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

[Podey]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Edit: Oh, we’ve moved on from the Lexx memes. Broken toes it is, then.

[Unrumble]

[Ridley]

Doh, ray, me, fah, soh, lah, woh, broke, me, toe

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

*woe, broke, me, toe

There, fixed it

[Moonlight]

Limping on the left side of my foot is fucking up my ankle so maybe I should perform my duties hopping.

[Moonlight]

[International Debris]

Edit: Oh, we’ve moved on from the Lexx memes. Broken toes it is, then.

[Podey]

Currently watching an episode of DS9 where some of the crew are in a tiny ship, flying around the halls of a bigger ship…. 

[Moonlight]

Finished Series X with my friend I’m showing the show to, and we watched We’re Smegged. I was struck by how much better Chris’s real dyed hair looked behind the scenes compared to those extensions he has in the episodes. Those look like he used about a pound of gel and the color feels too dark.

I’ve always hated Rimmer’s hair in X. The XI and on wig doesn’t quite look like his real hair (it’s not curly) but it’s MILES better than the X hair extensions.

[tombow]

I saw posters on another message board say that the Series X doc is a shockingly honest look at how rough and rushed the series was and how messy the last minute re-writes were. I don’t remember getting that feel from the doc, though I haven’t seen it for a few years.

[Flap Jack]

It’s true. You should consider rewatching it.

[Starbugger]

Some things that seem like they’re from Star Trek might themselves be derivative or similar to other works, but the most prominent ones to me are: […] maybe also Camille / The Perfect Mate, though that’s kind of a stock idea.

“Camille” is TOS’s “The Man Trap”, with the hideous creature that appears as everyone’s dream partner.

[Moonlight]

I saw posters on another message board say that the Series X doc is a shockingly honest look at how rough and rushed the series was and how messy the last minute re-writes were. I don’t remember getting that feel from the doc, though I haven’t seen it for a few years.

That’s odd because it is astounding how honest they are and the sheer amount of times something almost destroys the entire production is ludicrous.

[tombow]

when Timeslides was filmed was it a surprise to the studio audience on the night that Johnny Vegas was in it?

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I’d imagine the audience would’ve been very surprised to see him in Timeslides, especially considering nobody even knew who he was in 1989.

[International Debris]

His friends and family probably knew who he was.

[Formica]

when Demons & Angels was filmed was it a surprise to the studio audience on the night that Sylvester McCoy was in it?

[Dave]

When Tikka was filmed was it a surprise to the studio audience on the night that they weren’t watching it?

[Moonlight]

When Only the Good was filmed was it a surprise to the studio audience when they were locked in the studio for 13 years until Red Dwarf 10?

[Dave]

When the movie wasn’t filmed was it a surprise to the Duke of Manchester?

[Warbodog]

Johnny Vegas was also in Timewave. The studio audience probably wouldn’t have known before they arrived, but he was probably introduced before they started filming his scenes, since a “famous person walks onto set” audience reaction would be out of place. The set report’s here: https://www.ganymede.tv/2016/02/red-dwarf-xii-episode-2-set-report/

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

When Back to Earth was filmed was it a surprise to the studio audience on the night that they weren’t in it, watching it, and the episodes were paced specifically with their absence in mind?

[Dave]

When Out Of The Red wasn’t filmed, was it a surprise to anyone at all?

[tombow]

I think, what I was trying to say is… you can’t do Heavy Metal in dubly. Or in Timeslides. That’s why Lister’s youthful band is psychedelic, and not the Motorhead style crew we know he would have been in. But you know what I meant. Thanks for the set report.

going on from that… do you think “lesser Dwarf”‘s inferior-ness is not apparent live and only in the finished episode? Cause not many people at the recording seemed to know how controversial that ep would be.

edit – Spambot’s comment knew the score

There was a palpable sense that nobody knew what they were doing with the show. Writing, directing, production design, and general studio management was a total shambles. At one point a scene had to be reset because nobody pressed record on the camera. They also came out to ask us to laugh harder as the microphones were unable to hear us…

[Ian Symes]

Spambot was a bellend who didn’t know what they were talking about for the most part, but they did happen to choose the one episode where some of their complaints were valid.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

A lot of XI and XII audience (by being a smaller audience) weren’t always hardcore fans and people much more casually going to see a sitcom recording, right?

Weren’t there always tickets going begging at the last minute as they wanted to fill seats for people (casual viewers) that didn’t show.

A lot of that casual audience, as we unfortunately saw at the time, had no objections to the stuff in Timewave.  So being in the room is going to be less tense than for all of us sitting at home watching it.

And not just because you’re there watching Red Dwarf live.

[cwickham]

When Dear Dave was filmed was it a surprise to the audience that they only saw half of it?

[Unrumble]

When ‘The End’ was filmed, were people assuming they’d missed all the previous episodes?

[Dave]

When Bodyswap was filmed, was it a surprise to the cast that the audience hadn’t turned up?

[Jenuall]

When Encounter at Farpoint was filmed was it a surprise that Data existed considering Kryten hadn’t been created yet?

[Ian Symes]

When Parallel Universe was filmed, did Holly survive his computer rashes?

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

When Out of Time was filmed, were the cast surprised when Ed Bye used actual explosives and killed them all to make the ending more realistic?

[Formica]

When Red Dwarf: Titan was recorded, was it a surprise to Derek and Kit?

[International Debris]

When Red Dwarf The Movie was filmed, was it a surprise to the Whatever You Want winner that they weren’t in it?

[Frank Smeghammer]

When Me² was filmed, was it a surprise to the studio audience on the night that Chris Barrie seemed to be in two places at once?

[Moonlight]

When Red Christmas was filmed, did it surprise the audience when the real Santa Claus was explosively decompressed on set?

[Flap Jack]

When ‘Blue’ was filmed, were the audience surprised to learn that Kim Fuller wasn’t a woman?

[Renegade Rob]

When “Pete” was filmed, was it a surprise to the studio audience on the night that they weren’t issued a formal letter of apology?

[Moonlight]

When Siliconia was filmed, was it a surprise to the studio audience when they were forcibly put into Kryten masks and made to be extras?

[Flap Jack]

When Can’t Smeg Won’t Smeg was filmed, was it a surprise to Ainsley that Danny switched the rice?

[Moonlight]

When Back in the Red was filmed, was it a surprise to the studio audience when they became overcome with lust and had sex with Rimmer one by one?

[Nick R]

When Universe Challenge was filmed, was it a surprise to the studio audience that Bamber Gascoigne murdered Jeremy Paxman?

[Dave]

When David Ross lifted up that tureen of orange savoury liquid to throw on Rimmer’s bunk at the end of ‘Kryten’, was it a soup-rise to the studio audience?

[Nick R]

When Alison Dio told her husband Stuart that she’d got tickets for them both to watch the filming of a series XI episode, was it a surprise to Stu Dio that he’d be in the studio audience?

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

When the radio times printed that Can of Worms involved a Polymorph was it a surprise to absolutely anyone at all that the episode involved Polymorph?

[tombow]

In Trojan were the audience shocked by Howard’s lack of genetic similarity to Arnold, thus ruining the coming twist of them having different fathers?

[Moonlight]

When Patrick Stewart reached for the phone to call his lawyer, was it a surprise when something made him laugh?

[Dave]

When Rimmer had to organise his own surprise birthday parties, was it a surprise to him when he turned up?

[Author]

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