How do you solve a problem like Meltdown?

[si]

Just watched Timewave. Crikey. Not only is it bad, it’s not even as good as I remember.

My immediate reaction… what the fuck was I on?

Let’s Talk About Timewave (on UKTV Play)

[Dollar Pound]

pony ob. killing pooh is too dark. i like the dinosaur.

[Dollar Pound]

pony is cockney rhyming slang but djj is from west london

[Dollar Pound]

too obviously framing rimmer to top up his smeghead factor and maintain the wooby balance (so they can keep being mean to him). i think it was slated to go first which would have made more sense in this respect.

[clem]

It’s odd that Kryten calls the big bird creatures ‘dinosaurs’ because they don’t really look like dinosaurs, not even crap unconvincing ones, like Pete. They’re in Prehistoric World though, so I guess that’s what they are. When they wrote the script Rob and Doug were probably envisaging a model being made rather than footage from a Japanese monster film.

[International Debris]

I don’t think they mean it will take literally 4000 years, just that at the speed they’re travelling, light speed or close to it, they would have travelled a further 4,000 years distance at a relatively normal speed. So it might only take a day to turn the ship around but in that time they’ve have been travelling so fast, that at normal speeds they’d be 4,000 years further away.

Given that he also says “you can’t do a three point turn this close to light speed” it definitely seems to be that the turning itself will be long and difficult.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

<block quote> Given that he also says “you can’t do a three point turn this close to light speed” it definitely seems to be that the turning itself will be long and difficult.

Oh it will, but it would have to be a rather long arc. You couldn’t do a 3 point turn doing 100mph but given enough open space you could turn the car around, you’d just have to turn at a relatively shallow angle and keep travelling forward whilst you did it.

[bloodteller]

>Ignoring the fact that it supposedly takes 4,000 years to turn around (thus they’re still not remotely heading back to Earth and never will in their lifetime)

Holly mentions in Better Than Life that they’ve turned around though, which is why the post-pod was finally able to catch up with them.

Also I think Meltdown is a good episode on paper, but the dodgy location footage, fucking awful dinosaur effects, rubbish scene transitions etc. all kind of sour it a bit. If they had the money to do it how Rob and Doug had envisaged, I’m sure it would have been less crap in terms of visuals

[Warbodog]

I never understood how that 4,000 years to turn around line fits with the rest of the series. It gives the impression that Red Dwarf will be stuck at near light speed from now on, but from series 2 they can stop and park and even in series 1 they seem to be travelling at a safe speed if they can pick up garbage pods and go outside the ship. Oh yeah, sitcom.

[Warbodog]

…Maybe they could slow down (Holly activates reverse thrust because light speed is too scary), they just wanted to maintain the incredible speed they’d built up over millions of years and 4,000 years was considered an acceptable trade-off, because they’d still get back to Earth much faster than if they slowed to a more conventional speed and turned around. But then they decide to do the latter anyway. I don’t bloody know.

[By Jove its holmes]

The guest stars were mostly professional lookalikes that you hire for events, were they not? Even so, Elvis steals the show.

[bloodteller]

>…Maybe they could slow down (Holly activates reverse thrust because light speed is too scary), they just wanted to maintain the incredible speed they’d built up over millions of years and 4,000 years was considered an acceptable trade-off, because they’d still get back to Earth much faster than if they slowed to a more conventional speed and turned around. But then they decide to do the latter anyway. I don’t bloody know.

It’s explained in Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers that during the events of Future Echoes, Holly managed to do some complicated maneuver that allowed them to turn around. Sure, this isn’t shown in the show, but given that they’ve turned around by Series 2 then it’s the only way that really explains how

[clem]

> The guest stars were mostly professional lookalikes that you hire for events, were they not?

It’s a mix of actors, impressionists and lookalikes. Roger Blake (Noel Coward) did voices on Spitting Image, including Prince Phillip. I think he and Chris would both have still been working on SI at the time Meltdown was recorded.

[Ben Kirkham]

So the consensus I’m getting is that it’s mainly in the production looking a bit cheap and uninspired. I’d never really noticed it that much before, but there’s definitely a point to be made there. Still love it, though.

[Dollar Pound]

i really like the pony eagle dinosaur though

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Kryten does make a point of saying the dinosaurs are unconvincing, and I’d assume that they would have written/filmed that line before they got the footage of the creatures to put into the edit.

[bloodteller]

>Kryten does make a point of saying the dinosaurs are unconvincing, and I’d assume that they would have written/filmed that line before they got the footage of the creatures to put into the edit.

It’s not so much the dinosaurs looking fake that bothers me, it’s that the quality of the footage doesn’t at all match the rest of the episode. It’s all grainy and horrible, so it doesn’t look like the dinosaurs are even in Waxworld at all, it just looks like Kryten is reacting to footage of an old monster movie- which he is, but still, it breaks my suspension of disbelief

[clem]

My point is that they *don’t* look like fake/unconvincing dinosaurs though. Clearly that’s what they’re meant to be, diegetically, because of what Kryten says about them and because they’re in ‘Prehistoric World’. It’s just a bit crap that if they had to use existing footage for budget or other reasons they couldn’t get actual ropey-looking fake dinosaurs, instead of using kaiju monsters.

[Warbodog]

I always liked that “dinosaurs” bit and Kryten criticising their credibility. I like it when Red Dwarf breaks the fourth wall – “rather unconvincing red eyes”, “why don’t we ever meet anyone who can shoot straight?”, Back to Earth part 2 before it gets a bit much.

Not that I can remember, but when someone’s watching series IV for the first time, especially once per week, they must be wondering what the hell that dodgy bird head is in the credits, so it’s fun that it’s dragged out right to the last episode.

[Ben Saunders]

It is bizarre that they choose to use it in the opening credits, isn’t it? Maybe it cost them a lot of money to clear or Rob and Doug actually thought it was brilliant

[International Debris]

Yeah, the monsters have never bothered me, to be honest. I like the fact that their ridiculousness is played upon with a joke. It always just made me laugh, really.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

aybe it cost them a lot of money to clear

If that clip cost a lot of money I’d have thought they’d want to limit it’s usage. They’d have to pass a residual for each time it’s used, that could potentially mean for each TV broadcast and each home release etc …

Putting it on every episode would cost them every time an episode from series IV airs etc.

Unless they somehow got a flat one off rate on it, in which case it would mean it’s really cheap.

I’d be more inclined to say that they thought it looked good in the montage to make people sit and wonder what the fuck it was when the series first went out. Though I’d have thought seeing Mother Theresa with a machine gun would have been more of a cool what the fuck thing to include, so who knows.

[Dave]

Now I want a Red Dwarf opening montage that consists solely of various shots of Hitler.

[Author]

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