Mundane observation dome

[Warbodog]

Do you have any miscellaneous insights on the series that may be worth contemplating for a few seconds before moving on with our lives? Here are some of mine.

1. The four regulars have names that can work any way around, though this would have been more obvious if David Ross had stayed and wouldn’t work if Chris Barrie used his real name.

2. The series’ lax attitude to continuity extends to the setting. Outside of Holly’s distress calls, I don’t think three million years is mentioned all that much after series I and before VI (not sure about later years). Instead, we get the extremely fudged “dead for centuries” and “travelling for thousands of years” – not actual retcons, but suggesting a more conventional setting for casual viewers tuning in and the sort of stories they’re telling. It’s only millions when they need it to be.

3. 200 years of stasis between series V and VI means that the earlier series took place in their equivalent of the early 19th century by comparison (e.g. Blackadder the Third). Since they didn’t run into a long-lived Camille or one of her great-great-etc grandchildren, it didn’t come up.

4. Although Lister is routinely slagged off in the series, he’s spared the level of seemingly authoritative character assassination that Rimmer gets, because the audience is aligned with Lister’s viewpoint most of the time. For example, we see Kochanski Camille belittling Rimmer’s interests, but we don’t get the equivalent of Hologram Camille reacting to Lister’s pickup lines, we’re left to form our own opinions on those. This flimsy point has not been considered much beyond this single example.

5. Cat’s costumes are overwhelmingly referenced more than anyone else’s in the series, but the least discussed by fans.

6. Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibbley were so seemingly ubiquitous in canon and tie-in merchandise through the 90s (Smegazine strips, T-shirts) that they still feel overused today, even though it’s been over 20 years since they appeared. Maybe they’re allowed back after all.

7. Only series III & V and maybe XI & XII (not as familiar with those) don’t have any sense of an arc whatsoever (though IV’s minor Kryten disobedience arc was already fucked up by episode shuffling). Series III is just about the only series where no episode directly references any previous episode, but it still has the Backwards scrolling text and general references to Rimmer having died and stuff.

8. One of the series’ most famous and quoted scenes – everybody’s dead, Dave – is a straight-up 2001: A Space Odyssey homage and would have been received that way at the time, but doesn’t work like that for most people coming to the episode later on or new viewers who are young or don’t watch old films.

9. Sometimes dismissed as lightweight and gimmicky today, Backwards was designed as an innovative interactive experience to reward extracurricular effort. As well as inviting fans to work out the backwards events and filming logistics, Arthur Smith’s eugolonom is teasingly long and “you scoundrels” is clearly a cleaned-up translation gag even before you’ve heard it. Unfortunately, by the time technology caught up with the intent and the ability to reverse media files properly on home computers became commonplace, Backwards Forwards came out and everyone just cheated with the walkthrough.

Imagine the quality of the musings I left out!

Topic

[Dave]

Legend has it that the ghost of an obsessive teenage fan of Red Dwarf, who had undergone plastic surgery to look exactly like Bobby’s Kryten, still haunts Shepperton Studios, and can occasionally be glimpsed in films that are shot there.

#TheBobbening

[Moonlight]

Legend also has it that eight nearly three-decade-old episodes still haunt this very website, corrupting the souls of those within its walls. Just when you feel at your most content – WHAM – you remember that awful prop cow and derail a thread talking about it.

#HalloVIIIn

[Nick R]

Smegadrive reference shot:

Someone please edit Squiffy Kryten (Squiten?) into it!

[Moonlight]

This is yet another reason it sucks that I am working all day today. I could’ve belted that out in 10 minutes in that 2013 version of Photoshop I’ve been using for over a decade and absolutely paid for.

[Dave]

[Dave]

[Dave]

[Unrumble]

[clem]

TOS was updated a couple of days ago with the news about I-VIII returning to Netflix, and Doug paying tribute to Patrick Stewart.

https://www.reddwarf.co.uk/news/index.cfm
A brand new nugget of information about the movie script, there. Unless it isn’t and I’d just forgotten it.

They’re still advertising the I-VIII Blu-ray set on the home page. 

[Dave]

A brand new nugget of information about the movie script, there. Unless it isn’t and I’d just forgotten it.

I don’t remember hearing that before. Could have been fun.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Is that hinting at Rimmer flushing this General out into space? Doug sure loves that idea as a gag doesn’t he 

[Rushy]

Is that hinting at Rimmer flushing this General out into space? Doug sure loves that idea as a gag doesn’t he 

You make it sound as if Picard being flushed into space wouldn’t have been fucking hilarious. 

[Moonlight]

[Ian Symes]

They’re still advertising the I-VIII Blu-ray set on the home page. 

Doug’s tribute to Sir Patrick mentions that the Red Dwarf Night links live on through YouTube. Yes, but they’re also on both Bluray sets!

[Moonlight]

D is for Daleks, for some reason.

[Rushy]

Imagine if Red Dwarf got a fascist fanbase like this. Just a whole clan of unironic Arnold Rimmer worshippers who see Lister as a woke Dumb-o-crat dragging him down. 

Comedy really has no reason to exist anymore. You can’t write better jokes than “the American government officially declares Darth Vader to be the good guy”

[Ben Saunders]

Right wingers like the aesthetic of the militaries and hierarchies in things like Star Wars and Star Trek and don’t actually pay attention to anything beyond that level. How anybody could watch the fall of Darth Vader and think hmm yes this is obviously a good thing that is happening is beyond me.

[Rushy]

How anybody could watch the fall of Darth Vader and think hmm yes this is obviously a good thing that is happening is beyond me.

Kylo Ren’s story aged like fine wine

[Ben Saunders]

Kylo Ren’s story aged like fine wine

A girl found him hot though so he was redeemed

[Ben Saunders]

Kylo Ren’s story was always so stupid because it was like, did you not see Return of the Jedi? Did you miss the whole redemption thing? But apparently people just are that stupid.

[Rushy]

A girl found him hot though so he was redeemed

That’s just old-school Star Wars optimism. Vader deciding to side with a son he’s never known over the regime he’s served for decades is just as romantic a notion. 

Kylo Ren’s story was always so stupid because it was like, did you not see Return of the Jedi? Did you miss the whole redemption thing? But apparently people just are that stupid.

I think it works, but only in the context of the Force Awakens. The Last Jedi muddles the idea, because they have a scene where Rey specifically points out Vader’s redemption (implying that it’s common knowledge even on a backwater planet).

In the Force Awakens, I got more of a vibe that it was something Luke only shared with his closest friends and relatives. He probably did tell Kylo, but Kylo – being in the process of radicalisation – would have dismissed it as a lie. 

[Ben Saunders]

Vader deciding to side with a son he’s never known over the regime he’s served for decades is just as romantic a notion.

If you downplay the themes of fear and loss throughout the saga and how Anakin losing his mother traumatises him into selfishly not wanting to lose Padme and how this is mirrored by him selflessly throwing away his life to save his son and put a stop to the cycle of abuse then yeah you could maybe make a statement as reductive as this.

I would participate in Force Awakens apologia if it was still 2016.

[Rushy]

If you downplay the themes of fear and loss throughout the saga and how Anakin losing his mother traumatises him into selfishly not wanting to lose Padme and how this is mirrored by him selflessly throwing away his life to save his son and put a stop to the cycle of abuse then yeah you could maybe make a statement as reductive as this. 

I think we’re not having the same conversation. 
I’m not comparing the two events in terms of how narratively beautiful they are, or how well they fit into the grand picture. I’m comparing them in terms of the most basic verisimilitude. As in, “if these people were real, how likely it’d be for something like this to happen?”
And I did so because I assumed you were criticising the premise of a girl falling in love with Kylo and helping him to change his mind. To me, both Vader and Kylo’s redemptions are equally a romantic and unrealistic notion befitting an old-school adventure film. But how and why it succeeds in Return of the Jedi and not in Rise of Skywalker, that’s an entirely different matter. 
As for Force Awakens apologia, it’s not really my intention to apologise for anything, because I don’t think there’s anything to apologise for. It’s a very good Star Wars film. 

[Ben Saunders]

Fair enough, I was implying it was poorly executed in episode 9, but I don’t think anybody who isn’t a Reylo shipper would put much effort into defending that one.

You’re probably the first person I’ve seen since the initial hype died down to call 7 “very good”, to me it’s lazy and uninventive but could have served as a sort-of decent launching point for a new trilogy if the next two instalments did some serious work to build upon it. They didn’t. On its own it’s almost remarkably bland and not really even worth criticising anymore, blah blah remake of IV etc. Who cares at this point. I liked it up until Poe Dameron crashes and dies, only to be brought back later for no reason because JJ Abrams liked him. First time in a cinema I went for a piss and wasn’t really concerned I was missing anything. I came back to “oh they’re building another Death Star” and I was like of course they are man.

[Professor Flibble]

I’ve still not watched The Rise of Skywalker.

[Rushy]

Well, I respect your opinion but don’t agree in the least. I’ve seen the film several times now and I’ve always enjoyed it for how heartfelt it is. The new characters are charming and memorable, and the old characters are handled impeccably. I care more about Han Solo in the Force Awakens than in any other film he’s in. As I said above, the premise about the SW equivalent of neo-Nazis has stood the test of time. 

I liked it up until Poe Dameron crashes and dies, only to be brought back later for no reason because JJ Abrams liked him.

This is exactly the kind of old-school mentality that I love. Where things happen because people are friends and fall in love with what they’re making. It’s the type of thinking that gave Sam Jackson a purple lightsaber. Just because he asked. 

As for being a remake, I would argue the film is deliberately playing around with the context, staging and characters of IV. Kylo and Hux are a good example of this. They’re designed to echo Vader and Tarkin while also being their polar opposites in personality.

Luke was someone who wanted to escape his family. Rey is only ever interested in finding her family. 

Han, who carelessly mocked Obi-Wan and the Force in the original, is now effectively filling the Obi-Wan role. 

[Dave]

I’ve still not watched The Rise of Skywalker.

Keep following that instinct. 

[Professor Flibble]

I’m more interested in watching The Clone Wars anyway. In my mind, it’s the six films and they also did three kinda naff sequel films and I saw two of them once.

[Nick R]

Right wingers like the aesthetic of the militaries and hierarchies in things like Star Wars and Star Trek and don’t actually pay attention to anything beyond that level. How anybody could watch the fall of Darth Vader and think hmm yes this is obviously a good thing that is happening is beyond me.

I liked the joke about this in Wake Up Dead Man, where a right-winger quotes a villain from the Empire, and then in the next line immediately compares himself to the Rebels. It was a funny joke on its own, and then I got a second laugh out of it when I realised that it was in a film by Rian Johnson – a man who knows a thing or two about Star Wars becoming a culture war cause célèbre.

[Rushy]

Rian Johnson – a man who knows a thing or two about Star Wars becoming a culture war cause célèbre.

Johnson is a distinctly mixed bag for me.

Yeah, the culture war was ridiculous. But also, he absolutely fueled and encouraged strife online. The whole ‘your Snoke theory sucks’ thing rubbed me the wrong way. Never mock your audience for engaging with your film.

[Technopeasant]

Keep following that instinct. 

I actually probably enjoy Rise of Skywalker more than any of the other sequels. It’s just so hilariously dumb. I do admire The Last Jedi more even if its not well executed and I can barely even recall the sequence of events in The Force Awakens.

[Ben Saunders]

I’ve still not watched The Rise of Skywalker.

TLJ killed all my investment in the sequel trilogy so I just went into TRoS as if it was some random action movie, and in that sense it is… kind of funny? Still dreadful, especially one moment regarding the supposed fate of a legacy character that is incredibly cheap and dishonest, and generally as a Star Wars movie and especially as a finale to the entire saga it really is atrocious. But if you aren’t invested whatsoever in any of these characters or anything happening on screen, you can at least laugh at it.

I find it kind of astounding how almost everybody is like yeah IX sucks. I was so used to literally everything being 50/50 for so long that everybody actually agreeing on something almost didn’t feel quite right. We haven’t seen unity like that since the final season of Game of Thrones, and I don’t know when we’re going to see it again.

[Ben Saunders]

I can barely even recall the sequence of events in The Force Awakens.

I’ve watched it exactly one time but: Kylo Ren stops a blaster bolt with the Force. Poe Dameron does some bullshit. Finn defects because he doesn’t like killing and then immediately starts killing his ex-co-workers. Rey eats some magic bread and beats up like four dudes. Simon Pegg is a big ugly fuck. Rey bypasses a compressor because she’s a genius somehow and says she’s never seen this much green in the galaxy, which makes everybody in the theatre chuckle because that means WEED. They all team up and take down Death Star III (This Time It’s A Planet). That’s not how the Force works. Han Solo dies, Kylo gets shot by Chewie then gets humiliated by Finn and Rey while punching himself in the stomach. The end.

Edit: I forgot the bizarre filler Kanjiclub scene, the orange lady (she is an orange) and Boba Fett Is A Girl Now (She Is Also Useless).

[Warbodog]

unironic

People also just troll for reactions though.

[Ben Saunders]

About 80% of the internet is just ragebait at this point, yes.

[Rushy]

Rise of Skywalker is kind of a camp classic for me, mainly because of Palpatine. Raising an army of the undead, going ham with the Force Lightning, those scenes are great fun. The granddaughter thing is delightfully silly, and I get a kick out of the DuckTales style quest plotline the movie goes for. I’d never hold it up against the George Lucas films (maybe Attack of the Clones), but it fulfils the function of being a good yarn. Which the Last Jedi notably doesn’t. That one was just filled with a palpable sense of embarrassment for having to be part of this franchise. I found it offputting. 

[gerrydelasel]

This star wars crap belongs in the I-thought-you-hated-films thread. 

[Author]

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