Something That's Shit About Remastered Possibly Not Noted Before

[cwickham]

I watched The End Remastered this evening (with the text track on, I’m not a complete sadist) and, although it has frequently been correctly commented on that all of the replacement library music is shit… there’s still Goodall music in there (such as when Lister shows Frankenstein his picture of Fiji). And it’s totally at odds with the replacement music. The result is like different sections of the episode have been scored by two totally different people, which works as well as you’d expect.

How the *hell* did this get through? The film look and replacement CGI are both just as appalling, sure, but at least it looks consistent. If all the music was replaced it’d still be horrible but less baffling.

Anyway, that’s something I was so aggrieved by I felt the need to make a thread about it at two-thirty in the morning. Anything else horrible about Remastered possibly not noticed before?

Topic

[Stephen R. Fletcher]

Something I’ve always noticed (and has always bugged the shit out of me) since first seeing the Re-mastered version in ’99: The audience laughter being cut out after Rimmer’s line “I’ll just put Kryten” in the beginning of Backwards. I’d love to know why the hell they decided to do that as it just feels like such a weird change. I was also surprised it was never listed on the text track, and I’ve never seen anyone bring it up when talking about generally shit things to do with Re-mastered.

[Plastic Percy]

What bugged me more is the incongruous replacement of Holly in the first series. Obviously they couldn’t replace him in all the shots where he’s appearing in the background on monitors, but since they couldn’t replicate the same digital effect as used in that series, they should have just reshot all of it.

Saying that, I’ll always have a bit of time for Remastered as it was the first Red Dwarf I was properly exposed to. I think it was around Christmas 2000, I had expressed an interest in Red Dwarf and my parents bought me Kryten/Better than Life/Thanks for the Memory Remastered and Red Dwarf VII: Xtended on VHS. For my birthday a few days later I used my birthday money to buy to pick up the Smeg Ups & Smeg Outs VHS doublepack in QVC.

[esme]

One thing that’s annoyed me about the remastered series is the opening titles used, that look like they’ve been mushed together in a hurry and then used for all 3 series, without any changes between them, so like Kryten appears in I and II which doesn’t make any sense at all.

The end credits are just as bad for me. Some episodes have got mistakes in them or makes them feel overly familiar (like “Rob Llewelyn” and Danny John-Jules without the hyphen), and the font looks like it was done in Windows Movie Maker.

[International Debris]

Doubtless there will be new shitty things to discover in Remastered for years to come.

When Remastered came out I’d only seen bits of I and II once, and barely remembered them at all beyond the theme tune and a couple of jokes, so for years they were the only versions I knew. Even then, I still prefer the originals. Although I DO always miss ‘yes God’ at the end of, er, The End. It fits the beat so well that the silence seems so odd.

Also the awkwardness of the same Smells Like Teen Spirit-esque library track also being used in an episode of Fun at the Funeral Parlour.

[clem]

> I DO always miss ‘yes God’ at the end of, er, The End

Oh I hate that, find it really cringey. So much so I suggested it as a low for the Holly moments High and Low article. Is High and Low ever coming back? I liked it.

[Dave]

I think it’s interesting to hear from people who saw the Remastered versions first and feel like there’s something missing when the additions aren’t there.

I dislike “yes, god?” too, but if that’s the first version you knew I can imagine the scene feeling odd without it.

[flanl3]

New High & Low suggestion: High & Low

I’d personally recommend the low of when it stopped being a thing for this article.

[International Debris]

Thing is, I got used to all of the other original scenes quite easily, but that silence just feels wrong, almost as if they were planning to put a joke in there and never got around to it.

[Mr-Stabby]

The audience laughter changes are actually a problem with Series 3 Remastered in general I’ve noticed. Particularly in ‘Bodyswap’ of course, but then you’d think they’d used the same audience track from the original, so why the need for changes. But Series 3 Remastered also suffers from bizarre sound mixes. The fight with Hudzen 10 in ‘The Last Day’ is horribly sound mixed. It’s just a muddle of sounds, and I swear you can actually hear the original Howard Goodall music slowed down when everything goes slow motion, with that horrible library track on top of it.

[Dax101]

The remastered is a mixture of fixing a few things and ruining a few things that didn’t need fixing.

The series 1 replacement holly scenes are just a puzzlement to me, Normans performance isn’t as good and they don’t even mix well with the original holly scenes.

[cwickham]

Continuing my rewatch, another thing I noticed: the Remastered title sequence is a complete and utter mess. The first half of a CGI version of the original I & II opening, which is there for no other reason than they wanted to get the pull-back shot correct, then a version of the rock-theme-montage opening, then Holly’s show recap/joke from 1988. And the ones where Norman’s recorded a new joke in 1997 so they can’t show him in-vision are just appalling.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Many of the first couple of series I only saw Remastered for the longest time, maybe not until the DVDs were released was I able to confidentially say I’d seen them all as originally aired.

I too miss the ‘yes god’ line, but I also think they were right to trimming the scenes in Balance of Power with Lister drawing a a H on his forehead with cream and the whole ‘black card situation, end of conversation’ bit.

I’m not sure what it is, but those lines/jokes don’t sit well, it’s hard to explain. The pacing is much better without them.

[Dave]

I also think they were right to trimming the scenes in Balance of Power with Lister drawing a a H on his forehead with cream and the whole ‘black card situation, end of conversation’ bit.

Wh….what?

I know what those words all mean, I just can’t make sense of them in this context.

[cwickham]

One Remastered dialogue cut I noticed today, that’s not commented on much, is the removal of Lister explaining that the “Arnie Does It Best!” headlines are actually referring to other people with the same name.

I presume this was considered over-expository, but thinking about it – does the cut version actually make sense without the explanation of what the headlines actually are? I’m not sure it does.

[International Debris]

I knew they were other people because I’d read IWCD, but I wouldn’t have known otherwise.
Also can’t fathom why they removed the whole black card thing. Getting to see that in full was one of the absolute joys of the DVDs being released.

[flanl3]

I would have guessed on the headlines even without the explanation

[Moonlight]

I still think the walker Blue Midget reeks the most of “Let’s do this just because we can” out of any change in the Remastered. Even in Series VIII it was one of the most cartoonish elements, let alone crow-barred into the infinitely more restrained Series II.

I find it fair for someone to prefer the Remastered if they started on it, but if you always watched the originals then the Remastered changes feel jarringly at odds with the tone of the early series. Added Holly lines like the one about urine being caught cheating just feel totally out of place in early episodes, but right at home in those made around the time of the Remastered. Between that and bizarre additions like the Polymorph in the vents, every time I watch Remastered I feel like little pockets of Series VIII’s worst indulgences are somehow infecting earlier episodes.

I just cannot see the Remastered as its own product. I can only see it as Red Dwarf with bizarre, ill-fitting changes tacked in. Absolutely nothing the Remastered ever did has added to my enjoyment of an episode, they only serve to distract and/or annoy.

And I will argue to my grave that Red Dwarf’s original model effects look objectively better than the CGI of the Remastered. I won’t bash VII’s CGI because it’s the only way they could afford all the shots they needed, but the Remastered’s CGI is needless replacement of existing superior model shots. That’s wasting huge amounts of what microscopic budget they had on making something that looks way cheaper than what it’s replacing. I challenge even the most ardent defenders of the Remastered to look me in the eye and tell me the Remastered Bodyswap chase isn’t some of the worst spaceship effects you’ve ever seen on a TV show EVER.

Even with CG spaceships, they should have kept the Red Dwarf model shots and devoted all the time and effort on the CGI to Blue Midget and Starbug. The CGI Red Dwarf holds up incredibly poorly in close-ups, with much of the fine detail blatantly just flat textures instead of actual geometry. Add to that that complete lack of shadow, just flat omnidirectional lighting from all angles and CGI Red Dwarf doesn’t look remotely like a real, physical object. The harsh lighting and dark shadows of the Red Dwarf model shots are a huge part of what made them look so good, and the presence of actual light and shadow are why Series VIII’s CGI spaceship shots look so much better than VII’s and Remastered’s. Though the over-shininess of the Red Dwarf ship itself in VIII pretty much screams “I AM CHEAP CGI” just as much as a lack of any real lighting does.

You know, without the dozens of shots of Red Dwarf to render, they could’ve had the time to render things like Starbug with proper light and shadow, maybe even with higher resolution textures. The horrible pixelly textures are probably the worst thing about Remastered CGI, the biggest issue with the Red Dwarf ship besides the lack of lighting, and also blatantly visible every time a planet is seen in VII. Good thing VII didn’t have eighteen giant planets in every single space shot or those bad textures might’ve been extremely visible.

Why the fuck does every spacescape starting in the late ’90s need to have a billion planets and nebulas in it? Why does it always have to be so busy? I noticed XI got back in the habit of having a planet in basically every shot, but at least those planets actually looked good.

[Author]

Replies