Worst line from Red Dwarf

[Smeg4Brains]

What line in Dwarf reaaly makes you cringe?

For me it has to be “What a Dibbley!”

Topic

[Dave]

>The line itself was quite good, but the way he delivered it felt hokey somehow.

I know what you mean.

“What do we do, whisper ‘charge’, tippytoe up to them all screaming “shhh” and chloroform them with Lister’s armpits?”

Nothing wrong with the line or the delivery, but Rimmer says it whilst looking at Lister. Which is odd.

[Pete Part Three]

Yeah, that’s always jarred with me. I think Chris Barrie does the same thing elsewhere, but the line escapes me.

[TheLeen]

> I now have a mental image of Doug going ?If you don?t like it, Andrew, write your own bloody sci-fi sitcom!?

Yes please. Andrew, listen to Doug.

[Ben Paddon]

Actually, and this is a genuine offer, if Andrew ever wants to write an issue of Jump Leads he’s more than welcome.

[Andrew]

I…gosh, I don’t know what to say. Two whole posts of support is more than I usually get in a year!

[John Hoare]

>?You mean there?s a heart out there with no body? No wonder it?s beating so fast.? Um? what?

Yeah, I never understood that either.

Isn’t the joke that without a body, the heart would be rather panicky – hence it beating so fast?

I’m not saying it’s funny, or it works as a joke, but that’s the explanation for it, I think.

[TheLeen]

That’s what I tought; anyway, it’s not a good sign that I had to think about it. You shouldn’t have to think about what a joke might or might mean.

[Seph]

I always thought it was a song lyric, the way Cat said it.

[Pete Part Three]

You’re trying to explain the jokes in RDVIII?

Some things were never meant to make sense…

[John Hoare]

God, I remember being so excited when I first saw that trailer…

[Pete Part Three]

There are bits of it that are very good and well edited, despite an plethora of clips of lousy moments.

Odd how they often chose to be dramatic rather than comic (Cassandra’s line “All of the canaries will be dead in one hour except for Rimmer” is cut off before the “…who’ll be dead in 20 minutes”).

[Seb Patrick]

Well, why spoil one of the few good punchlines the entire series is going to give you?

[Ben Paddon]

I remember seeing that trailer vividly. It was the end of one of the series of Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie, and as the credits were rolling I turned to my sister and, to wind her up, I said, “Y’know they’re starting a new series of Red Dwarf next week, right?”

The joke was ruined when that trailer played immediately after the credits had finished.

[John Hoare]

I’ll tell you what – it’s a hell of a lot of a better trailer than the one on the VII DVD. That one verges on incompetence – nasty, choppy editing. Either the person doing it was completely incompetent, or it was hastily cut down from a longer version, or something.

[pfm]

It really DOESN’T make any sense when the trailer is better than the entire series. What I don’t understand is why they include Kryten’s line ‘I presume you’ve heard the news about Miss Kochanski’. It’s fairly random. Unless they’re just tempting all the haters with the idea that she might be dead.

If only the series had turned out as dramatic as the trailer suggests. Yeah yeah yeah, it’s a fucking sitcom not a drama, but (this applies to VII more) I wish they’d pushed things further down that road.

A big problem with VII is that it’s neither here nor there. They should have totally cut the laughter track and had that planned from the start (so there are no dodgy pauses for laughs like in the Xtendeds). This would have negated the need for gag after gag, so many of them falling flat, not just because they weren’t good enough but because the new setup of VII meant certain lines that WOULD have been funny in the earlier series’ seemed out of place. The same feel of an audience sitcom just isn’t there, so you don’t get the same atmosphere and reassurance of a gag going down well, regardless of the added laughter from the screenings.

I disagree that more drastic changes would have turned off fans.

[Pete Part Three]

>It really DOESN?T make any sense when the trailer is better than the entire series.

It really DOESN’T make any sense when the trailer is better than the movie, but that is so often the case.

Removing the laugh-track to cope with the fact that there are less jokes is not dealing with the problem directly; it’s just a purely aesthetic way of excusing the fact that the show’s not funny any more.

I don’t think VII is any more dramatic than the earlier stuff. There’s a fair few minutes in The Inquisitor, for example, where there’s very little jokes and it’s all pretty serious…but it’s still far funnier than the similarly toned Epideme.

[Turk Thrust]

> It really DOESN?T make any sense when the trailer is better than the movie, but that is so often the case.

Doesn’t it? It makes a lot of sense I think. If you can just pick the funniest or most dramatic moments and cram them into a short space of time then it stands a decent chance of impressing.

[Pete Part Three]

Forgive me, I was paraphrasing from Monkey’s post. I agree.

[Author]

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