Your Unpopular Red Dwarf Opinions

[Piplup2003]

The title says it all. What opinions do you have about Red Dwarf that no-one else seems to agree on?

For me, it’s that VIII is my second favourite series (behind V) and that I prefer Chloë over Claire as Kochanski (this may be partially influenced by the fact that I’ve met Chloë).

And please, no arguing.

Topic

[Renegade Rob]

and why would he decide to paint his entire feet during the prison’s dedicated toenail painting hour

Painting his foot sportscar red was just his midlife crisis starting to manifest.

[GlenTokyo]

I think the Lego Red Dwarf stuff that people try to make happen is crap.

Soz Bob

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I saw a Starbug one recently and it’s really uninspired as it’s just an exercise in how to make spheres out of square green bricks.

The bunk rooms/sets are ok but for the most part lack any interesting details and are generally quite small.

A large Red Dwarf itself might be interesting as you’d have all different things jutting out of it, and if you’re really clever, could have little landing bays to put small Starbugs and Blue Midgets, but you’d still ultimately end up with a big red brick at the end of it all.

[GlenTokyo]

It’s not even close to being the correct shade of green either.

It’s water butt from a garden centre green.

If we’re having playsets I’d rather people were asking Revell or something.

The Lego ones, particularly Starbug are too small to be worthwhile. If it was twice the size and self supporting it’d be impressive, but as it is, nah.

The blue midget one is more impressive because it stands on its own legs, but because of the scale it looks like it could double as ED 209 or an AT-ST aswell as Blue Midget.

I’ve seen a large Red Dwarf, the cut down pencil and that was big enough that it read properly, but it’s not doable for a kit. It was about 3-4 foot long and probably cost a couple of grand in Lego.

[Flap Jack]

Remember when there was a Red Dwarf level in Lego Dimensions, but instead of getting its own dedicated story or chracters, it was just a small secret area buried in a Fantastic Beasts story pack?

So not only playing second fiddle to a fantasy series written by a transphobe, but playing second fiddle to a sub-par spin-off of a fantasy series written by a transphobe. The ultimate insult.

[Ian Symes]

I think the Lego Red Dwarf stuff that people try to make happen is crap.

I think I’d be better inclined towards it all if it didn’t take up every other post on my #reddwarf Twitter search and all the Dwarfy Facebook groups whenever they’re pushing for votes. And the thing is, for better or worse, even if it gets the requisite number of votes to trigger it being put to the panel, it’s never going to happen. There is not a chance in hell that Red Dwarf is a well known or profitable enough brand to get the full Lego treatment.

[Flap Jack]

UKTV/GNP should just make their own off-Brand Red Dwarf toy construction sets.

Smego

OK, that name’s not exactly inspired, but it’s a decent starting point.

[tombow]

such a stupid waste of time. Lego Bill n’ Ted mall or Fraiser Crane Apartment/Studio is where it’s at

[GlenTokyo]

I think the Lego Red Dwarf stuff that people try to make happen is crap.

I think I’d be better inclined towards it all if it didn’t take up every other post on my #reddwarf Twitter search and all the Dwarfy Facebook groups whenever they’re pushing for votes. And the thing is, for better or worse, even if it gets the requisite number of votes to trigger it being put to the panel, it’s never going to happen. There is not a chance in hell that Red Dwarf is a well known or profitable enough brand to get the full Lego treatment.

It’s everywhere. Same few pictures every couple of weeks, still not bothered.

I don’t get why people are so keen on it, I know Red Dwarf isn’t Channel 4 News or Broadchurch or anything, but I still don’t think Lego or funko bastard pops fit at all.

I want a 1:48 scale resin Starbug or a remote control Skutter that looks nice on a shelf, not some fat headed blob people and a bit of Lego.

/rant

[Dax101]

The Promised Land again has some more dramatic elements, but the three main series have felt to me as much ‘straight comedy’ as any of the Rob era episodes.

The Co-Rob era wasnt afraid to balance out comedy, sci-fi, pathos and dramtic elements. the Dave era is definitely trying to be more funny more than anything else. there seems to be a comedy payoff to almost everything that happens in the Dave Era. its not quite brave enough to let pathos just have its moment.

And when we do get pathos and dramatic elements in The Promise Land, it feels more like its there because its a tv film that needs to be something abit different. and people gave praise to the Moonlight pathos almost like Red Dwarf hasn’t had these elements before when really its had many like this. just not in a long time.

[Ben Paddon]

I think The Promised Land would’ve worked better as a single-camera, no studio audience affair, to be honest.

I also think that, as good as the sun/moonlight scene was, the dialogue was in dire need of another pass. Solid idea, wonky dialogue.

[Sofajockey]

The end of Back to Earth is the only genuinely moving moment in Red Dwarf history. I proper welled up.

[tombow]

what about this?

That episode, “Terrorform,” which ends with the crew facing the monster of Rimmer’s self-loathing, made me cry so hard as a teenager that I refused to watch it again for nearly 20 years. It remains the purest expression of my psyche available on modern TV.)

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3da7a9/struggling-to-grow-older-with-my-favorite-childhood-sci-fi-show-red-dwarf

[Pete Part Three]

Interesting article. The stuff about the characters being in stasis is broadly true and my big problem with a lot of the new episodes is that they don’t really embrace the ages of the actors/characters, because if you’re going to make new Red Dwarf, don’t just give us old Red Dwarf reheated.

But to say that the show doesn’t *occasionally* do that is untrue. I love the stuff about Lister turning 50 in M-Corp for much the same reason that I detested Lister’s claiming that Kochanski is 30 and still moping about her in Entangled. One is the the show embracing the ages of the cast, the other is the show desperately trying to pretend things are how they used to be.

Likewise, while Cat needing glasses in Mechocracy clearly wasn’t substantial enough to justify more than a few lines, it’s preferable to the bits in X, XI and XII where Danny does S1,S2 screeches and twirls.

[International Debris]

Yeah, you don’t have to fundamentally change the characters to acknowledge the fact they’ve aged.

[Dax101]

I think its best not to acknowledge the ages of the characters. mostly because they need the audience to feel there is still life in this. still youth and energy and that the characters can still go on adventures and face threats ect ect. but the moment you start acknowledging the character’s ages is the moment the audience starts saying yikes they are getting old or this show has been going too long.

I think if you can make the audience forget the casts getting older. its better for the show.

Although the Cat only needed glasses because Doug needed to find an excuse for the Cat would help rimmer. which would be very out of character if it wasn’t for blackmail.

[si]

The Promised Land directly referenced the characters’ ages, and it was the best Dwarf in years.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Yeah I’ve no problem with the ages thing and it being mentioned. There’s a wealthy of comedy and story to be pulled from these guys being old now. Especially Lister who has lived “alone” on Red Dwarf longer than he was alive prior to the accident.

They’ve all grown as characters too in one way or another so it’d be daft to ignore the fact they’ve grown in age too.

[Dave]

Yep, completely agree. Not only is it more honest to acknowledge that none of these characters are in their twenties any more, but it also opens up ideas that wouldn’t have been possible for the show to effectively handle in the past.

Episodes like Krysis or Fathers and Suns wouldn’t have worked the same with a young cast, and episodes like Skipper and Promised Land have got a lot of mileage out of these characters having long relationships that are different and more complex than in the early days.

[Dax101]

Its abit like the OT Star trek movies. After wrath of Khan they stopped mentioning how the characters were getting older. And i think thats because it starts to get sad after a while. Especially if you want to keep making more.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

There’s just a balance to strike isn’t there. Don’t acknowledge it at all and it’s a bit weird, but take it too far and have Lister with a Zimmer frame and Cat complaining about his prostate and it’s too much.

[Dave]

He will never need a Zimmer.

[International Debris]

Yeah, I don’t think anybody’s asking for Last of the Summer Wine in space, but using their age and the length of their time together to explore particular character ideas and plots – once in a while – is very worthwhile.

[Hamish]

ike the OT Star trek movies. After wrath of Khan they stopped mentioning how the characters were getting older. And i think thats because it starts to get sad after a while. Especially if you want to keep making more.

“Is it possible, that we two, you and I, have grown so old, and so inflexible, that we have outlived our usefulness?”
– Spock to Kirk, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

[Dax101]

ike the OT Star trek movies. After wrath of Khan they stopped mentioning how the characters were getting older. And i think thats because it starts to get sad after a while. Especially if you want to keep making more.

“Is it possible, that we two, you and I, have grown so old, and so inflexible, that we have outlived our usefulness?”
– Spock to Kirk, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

I knew someone would bring up VI. but that was planned as their last movie. it was a send-off movie, so it made sense to acknowledge the longevity. but when they didn’t know when it was gonna stop, basically III-V. They didn’t mention it, because they wanted to keep them feeling as youthful as possible even though they were around middle age.

Infact Kirk apparently needed glasses in Wrath of Khan which he never needed again after. he sold them in Star Trek 4. i guess he got laser surgery between movies.

[Hamish]

Honestly I think the TNG films are worse offenders when it comes to not coming to terms with the age of the cast. Or their plot lines in subsequent shows.

As some have pointed out before, it is rather disrespectful to the new tactical officer on the Enterprise-E that Worf can come and take his old station back whenever he pleases.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

As some have pointed out before, it is rather disrespectful to the new tactical officer on the Enterprise-E that Worf can come and take his old station back whenever he pleases.

Well, in First Contact they are literally in the middle of a battle against their greatest enemy, and Worf is a very experienced tactical office, it would be criminal to have him doing anything else in that situation.

He is also a high ranking officer, potentially also out ranking whoever the tactical office is, so there could be a precedent there too.

After that though, in the subsequent films, they do have to crow bar him in a little.

[evilmorwen]

The Motion Picture was the big time-passing-denier in the Star Trek movies, mind – it was specifically set just a couple of years after the original run ended even though it had been a decade in real life, and then Meyer’s Wrath of Khan, which was made just a short time afterwards makes a big fuss about actually acknowledging the passage of time. The middle films (directed by the cast) then are either about restoring the status quo or (with V) playing in it. VI is Meyer again and goes back to the themes he’d been doing in II.

When The Final Frontier came out, Shatner was 58, which is wild. That’s how old Tom Cruise is this year, and only two years older than Craig.

[si]

Don’t give me this Star Trek crap, it’s too early in the morning.

[Flap Jack]

Oh no, a stasis leak in the “Star Trek Crap” G&T forum thread.

[si]

Fuck that, no more stasis leak gags for me.

[GlenTokyo]

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[GlenTokyo]

Damn. My hot take on the current state of Star Trek disintegrated when I brought it into this thread.

[Moonlight]

Back to Earth shouldn’t be counted as separate episodes in the next big poll. Nobody watches it that way and all it does is hurt its position by forcing its weakest parts to stand on their own. I literally haven’t rewatched BtE as three episodes since the DVD came out except to hear the cast commentary.

[RunawayTrain]

Back to Earth shouldn’t be counted as separate episodes in the next big poll. Nobody watches it that way and all it does is hurt its position by forcing its weakest parts to stand on their own. I literally haven’t rewatched BtE as three episodes since the DVD came out except to hear the cast commentary.

Even when I ripped it from the DVD, the 3 episodes with the cast commentary are one big file! (But with credits at the correct points between eps, which is a bit jarring.)

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Even when I ripped it from the DVD, the 3 episodes with the cast commentary are one big file! (But with credits at the correct points between eps, which is a bit jarring.)

I did a big re-rip of all my Red Dwarf (and other DVDs) recently and sooo many of them have episodes 1 to 6 as separate files, and then another file for ALL files for when you click Play All. Rather than DVD software stitching together the episodes from markers or something, every DVD that has a play all feature it seems just as 1 big file for “All”

But I agree with KT, whilst those episodes will always be counted separately so anyone that gives a shit can say there are 74 rather than 72 episodes of Red Dwarf, when considering BTE for a poll it should be counted as one whole thing.

Whilst I can see that leading to an argument of counting Back in the Red and Pete as wholes also, that’s silly and we all know it.

[RunawayTrain]

I did a big re-rip of all my Red Dwarf (and other DVDs) recently and sooo many of them have episodes 1 to 6 as separate files, and then another file for ALL files for when you click Play All. Rather than DVD software stitching together the episodes from markers or something, every DVD that has a play all feature it seems just as 1 big file for “All”

But I agree with KT, whilst those episodes will always be counted separately so anyone that gives a shit can say there are 74 rather than 72 episodes of Red Dwarf, when considering BTE for a poll it should be counted as one whole thing.

Whilst I can see that leading to an argument of counting Back in the Red and Pete as wholes also, that’s silly and we all know it.

The Bodysnatcher set is very odd – it has blocks of some episodes without commentary, and the ones with commentary as separate files, and then the ones with Text Track in other blocks. So not quite separate episodes but also not the entire series in one as it appears to be in a normal disc player. I haven’t finished going through them to work out exactly what’s what yet though; I do know that in series II I’ve got episodes 3-6 in one block but series III there are 2 together at most. [Ideally I’d like to make the text track and commentaries as options for the episodes with only subtitles so I don’t need 3 copies of the files, but by the time I’ve done that I may as well have just watched and listened to everything 3 times!]

The Brittas Empire, on the other hand, had each episode separately which is what you’d expect (from discs which do have a Play All option).

Agreed. I actually started typing why BTE shouldn’t be treated like BITR and Pete but found the points didn’t really stand up … so I think I’ll have to settle for ‘it’s a weird blip in the ouevre that is best tolerated as one single feature-length episode’!

[Flap Jack]

Pete shouldn’t be counted as separate episodes in the next big poll. Nobody watches it that way* and all it does is allow Part One to undeservedly rise to the rank of second worst episode.

* at all.

[Dave]

Call me a bluff old traditionalist if you like, but I’m fine with treating individual episodes as individual episodes.

(Given that that’s how most people who saw it experienced it, with DVD buyers representing only a small fraction of the total audience.)

[Ian Symes]

Yeah, counting multi-part episodes as one will never happen in any poll we run. We are slavishly devoted to “as broadcast” being sacrosanct. Besides which, in each and every Red Dwarf example, the different parts of each story differ in quality. IMO: BITR Part 1 is alright by VIII standards, Part 2 is meh, Part 3 is abysmal. Pete 1 is average, Pete 2 is one of the worst things ever made anywhere. I’ll admit I find it hard to separate BTE Parts 2&3, but they’re both vastly superior to the plodding Part 1. I certainly consider each part separately when doing my rankings, and wouldn’t lump each part of a story together by default.

But JUST FOR FUN, here’s how the bottom of the Pearl Poll would have looked if we took an average of the multi-parters’ scores instead of treating them individually:

So ACTUALLY, counting BTE as one would harm the majority of it overall. Two thirds of it would be overtaken by Beyond A Joke in relative terms.

[Dave]

On the other hand, at least it puts Timewave where it should be.

[International Debris]

I’ve only watched BTE episodically twice: on broadcast, and listening to the cast commentary. So it’s a bit of a pain for me when it comes to the polls and my placing is based on vague guesswork, which is probably true of a lot of people. So I’d personally go for using it as one episode.
That said, I understand and respect the ‘as broadcast’ rule, and it fits in well with G&T’s general approach.

[clem]

One of the best things in BTE Part 1 is a face Rimmer pulls when Cat’s telling him about being attacked by the squid, and that shot isn’t in the director’s cut.

On the other hand, at least it puts Timewave where it should be.

Nearly where it should be.

[Pete Part Three]

I would say that Back to Earth Part 2, at least, is far better than Part 3. That may be like saying the middle of a movie is much better than the end…but that’s a perfectly valid criticism for lots of movies.

[Hamish]

One of the best things in BTE Part 1 is a face Rimmer pulls when Cat’s telling him about being attacked by the squid, and that shot isn’t in the director’s cut.

I am still annoyed by a lot of the cuts made to Part One in the Director’s Cut compared to broadcast and never watch it because of that.

Call me a masochist if you like.

[Dax101]

I don’t miss the shot of them freezing for the ad break. what even was that? how did that make it to air?

[tombow]

someone on imdb, when BTE was airing, said they emailed Norm Lovett to ask if he saw it, and he supposedly replied – “I disliked it on a number of levels and am glad I wasn’t involved”.

[Dave]

In fairness, that could have been anyone.

[RunawayTrain]

Yeah, counting multi-part episodes as one will never happen in any poll we run. We are slavishly devoted to “as broadcast” being sacrosanct.

Ah, makes sense.

[Moonlight]

In terms of model-related VFX, The Beginning looks better than anything in Series XI and XII to an almost embarrassing degree. All the best model shots I can think of in those series are combinations of models and CG elements, i.e. Siliconia’s abduction scene.

XI / XII felt like people didn’t know how to film models and were just guessing.
The extreme overuse of the same model sequences and the sheer amount of totally digital shots constructed out of 2D stills really suggests they were lacking in decent, usable model shots to draw from.

Twentica violently shifts from looking good and looking pathetically cheap because of the way they filled out the episode with those paper cutout Starbug shots. There’s probably more of those than genuine shots in that episode in particular. The big crash would look fucking great if it wasn’t half-constructed out of Terry Gilliam animations.

[Author]

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