Lawrence Miles has written something about Red Dwarf

[Nick R]

Saw Andrew Ellard posting about this on Twitter…

Prominent Doctor Who Author/Fandom Man Lawrence Miles has written a blog post about Red Dwarf. (“I know, I didn’t expect that either.”) Read it before he deletes it like most of the other stuff he posts!

As usual with his TV criticism, it’s well written and has some interesting insights… but it also contains reductive, generalised assertions that are bound to wind people up. (Personally I still haven’t forgiven him for those horrible things he said in the Randomness Times: that Terry Pratchett’s only got one joke which is “There’s a troll but he’s called Kevin”…)

Anyway, in this case, the bit I found interesting is his opinion about what Red Dwarf’s central preoccupation is, compared to threats in other sci-fi:

If you look at early-phase Doctor Who (certainly the ’60s, but leaking into the ’70s), the worst thing that can happen to you – the very worst imaginable horror – is to have your consciousness invaded.

[…]

Yet in Red Dwarf, the great fear is of foreknowledge, of predestination. We’re trapped by who we are, and by what we’re absolutely, inescapably bound to do. “Bound” in its truest sense, too, the sense that you’re tied to your future. We could take the characters’ own immutable shallowness to be a sign of this, but the idea of being trapped in your destiny occurs as early as the second episode (“Future Echoes”, as if most of you didn’t know that). It’s an idea repeated throughout the series: “Justice” ends with a rant about free will that’s undercut by a pratfall which suggests an apology on behalf of the writer/s for explaining the point, while “The Inquisitor” gives us a creature that makes us feel guilty for not achieving greatness. As do the parents of one lead character and the fantasies of the other, throughout the whole 25 years and counting.

And the Reductionist Generalisations and assertions that are brimming over with wrongability include bits like these:

by this stage, Red Dwarf fans were already seen as the kind of gits who expressed themselves through T-shirts from Forbidden Planet rather than conversation, much as Python fans had been since the ’80s. The seventh series made even them too embarrassed to admit to liking it.

“Gunmen of the Apocalypse” […] is a very bland episode of an SF series that isn’t dramatic enough to be drama and isn’t funny enough to be comedy.

Red Dwarf X has failed to be terrible simply because it’s cramped, and understated, and… well… cheap.

And then there’s this:

The “exterior” shots are now CGI rather than modelwork,

ARRGGHH

[genericnerdyusername]

What an arse.

[Jonathan Capps]

Miles is the worst troll cunt on the entire internet.

[NoFro]

Nobody, apart from hardcore fans, gave a toss about Gunmen of the Apocalypse. The 6 million viewers who watched it when it first aired were all hardcore fans and so were the people who gave it an Emmy.

My favourite bit:
The “exterior” shots are now CGI rather than modelwork, and you can argue amongst yourselves as to whether that makes them more or less interesting, even though the answer is obviously less.

I can’t even… I mean… What a tit.

[Ben Kirkham]

“Miles is the worst troll cunt on the entire internet.”

I’ve never read any of Lawrence Miles’ Doctor Who books, though I gather they’re quite popular.

But his attitude always really pisses me off. He’s clearly of the opinion that Doctor Who has been awful ever since it came back and he would have done a better job. For example, on his site:

“Newsflash: After Doctor Who, Sherlock, and Jekyll, BBC announces quest to find other UK legends that Steven Moffat can completely miss the point of and then ruin for everybody in the future”

and:

“The last time I tried to e-mail Steven Moffat was, predictably, shortly after he got his sneery Scots backside into the producer’s chair. No, it’s true: even his backside is capable of sneering. I asked him whether he could possibly lift my exile from BBC Books, (a) because it’d keep me quiet without requiring him to have any personal contact with me, and (b) because I’d probably do a better job of writing for the re-vamped range than anyone else who might possibly want to do it (remember, he actually liked my work, at least when it wasn’t pointing in his direction). He never replied, and a couple of months later, it was announced that Michael Moorcock would be writing a Doctor Who novel. Call me paranoid, but just for a moment, it felt as if someone were deliberately trying to prove me wrong. ”

How bitter. He might as well stand on top of the Millennium Centre in Cardiff with a bottle of White Lightning cider in his hand, screaming “GIVE ME A JOB, I WANT TO WORK AGAIN!”

Oh, and he clearly knows fuck all about Red Dwarf, too.

[Danny Stephenson]

Is this the guy who had a massive breakdown on twitter a while back?

[Ben Kirkham]

“Is this the guy who had a massive breakdown on twitter a while back?”

It would not surprise me in the slightest. I think he’s still having a massive breakdown on his blog, tbh.

[Jonathan Capps]

> I’ve never read any of Lawrence Miles’ Doctor Who books, though I gather they’re quite popular.

I’ve read one and it was an impenetrable ball of fucking shit.

[Seb Patrick]

Miles is often very funny and is clearly a very intelligent man who sometimes has great insight into Doctor Who. He’s also written some great books.

However, he is quite possibly the most emotionally stunted individual I’ve ever seen evidence of, and as such is frequently a monumentally wrong-headed cunt.

I’m also not sure how he gets away with libelling people on his blog as frequently as he does. I suppose we should be thankful that his post on Dwarf didn’t also include accusing Doug of shagging teenage fans.

[Seb Patrick]

It was also quite astonishing when he sat down and wrote a Doctor Who episode one script (i.e. a “How he’d revamp the show if he’d had Russell or Moffat’s job” type thing) in a day or so, to prove that it could be done. He then smugly sat back and pointed out (as well as letting the handful of acolytes that he has point out) what a great story it was and how brilliant it was.

Conveniently ignoring the fact that it read like it was written by someone who’d never seen a TV script in their entire life, and had instead just taken a prose story and substituted all the narrative for stage directions.

[Ben Kirkham]

“I’ve read one and it was an impenetrable ball of fucking shit.”

Hahaha! Which one was that? An 8th Doctor book or one of those reference books? (About Time, is it called?)

[Jonathan Capps]

It was the 8th Doctor novel The Adventuress of Henrietta Street. Utterly tedious.

[Ben Kirkham]

“Miles is often very funny and is clearly a very intelligent man who sometimes has great insight into Doctor Who. He’s also written some great books.

However, he is quite possibly the most emotionally stunted individual I’ve ever seen evidence of, and as such is frequently a monumentally wrong-headed cunt.”

Quite possibly the funniest juxtaposition of paragraphs I’ve ever read – and very correct. He does seem to have a massive chip on his shoulder. He’s decidedly miffed that BBC Books chose Michael Moorcock and Stephen Baxter over him, as though he was anywhere in the same league as them.

[Ben Kirkham]

A friend of mine has read that book and tried to describe the plot to me. I didn’t know it was written by Lawrence Miles. I couldn’t understand the plot summation one bit.

[Ben Kirkham]

After reading this interview, I can safely say that the man is a full-blown emotional wreck:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050301095733/planeteleven.co.uk/features/lmia/lastever.php

[Plastic Percy]

Lawrence Miles is just bitter because when ‘Doctor Who’ returned to television he was no longer an important name in ‘Doctor Who’. Add to this, he’s got a one-sided rivalry with Steven Moffat, who I’m fairly certain doesn’t even remember him. Apparently they shared a table with a few other people at a fan meetup in London, and Moffatt sneered and turned his nose up at Miles when the latter showed off that he’d just bought ‘Bagpuss’ on DVD. To this day, Miles considers him his nemesis. His bitterness towards the current incarnation of the show is further fueled by the fact he fully expected the BBC to knock at his door, asking him to run the show, even though he has no experience working in television.

A lot of people in Doctor Who Fandom tend to blow smoke up his arse, but he is pretty much a massive cunt.

[Sam Johnson]

Dear, oh dear. I was quite interested in what Lawrence had to say, until he said this:

“Gunmen of the Apocalypse”, after the first few minutes of grotesque VR-sex (a new source of humour in the early ’90s), is a very bland episode of an SF series that isn’t dramatic enough to be drama and isn’t funny enough to be comedy. ’90s Red Dwarf fans, by that stage as insular as ’90s Doctor Who fans or ’90s Iron Maiden fans, voted it one of their favourites. Nobody else gave a toss.”

Gunmen is my dad’s favourite episode. Amd he has some major issues with Dwarf on the whole. If anything, I think Gunmen has to be one of Dwarf’s biggest successes. Y’know, what with the Emmy and all…

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I don’t know what all this palaver is about, Nu-Who is bollocks anyway.

Yeah, I fucking said it, fuck the lot of you.*

*I love you all!

[JamesTC]

He liked the first few series of New Who. I think it was around the end of Tennant’s second year that he started to dislike it.

[Blisschick]

I can honestly say that I don’t know who this guy is, but it appears he can barely hear himself over the sound of his own ego. I can taste the bitterness from here. Obviously, I haven’t missed anything.

[fozzibear1]

As a long time usenet user i just assume its normal for each fandom to have its twonks.
I mean analysis and deconstruction are fine but there are people where you quickly get to the point of thinking, or even stating
“if you hate this show so much that it seems to offend your very existance and you are continuing to watch then clearly you are too dumb to know how to use the off or switches and hence your opinion is irrelevant”

cheers
Fozzi

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