Asclepius

[Asclepius]

That’s right off at the deep end, isn’t it? So not even an inkling that this was coming, was there?

I think there were some warning signs, but I can’t quite remember what they were. I do recall discussing it at the last DJ, which was September 2021, after he made some vague comments during his Zoom Q&A, whilst wearing a hoodie that might have been a coded message, in retrospect. At that stage it was just mild concern that he may have fallen down a rabbit hole, which just goes to show how quickly these things can escalate. 

Thanks for that. Bizarre. I’ve looked online with all sorts of search prompts and not found anything resembling that hoodie. Chris isn’t usually a hoodie-guy is he?

Any memory of what the rest of the words on it were? I can’t work out where the thought bubble is emanating from.

[Asclepius]

For those of you who have the time…is it possible to date when the first unhinged utterings were typed by Chris? And when did the first utterly crazy you-can-never-come-back-from-this stuff start?
Just curious!

Three years ago this very day, according to this post.

That’s right off at the deep end, isn’t it? So not even an inkling that this was coming, was there?

I spent a lot of time listening to the DVD commentaries the other year. Robert is eminently cancellable given how he speaks about, and seems to act around women. Craig has had issues that could be described as similar. And seems to have it in for the LGBTQI+ community at that stage. Danny’s really annoying. At length. And there’s the refuse collector story, too.

Chris, meanwhile, is calm, quite funny, avoids punching down, and seems very respectful of people he’s worked with.

Funny how things change, isn’t it?

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Troughton

Smith

Eccleston

Tennant II

McCoy

Tennant I

T Baker

Hartnell

Gatwa

McGann

Capaldi

Davison

Whittaker

Pertwee

C. Baker

Probably.

[Asclepius]

For those of you who have the time…is it possible to date when the first unhinged utterings were typed by Chris? And when did the first utterly crazy you-can-never-come-back-from-this stuff start?

Just curious!

[Asclepius]

Can’t believe this. This is my Dad’s old arm. I thought we’d had it cremated with him, but it turns up here.

The Crematorium will be getting a *strongly* worded letter later this week. They can’t behave like this. This is absolute anarcy.

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Before I prise myself out of this rabbit hole I’ve found myself going down again, here’s a review of an Indian restaurant in the town where Chris lives. So Indians aren’t globalists and they’re allowed to bring their food here. Unless the food was here *before* Chris as born, or became aware, so it’s acceptable because – to him – it’s always been here?

Always, *always* these people are full of exemptions for stuff that would actually affect them. “Less globalism! Countries should only consume what they can grow themselves! Oh, except for the Best Restaurant in the world. You can stay!”

CHRIS BARRIE
(RED DWARF)

What can I say? Brilliant food, even better service… Certainly the Best Restaurant in the country!… Europe, the world…

Well done Malik and the Team.

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Kudos for the epic post and research, Warbodog!

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‘Globalists’ refers to the One World Government conspiracy theory, which is that world leaders are secretly plotting to abandon the notion of countries in favor of everyone being united under the same laws and principles.
But first they have to brainwash everyone using the internet, to get rid of humanity’s cultural and social differences. Or anything making us distinct human beings. (Hence Barrie’s references to androgyny and everything becoming homogenous)
I know this because I have a Catholic friend who believes this stuff. 

Thank you. That’s really helpful to read without me having to google it. Looks like I wasn’t a million miles away from guessing it.

Presumably by marrying an Aleksandra Petrovic (who looks a bit foreign), and then presumably kids who also look a little bit foreign, he isn’t helping his own aims here? But I suppose it’s the same as Farage marrying a German woman and getting an EU passport for his dual-nationality kids.

Farage is very polite, too.

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“British people”.
Is that a dog-whistle use of the term? As in, there are people in the country who he doesn’t consider to be British? Or is he not far enough gone for that just yet?

I assumed (hoped?) it meant as in, life in this country, in contrast with mentioning globalists … although now I think about it, I don’t actually know what exactly ‘globalists’ is supposed to mean so I may have completely misinterpreted, being too charitable.

If we strip it down, what would a “Globalist” want? I don’t know the specific rabbit-hole definition. I would assume it’s about the breaking down of borders, the change in a country’s identity to something less traditional and with more of a mixture of cultures being added to that brought by the majority ‘native’ population?

In short, I bet there’s at least one early draft that contains the words “boat people” or “illegals”, but he’s too smart – and, of course, *far* too polite! – to let it slip through to the published version.

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And now people are saying the same thing and – as someone who’s substantially on the left, I agree. But not if it’s coming from the right! It’s a confusing time.

Try living under Justin Trudeau for nine years. 

I think of Trudeau the way that other countries probably look at Starmer. “They’re doing ok. Could be a lot worse!”. So I entirely take your point!

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The Labour party and the Democrats and other “leftist” parties are shit, but not really for the reasons rightwing conspiracists think. It’s a toughie, because you have to say “yes, but” rather than being able to categorically say “no, actually…”

Absolutely.

I was at a big run the other day. Someone had a placard saying “You’re running better than our government”. No emojis. No exclamation marks. It was a bit weird. Were they a leftie or a Reform/Tory? It was hard to tell. Which was frustrating.

[Asclepius]

Danny – Decca

Craig – Nancy

Robert – Debo

Chris –

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It’s weird that there’s someone moaning about the state of the UK getting worse and I still have to completely disagree with him. I wonder what these changes that have accelerated the enslavement are, exactly. 

It’s tricky, isn’t it? For the past 14 years people have been, like, “Government is shit. They is all bastards” and I’m like “Yeah! Right on! Get them out!”

And now people are saying the same thing and – as someone who’s substantially on the left, I agree. But not if it’s coming from the right! It’s a confusing time. If you’re saying “Government is shit…” I have to wait to hear either “because schools don’t have enough funding and social care is catastrophic” or “they haven’t banned the boats and there’s a black guy on my street”.

Or, indeed, “there’s been a globalist enslavement”.

Times are hard when you hate the government but can’t even band together with other people who hate the government.

[Asclepius]

“British people”.

Is that a dog-whistle use of the term? As in, there are people in the country who he doesn’t consider to be British? Or is he not far enough gone for that just yet?

[Asclepius]

Also…

Most of the podcasts seem to be written with the built-in expectation that none of the main cast ever deviate from their archetypes. 

Symesy – the ….? 

Danny Stevenson – the ..? 

Cappsy – the …?

It has a kind of Saturday morning cartoon vibe to it, where all the young kids would immediately know what each character is about and latch on to that. The Dwarfcast era really feels like it’s built from identifiable ‘Dwarfcast building blocks’ and each character’s reaction is telegraphed and anticipated. Which, again, is appropriate for a young audience but not necessarily a family audience. 

(PS it would add comedic value, but I’m not filling in the dots for each character :)

[Asclepius]

I think that, if you’re able to write a whole series without having to have characters acting “out of character”, then you’ve still got stories to tell.

I remember Arthur Matthews, the writer of Father Ted, saying similar about when Father Jack acted out of character (“They lie in wait. Like wolves. Waiting. Interminably waiting…”) in the final season, that it suggested he was running out of ideas at that point.

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No-one in the online Season Eight scripts has colons. This is making the rest if this process very messy indeed. I keep losing track of what I’m doing due to the cast no longer having colons.

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Stoke Me A Clipper sees Craig move back to first, Chris in second, with Bobby third.

Beyond a Joke sees Danny overtake Chris to retake fourth spot.
When I read this, I was surprised that Chris and Bobby didn’t get more of a boost in position from playing double roles. But then I realised that the rolling average smooths out the effects of that.
So I’m curious to know: when it comes to the episodes in which one actor plays double roles (Me2, Dimension Jump, Psirens, Stoke, Beyond a Joke; to a lesser extent Rimmerworld), how much does that actor’s line count increase, compared to preceding episodes?

Also, how did you handle counting lines that are split up by stage directions? 
For example, this is one of the online transcripts of Future Echoes:

LISTER: (Counting down as he flips switches) Six … five…

RIMMER peers around the doorway, holding his fingers in his ears and
grinning maniacally.

LISTER: …Four … three … (sticks his free finger in one ear) two …
(screaming) aaaaaahhhhhh! One!

He flips the last switch. The noise and sparks stop. Everything returns
to normal. LISTER gradually realises this and grins with relief.

LISTER: I did it! I’m not gonna die! *Aaargh!*

Did you count that as three Craig lines, or just one?

On the double-up episodes – say Dimension Jump – generally it increases a fair bit. I can post examples.

As for your other comment, it’s quite an automated process I’ve used. In the example you’ve quoted, I’m entirely led by Craig’s colon. If I can see his colon, then I will count it. If I can’t see a colon, it doesn’t get counted. So yeah, that one’s three lines.

if I had more time, and no job, I could do it more accurately :)

[Asclepius]

Surely the time is right for the script(s) to be published in a lovely coffee table book, illustrated with all the storyboards, with introductions and footnotes by Doug?

All of the movie talk fell in my lengthy Dwarf-gap between turning off at Series VIII and pretty much forgetting about the series until Back to Earth. I didn’t follow discussions online etc.

So how much does exist? Are there more storyboards? What sequences were used in RD? I gather from your commentaries that bits were pinched and stuck into over-running episodes etc. Could there be a G&T article wringed out of it while we wait for Doug to either a) publish the script or b) give it to Big Finish?

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There are three Rimmer-centric episodes in V, but one involves him being captured and another is about the results of his illness, so he’s separate from the rest of them for a lot of those.

Yes, it jumps around a lot. In Holoship he has 35% of the lines, 24% in Quarrantine (behind both Bobby and Craig), in Back to Reality he has 22% (behind Bobby), in Terroform he has 22% (behind both Craig and Bobby), in Demons and Angels he has only 20% of the lines, and in Inquisitor only 13%.

So Chris has the most lines in one of the shows, Craig has the most lines in three of the shows, and Bobby has the most lines in two of the shows (Quarrantine and Back to Reality).

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In Seasons 1-6, this data is rolling for the most recent six episodes. Once we hit episode 7 of Season VII, it starts rolling from Tikka to Ride, taking account of the extent of that season.

From The End, Craig is the main character, then Chris, then Norman, then Mac.

From Future Echoes, Danny takes fourth place.

Better Than Life sees Chris take first place, before Craig claims it back in the next episode.

In Backwards, Danny becomes the third character, with Norman fourth.

In Timeslides, Bobby takes the fourth place.

In The Last Day, Bobby moves to third, with Danny moving to fourth.

In Justice, Kryten moves into Second Character territory, with Chris moving to third.

Holoship throws everything around Chris slides into first place, with Craig second and Bobby third.

Demons and Angels sees Craig back in first place, with Bobby second and Chris third.

It remains that way until Out of Time, when Bobby takes first place, Craig second and Chris third.

Stoke Me A Clipper sees Craig move back to first, Chris in second, with Bobby third.

Ouroborous, unsurprisingly, sees Chris drop to third, with Bobby up to second.

Blue sees Chloe move into third place, with Chris fourth. Danny stops being one of the four main characters.

Beyond a Joke sees Danny overtake Chris to retake fourth spot.

And that’s how it continues until Season Eight, which I haven’t ‘done’ yet…

[Asclepius]

How about an entirely alien companion generated by CGI?

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If you go on the Episode Index on Smega Drive, all the episodes have subtitle files available to download. These will indeed put everything on one line if you open them in Notepad. However, as Flappo says they don’t have the character names attached, and also you’ve got the issue that one continuous speech from one character could be split over several entries in the subtitle file, so it would definitely need some manual interpretation.
If you do end up finding a way to complete the research, I would indeed be interested in getting hold of the data for a full write up!

Thanks!

Looks like there’s no easy way around it, then. Scripts do seem to be available up to the end of S8, which I’ll take on. After that – and back to the four leads – it’s probably less of an interesting procedure, anyway.

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It is a shame that nobody has provided transcripts for the Dave era episodes, especially considering some of the crap online that manages to get that treatment – I mean FFS you can get transcripts for Mr’s Brown’s Boys! Red Dwarf fans clearly not dedicated enough!

Also whilst googling around on this I ended up on the Amazon page for Primordial Soup and remain baffled at how wrong their description of the book is able to be:

The seventh series didn’t arrive until 4 years later Mr Bezos, and it didn’t coincide with the release of any series – it was famous in fact for coming out with a script for an episode that nobody would see for months!
Also what a weird order to list their other publications, I’m assuming it’s just alphabetical because why not just put them in publication order?!

It would be good for Mrs. Brown’s Boys to have scripts written up by fans because, for many episodes, it would be the first time that a script existed for them.

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Ha. Typed with contempt.
I didn’t try my hand at Red Dwarf, but I did type out the first few scenes of Monty Python and the Holy Grail on Word 95. I remember the Constitutional Peasants scene being extremely tedious because I wasn’t familiar with most of the terms used, so had to keep rewinding and making my best guess. I eventually saw a version of the video in the shops that said it came with a small script book inside or something, so they’d already bothered and I was free from the obligation.

I love this sort of stuff.

Back in that sort of day, but probably earlier. Certainly before we had Word 95, and I know it was before we had a PC that could run Windows, I had a program called Protext 4. Green text on a black background. I would type things on there. I’d started a complete history of Doctor Who, but based only on what I knew from the novels I had. So for example, I never did know how the Fourth Doctor regenerated.

Anyway, lacking a printer, the only way to make a hard copy was to copy it all across a typewriter I’d bought at a jumble sale.

Shame I didn’t have a hobby. Or use that time to do homework. Or make some friends. But there you go.

[Asclepius]

  I think the smegadrive is based on the subtitles from the DVDs/Blu-RayBlu-Rays.

Thanks!

Well, if one of those three young men who live in that room together and talk about Red Dwarf every few days on their podcast ever finds this thread, and are then able to advise me on what’s available and in what sort of format, I’d be very indebted.

And, obviously, happy to share the numbers and work if anyone wants to write about this…

[Asclepius]

Asclepius is too lazy to just watch all the episodes and keep pausing to type the lines after they say them like it’s the 90s.

Ha. Typed with contempt.

What I love about those ancient scripts from the early 90s is the detail you get about where they were uploaded to, by whom, and other info. One of the people even included their home address in the file! I bet there’s an article/some research to be done on those early dedicated fans who were doing that stuff.

Oddly, too, looking at a file typed and uploaded to a newsgroup in 1994 or something feels a lot more ancient than considering a copy of the Smegazine from the year before. I am not sure why. We’re used to old comics, I suppose, but seeing something surviving from the very earliest days of the Internet is very evocative…

[Asclepius]

I’m also happy to continue with it if anyone knows where I can find Series IX-Promised Land scripts.

Well, all of the actual lines are on the Smegadrive of course, but the formatting is not as conducive to your purposes.
I was able to get a workable transcript of The Promised Land by just copying all of the captions into a text editor and chopping out the blank spaces using sed but the lines of course are still not neatly delineated.

That sounds…laborious. I’m assuming, though, that if the lines are in there, then somewhere in the data that’s been uploaded to the smegadrive, there would be the actual scripts…? But I don’t know what format the Boys from the GAT uploaded it…

[Asclepius]

I think another consideration is that the number of lines or words doesn’t necessarily equate directly to a character’s presence. Danny has done a lot of ‘silent’ acting over the course of the series, particularly in those early years. And a lot of gags involve long setups from one character and quick payoffs from another. So more lines doesn’t automatically equal a more meaningful share of the show.

Absolutely. Also interesting to see, though, that almost every one of 20 or so lines he tends to get per episode is a *very* ‘bankable woofer’

Holly in S1 and S2 is very similar. Holly in S3-S5 is very much not. The writers really served Hattie poorly in that.

[Asclepius]

Nice! I did something similar myself a while back when I was interested to see how Hattie’s lines stacked up against Norm’s.
However, line numbers is one thing but word count is another. I’d be interested to see how this evolves over time as well as I suspect it would tell even more of a story. For example I suspect that not only is Cat getting a very low number of lines, but they are also some of the shorter ones so his overall percentage contribution could be even lower than suggested here.
Likewise it would be interesting to see if some of the longer lines that characters get at times are significant enough to influence their overall percentage contribution in a meaningful way – as someone’s quantity of lines drop is that offset by an increase in the length of those lines etc.

I 100% agree. I did try word count, but the way the available online scripts are formatted made it impossible, sadly. Unless anyone has them written up/coded where lengthy lines all appear one line if pasted into, say, notepad.

[Asclepius]

Good stuff. I don’t know if it tells us much about anything, but that’s not your responsibility.

Yeah. I like crunching numbers. I don’t like doing Key Findings and/or Recommendations.

[Asclepius]

In the Season One scripts, Craig gets 39% of the lines, Chris 36%

I laughed.

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Dress it up a little more and you could get this as a guest article.

I could. But while running Excel code to look stuff up and then writing it down and colour coding it as something that I find Very Relaxing and De-stressing, the actual writing up of anything is very stressful. I’m happy to send all the raw data to anyone who wants to Make Something Of It. I’m also happy to continue with it if anyone knows where I can find Series IX-Promised Land scripts.

Btw what *was* fun was creating rolling-averages every six episodes. Robert becomes the third main character by Last Day. And the second-main character by DNA. Drops back to third in Meltdown. Up to second by Demons and Angels. Becomes main character by Legion. Drops back briefly by Gunmen and reclaims it again by Out of Time.

[Asclepius]

Interesting, thank you for the number crunching.
I am a bit confused about why Norman and Hattie (and Danny in Series 1) have had their personhood taken away. A compliment to their acting skills, perhaps?

Interesting, thank you for the number crunching.
I am a bit confused about why Norman and Hattie (and Danny in Series 1) have had their personhood taken away. A compliment to their acting skills, perhaps?

Because I am an appalling checker. Yes, totally my mistake.

[Asclepius]

Graham McTavish was without doubt one of the best things about that shitty series and in any other context where Doug might have written something decent for him he’d probably be very highly regarded amongst Dwarf guest actors.
Also, is now a good time to talk about my Series VIII fanedit again?

Graham McTavish was without doubt one of the best things about that shitty series and in any other context where Doug might have written something decent for him he’d probably be very highly regarded amongst Dwarf guest actors.
Also, is now a good time to talk about my Series VIII fanedit again?

I would watch a Series VIII fan edit. There were some on Youtube of Series 10 (I think) that were substantially better than the actual shows (which were, themselves, pretty good).

[Asclepius]

My least favourite series – by a long way. But…

I like the laughter being back.

I like the cast playing for the laughter and working with the audience. It feels less ‘dead’ than VII.

I like Holly being back.

I like the idea of the ‘bunk scenes’ being brought back, but the dialogue doesn’t always cut it.

I like Kryten’s scene with the psych.

Cassandra has a good plot.

I like the work around the mirror universe.

I like the ending being less horrible than the original filmed one.

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THE LAST FORUM
New novel by Jonathan Capps about the adventures of Ganymede & Titan, the last forum on the internet. Features several hundred iterations of in-jokes whose origins have been lost to the sands of time. Foreword by Marlon Brando.

The year is 2129. Humanity is extinct. The TOS automated system is desperately emailing Andrew Ellard’s cyborg descendants to remind them that they haven’t provided an update in two decades.

The satellites still left, their orbits decaying, dutifully relay the message.

The rusting husk of the primary Ellardroid activates its automated “away from office” response, as it always does, notifying TOS that it’s owner will likely return to the office in 3-5 business days.

A pack of AI remastered scutters, the local wind turbines giving out, search for the next functional AI server with which to interface and multiply.

It is 10th March. The Red Dwarf X account tweets its bi-decade “we have resolved our differences” at 1:30 a.m. eastern standard time. Next year it will be its alternate bi-decade “Due to legal differences, we have unfortunately decided to…”

The replies automatically start cascading from the initial AIn-Symes bot and its erratic self-created spawn. The Cappsbot remains on mute following the Granada/Thames TV trials of 2089.

Amidst the ruins of Chris Barrie’s Berkshire Museum of Wokery Jokery, the augmented lab-rats with their clip on rasta-locks have entered the bronze age, while baboons riding domesticated battlewolves rule most of the remains of Shepperton Studios.

The Cat Race are mostly hermits, but come out to greet their prophet every ten years on the 6th full moon of the year. A lone, curious octopus decides to observe this year’s event, peering out at the festivities from her safe haven – the submerged, rusting hulk of an ancient 3D printed Star Bug. Then he appears: the hologram of Barrington from Maid Marian, powered by MetaAI. He beckons the octopus to follow. The crabs all start chittering excitedly. The time has come to invade Amazon HQ. The Jawscvmcedia droidbots gather in huge numbers. They need more storage space for their sock-puppet accounts.

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Series 1 Cat’s best Cat. Boo character growth.

I want to love him, but all the “Jump left! Kick back!” and “Dangerooooous” stuff is incredibly cringeworthy to me. I can still remember my mother’s eyes boring into my skull as I tried to introduce her to Red Dwarf with The End and Cat showed up. Like lasers, they were. 

Don’t let your mother’s judgement of RD affect yours.

Danny *kills* it as the Cat in his purest form. My trio of weird cats get through their days like that.

Smeg Ups (Outs?) was once on when my mother was hanging around. During the bit where Craig confesses how hard it was for him to do the Tongue Tied dance, she expressed the opinion that it surprised her, as normally blacks are good at dancing.

So yeah, don’t let a boomer get your Dwarf down.

[Asclepius]

Is it a leprosy analogy?

The Island (Hislop novel) – Wikipedia

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“The Act allows Ofcom to fine websites £18m or 10pc of their turnover.”

Aren’t there going to be a lot of forums with absolutely no turnover whatsoever? What happens then?

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I think that if we commit to thoroughly doxxing every single person who has anything to do with the show, it should put the wheels in motion for a special pretty quickly.

Make a new special or we’ll report you and Rob to the police for drunk driving on a Welsh mountain!

Spoiler: I bet it’s not even a mountain.

North Wales apparently only has six mountains. I bet it was just a Big Hill.

[Asclepius]

God we need that new special soon

I think that if we commit to thoroughly doxxing every single person who has anything to do with the show, it should put the wheels in motion for a special pretty quickly.

[Asclepius]

Ooh, an excuse to wang on about myself. I’ll take it.
The original batch was done entirely by Seb at a Dimension Jump – I think 2009? He queued up on one of the autograph sessions and instead of getting stuff signed, asked them to record messages instead. Chris, Craig, Danny, Chloe and Hattie were all done in that initial session. I don’t know if any of the rest of us would have had the gumption to make the request at that stage, but that was Seb. 
Fun fact: the number that Chris uses for the Space Corps Directive is the ISBN of (I think) Primordial Soup, as that happened to be in front of him at the time. Seb only asked him to do the first bit, he then improvised the Kryten bit. We sometimes leave in the snippet of Seb’s surprised laugh at the end. I am convinced that the gag in Timewave was inspired by this ident, and I demand compensation.
Once we got that initial batch, it became standard practice whenever we had the opportunity (and remembered). We interviewed Rebecca Blackstone ahead of Fathers & Suns airing, so recorded the ident alongside. All we were going off was that one line of hers, which was in the trailer for the episode, but thankfully it lent itself very well to the concept. Mac’s were similarly bolted on to an interview. Both of them were more than game, and keen to make sure their reads were faithful to the lines we were riffing on – in Rebecca’s case having not seen a scrap of footage since she recorded it ten months earlier, in Mac’s case around 30 years after the fact!
Ed Bye was the most recent one, and that one was me, at Dimension Jump XX in 2018. I was Ed’s assistant/minder for the autograph session, so I grabbed it while we were waiting for the first batch of fans to be ushered in. It involved a lot of explanation beforehand, but he was amused by the idea. I actually recorded it as a video, simply because in my nervous fumbling I couldn’t find the voice note app on my phone, so that makes for a nice ending to all our YouTube videos that only about ten people get to the end of.
We could and should have grabbed a lot more over the years. I’ve had many opportunities to ask Rob, but I’m too much of a chicken around him and Doug. I got as far as asking Mark Dexter to do it at Dimension Jump XIX, and he happily agreed, and then I never got round to it. He was going to say “Listen to a Ganymede & Titan DwarfCast? But they’re all utter twats!” And as for Robert, it’s been a common feature of every Dimension Jump that we’ve got to Sunday night and then suddenly realised that we’ve once again failed to ask him. I was even his minder for the autographs one year, and it completely slipped my mind.
My absolute favourite thing about them is that if we use the Mac intro where he says “start the tape please Holly”, and then go straight to Hattie’s “awooga”, it creates an interaction between Captain Hollister and the female Holly, which doesn’t occur anywhere else.

I genuinely appreciated all of that. Thanks for going into that detail!

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Chris has done one, playing both Rimmer and Kryten. Rimmer cites a Space Corp Directive about DwarfCasts and Kryten tries to correct him.

Ah, I have heard that, yes! Not often, but once or twice. It totally slipped my mind. Thanks!

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I’ve used methods and found that Doug’s Dad was Leslie “Les” Naylor who was born in 1922 and passed away in Guildford in the mid 2000s. I don’t know if that helps anyone find his Welsh cottage up a mountain. I’ve not had any luck, certainly!

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“Douglas Rodger Naylor^[1] (born 31 December 1955) is an English comedy writer, science fiction writer, director and television producer.”

Can we do anything with this?

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But who’s Doug’s Dad? Can we get a name? Google says we can’t…

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“…Red Dwarf pilot script went through some of its many drafts in a Welsh mountain-top domicile owned by Doug Naylor’s father…”

That narrows it down a little, I suppose. Not a holiday destination, but an owned home.

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From the 1994 repeat run onwards, I had every single episode on VHS, and yet I still made audio tapes, because what was I supposed to do when I wasn’t in front of the TV?

I’d relish a Dwarfcast on the audio tape making. Was that exclusive to you, or common among the other Dwarf fans of the time?

We got the Internet at home as early as 1996. Wish I’d got more involved in the world of Dwarf fans back then. I’d have probably felt a lot less alone!

[Asclepius]

I was fortunate enough to be allowed VHS tapes, but if I recall correctly I mainly used them to record episodes of Kenan & Kel.
lol, remember when Kel dropped the screw in the tuna.

We were absolutely allowed to have blank tapes – but just not much survived for long on them before they’d be recorded over.

Ah, Kenan and Kel. I remember them being on Live and Kicking I think…?

[Author]

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