as far as asking Mark Dexter to do it at Dimension Jump XIX, and he happily agreed, and then I never got round to it. He was going to say “Listen to a Ganymede & Titan DwarfCast? But they’re all utter twats!” And as for Robert, it’s been a common feature of every Dimension Jump that we’ve got to Sunday night and then suddenly realised that we’ve once again failed to ask him. I was even his minder for the autographs one year, and it completely slipped my mind.

My absolute favourite thing about them is that if we use the Mac intro where he says “start the tape please Holly”, and then go straight to Hattie’s “awooga”, it creates an interaction between Captain Hollister and the female Holly, which doesn’t occur anywhere else.

[Asclepius]

Chris has done one, playing both Rimmer and Kryten. Rimmer cites a Space Corp Directive about DwarfCasts and Kryten tries to correct him.

Ah, I have heard that, yes! Not often, but once or twice. It totally slipped my mind. Thanks!

[Asclepius]

Ooh, an excuse to wang on about myself. I’ll take it.
The original batch was done entirely by Seb at a Dimension Jump – I think 2009? He queued up on one of the autograph sessions and instead of getting stuff signed, asked them to record messages instead. Chris, Craig, Danny, Chloe and Hattie were all done in that initial session. I don’t know if any of the rest of us would have had the gumption to make the request at that stage, but that was Seb. 
Fun fact: the number that Chris uses for the Space Corps Directive is the ISBN of (I think) Primordial Soup, as that happened to be in front of him at the time. Seb only asked him to do the first bit, he then improvised the Kryten bit. We sometimes leave in the snippet of Seb’s surprised laugh at the end. I am convinced that the gag in Timewave was inspired by this ident, and I demand compensation.
Once we got that initial batch, it became standard practice whenever we had the opportunity (and remembered). We interviewed Rebecca Blackstone ahead of Fathers & Suns airing, so recorded the ident alongside. All we were going off was that one line of hers, which was in the trailer for the episode, but thankfully it lent itself very well to the concept. Mac’s were similarly bolted on to an interview. Both of them were more than game, and keen to make sure their reads were faithful to the lines we were riffing on – in Rebecca’s case having not seen a scrap of footage since she recorded it ten months earlier, in Mac’s case around 30 years after the fact!
Ed Bye was the most recent one, and that one was me, at Dimension Jump XX in 2018. I was Ed’s assistant/minder for the autograph session, so I grabbed it while we were waiting for the first batch of fans to be ushered in. It involved a lot of explanation beforehand, but he was amused by the idea. I actually recorded it as a video, simply because in my nervous fumbling I couldn’t find the voice note app on my phone, so that makes for a nice ending to all our YouTube videos that only about ten people get to the end of.
We could and should have grabbed a lot more over the years. I’ve had many opportunities to ask Rob, but I’m too much of a chicken around him and Doug. I got as far as asking Mark Dexter to do it at Dimension Jump XIX, and he happily agreed, and then I never got round to it. He was going to say “Listen to a Ganymede & Titan DwarfCast? But they’re all utter twats!” And as for Robert, it’s been a common feature of every Dimension Jump that we’ve got to Sunday night and then suddenly realised that we’ve once again failed to ask him. I was even his minder for the autographs one year, and it completely slipped my mind.
My absolute favourite thing about them is that if we use the Mac intro where he says “start the tape please Holly”, and then go straight to Hattie’s “awooga”, it creates an interaction between Captain Hollister and the female Holly, which doesn’t occur anywhere else.

I genuinely appreciated all of that. Thanks for going into that detail!

[Warbodog]

Amazing, Unrumble.

[Ridley]

I’d bet money on the Space Corps joke being subconsciously lifted from the DwarfCast if it wasn’t such a reckless use of finances.

[si]

Ooh, an excuse to wang on about myself.

Wang. Heh.

[Richietee]

I love this insight into Dwarfcast history and support more Wanging On!

I’ve listened to the episodes far too many times to count with so many moments I love, a part that always sticks with me is from the Legion commentary –

“I really want a Bucks Fizz”

PAUSE

“Well time for making your mind up”

followed by John’s earphone shattering laughter

Also from the Out of Time Commentary Seb getting excited that a Subbuteo fence is used in the log cabin structure is a highlight (also this DwarfCast features an early use of the word Cloche #DwarfCastFacts) 

[Unrumble]

 Seb getting excited that a Subbuteo fence is used in the log cabin structure is a highlight

[Moonlight]

I remember (I think Ian) rendering the Pete Extended description “one long, Hollister-irritating narrative” as “one, long Hollister…irritating narrative” and that sticks with me for some reason.

[Author]

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