Misheard lines

[Danny Stephenson]

Does anyone have any quotes from Red Dwarf that they’ve misheard and took it as read, only to find that years later you’ve got it all wrong?

Now i’ve wrote this topic starter I can’t think of an example. Bollocks

Anyways…

Discuss.

Topic

[International Debris]

As a kid I had no idea what shoals were, so I had many interpretations of that line over the years, including “goldfish shites”

I heard it as “goldfish goes nibbling at my toes” which is, admittedly, less funny than “goldfish shites”.

[si]

Goldfish shites
Nibbling at my tights.

[Dave]

And that one.

Misheard lines

[Dave]

Hmmm, that link was meant to lead back to the posts on 28 February in this thread, but it doesn’t seem to have worked. Oh well.

[Warbodog]

I thought ‘Officer Bud-babe’ was ‘Officer Butt-babe’ as a teen, continuing Cat’s established ass obsession. Looks like that one’s pretty common.

[International Debris]

It took me a long time to work out that Officer BB was an abbreviation of Officer Bud-Babe, which was Cat’s way of calling her both ‘buddy’ and a ‘babe’.

[RickLee84]

When I was a youngster watching the show, I at times thought it was “goldfish holes” and then that evolved into “goldfisho’s” which I imagined was the evolution of the word goldfish or the species itself since the show was set 3M+ years into in the future. I was fine with it because we had space weevil and GELFs and thought it was just another futuristic term.

[si]

Been back and had a look at those comments from February 28.
Congratulations to Dave on his ability to be able to remember things he posted almost two months ago should anyone unknowingly repeat it.

[Ian Symes]

It took me a long time to work out that Officer BB was an abbreviation of Officer Bud-Babe, which was Cat’s way of calling her both ‘buddy’ and a ‘babe’.

It doesn’t help that “Officer BB” is the first iteration we hear in Ouroboros, after the initial “Officer Bud-Babe” was cut from the broadcast episode – it’s only there in Xtended.

[bloodteller]

in Mechocracy, when Lister is reciting his list of bread products to the toaster he says one that sounds like “Sogen” but there’s no such thing. what is he saying there?

[Dave]

Been back and had a look at those comments from February 28.
Congratulations to Dave on his ability to be able to remember things he posted almost two months ago should anyone unknowingly repeat it.

I wasn’t picking on your comment, the whole conversation was just such an exact repeat of that part of the thread from just a few weeks ago that I thought I would make the obvious White Hole joke.

Sorry that it obviously came across as more pointed than I intended.

[Taiwan Tony]

>I’d love to know the thinking process behind the editing of those final moments… The “To be continued” seems kind of strange too. The assurances there was more Red Dwarf means that these guys weren’t going to stay dead. It’s not quite a cliffhanger ending. Alas, I’m guessing everyone involved has now forgotten the fine details.

I thought there was a scene cut from the end (with the urine moustaches) that explained all this. Have I misremembered?

[Ben Saunders]

The “to be continued” was added in editing, if I recall, with the original ending being the urine moustaches idea.

[bloodteller]

if you really want to get nitpicky about it, the original ending was to be them all just happily enjoying the wine and going “good year, nice wine” etc.

supposedly craig charles came up with the idea for the urine re-cyc mustaches during the script readthrough or something, and so they decided to have that as the ending instead.

[International Debris]

Urine recyc is obviously a much better ending than ‘To be continued’.

[Ben Saunders]

I absolutely cannot agree with that

[Dave]

Ace Rimmer should have turned up and saved them at the last minute. By kneeing Death in the bollocks.

[Pete Part Three]

I’d be fine with Starbug just blowing up, and the credits rolling. The “To be continued” instantly reassures you that they’re not dead. It’s the equivalent of Sherlock popping up at the end of “The Reichenbach Fall”.

And to be frank, Tikka doesn’t “continue” Out of Time, it just spends 2 minutes explaining what has to happen for there to be more Red Dwarf, and then tells a different story. If you’re killing off all your characters but also promising that they’ll be more episodes, you’re immediately telling your audience that when you come back, you’re going to retcon the shit out of everything that’s just happened.

[Ben Saunders]

The “to be continued” is just to assure people that the show isn’t over for good, same reason for “the smeg it is”, although the second time ’round it took a lot longer to bring it back.

[si]

Been back and had a look at those comments from February 28.
Congratulations to Dave on his ability to be able to remember things he posted almost two months ago should anyone unknowingly repeat it.

I wasn’t picking on your comment, the whole conversation was just such an exact repeat of that part of the thread from just a few weeks ago that I thought I would make the obvious White Hole joke.

Sorry that it obviously came across as more pointed than I intended.

No, no, you’re alright, I was just being funny in a sarcastic manner, not being mardy.

[Dave]

Ah ok, good.

So it’s decided then, we consult Holly.

[International Debris]

I absolutely cannot agree with that

Oh good, we’ve agreed on some things recently and I was getting worried! :D

I don’t like the ‘To be continued’ ending. I think the actual phrase is fine – if it was planned to be the last episode ever we’d have known it, so we always knew they’d get out alive anyway. It’s the same as the cliffhangers in new Doctor Who, nobody ever thinks “oh shit The Doctor’s not going to get out of this one and it’ll be the end of life on Earth”, so ‘to be continued’ works fine. See also: every use of ‘to be continued’ in every TV series and film ever.

I just don’t really like it as a cliffhanger, and I particularly don’t like the resolution and continuation of the time drive and the way it was all handled after that. Generally, a cliffhanger works well when placed mid-way through a story, and the Out of Time one just feels like “we didn’t know how to end it”. It would be like Queeg ending with Holly being shut down. The fact that we could have been rid of the time drive but we ended up with series VII’s “we could return to Red Dwarf at any point but we don’t use the time drive because of a totally irrelevant explanation from Tikka to Ride” nonsense instead just makes it worse.

The only Red Dwarf cliffhanger I like is the one at the end of Parallel Universe, and that’s because it’s done with a joke that makes it seem intentionally and entertaining.

[Dave]

Thinking about it, the first three episodes of Series I all feel like they end on a bit of a cliffhanger, don’t they? And Confidence & Paranoia.

I know they’re not really treated as such, but they all leave a story idea hanging in a way that makes you keen to see what happens next.

[Pete Part Three]

>It’s the same as the cliffhangers in new Doctor Who, nobody ever thinks “oh shit The Doctor’s not going to get out of this one and it’ll be the end of life on Earth”
>See also: every use of ‘to be continued’ in every TV series and film ever.

I can’t think of an episode (not even a season finale) in Doctor Who which ends with the Doctor dead and the TARDIS destroyed. Can you give an example in a TV show where there’s a “To be continued” caption after every main character has been killed?

It just seems a bit surplus to requirements, really. I think I’d have preferred the “They can’t end it like this!!” outrage to the reassuring “They’ll be back in Series VII”. If you’re ahead of the story, you’re going to have a (likely correct) theory on how they get out of it and know the show isn’t over. The caption just kind of spoon-feeds you. And when Tikka finishes the job, it’s a “well, duh” moment.

You know, the unreality bubbles thing might have been more satisfying,

[International Debris]

Well, The Pandorica Opens ends with The Doctor locked in the Pandorica, everybody else dead, and the destruction of the entire universe outside of Earth. Followed by ‘to be continued’.

I get where you’re coming from, but I think unless an episode is very specifically marketed as ‘the last ever episode’ then the audience are going to assume that there’ll be a resolution, so it doesn’t really bother me whether they use the caption or not.

[Ben Saunders]

Doctor dead, Under the Lake. Caves of Androzani as well. Tardis destroyed, The Mind Robber, The Magician’s Apprentice. Both? Probably not.

Doctor Who cliffhangers have always been contrived, a necessity of the format, but some of them are really good, like Turlough going off the edge in Enlightenment or The Master turning up with a bunch of Daleks in Frontier In Space. Which the next episode doesn’t even attempt to pretend happened, in one of the biggest disappointments the show has ever thrown at us.

[Ben Paddon]

Cliffhangers aren’t “well, they’re not going to get out of that!“, they’re “Ooh ‘Eck, how’re they going to get out of that?!” – knowing that the Master replacing the entire human race with duplicates will be undone before he regenerates in “The End of Time – Part 2” didn’t stop me from experiencing anxiety over how it’d be undone when the credits were rolling at the end of part 1.

Anyone who dismisses cliffhangers as pointless because of a lack of genuine peril isn’t watching TV properly and should hand in their sets immediately.

[Ben Saunders]

Some Who cliffhangers are absolute, clunkers, though, and only exist to create artificial drama in stories that don’t benefit from them (the Doctor gets imprisoned only to immediately escape, three times). They do provide an opportunity to go for a walk or get a drink or something, check Twitter, every twenty five minutes, so that’s nice. Also plenty of lame resolutions (Genesis of the Daleks) and occasionally events shown out of sequence to create a truly artificial cheat of a cliffhanger (Image of the Fendahl).

[International Debris]

Yes, a lot of Who cliffhangers aren’t cliffhangers at all – Death to the Daleks’s “oh no, it’s a coloured tile!”, Trial of a Timelord’s “The Doctor pulls yet another expression”, Mark of the Rani’s “oh no the Doctor’s fallen down, actually he hasn’t and you only thought you saw him actually fall down the hole last week but you didn’t, honest”, Dragonfire’s “I’m just going to hang off this cliff for a while, that’s how you do a cliffhanger isn’t it?”, The Curse of Fenric’s “lots of batshit crazy stuff happens and then – The Doctor pulls a face!” etc. It was a necessity of the serial format, and thus occasionally tedious, although frequently brilliant.

The best example of a serialised show’s use of a cliffhangers I can think of is Lost. Some episodes ended on a cliffhanger, others didn’t. They were utilised only when necessary.

[Dave]

All the shit Doctor Who cliffhangers in the world are worth it for the end of the first part of Remembrance Of The Daleks.

[Ben Saunders]

Death to the Daleks is fucking hilarious. Needless to say, that wasnt the originally written cliffhanger, it was a result of editing. Laugh at Trial all you want but the genocode cliffhanger is pretty hot stuff. JNT insisted for a while that all cliffhangers end on a shot of The Doctor, resulting in some absolutely ludicrous stills. The Fenric cliffhanger in question is brilliant, though. The Zygon reveal in their eponymous debut is great as well.

Chuck has some brilliant cliffhangers, ones that make you really unwilling to go to bed with that kind of lore shattering zinger enticing you to watch more. They also don’t use them every single episode.

[Dave]

24 was always pretty great at whipping out a compelling cliffhanger (or several) even when the episode itself hadn’t been much cop. Watching it on DVD it was pretty much impossible to avoid sitting down and watching a whole disc’s worth.

[Ben Saunders]

I think that was me with Enlightenment. “Meh, this is pretty bor-holy SHIT I can’t stop watching now”

[International Debris]

The Fenric cliffhanger in question is brilliant, though.

Oh yes, it’s great, there’s this wonderful sense of “What the fuck is going on? Wait, what was that? NOW what’s going on?” in the last 30 seconds, but as the wonderful cliffhanger-themed documentary on one of the DVDs points out, it was decided to end on McCoy pulling a slightly confused face. Colossal and strangely underwhelming at the same time, in a way that only classic Who can do.

24 was always pretty great at whipping out a compelling cliffhanger (or several) even when the episode itself hadn’t been much cop.

It had a lot of these, didn’t it? I’m sure it was FlashForward that did the same sort of thing, with the plot only really moving forward in the last two minutes of each episode.

[Plastic Percy]

Wasn’t it one of JNT’s perculiar diktats that a cliffhanger should be a semi-closeup of the Doctor looking serious/worried/in pain?

[Hamish]

> the Doctor gets imprisoned only to immediately escape

Wait, does this mean that Timewave was originally going to be a two-parter?

[Ben Saunders]

Yeah Percy they talk about it on the DVD for terror of the Vervoids, where one cliffhanger absolutely does not need or desevre a shot of the docotr but had to have one

[International Debris]

JNT made some really, really bad decisions, didn’t he?

[Ben Saunders]

JNT loved the show, made some great decisions and fought harder than anyone to keep the show on the air, for which i commend him, but yes, he made some horrible decisions as well. He was a complex character.

[Taiwan Tony]

They don’t end with a to be continued but I liked it when they killed off all the characters in Black Adder II. (Goes Forth was affecting, too, but somehow less chilling.)
And I was genuinely upset to see Richie and Eddie get shot at the end of Bottom 3.

[Warbodog]

>I was genuinely upset to see Richie and Eddie get shot at the end of Bottom 3.

I just thought it was funny, but I was sad there wouldn’t be any more, since it definitely felt final in a way that falling to their deaths five weeks earlier didn’t. Probably because they made a point of unambiguously and vividly showing the slaughter, I got the message.

[Taiwan Tony]

Apparently there was an announcer over the credits that they’d return. In my torment, I missed this. Probably didn’t hear over the sound of my own wailing.
I certainly didn’t find it funny. Still don’t. Poignant, perhaps.

[International Debris]

They wrote a fourth series, didn’t they?

[Ben Saunders]

Google turns up an apparently rejected fourth series of scripts and a lovely quote of Rik calling the person responsible for the rejection a “lesbian bitch”. http://lostmediaarchive.wikia.com/wiki/Bottom_Series_Four_(BBC-Rejected_Scripts;_Mid-to-Late_1990s)

Also a G+T forum discussion, funnily enough. https://www.ganymede.tv/forums/topic/so-a-4th-series-of-bottom-is-on-the-way/

[Taiwan Tony]

According to Ade the fourth series was chopped up and stuck into live shows, so we didn’t miss anything.

[Plastic Percy]

<<JNT loved the show, made some great decisions and fought harder than anyone to keep the show on the air, for which i commend him, but yes, he made some horrible decisions as well. He was a complex character.>>

I’ve always attributed a lot of his poor story decisions to the fact that he was the only Producer to have worked his way up from the floor, unlike other producers who’d mostly been writers, script editors and directors. They were more likely be able to spot plotholes or know what wouldn’t work on screen for dramatic reasons rather than someone more used to booking studio time and hiring lighting rigs.

[Ben Saunders]

Yeah he wasn’t great on scripts, and according to Saward the quality of scripts they were getting at the time was fairly… shall I say low, meaning Saward had to basically re-write a lot of his era. JNT had mad ideas like “do an episode called Greatest Show in the Galaxy, what do you mean what’s the plot? Write it”, and “oh do an episode in Amsterdam.” And he refused to work with writers who had written for the show before, Saward having to convince him to let Robert Holmes write (one of) his best scripts for them.

But that story about him refusing to let another Shada Moment happen and getting Greatest Show made by any means necessary shows to me that he at least did some good things. And the endgame Cartmel stuff happened with (in spite of?) him, which was good.

[Plastic Percy]

On the one hand, it was a good piece of blue sky thinking to open up the policy for new writers, but at the same time a bad move to blackball old hands – Robert Holmes, Terrence Dicks, the Bristol Boys etc. could all be relied upon to bring in a good idea and knew what worked and could deliver a script which was servicable from the get go.

My problem with Eric Saward is that he never seemed interested in writing for the Doctor. He was more interested in his own vision of gritty scifi, hence why his scripts are filled with tough space marines and ruthless gun runners instead.

[International Debris]

Yes, there’s a lot of very generic sci-fi going on in the Davison and Colin eras. Some strong stories, but very little that really sticks in the mind in the way so many ’60s and ’70s stories do. It took until the McCoy era for the show to start really trying to be different and surprising again, even if it started that task by pretending to be an under-budgeted CBBC comedy about aliens.

[bloodteller]

not exactly a misheard line, but i only just realised this morning the Marooned line about “your ball landing in Lister’s buttock crevice” is implying the ball actually lands up his arsecrack- i always thought it meant the ball landed in the imprint in the sand that his bum made during all the sex

[Author]

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