What did you prefer, Series 1-2 sets or the latter Series onwards?

[Tonguetied]

Some say Series 1-2 sets were the best, others disagree and claim that they prefered the sets of later series. We know that the early series sets were dirt cheap, they look as though they were going to fall apart; That the colours were too dull. However I believe that these sets really gave the early shows that certain atmosphere which I certainly missed in later series. The colours gave it a very monotonous look sure, but hey this is a big mining ship, not a luxury space cruiser. It gave it a sense of greatness. Lister and Rimmer’s bunkroom had a great design, as did the other rooms seen in the first two series. Later series, did have great designs, but I felt it was missing something that the earlier series had. The simple clean look which I felt should have been retained. Sure it was cheap, but hey, some things in life don’t cost much to be great. Anyway tell me your views, which do you prefer, or are you indifferent?

Topic

[Pete Part Three]

Jawscvmcdia commenting on a TongueTied thread. Two worlds collide.

[RickLee84]

S5 Starbug interior looked great, if they was kept but with the extra seating in the cockpit it would have looked brilliant I think, but wouldn’t have fit in with the overall theme of the series of a long passage of time, the ship falling into disrepair etc.

[International Debris]

1 & 2 sets are my favourite.

[Dollar Pound]

i done the lounge up like the starbug midsection circa series vi, the kitchen series iii/iv and grey in the bedroom. just depends what i’m doing i guess. how has everyone else done their yachts?

[RamesesNiblickTheThird]

III to V sets no question. Then I and II. I love the lighting in the new era and the detail but that’s about it.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

The new sets a little too modern / futuristic aren’t they? I don’t think there would have been any shame in keeping the sets looking a bit out dated. It meant to be a big industrial mining ship, not a high tech space craft.

I appreciate they are suffering the same fate as Star Trek, where modern technology has caught up with the tech shown on screen in some cases, but it is a comedy, and the little knowing nods to things like using VHS in the future are quite nice. Star Trek needs to look flash and advanced, Red Dwarf doesn’t and never really did. It should look like an oil rig in space.

It can afford to look a little more old a decrepit, that’s part of it’s charm. It doesn’t need to look sharp. Other ships they discover can, and should, but not Red Dwarf.

Thats not to say they don’t look fantastic, just that it’s unnecessary IMO. Starbug for example has had so many updates over the years it’s gone from a crappy little ship to surface vessel to a full blown intersetella space craft in its own right.

[Ben Saunders]

I like them all. Why do we need to fight?

There’s something incredibly homely about the old military/ocean grey I sets. I actually preferred them before they chucked bananas and shit all over the walls to give it a bit of colour. Series III i quite homely too but the Dwarf seems to get progressively less inviting and more rundown and cold as we go on and on. I love the camaraderie and adventure of VI and VII but know I wouldn’t want to live entirely on Starbug. I used to love the look of VIII but now it just looks like overlit sets, X was a bit ugly and XI and XII are too damn dark.

[bloodteller]

i like the Series I sets the best, they really do make it feel like it’s actually taking place on quite a large mining ship, which is something you never really quite feel in the later series. plus the basic grey walls and the simplicity of the Drive Room sets feel like the type of thing you actually would see in the future-with how small technology is getting, it makes more sense that you’d only need a tiny little room to control a huge ship

plus the Series I sets don’t have school dinner trays plastered over absolutely fucking everything, which is something that really started to look a bit weird, especially in VIII and XI. what are the dinner trays for? are they just decorative wall items, or is meant to be some tech thing that’s part of the ship?

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I believe the dinner tray thing is to give the walls some shape and texture, which is crazy as you’d just create flat walls as far as you can. If there has to be anything behind them, you wouldn’t wind the wall in and out around it, you’d just make it slightly deeper and have a flat wall. I’m sure there’s reason for it looking better on camera or something, but it make no logical sense

[Moonlight]

Because flat, matte walls wouldn’t look nearly as interesting? And the only reason you even notice them as being dinner trays is because they explicitly explained as much on We’re Smegged.

[Ben Saunders]

I feel like the ship felt biggest in IV, possibly II thanks to the elevator. The obvious re-use of one corridor in V makes it all feel like it takes place on one floor and th-thank modern series’ all take place in two or three rooms.

Back to Earth is cheating.

[Ben Saunders]

and the modern series’*

[bloodteller]

III also makes the ship feel fairly big imo, there’s loads of different areas of the ship seen in it. the huge gantry areas and the sauna used in Bodyswap, as well as the cargo bay in Polymorph really sell it to you that it’s a big place

lots of different areas of the ship in VIII as well but they’re somehow just not quite as convincing. they also try to do a big cargo bay in Pete but it’s not really very good and at one point a random bloke just wanders into frame seemingly unaware that there’s filming going on

[Ben Saunders]

Oh now you mention it VIII does make the ship seem pretty big, with the big reveal shots of the prison thing and the cargo deck. It doesn’t make the ship feel like anywhere I’d want to be, though. I-IV do, V-XII don’t.

[Warbodog]

Are there people who prefer the two-hander, character-driven style of I & II but wish they’d had the Mel Bibby sets back then? Or who prefer the ensemble, antics-driven style of III-V but wish they’d kept the Montague sets? It seems to be part and parcel of the era you like best (or saw first?), down to the preferred Holly. Or I could just be speaking for myself, as I probably prefer III-V by all metrics.

Since the new series aren’t polluted by nostalgia, I prefer X’s warm, reddy sets to XI/XII’s cold blue dinginess, but maybe that’s more of a lighting issue.

[Ben Saunders]

I saw Series One first and those are my favourite sets and that is my favourite Holly. But I like the action oriented III-VI stories the most. There are aspects of every (yes, every) series I like, however. Whether or not I’d prefer to have the One/Two sets in III-IV, I couldn’t possibly answer, as the sets used in a series are such a large part of said series’ identity. Rimmer writing his notes all over his body in the III bunkroom doesn’t look right in my head, but of course it would if that was the way it had always been. V couldn’t be done on the Series One sets, imo, the atmosphere and lighting gets so much darker at that point.

[International Debris]

I would have preferred them to gradually update the look at the show went on, rather than going with the rather jarring contrast between 2 & III. And I wish IV onwards had more dialogue based, less actiony plots. I don’t necessarily think either is better than the other, but a gradual blend of the two would be lovely.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Given they move from their quarters to the officers quarters, it’s easy to accept the change in style as just being a different part of the shop. Especially as, canonically, Lister’s bunk is still the same in Back in the Red.

[Ben Saunders]

Abandon shop

This is not a daffodil

[bloodteller]

>Given they move from their quarters to the officers quarters, it’s easy to accept the change in style as just being a different part of the shop

i think this is stated in one of the books- when lister first arrives on Red Dwarf, he notices the whole place is a huge mashup of different styles due to the decades it took them to build the ship.

[Lily]

I just presumed it was nicer because of rank. Officers get swish white rooms, third level technicians get plain grey ones.

Although as the bunk rooms have gotten bigger over the years they make increasingly less sense. Most people would prefer to have a smaller room privately, than an enormous room they have to share. The amount of space taken by the bunk-suite in XI/XII could be used by two double bedrooms quite easily.

[International Debris]

Given they move from their quarters to the officers quarters, it’s easy to accept the change in style as just being a different part of the shop.

Oh yeah, it definitely makes sense in-universe. I’d just prefer a gradual change as a viewer.

[Plastic Percy]

The guide on the Red Dwarf website, apparently taken from an extract from the corporate publicity video, mentions that the officer quarters are deliberately more luxurious than the technician quarters as there’s no reason for the high-fliers to slum it.

I figured that the Boys from the Dwarf have customised the new sleeping quarters extensively and that it might have been a large storeroom previously. Or that it’s the equivalent of the Officer’s Quarters in the rebuilt Dwarf, with the red colour being a holdover from the colour coding used in I & II – White Corridor 159 etc.

[Lily]

It’s kinda sweet in a slight slash-fic way that in all these years and with a spaceship five miles long, it’s never occurred to them to have separate bedrooms.

[Yaron Ru]

Except in Me2.

[bloodteller]

to be fair, you wouldn’t really want to live in a room on your own, would you? they keep each other company and stuff, and they’re the only two people onboard the ship who realistically can share a room together- Kryten’s always busy cleaning and stuff, and Cat is too selfish to share a room with anyone (plus lister gets sick of the cat after spending like an hour with him in Samsara).

or maybe the two of them are gay for each other, I don’t know.

[Hamish]

They could just become, you know, neighbours or something.

[bloodteller]

but that wouldn’t be nearly as interesting

[flanl3]

What do you use the second bunk for?

[bloodteller]

>What do you use the second bunk for?

i stayed at a hotel once that had a bunk bed, and whoever had used it last had put a load of danish pastries in the second bunk. so maybe thats it

[International Debris]

In my head, they spent time apart living in other rooms / floors / areas of the ship, and ended up realising that being alone was even worse than being together.

[Hamish]

As someone who does have a bunk bed, I can assure that the correct answer to the question of “what do you use the second bunk for?” is in fact: Cats.

[Gelfbride]

My first episode of RD was in 1991 or so, so I am pretty certain series 4. We were students I was 18 and we all stopped partying to watch the weekly episode and it was explained to me about a cat who evolved. Regardless, I loved it- it reminded me of star trek meets the young ones. Life went hard and then I didn’t see another episode till partwat thru Series 7- Kochanski was banging the pipes and begging for cottage cheese with pineapple chunks so in essence, that was my first real expereince. which I loved… watched it all,each week waiting for the next episode. and then purchased the remainder on DVD to watch and so to go back to 1-2 seemed so… out dated. I now watch them all and gain greater insight and enjoyment each time,
I prefer 1-2 over the more recent ones, I didn’t like Krytie TV and was a bit – meh, and the stupid part of my brain didnt like Chloes’ longer hair so stupid those things bug me.

[bloodteller]

>the stupid part of my brain didnt like Chloes’ longer hair so stupid those things bug me.

i also found it kind of weird how they couldn’t be bothered to keep her hair how it was in Series 7 tbh

[International Debris]

Of all the continuity errors in Red Dwarf, the change in Kochanski’s appearance between VII and VIII annoys me more than most.

[Dax101]

Series 8 tried to be a reinvention in many ways.

Who know the Ship had about 20 starbugs and blue midgets onboard… only series 8.

[bloodteller]

>Who know the Ship had about 20 starbugs and blue midgets onboard… only series 8

in XI/XII they use Starbug 19, and they use multiple Starbugs in Backwards and Terrorform

[Ben Saunders]

Original ship design, as well. They’ve definitely gone through a number of ‘bugs and ‘dgets over the series, though

[Unrumble]

Given their general lack of concern with continuity, plus the amount Chloe moans on about her hair in the VII commentary, I doubt anyone was fussed about her hair looking different.

[Plastic Percy]

She looks very different. Her hair is longer, a lighter colour and she’s also lost a quite noticeable amount of weight.

Across the series, I think they destroy five Starbugs, three of which in III alone.

[Dave]

More than that, surely?

Off the top of my head there’s Backwards, Marooned, Bodyswap, Terrorform, Out Of Time, Back In The Red Part One…

And that’s discounting major crashes and repairs like Dimension Jump, Emohawk, Gunmen and Twentica.

[Ben Saunders]

>Out of Time
Two Starbugs get blown up in Out of Time but also no Starbugs get blown up in Out of Time.
I don’t want to think about that one too hard.

[Hamish]

Am I the only one feeling a bit meh that it is the appearance of the one female cast member that we are holding to such a high degree of continuity?

[Taiwan Tony]

Chris’s wig and Bobby’s stomach received similar traction. Not sure if they were continuity based complaints, though.
Lister’s accent bugged me more. And it was better for the comedy when he was screechier.

[Ben Saunders]

The more i think about it the more i realise just how different she looks between 7 and 8. i mean, i notice before, but yeah, it’s pretty stark.

The next biggest change in appearance from Nanarchy-BitR would be Kryten suddenly losing those incredibly defined lines on his face, i think. Now I’m going to have to watch it again to see how everything else changes.

[International Debris]

Am I the only one feeling a bit meh that it is the appearance of the one female cast member that we are holding to such a high degree of continuity?

It’s the fact that Nanarchy and Back in the Red are quite clearly set on the same day that bugs me – especially as the other three are pretty much the same in appearance, same outfit, same hair style. If the series were set a few months apart I wouldn’t have had a second thought about it, but it appears to be a matter of minutes between her last scene in VII and first scene in VIII and she practically looks like a different person.

I also find the disparity between the Starbug bays in the ‘mini Starbug’ reveal shots in both episodes equally frustrating.

[Me Own Stunts]

> Off the top of my head there’s Backwards, Marooned, Bodyswap, Terrorform, Out Of Time, Back In The Red Part One…

I thought we were seeing the same Starbug crashing each time, not new ones. There’s even a line about it crashing more times than a ZX81.

[Warbodog]

>I thought we were seeing the same Starbug crashing each time, not new ones. There’s even a line about it crashing more times than a ZX81.

Maybe they salvaged some or all of the crashed Starbugs and painstakingly repaired them, but it feels like they’re leaving them behind. Then Holly or Kryten flies another Starbug into that convenient landing bay the guys like to use and Rimmer insists the Skutters repaint its registration ‘1’, even though that doesn’t matter.

[Me Own Stunts]

> it feels like they’re leaving them behind.

It never even crossed my mind that they were doing anything other than constantly reusing the same Starbug, repairing it offscreen when necessary.

[Warbodog]

I never really thought about it, but I know I had a sense of potentially endless replaceable Starbugs before we saw the fleet in VIII.

I remember first seeing that Psirens “crashed more times than a ZX81” line as the caption to a Starbug pic in either the Programme Guide or a Smegazine, and I interpreted it as a dig about all the Starbugs they get through. I didn’t see the episode until a couple of years later, where the line’s specifically about the VI ‘Bug and how hard-wearing it is, so different from what I was thinking.

[Author]

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