We say good things about the Dave-era

[Bargain Bin Holly]

Here’s one, I like Lister’s custom vest he sometimes wears that has all the four main character’s faces on it in Series XI and XII.

Topic

[International Debris]

There was one fan edit of Fathers & Suns which removed the lines about Rimmer wanting the new computer to have big tits because it was offensive

This I find odd. I could understand it being removed because it’s a potentially good gag done very badly, in a clunky, predictable way, but the idea of removing Rimmer’s offensive views – given the fact that he’s a character at least partially defined by being a selfish dickhead – is really odd. He’s done and said worse than that.

[Dax101]

>I felt Doug had completely misunderstood what the Out of Time cliffhanger was about. For me the cliffhanger wasn’t about how the crew were still alive – I was completely expecting this to be hand-waved. I was interested in what the cliffhanger would mean for Rimmer’s future.

Oddly this one i don’t think really would have much of an effect on Rimmers character just because he had one heroic moment that was just that… of the moment. well unless he spends most of series 7 bragging about it.

Even if you look at the Original ending to Out of time thats on the smegs up and deleted scenes with Kryten speaking of Rimmers heroics its Rimmer who modestly accepts it and moves on.

Now you could argue that Doug kinda gave Rimmer no credit in Tikka to Ride because he said it was their future selves that destroyed the time drive instead of Rimmer… and that one is unfortunate.

[clem]

I was half expecting the revelation about Rimmer’s father to be addressed in Officer Rimmer, especially because it’s mentioned very briefly in the previous episode. It seems right for Rimmer to become so snooty when he gets promoted but maybe Lister could have brought up the dad thing to get him to stop being such a condescending prick.

[Pete Part Three]

>I’d be able to understand the opinion if you elaborated on it, is it purely just because it looks like it got shot in a room above the studio? Did you not like the acting by the teenage Rimmer? Do you think it doesn’t add to the episode?

Well, I already said it adds nothing to the episode. But aside from that:

* Characters talking to themselves to reveal exposition to the audience is crap. And when it’s already telling us stuff we’ve just been told it’s even worse (“First day of term, and I’m late”)

* The acting is like a children’s TV show. Especially Young Rimmer’s “so embarrassing” exclamation, just so the audience is aware that Rimmer is embarrassed.

* The experiment is repeated three times, just to hammer home the point…and then cuts before we get any kind of conclusion. What is it even saying? That Rimmer will go along with a crowd?

* It’s been filmed on a budget of 20p and it shows.

* Oh, yeah. It’s not funny.

>Apologies if it’s your fan edit btw

No, mine would be the one without that scene altogether.

[Bargain Bin Holly]

The experiment is repeated three times, just to hammer home the point…and then cuts before we get any kind of conclusion.

It’s repeated twice actually (unless you’re including the battle plan scene), and even then it doesn’t drag on. The scene doesn’t need any kind of added conclusion, it’d be like unnecessary padding; it’s purpose is to act as build-up towards the climax later in the plot.

What is it even saying? That Rimmer will go along with a crowd?

Evidently. Noticing this I think this ties nicely with the Simulants in a way, since they all act in unison to the Dominator’s orders they are only defeated by Rimmer thinking for himself.

It’s been filmed on a budget of 20p and it shows.

It may for you, but I think they worked well with what they had. They put good effort in making Rimmer’s father look like how he last appeared in Better Than Life; and the actor they got to play the teenage Rimmer looked the part. The classroom is fine for me, you can see some piping on the walls but I’ve seen classrooms like that irl. I liked the exterior shots they got of Io too, especially the planet shot. Overall, I feel the passion makes up for the lack of budget.

[Dax101]

* The acting is like a children’s TV show. Especially Young Rimmer’s “so embarrassing” exclamation, just so the audience is aware that Rimmer is embarrassed.

Its not so much the acting but more that Doug feels he needs to spell it out to the audience that Rimmer is feeling embarrassed at that moment..

I agree i always found him saying that out loud in class as strange.

[Me Own Stunts]

The look of the classroom was never a problem to me. Why wouldn’t a learning environment in the future continue to look more or less like the classrooms we have today?

I was personally grateful for all the additional environments we saw in ‘The Beginning’. Series 10 generally felt too cramped to me, and not in a good, Series 1 way. Series 1 showed us a wide variety of spaces inside the ship, making it feel as vast as we were told, while in series 10 Red Dwarf itself felt like a tiny ship because we mostly saw only the living space, which combined living room, kitchen and bedroom into one space, a drive room that resembled a tiny cockpit, and a tiny bit of corridor that they kept obviously redressing in unimaginative ways.

So yeah, even on their own terms the classroom, the simulant ship and the model sequences all make The Beginning into a highlight of series 10 to me, not a weak link.

[bloodteller]

all futuristic classrooms need modems and speaking slide rules, obviously.

and yeah the ship does feel very small in X.

[International Debris]

This thread is very close to turning into We Say Bad Things About the Dave Era.

[Me Own Stunts]

> This thread is very close to turning into We Say Bad Things About the Dave Era.

I know what you mean but it’s a mixture of balanced feelings on the Dave Era. A thread that rigidly shows only positive or negative feelings can be quite boring.

[Ben Saunders]

What is a classroom 200 years in the future supposed to look like? Most of X looks cheap anyway, singling out that particular “set” is a bit dubious

[Pete Part Three]

That’s the point; it’s not a set. Series 1 was a lot better at repurposing the space around the studios as “locations”. I don’t think it’s dubious when when it’s evident *onscreen* that they were budget problems throughout X. It’s obviously a big concern when the model shoots come back looking shit, why isn’t the same care extended to this?

>Overall, I feel the passion makes up for the lack of budget.

Oh, that’s nice. They tried hard. I’ll let them off the fact that I think it’s shit. I’m sure they busted a gut making Timewave too, Timewave 2.

Um…Snacky was good, I liked Snacky. Have I said that already?

[Ben Saunders]

It’s very obvious in series 1 that they’re just running up and down the lighting gantry or whatever, and the outside of the ship in Confidence and Paranoia looks like arse. Also the sets are all really grey and cheap in case you hadn’t noticed. Tongue Tied being obviously set in a TV studio is dubious from the perspective of Cat but forgivable for being a blatant dream sequence. I don’t think it’s possible to make an argument against the final set seen in Series II where Lister finds out he’s pregnant looks like utter, utter shit.

But I like the shows so I look past it.

[Flap Jack]

While we’re on the subject of sets (and to segue into a more unabashed “good thing about the Dave era”), the set and costume design in Skipper was amazing.

I’d be totally fine with a Series XIII where Red Dwarf looked as it did in that final parallel universe, and Rimmer is wearing his Series 1 outfit the entire time.

[Ben Saunders]

It did look quite nice, I like how even though the corridors are obviously just redressed red ones it still works, and they shoot them slightly differently as well. The darker grey and the more sturdy material really makes it look better than Series 1.

I guess that in (parallel) universe it makes perfect sense for the old corridors to look basically like the new ones, doesn’t it

[Dax101]

Going back to his series 1 outfit full term would be going abit too far backwards for the show.

The show really should be going forwards and not backwards.

[bloodteller]

>It’s very obvious in series 1 that they’re just running up and down the lighting gantry or whatever

but in Series I, i’m more immersed. although it is a lighting gantry, i can believe it’s a big fuck-off mining ship in the middle of deep space. in Series I the ship feels like a believable place.

in X, it doesn’t much feel like they’re on spaceships at all. it just feels like they’re sat around on sets in a studio which kind of breaks the illusion a little.

and to say a good thing about the Dave era, the Chinatown market chase scene was excellent

[Ben Saunders]

Not to bang on about it, but now that I know what TV studios actually look like, it’s very obvious that parts of the Dwarf ship in V and Starbug in VI are just parts of the studio straight up used as locations, especially when they pan up and you can see the lights and stuff. Also, in the scene in Marooned where the camera looks up through the guitar-shaped hole in Rimmer’s trunk, you can see the studio lights. And then there’s that shot where they move the camera too far too the right and you can see off the set and almost into the bloody audience.

There’s that story of the Who director who was fired for shooting directly up at the studio lights, using them as set dressing, because unions exist or something. Warrior’s Gate?

It -does- bother me in Series V, a little, but not really VI. It also bothers me in The Three Doctors where we’re supposed to be in some anti-matter universe, but the camera pans too high and it turns out Omega’s domain is lit with BBC TV studio lighting.

I don’t think X looks particularly realistic either but I’m not comfortable with giving earlier series a free pass for things I criticise later series for.

[International Debris]

I do think X looks a bit shit. Not just the lighting and directing being very broad, but just the real lack of interesting sets and the repeated corridors. The more I watch I and II, the more obvious the reuse of various corridors becomes, but in general I’d say X is the time when Red Dwarf itself has felt the smallest. The drive room really doesn’t help, even after I’ve headcanoned the ‘auxiliary drive room on level 138’ line from Carnie’s Homecoming fanfic.
Overall, it just doesn’t feel immersive.

[bloodteller]

yeah the lighting is really not very good in Series X. it just looks really…wrong in a way I don’t know how to explain with words. there’s something about it that just makes it feel like actors wandering about on studio sets rather than characters on a massive mining ship in deep space. and it’s the only series where i get that feeling.

the lighting was massively improved in XI/XII, at least. so i guess even the production people must have noticed it didn’t look too good in X.

[Ben Saunders]

I got the “actors on a set” vibe recently from Demons & Angels, but yeah the lighting is very flat on X. Like the bridge on The Next Generation. Or almost any given 80s Doctor Who.

Speaking of TNG, I’m still making my way through TOS right now, but I saw a clip of TNG S1 in a documentary and man, the alien planet studio set looked like it was just re-used from TOS. A single-colour, block green sky, polystyrene rocks etc. Which was fair enough in the 60s but you’d think they’d have made some progress in 20 years (I know TNG was pretty low budget though)

[Hamish]

To be fair, I can see why an enclosed room on a mining ship might be lit in a way similar to an enclosed room in a television studio. It is less inexplicable than it would be in say a sitcom that was set in a terrestrial house instead.

[Ben Saunders]

It makes more sense than everything being plunged in darkness/blueness like in XI and XII, but it doesn’t look better

[International Debris]

I think the layout of the X bunkroom doesn’t help – it’s very stagey, and having a lot of brightly lit, static shots of it just adds to that. One of the strong points of XI and XII’s direction was the cameras actually getting further in, making you feel like you’re actually in there rather than watching from a distance.

Comparing images of the original design and officers quarters, those two look a lot more cluttered and that makes them seem less ‘flat’ looking. Having stuff like the wardrobe, the communication screen at a severe angle to the bunk, etc. gives them a lot more depth and interest.

[International Debris]

In keeping with the spirit of the thread title, though, I absolutely love the BtE bunk room. Wish we’d had more of that.

[bloodteller]

generally BtE looks good visually, it’s really impressive especially when you consider the extremely tight budget.

the bunkroom and the chinatown set were especially impressive though

[Dave]

Yeah, the BtE bunkroom was a great take that took the best of the officers quarters and the original grey bunkroom and gave it a modern spin. The window looked great too.

[International Debris]

Yeah, I love the way it felt both connected to earlier series and also fresh at the same time. And again, it felt slightly cluttered and cramped, which is frankly what a double bunk room on a mining ship should be. If you can afford to be living in a space as big as the X-XII room, you’re probably above double bunk-level.

[Dave]

I reckon they got Kryten to knock a few sleeping quarters through and make them a giant bunkroom big enough to fit a studio audience.

[Dax101]

The BTE bunkroom is fairly unimpressive to me. perhaps its because of BTE as a whole but i think i prefer the X-XII bunkroom

The only thing that stands out to me about it is that its a 4 wall set. but then with the BTE bunkroom you would probably have to remove the Window part of the set since chances are thats where the audience would be looking in.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

The great thing about windows, Dax, is that they’re see through ;)

[Dax101]

True but instead of stars outside the window there would be an audience ;p

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Drape a big black cloth over the audience with little eye holes cut out so they can see. The whites of their eyes will act as stars.

Job done.

[Dax101]

Alright, you got me there…

[Dave]

And when the crew say or do something funny, the stars will vibrate. It’ll be like a visual laugh-track.

[Plastic Percy]

It’s not Rimmer’s genetics from Dungo or Mr. Rimmer that makes him a failure, that was never the point.

Rimmer is a failure because he’s an anal-retentive idiot raised by a military failure and a Bitch Queen from Hell.

It’s just that by the standards of his father he is a failure, but by the standards of Dungo he is a success.

[tombow]

I’ve only just gotton into the Dave era and I just finished X. I loved Rimmer being revealed as “working class” and winning a new respect from Lister. I’ve ordered XI and I’m hoping there’s some kind of different dynamic now.

[Hamish]

Oh dear.

[Rushy]

Danny John-Jules is much, much, much better in the Dave era than he ever was in the bubble. I know this won’t make me any friends, but the Cat could have been killed off at any point in series 1-6, and I really wouldn’t have minded much (especially series 1). 

It’s the Dave era that’s made him indispensable to me. 

[Warbodog]

– X: I appreciate the effort to have another series arc that’s still there in vague spirit, even if it got Smegged (with minor continuity like Lister’s engineering course, Kochanski mentions, struggling with backup computers, the quantum rod). XI & XII being episodically interchangeable was disappointing.

– XI/XII: Some good sci-fi concepts in Officer Rimmer and M-Corp particularly.

– TPL: We finally had the Red Dwarf special that was due since Back in the Red, plus it was actually good.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Nah, Cat’s best lines are mainly in series 5. I find his constant screeching in the Dave era a bit hard to watch. But I do like the Dave era in general.

[Spaceworm Jim]

My last post was rude. I meant to just give my opinion but comes across like I’m trying to say you’re wrong for having yours. I apologise.

[Moonlight]

I find his constant screeching in the Dave era a bit hard to watch.

Can of Worms is one episode.

[Ben Saunders]

When XI and XII were airing, the girl who lived in the room next to me told me that she could hear me loudly laughing in my room at night, so obviously I was enjoying it.

[Rushy]

My last post was rude. I meant to just give my opinion but comes across like I’m trying to say you’re wrong for having yours. I apologise.

It’s fine, I didn’t see it that way at all. 
To me, the voice is just ‘Cat voice’. I prefer that to Danny speaking in his normal voice, which makes me think of him more as Danny than the Cat. 
But there’s also his improved timing and the fact that he gets material that’s actually tailor-made for his character. Series 3-5 Cat is just Lister’s vain buddy with the clothes. Series 6-7 Cat is all nostril hairs and we’re deader than corduroy. Series 8 Cat barely registers. 
By comparison, you have the fantastic “you’ve got to think ahead!” scene in Fathers & Suns, him hunting the weevil in Entangled, the whole kidney situation in Give & Take. The ending of Cured.

EDIT: I also thought it was interesting to see Lister and the Cat paired up in Samsara, because it put a spotlight on how much their dynamic has shifted since the Red Dwarf shuffle days. 

[Rushy]

I really like how much of Craig’s cheekiness bleeds over into his performance nowadays. 

[Author]

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