SFX Stinker!

[si]

Got my new SFX today, found the review for the BtE DVD, and I’m not overly impressed – 2.5/5 for the story, 2/5 for the extras, plus some major slagging off of Doug Naylor’s direction.
But even worse, flicking through the letters page, there are two letters from ‘fans’, absolutely slating it. Were they watching the same show as me?

I write to you in mourning following the death of a previously much-loved friend.
Having currently endured two of the three […] eps […] I’m left bewildered and distinctly underwhelmed.
I’m not sure I can even bring myself to watch the third instalment, so bad were the previous two. – Simon Fowles

and

When I tuned in […] they seemed to be showing old episodes of Hyperdrive.
That would be the only explanation for the unfunny, flabbily written and charmless rubbish that I saw.
Oh, and Craig Charles taking the mick out of his drug habit. Woo hoo. -Keith Sullivan

Oh, fuck off.

Topic

[Andrew]

> The Dwarfers are from a universe in which Blade Runner and Coronation Street do NOT have to exist for real

The latter for sure, I’d have said, but there’s no reason BR wouldn’t exist. Only that none of them know it well enough to realise the similarity. (In the same way that nobody saying “This is a bit like Alien/Terminator/2001” in Polymorph/Inquisitor/Queeg.)

Me, I tend to think at least one of them has seen it and kinda forgotten, the way I can’t really remember the details of Hitchcock’s Marnie so long after seeing it. But you couldn’t add that to the dialogue in the first act without blowing the reveal.

[Jonathan Capps]

My view is (and I’m sorry if this has been said before, but for some reason I started drifing off around half way through this thread) is the squid collects the data for its hallucinations from the various dimensions it travels around. After all, you can’t expect a squid to adaquetly create worlds for its victims to inhabit. It is a SQUID, after all, give it a break.

[Andrew]

> the squid collects the data for its hallucinations from the various dimensions it travels around

The squid doesn’t travel dimensions, though. They just imagined that. It’s the hallucination’s way of handing the guys dimension travel – the squid’s back in the tank at the end of the story, since it never actually left.

It’s just a simple one-dimension-only group-hallucinating super-evolved mega-squid. With a missing tentacle.

[Jonathan Capps]

Well, you can prove anything with facts, can’t you?

[si]

A-HA! You say that now…

[Seb Patrick]

The squid doesn?t travel dimensions, though. They just imagined that. It?s the hallucination?s way of handing the guys dimension travel – the squid?s back in the tank at the end of the story, since it never actually left.

It?s just a simple one-dimension-only group-hallucinating super-evolved mega-squid. With a missing tentacle.

Hmmm. But if you were anyone but you, that’s entirely speculative. Nothing in the episode as broadcast states definitively that what you’ve just said is the case. So while you can disprove Cappsy’s theory with your Secret Background Knowledge, it’s hardly a fair playing field ;-)

[Pete Part Three]

>Making it one that we in the ?real? world know simply makes the story more entertaining to us the viewer

And we wouldn’t want that, would we?

>The ?story?, as such, is simply that they dreamt up a fictional TV show, and a fictional movie by which their fictional adventures could be inspired.

And then they made a postbox.

Which is a shame, because the only thing that worked for me in this entire thing was the metafiction stuff and that went balls-up when the Blade Runner stuff derailed it. Either way, it makes the final “joke” completely nonsensical. It’s supposed to imply that we’re the fictional creations, but since the “Earth” in the story is not our Earth, it makes no sense whatsoever.

But, I guess, what we’ve learnt is that if you analyse this story in any detail whatsoever, it makes no sense whatsoever.

>(In the same way that nobody saying ?This is a bit like Alien/Terminator/2001? in Polymorph/Inquisitor/Queeg.)

There’s a BIG difference between a few subtle nods to inspirations in those episodes, and what was done in BtE. No one can say “This is a bit like Blade Runner” in BtE, because another character would just pipe up “What are you talking about? This IS Blade Runner”.

>Secret Background Knowledge

The only references to the squid being capable of dimension jumping are after the crew have been covered in ink.

[Andrew]

I guess it’s not as clear as I thought. The only reason we think it has that ability is because the psi-scan showed that fact. But at that point the lads were inked, and everything that follows in that scene is definitively hallucinated. And the psi-scan is proved to be ‘complicit’ in the hallucination with Katerina’s arrival.

Thing is, we know the squid came from the ocean planet in Back to Reality. And that species has a clear, established history – it’s the final life-form created by an evolution experiment. I don’t think we’d have made the dimensional ability truthful without addressing whether it evolved that skill or that the first squid they encountered wasn’t indigenous after all.

If it WAS a dimension hopper, then it didn’t need to have come from the ocean planet in the first place, and there didn’t need to be a statement at the end about where it REALLY came from. The original reason for its appearance – that it just popped in looking for a place to hide – would have done. And it needn’t have been back there at the end, either.

That final ‘explanation’ scene being there pretty much proved that the dimensional thing was make-believe, I thought. I states for sure that it didn’t come from another dimension, but rather a planet in this one; and it proved the thing never jumped away. You wouldn’t have needed most of the scene if the hopping was genuine.

[Carlito]

> I guess it?s not as clear as I thought.

Nah, it was pretty clear.

[Wilbur]

>I guess it?s not as clear as I thought.

But everyone associated with Red Dwarf is hallucinating, why should everything be clear? Go and take a large dose of mood stabilisers (I think Norm may have some).

Hang on, you don’t know the ‘Creator’- that wasn’t our universe was it? So why do we have the right to know anything about that universe?

[pfm]

> Go and take a large dose of mood stabilisers (I think Norm may have some)

And Susan Boyle.

[Ian Symes]

But, I guess, what we?ve learnt is that if you analyse this story in any detail whatsoever, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Unlike older Dwarf, which is absolutely airtight.

[Seb Patrick]

>Nah, it was pretty clear.

So clear in fact, that until Andrew brought it up, not a single person mentioned the fact that the “dimension-hopping leviathan” part of the episode’s publicity synopsis was an out-and-out lie.

I admire your powers of hindsight, though.

[Carlito]

I meant it was pretty clear in the show that the squid’s dimension hopping abilities were part of the hallucination. The fact that they discuss how to dispose of it when they’re in the lift at the end of episode 3 kinda solidified that.

[Andrew]

> the fact that the ?dimension-hopping leviathan? part of the episode?s publicity synopsis was an out-and-out lie.

To be fair, the existence of Katerina and the gang’s journey back to Earth were lies, too, and nobody’s made a point of those synopsis points being hallucinated, either.

Given that final scene, I don’t think it’s unreasonable that people realised this and didn’t mention it. It’s what the scene was there to do, after all.

[Pete Part Three]

>So clear in fact, that until Andrew brought it up, not a single person mentioned the fact that the ?dimension-hopping leviathan? part of the episode?s publicity synopsis was an out-and-out lie.

Do we all have to swear on our Mums’ lives, that we realised this but didn’t think it was worth mentioning?

>Unlike older Dwarf, which is absolutely airtight.

They either holds up to scrutiny a damn sight better or I’m not so likely to point out logistical flaws because the earlier episodes aren’t, y’know, ropey.

One of the two.

[JamesTC]

> the fact that the ?dimension-hopping leviathan? part of the episode?s publicity synopsis was an out-and-out lie.

It wasn’t a lie because the other dimension does exist, Kryten states that at the end, the infinite multi-verse thing, the squid exists in one of the infinite universes created by the hullucination.

[Carlito]

So if they could get Ace Rimmer to transport them to that universe, they could get their hands on the squid and the transporter machine, bring it back to the real universe and hey presto! a way back to the real Earth!

[JamesTC]

Ace Rimmer is with them, the original Rimmer, unless he faked his own death to pass on the torch.

[pfm]

A lie is a lie.

[JamesTC]

Sometimes it is noble to lie.

[Jonathan Capps]

Now that I think about it for more than second, it is quite clear that the dimension hopping was all part of the hallcunation. Oh well.

> They either holds up to scrutiny a damn sight better or I?m not so likely to point out logistical flaws because the earlier episodes aren?t, y?know, ropey.

Back to Earth isn’t ropey, though. It does what a great deal other Red Dwarf episodes did and builds the story around a situation, the airtightness of which usually plays second fiddle to the comedy and character moments it enables.

Yes, I think the Blade Runner themes got out of hand in some places and yes you have to think for a while (but not that long) to come up with some explanations as to how BR and Corrie could be part of hallucination, but I also believe that it doesn’t matter one tiny cock because the results ended up being so satisfying on the levels that DO matter with Red Dwarf–characters and comedy. And, in the case of Back To Earth, producing a lovely tribute to the show and everything that surrounds it.

To add further futility to this already futile bout of cock slapping, I’m also fully aware that what you’re doing now is what I’ve always done with series VIII so the irony isn’t lost on me, but, you know what? Fuck it.

[Pete Part Three]

>To add further futility to this already futile bout of cock slapping, I?m also fully aware that what you?re doing now is what I?ve always done with series VIII so the irony isn?t lost on me, but, you know what? Fuck it.

Just as long as we’re all on the same page.

(Although we might not be if this thread gets any longer. DYSWIDT?)

[Jonathan Capps]

We know we’re in trouble when this thread starts casuing PHP memory problems.

[si]

This is possibly the first time a thread that I started has started to bore me.

[JamesTC]

Well the DVD has been released now, 2/5 for the extras? Stupid cunt.

[Author]

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