Would you watch a Red Dwarf "reboot" with an all female cast?

[Jawscvmcdia]

Like the successful Ghostbusters reboot of 2016 and similarly with the latest incarnation of Doctor Who, would you ever watch a reboot with an all-female cast? If so, who could play what character?

[Bargain Bin Holly]

[GlenTokyo]

I’d get Pauline Quirke in as The Cat and go from there.

[bloodteller]

They already did, it’s called Parallel Universe. Series 2, Episode 6

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Neither Ghostbusters 2016 nor Doctor Who (in any form let alone the next series) are reboots.

[Flap Jack]

“Reboot” is a fairly broad term that just means a series is being started up again after either a length of time on the shelf or a significant enough change in direction/continuity. Both Ghostbusters 2016 and Doctor Who 2005 definitely qualify as reboots (albeit of different types), as does Red Dwarf 2009/2012, arguably.

Doctor Who 2018 definitely isn’t one, though.

Then again, Jawscvmcdia didn’t actually say that Doctor Who was a reboot, they just used it as an example of a main character changing gender, so I think we can let them off.

My answer to the original question is obviously “yes”. Hard to say how different it would be given how traditionally male a lot of the character quirks are (like Rimmer’s superiority-inferiority complex about his brothers and the military), but hey, anything Red Dwarf is worth a watch! Even Timewave.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

“Reboot” does seemed to be used a lot these days when “remake” would be more appropriate.

I’d use “reboot” specifically for things that span multiple entries and media. “Remake” for anything which tells the same story as the previous version, and “re-adaptation” for any new version of something which originally exsited in a different media/format.

But there’s a lot of overlaps.

Ghostbusters (2016) is a reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise, and perhaps could be argued to be a remake of the 1984 film.

King Kong (1977), and King Kong (2005) are remakes of the 1933 film.

True Grit (2010) is a re-adaptaion of the 1968 novel, and not a remake of the 1969 film.

Batman Begins is a reboot of the Batman movie series and a re-adaptation of (some of) the comic books, but not a remake of any previous film.

Total Recall (2012) seems to be a remake of the 1990 film, and not a re-adaptation of the Philip K. Dick source material. It’s not a reboot of anything.

Overboard (2018) is a remake of the 1987 film, with genders reversed. It’s not a reboot either.

Casino Royale (2006) is a reboot of the 007 film series, a re-adaptaion of the novel, and not a remake of the 1967 film.

The Red Dwarf movie seemed to have been planned as a reboot AND remake of the TV series, but with the same cast.

[Pete Part Three]

Star Trek (2009) is a remake, a sequel, a reboot and a prequel.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

What’s it a remake of?

[Pete Part Three]

Billy’s Magic Rocket

[bloodteller]

Robbie Rocketpants

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I’ve always viewed a reboot as starting a franchise over from scratch and telling a largely different story. The core concept remaining the same but the stories being different. i.e. all the different Spiderman trilogies or BSG

Where as a remake is simply taking a single film (usually) and re-telling the same story but with just different actors and updated cinematography, as with a lot of Toxteth examples above.

Doctor Who, albeit with a long gap between 1989, the movie, and 2005, is all a straight continuation of the same story, same characters, with a history and a canon (well … hmm) that isn’t broken. It might be said to rebooted because it has started up again, but from where it left off. It hasn’t started over from scratch so it doesn’t really seem like a reboot in the sense I view the term as. Otherwise every new Doctor and or show runner would have to be defined as a reboot surely?

Ghostbusters 2016 (like Star Trek 2009) is a weird one because they exist in a universe where the events of their namesakes took place (albeit in different dimensions). So it sort of reboots the franchise by starting from scratch, but also acknowledging that the events of the other films did also take place and are connected to these ones in some way, so makes them both a continuation of the franchise, more than it does remakes or reboots.

I think Toxteth has it right, reboot seems to get used in place where remake (or something else) would make more sense. I think, just because a franchise has started up again, doesn’t necessarily mean its been rebooted, its a little more complicated then that.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>Ghostbusters 2016 […] exist in a universe where the events of their namesakes took place […] acknowledging that the events of the other films did also take place and are connected to these ones in some way.

Did it? I only saw it once, but from what I remember the existence of ghosts is widely considered to be fanciful in the 2016 universe (although, bizarrely, this is the case at the beginning of Ghostbusters 2 as well). Was there ever acknowledgement that they weren’t the first Ghostbusting business?

That’s why GB 2016 feels more like a remake to me (though it is also a reboot, considering the cartoon series and video game). It essentially tells the exact same story:
– Ghostly mayhem begins in NYC
– University scientists set up a ghost-busting service
– They create specialised equipment, hire an extra ghostbuster, and respond to various callouts
– They discover a world-threatening event is coming, and get ignored by the government
– They eventually battle the big bad, and save the world.

Mind you, Ghostbusters 2 also follows this same template almost exactly.

[International Debris]

Reboot is a very commonly used word these days, to the extent that people are just throwing it in anywhere to mean “new series related to previous ones”. A bit like the way “canned laughter” is regularly used by people for anything comedy with laughter, studio or otherwise.

The Dwarf film would have been a reboot (one reason I’m glad it never happened). Superhero franchises had a huge number of reboots throughout the ’90s and ’00s, which eventually got a bit confusing (something the ‘cinematic universe’ concept should hopefully stop from happening again any time soon).

[Bargain Bin Holly]

The Force Awakens is for all intents and purposes a remake, little to no story differences unless the universe is just experiences a deja vu

[clem]

There’s also things like Halloween H20 and indeed the new Halloween film out in October, both sequels which disregard previous sequels and establish alternate timelines. And The Force Awakens, which I believe renders the Star Wars expanded universe no longer canon? Is it fair to call these “semi-reboots”?

[clem]

Didn’t Rob and Doug briefly consider female main characters for Red Dwarf right at the beginning? Feel like I’ve read that somewhere, possibly the Programme Guide which I don’t have to hand.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> Did it? I only saw it once, but from what I remember the existence of ghosts is widely considered to be fanciful in the 2016 universe (although, bizarrely, this is the case at the beginning of Ghostbusters 2 as well). Was there ever acknowledgement that they weren’t the first Ghostbusting business?

If I’m remembering correctly (I’ve only seen it once too) but I think it’s the case that they are in a different universe/dimension to the original films, but that ultimately makes them part of the same movie universe as there is a bit of portal cross over at the end or something, on of the ghosts is from the universe the original film is in or something like that.

So it remakes the original story, but within the same movie universe, just a different dimension of it.

[Flap Jack]

I’ve always viewed a reboot as starting a franchise over from scratch and telling a largely different story. The core concept remaining the same but the stories being different. i.e. all the different Spiderman trilogies or BSG

Not an unreasonable definition! But it’s just not the one used by industry folks, the press etc. The evolution of language is all about usage, and the usage of “reboot” is just a lot more broad than that. After all, if that was all that it meant (in a film/TV context), then “hard reboot” and “soft reboot” would be redundant; no-one would ever use them.

Think about it this way: when you reboot your computer, do you expect the hard drive to be wiped and the operating system to be upgraded?

Doctor Who, albeit with a long gap between 1989, the movie, and 2005, is all a straight continuation of the same story, same characters, with a history and a canon (well … hmm) that isn’t broken. It might be said to rebooted because it has started up again, but from where it left off. It hasn’t started over from scratch so it doesn’t really seem like a reboot in the sense I view the term as. Otherwise every new Doctor and or show runner would have to be defined as a reboot surely?

You can’t just say “albeit with a long gap”, when the 16 year gap is exactly what makes it a reboot! (Well, that, and the 0% crossover between the 1989 cast/crew and the 2005 cast/crew.) The Doctor being recast isn’t the same as the show being cancelled and then brought back. You can’t reboot something which never went away.

Of course, there are shades of grey in calling something a reboot, but Doctor Who 2005 is pretty ironclad. They literally called it “Series 1”! And they didn’t even make it explicit that it was in continuity with the classic series until “Human Nature” in Series 3.

The Force Awakens is for all intents and purposes a remake, little to no story differences unless the universe is just experiences a deja vu

Aww, come on, don’t fall into this trap. A film isn’t a remake just because it has similar structure or similar scenes in places. The villain of The Force Awakens is the son of 2 of the characters from the original trilogy. Its story literally depends on the films before it. You couldn’t do that in a remake.

The Force Awakens is a reboot as well as a sequel though, naturally.

If I’m remembering correctly (I’ve only seen it once too) but I think it’s the case that they are in a different universe/dimension to the original films, but that ultimately makes them part of the same movie universe as there is a bit of portal cross over at the end or something, on of the ghosts is from the universe the original film is in or something like that.

Hey, I’ve seen Ghostbusters 2016 twice, and I can confirm that nothing like that happens in it. There’s a portal at the end, yes, but that was a portal to the ghost/demon realm, not a parallel universe. The only grain of truth is that Slimer appears in both 1984 and 2016 films.

I’m sure that the 2 universes do cross over in the spin-off comics, but regardless, this wouldn’t stop it from being a reboot.

Ghostbusters 2016 is actually an interesting case now I think about it, because the thing about “reboot” in the context of movies is: you don’t reboot films, you reboot series. So by calling a film remake (or different and long-awaited enough sequel) a “reboot” you create the inference that the film exists to spawn further sequels. GB 2016 isn’t getting any sequels for the time being, so is it still a reboot?

Yes, probably.

Another film I’d cite as an example of “reboot, but still in continuity with the original” is the recent Jumanji film.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Ah yes, at the end they mention Zuul; one who was a trans-dimentional antagonists of the original film. I guess that arguably puts the 2016 film in a parallel dimension to the the 1984 one.

Regarding the new Halloween and the next Termintaor films which disregard previous sequels, The Simpsons coined a term which sums it up perfectly:

Homer: “You guys saw the new Radioactive Man sequel?”
Carl: “Uh, it’s not a sequel, it’s a reboot.”
Lenny: “Actually this one undoes the stuff from the last one, so it’s a de-boot.”

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>Ghostbusters 2016 is actually an interesting case now I think about it, because the thing about “reboot” in the context of movies is: you don’t reboot films, you reboot series. So by calling a film remake (or different and long-awaited enough sequel) a “reboot” you create the inference that the film exists to spawn further sequels. GB 2016 isn’t getting any sequels for the time being, so is it still a reboot?

Well the original GB continuity was a series (the two films and the 2009 video game [and maybe the cartoon?]).
GB 2016 was planned as the start of series wasn’t it? (everything is these days). But it was a flop, losing the studio tens of millions of dollars. Had it been a success a sequel would’ve been inevitable.

[clem]

> “Actually this one undoes the stuff from the last one, so it’s a de-boot.”

Ha, I like that. The new Halloween ignores everything after the very first one, but apparently they’ve even retconned the ending of the first one somehow, and they’re just calling it ‘Halloween’, so it’s Halloween -> Halloween.

[Bargain Bin Holly]

The Force Awakens is beat-for-beat A New Hope tho,

1. Ally to the protagonist escapes Empire-controlled ship
2. Crash lands on desert planet where the protagonist lives
3. The protagonist encounters a wise old man who aides them in their journey
4, The protagonist gets involved with the Resistance and helps carry out their missions
5. The Empire has possession of a Death Star(s) and blows up one/several planet(s)
6. Our main antagonist takes orders from a higher power (Grand Moff Tarkin/Snuke)
7. The wise old man is killed by the main villain clad in black during the escape from the Death Star
8. The protagonists are able to escape the explosion of the Death Star as well as our main antagonist

Its a remake in my book

[Flap Jack]

Largely agree with your points, Toxteth! The use of Zuul or Slimer doesn’t really confirm parallel dimensions though (at least, not within the story). It just adds to the remake-y elements of the film.

[Flap Jack]

1. Ally to the protagonist escapes Empire-controlled ship
2. Crash lands on desert planet where the protagonist lives
3. The protagonist encounters a wise old man who aides them in their journey
4, The protagonist gets involved with the Resistance and helps carry out their missions
5. The Empire has possession of a Death Star(s) and blows up one/several planet(s)
6. Our main antagonist takes orders from a higher power (Grand Moff Tarkin/Snuke)
7. The wise old man is killed by the main villain clad in black during the escape from the Death Star
8. The protagonists are able to escape the explosion of the Death Star as well as our main antagonist

Its a remake in my book

Ah, yes, Star Wars and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, 2 films which each have exactly 8 beats.

Seriously, this is such a bad argument I’m still trying to work out if you’re just trolling us, Timewave.

Because even those 8 points only seem like exact copies because you’ve chosen to describe them in such specifc ways. Let’s go through this, shall we? FOR FUN.

1. The characters you’re comparing here – other than being in a similar situation – are completely different. Finn is a stormtrooper who turned traitor after seeing the horror of battle, and is escaping mostly to save himself. C-3PO and R2-D2 are droids who happened to be working on a rebel ship, and are escaping specifically to enact rebel plans. You can’t say one is just a straight up remake of the other, because movies are more than just dryly described plot points – they’re about the characters and their emotional journeys.
2. OK, this is indeed similar. But it’s just there as a means to get the plot together. “Crash lands on desert planet” is not the plot of the movie.
3. Wait… did you seriously just describe Han Solo as a “wise old man”?! The story of TFA is all about how Han is a washed up loser who failed to save his son from the dark side, failed to save his marriage, has fallen back into all his bad habits, and is desperately trying to make up for his mistakes, but still fails. “Wise old man”? Come on. You might as well say that TFA is a remake of The Phantom Menace, and Han is Jar Jar.
4. Only similar by the broadest of strokes. Luke tries to help the rebellion deliver the Death Star plans, but gets sidetracked by a rescue mission of his own making, and doesn’t help the rebellion with an actual mission until the very end of the film; Rey is just trying to find the Resistance, but gets captured, and all she does in the end is try to escape and beat on Kylo Ren for personal reasons, not as part of a Resistance mission.
5. Sure, that detail is very similar, but by that logic Return of the Jedi is a remake of A New Hope as well.
6. Grand Moff Tarkin is not Darth Vader’s superior, at least not explicitly. I think at this point in your list you must have realised that the direct comparison to Snoke you were thinking of was The Emperor, but that’s from a different film so you couldn’t use it.
7. OK, there are SO many differences between these two things. Obi-Wan becomes at peace with himself and dies on his own terms before Vader can strike him, and achieves his goal of distracting Vader so the others can escape; Han gets stabbed through the chest by surprise by his son while he’s trying to hug him and bring him back to his side, and so fails to achieve his goal. One happens halfway through the film; the other happens near the end of the film.
8. Yeah, “people escape a death star explosion” is a similarity, but other than that, ANH focuses squarely on ship-based fighting by Luke, while TFA ends in a lightsaber duel in a snowy forest area., while an actual living planet falls apart around them. How did you come out of that thinking “these things are exactly the same, totally”.

Right, I’ve already written way too much on the subject of Star Wars on a Red Dwarf forum, but I’ll just echo something Andrew Ellard once said: structurally, TFA is like all 3 of the original Star Wars trilogy rolled into one, not just the first. But for me, its characters’ stories are a whole new thing.

It is not a remake in any conceivable sense of the word.

[bloodteller]

>Grand Moff Tarkin is not Darth Vader’s superior, at least not explicitly. I think at this point in your list you must have realised that the direct comparison to Snoke you were thinking of was The Emperor, but that’s from a different film so you couldn’t use it.

Isn’t he? I thought Moff Tarkin was sort of the CEO of the Death Star, and Darth Vader was like a representative from the Emperor who had to swing by and check the plans were all going smoothly. Maybe not explicitly stated in the film, but I was sure that Moff was in charge of the operation and Vader was just sort of there for some reason or another

[bloodteller]

We all know Mr. Stevens is the boss anyway. He’s Head Of Catering

[Flap Jack]

The film is never clear about who is higher ranking out of Tarkin and Vader, but if Tarkin was just straight up Vader’s boss, then it would be made clear.

The extra context of Empire/Return shows that Vader is the Emperor’s right hand man, so the chance of a Grand Moff having “appear as a giant face hologram and order Vader around while he kneels and says “yes, my master”” privileges is quite slim.

[Taiwan Tony]

Probably Sarah Pascoe, Katherine Ryan, Gina Yashere and Luisa Omielan.
You’d definitely need Romesh Ranganathan in it if you wanted to get it made though.

[Pete Part Three]

>The extra context of Empire/Return shows that Vader is the Emperor’s right hand man

To be fair, there’s a bit of backpedallig with The Emperor and Vader’s role in the sequels. Pretty sure that it wasn’t the original intention that the Emperor would be a Sith (and thus woudn’t have a close Master/Apprentice relationship with Vader). Admiral Motti’s dismissal of the Force doesn’t ring true if it’s something the Emperor is all over.

[bloodteller]

Wasn’t the Emperor originally supposed to be a regular old politician-type character?

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

You can’t just say “albeit with a long gap”, when the 16 year gap is exactly what makes it a reboot! (Well, that, and the 0% crossover between the 1989 cast/crew and the 2005 cast/crew.) The Doctor being recast isn’t the same as the show being cancelled and then brought back. You can’t reboot something which never went away.
Of course, there are shades of grey in calling something a reboot, but Doctor Who 2005 is pretty ironclad. They literally called it “Series 1”! And they didn’t even make it explicit that it was in continuity with the classic series until “Human Nature” in Series 3.

I get most of what you’re saying in the rest of the post this excerpt comes from, but wanted to address this specifically.

I don’t think a gap, no matter how long, should matter. Whether its 1 year or 16 years, its still a continuation. They start back calling it series 1 really just to simplify things, especially for new viewers … you don’t have to have seen the previous 40 years of the show to understand whats happening (RTD specifically wrote it in such a way too) but for fans that had seen the show previously, there would be stuff in there for them too. Otherwise why not make a point of having Eccleston on his first regeneration rather than the 9th? RTD knew he was continuing where the previous show had left off, he just created back story for the years it had been off the screen.

The movie the comes in-between made a point of having 7 regenerate into 8 … The Doctor then confirms at some point he is on he 9th or 10th regeneration. It takes a while but Moffat then fills in the gaps with 8 and 9.

If it isn’t mentioned before hand then School Reunion in the second series certain cements that the history of the show is relevant as they bring back Sarah Jane Smith.

All that aside, I like the analogy of rebooting a computer. But I think the phrase is being used very differently, it certainly has different roots. Booting/Rebooting in computer terms refers to computers starting themselves up, coming from “pulling yourself up on your own boot straps” … its the computers ability to load itself rather then being fed programming and command.

Rebooting in film/tv probably has borrowed the phrase and adapted it, and you’re right language does evolve etc … but I guess my pedanticism comes from how ambiguous the using of the term is, and why despite what the media and joe public say and mean, its necessary to have clearly defined terms used correctly (reboot, remake and so forth) to clearly understand what is meant because, as we have discovered with this conversation, it’s a complex minefield and reboot especially is being used liberally to describe very different things.

<block quote> Another film I’d cite as an example of “reboot, but still in continuity with the original” is the recent Jumanji film.

I really don’t think a sequel to a film, just because it’s 20 years after the original, can be called a reboot. If its set in the same universe and acknowledges the events of the first film (which I believe it does I haven’t actually seen it) then its just a sequel.

Otherwise would we call Terminator 2 a reboot because it took 6 years to make? How long a gap does there need to be? What about Blade Runner? That is very specifically a sequel too but over 30 years later. Is that a reboot or just another film in the series?

I think if we met half way we’d say a reboot is starting a fresh with something new. We could agree that Jumanji is a reboot, new characters, new story etc … but I think we’d then have to agree Blade Runner isn’t, even though by your definition just because it has been started up again several years later it is.

Hope my points make sense, realise I’m rambling a bit.

[Ridley]

Force Awakens is a redo of IV-VI as one film.

It’s all in the tweetnotes: https://medium.com/@ellardent/tweetnotes-star-wars-the-force-awakens-ed8c7cd353d

[Flap Jack]

I do totally get what you mean, quinn_drummer. While I still maintain that a reboot can be in continuity with the old version, it’s definitely a thing that “reboot” makes people think “oh, new continuity?”.

Just to clarify my position on Doctor Who ’05 being a reboot a bit more, it’s not so much the gap of time ITSELF which makes it a reboot, it’s the way the writing reacts to the fact that it’s the first new series in 16 years. Because Series 1 actually isn’t a direct continuation of Series 26 – or the TV movie – at all. It’s set an ambiguous amount of time afterwards, and the only returning main character is The Doctor himself, and he’s changed face off-screen.

If the revived Doctor Who were a hard, new continuity type of reboot, you wouldn’t need to change anything about it until School Reunion (uh… yeah, I screwed up in crediting Human Nature as being the episode which confirmed the classic series as canon; it actually just confirmed the 8th Doctor as canon. MY BAD.)

Essentially, if ‘Rose’ had opened with Paul McGann exiting the TARDIS talking about San Francisco and the Master, then I’d agree with you that it’s not a reboot. It’s why the TV Movie probably isn’t one.

So, a big gap doesn’t guarantee a revival will be a reboot, but it makes it more likely, as the writers won’t want to rely on their audience understanding the full context of the most recent series.

This is also why I consider Back to Earth an incredibly soft reboot, too. Although it’s far more debatable there, because of how many specific back references it has, it still sets up a new, approachable status quo for the crew that absolutely refuses to be a direct continuation of Series VIII, or even offer any resolution to it.

Films are a different beast because it’s easier to get caught up on a few films than several seasons of a TV show, so a big gap between releases doesn’t always make the difference. The key question for me is “Is this film selling itself as Film 1 in a new series, or as the long-awaited sequel to the last film?”.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is definitely the former, because it’s only in continuity with the original via small references, not by being about any of the same characters.

Terminator 2 is definitely the latter, because every aspect of its plot and characters are directly continuing on from Terminator 1.

Blade Runner 2049 is also the latter, because despite the time skip its story is specifically following up on the resolution to the original AND it wasn’t created to spawn further sequels, but just to be a standalone sequel.

Star Wars 7 is actually both a long-awaited sequel to a film and Film 1 in a new series, which is why it’s a serious edge case here, but for me it’s still narrowly a reboot.

I think if we met half way we’d say a reboot is starting a fresh with something new. We could agree that Jumanji is a reboot, new characters, new story etc … but I think we’d then have to agree Blade Runner isn’t, even though by your definition just because it has been started up again several years later it is.

Ha, I realise I’ve more or less come around to agreeing with you on most of this anyway. Good stuff. It helped for me to interrogate my own reasoning on this.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Now we’ve cleared that up rather amicable (round of applause to us) who thinks series VIII has a few flaws?

“Flaws?”

*pause*

*laughter*

[Hamish]

But is Series VIII a reboot?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Series III-V is a soft-reboot of the show of series 1 and 2

Series VII-VIII is a full reboot

Back to Earth is a stand-alone remake of Back to Reality

Series X-XII is a de-boot of series VII and VIII, and a sequel to series V.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Howard Burden confirmed Robert still wears the same boots for Kryten he had in Series III, so nothing has been rebooted.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Howard Burden’s talking rubbish then, as I distinctly remember Kryten having very pointy boots in earlier series, whereas in later ones he’s essentially wearing DMs.

[Bargain Bin Holly]

Those point boots always looked really stupid, like Kryten nicked them from a wizard. You can see them in Camille when he’s hanging off the ledge

[Ben Saunders]

>Well, that, and the 0% crossover between the 1989 cast/crew and the 2005 cast/crew.
Graeme Harper, who directed Caves of Androzani amongst other things, also directed episodes for New Who right from the get-go.

Also The Force Awakens being a remake of A New Hope (with elements from the other films) is surely common knowledge by this point. I don’t care if you like the film but I feel not accepting that fact is a bit out there.

Vader is very much written as an enforcer, subservient to Tarkin in IV, but its’s left ambiguous -enough- that the entire rest of the saga with Vader as the main character can still work with very little mental gymnastics. In the same way that Obi-Wan’s speech about him killing Vader really IS true, from a certain point of view.

[International Debris]

And several writers for the RTD era Who wrote for the New Adventures series of novels, which are as close to an ‘official’ continuation of series 26 as anything. I don’t think it’s a reboot at all, it’s just a continuation.

[Ben Saunders]

RTD was a very smart man who presented the show as both a continuation and a reboot to appease different fans/markets etc, it was all a bit vague intentionally I think

He also saved Big Finish by loudly stating that he would “take care of it” during one of the preliminary meetings

[Flap Jack]

Graeme Harper, who directed Caves of Androzani amongst other things, also directed episodes for New Who right from the get-go.

Given that Graeme Harper’s last classic series story was in 1985 and his first new series episode was in 2006, I’m going to class this as “uhhh… kind of, but not really.”

But even if Graeme was in both 1989 and 2005 crews, that wouldn’t prove that the 2005 series is not a reboot. The lack of returning crewmembers is just something which adds to the argument that something is a reboot, not the key determining factor.

Also The Force Awakens being a remake of A New Hope (with elements from the other films) is surely common knowledge by this point.

No, “The Force Awakens is noticably similar to A New Hope in a lot of ways” is common knowledge. “The Force Awakens is a literal remake of A New Hope” is a nonsensical assertion that I’ve not seen anyone earnestly argue for until now.

[Taiwan Tony]

Marooned is a Das Boot of series three.

[Seb Patrick]

In any sense that would give the term any kind of meaning, Doctor Who 2005 is not a reboot.

We have a word for what it is, and that word is “revival”. Why ruin the meaning of “reboot” by using it to mean that?

[Dave]

Restarting a series with a brand new “series one” that introduces a significantly different take on the show with a new cast and crew and minimal ties to old continuity is a perfectly reasonable description of a reboot, I think.

A revival feels more like the kind of thing they’ve done in recent years with old sitcoms like Goodnight Sweetheart, Porridge and Open All Hours – bringing something back in a similar form to the way it used to be, playing on nostalgia and playing up ties to the past. All the kind of things the new Doctor Who initially avoided when it first came back.

It’s easy to forget now how cagey the show was about even acknowledging the idea of previous Doctors or past history. What RTD did was clever, because he established the show as a new entity that you could come to fresh as a newcomer to Doctor Who, but without doing anything that contradicted the show’s history (which, of course, got gradually reincorporated into the new series more explicitly). So he gave us the best of both worlds.

[Dave]

Or to put it another way, Dave Dwarf is a revival.

If they had produced a brand new series called Red Dwarf Series One with new writers, a cast of new young comedians in the roles and a completely different look and feel and hour-long episodes, I think you’d be hard pushed to call it a revival – it would be a reboot.

(Although obviously Doctor Who is kind of a special case in some respects because the show has a built-in mechanism that lets it change its cast regularly while still maintaining the ‘same’ lead character.)

[GlenTokyo]

Doctor Who isn’t a reboot.

It restarted with the 9th Doctor, it’s just written to make sense for people who haven’t seen all the others, like most sequels/things that follow on from other things that have had a bit of time between, and has featured from what I’ve seen K9, Sarah Jane, Tom Baker’s scarf, Peter Davison in a special I think, loads of other crap from the continuity that I can’t remember or be bothered to list.

Also the series 1 stuff, did they even have series when it started? They had Stories. A few episodes in a story, which you then referred to, like Back to Earth.

[Dave]

How about the Netflix reboot of Reboot? It’s a similar example to Doctor Who 2005 in that it’s a completely fresh take on the same material that gradually, over time, reincorporates elements of the old Reboot continuity to make it clear that the Reboot reboot and the original Reboot are linked in a similar way to old Who and new Who.

I’d still call the rebooted Reboot a reboot even given the ties to the original Reboot.

[Author]

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