Ben Paddon

[Ben Paddon]

Jokes on you. We’re all AI.

I’m not. I’m being operated by an unseen man in a massive box.

[Ben Paddon]

I saw! I’d wondered who did that.

[Ben Paddon]

Season 2 starts in two weeks, on October 31st. Is our first episode even remotely spooky? You’ll have to wait and see! (No. Short wait, there.) We have a bonkers cast this season, including Roger Craig Smith (Sonic the Hedgehog), Dave Fennoy (Batman: Arkham Shadow), Grey DeLisle (The Simpsons), and Debi Derryberry (Jimmy Neutron).

We did post a trailer for season 2 a few weeks ago, if that’s your thing.

[Ben Paddon]

Ooh, love that. Beautiful.

[Ben Paddon]

Ah! I didn’t see that. Feel a right twonk now.

[Ben Paddon]

I haven’t watched his new one, Douglas Is Cancelled, yet – anyone checked that out?

My wife and I planned to watch the first couple of episodes last night and ended up watching the whole lot. I’m an ardent fan of Moffat’s work, while my wife is more critical of him. We both loved it.

[Ben Paddon]

I think I’ve only watched the long credits once, maybe twice. I don’t think it’s strictly necessary.

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[Ben Paddon]

I still love Back to Earth, but refuse to watch it in episodic format. It’s Director’s Cut or nuffin’ for me.

[Ben Paddon]

My Facebook memories have reminded me that nine years ago I had a dream in which Chris Barrie had been conned into buying $1,000 worth of diapers because he’d been told he could sell them at a significant profit.

With everything that happened with his website of late, this dream feels much more believable now.

[Ben Paddon]

We’re two episodes in now – you can listen on the website, see a version with captions on YouTube, or find it in your podcasting apparatus of preference.

Episode 3 drops on Wednesday (8am Pacific, 11am Eastern, 4pm UK time) and it’s easily the best thing I’ve ever written. I really hope you all listen and/or enjoy.

[Ben Paddon]

Yep! Each episode will be live on the website as well as podcast apps, Spotify, YouTube (with captions), and… Amazon Music, for some reason.

[Ben Paddon]

So this is back. We made the first episode, then I had a breakdown, but over the pandemic I’ve resolved to actually do this properly. So we did. Six half-hour episodes (well, five half-hour episodes and one 40-minute episode, but it’s a podcast, so sod it). It launches in March, hopefully – one episode a week for six weeks – then I’m making six more. Here’s a trailer.

For those of you who listened to the 2015 episode (which, in a brazen piece of revisionist history, I’m now referring to as the pilot) the first episode has been rewritten and re-recorded. I have to say, peas_and_corn’s feedback has sat in my chest like a ball of molten lead over the last god-has-it-really-been-almost-eight-years, and I’ve adjusted my performance (and some of the writing) with the assistance of our directors.
Oh, and we have directors this time. Two, in fact! I know. I was shocked too. Episodes 1, 2 and 6 were directed by Dino Andrade of Batman: Arkham Asylum fame, while episodes, 3, 4 and 5 (as well as pick-ups for episode 2) were directed by Austin Lee Matthews, whose credits include Final Fantasy VII Remake and Pokémon Legends. They are both wonderful, supportive, delightful people to make stuff with, and they helped wring out a halfway decent performance out of me. I can’t wait for you to hear it.

Anyway, please subscribe to this. I’m excited, I’m proud, and I’m tired. But mostly the first two.

[Ben Paddon]

There’s a Discord?

Edit: Ooh, I found it.

[Ben Paddon]

Hollister was the 2044th fat bastard that Rimmer had met, obvs. He keeps a little notebook.

Didn’t the Red Dwarf Plot Inconsistencies Project actually suggest this as a likely explanation?

Personally I’d be happy with 2044 being the year Hollister was born.

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Every release of BSG Season 1 I’ve owned – and I’ve owned three from both the US and UK – has included the miniseries, starting at disc one. Am I missing something?

[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.

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If I had one gripe – and it’s a small gripe, in the grand scheme of things – it’s that the film ends suddenly. Very suddenly. But the film as a whole, I loved it. I adored the entire thing.

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Why in the name of God’s arse would they get angry about the smeg ups?

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As soon as Kryten said the words “sex change” my whole body tensed up. When he barked “LET ME FINISH” it felt like Doug saying, “Look, you’re going to be uncomfortable, but please put that discomfort to the side for a minute so we can keep doing the joke.”

I didn’t like it. It felt awkward, dated, and I honestly wish they hadn’t done it. It took me a while to loosen up for the rest of the show. Easily the most upsetting, disappointing point of an otherwise fine special.

[Ben Paddon]

Alternatively: “Yeah, the first series had such a shoestring budget they couldn’t afford to film on location in space.”

[Ben Paddon]

Series 1 of Doctor Who was spectacularly low budget, they never leave Earth’s orbit once because they couldn’t afford to

Hello! This actually isn’t true. The reason the first series sticks to Earth or Earth-adjacent stories was to ease a general audience into the premise. The idea that they somehow couldn’t afford to take a disused warehouse and pretend it’s on the planet Zog is a ridiculous one, considering they do exactly that the following year… and recycling a location they’d used for the first series, no less.

[Ben Paddon]

would pay to see Glenn Howerton play an American Rimmer.

This really would be perfect.

[Ben Paddon]

Give writers enough time and they’ll wank out an explanation. We’ve had at least half-a-dozen explanations for the Doctor being half-human (some of which state it was only for the events of the movie), and we’ve even had at least two canonical explanations for the UNIT dating controversy (the dating protocol thing from DotD, and a mention of time being sort-of badly folded in on itself from one of the Big Finish “Legacy of Time” stories).

[Ben Paddon]

Shock! I actually just found my Extra Bits book going through some boxes I haven’t opened since moving about a decade ago. It’s in pristine condition, and is probably the easiest of the four pieces (CRB, Sourcebook, AI screen and Extra Bits) to scan. So if I can get access to a scanner I might well be doing that.

[Ben Paddon]

I think they should never repeat it, wait 2 years to release it, and then spread it over 2 VHS releases for £12.99 each. And sell it in Woolworths, so I can get some Pick ‘n’ Mix at the same time.

Not strictly speaking super-relevant, but this reminds me of a conversation I had with someone here in the US about how they won’t watch Doctor Who on DVD or on BBC America because the only “real” way to watch it is using a set of rabbit ears to pick up a signal from the PBS station the next state over, watching it through a baffling haze of swirling static.

As someone who grew up watching the classic series on UK Gold and VHS, it’s wild to me that there’s this entirely different, largely culturally-specific means of watching the show, let alone that it’s considered by at least one human-shaped person to be the only “authentic” way of watching.

Anyway, I bought Red Dwarf III on DVD from GAME back when they sold DVDs, so what do I know?

[Ben Paddon]

We know, probably, that there’s 100 years between the War Doctor’s life in The Day of the Doctor and the Ninth Doctor in, at the earliest, Aliens of London. Personally, my assumption is that the Ninth Doctor moped around the universe for a century trying to figure out what to do next before ultimately realizing the answer is, of course, “be the Doctor.,” and the reason he’d never seen his reflection before that moment in Rose is because he couldn’t bare to look himself in the eye knowing what he’d done. Or what he thought he’d done, at least.

Not that, y’know, I’ve written extensive fanfiction about it or anything.

[Ben Paddon]

I have physical copies of everything, but I’ve never scanned them. Honestly, I was always worried about doing damage to the books.

That being said, my Bits and Bobs bookelt appears to have gone missing. I wonder if I misplaced it during one of my many moves?

[Ben Paddon]

The BBC will often run credits on feature films at 2x speed (and therefore videolook) as well though this is mostly to save time I think.

I am reminded of a BBC Two broadcast of Suburban Commando, which ends with the credits rolling over a long pull-out shot of Christopher Lloyd driving his car on the freeway, which the BBC had sped up and, quite bafflingly, opted to replace the music with Offenbach’s Can-Can music. It’s always stuck in my memory.

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“Well, it means you’ve got a more tasteful cockpit.” One of my favorite Holly jokes, one of Hattie’s best reads.

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Okay, I’m done. So long, everyone. It’s been fun.

[Ben Paddon]

Not a fucking chance.

[Ben Paddon]

I knew the top tunic was different, but I’d forgotten entirely about the pants and boots.

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Considering the current version of the uniform debuted in BTE almost a decade ago, is this the longest we’ve had Rimmer in one consistent uniform?

[Ben Paddon]

It’s not as problem with the BBC specifically, but with US Bluray standards.

Officially, US Bluray players aren’t supposed to support 1080i50 which, given most UK content is shot at 25 or 50fps, is what they’re encoded at. Most players do support it, of course, because blocking 1080i50 content is something that has to be done at the software level so it’s easier to just let players run it. But Sony and Samsung players don’t, including the PS3 and PS4, which creates problems.

To resolve this issue, BBC Video in the US slows their content down to 24fps, resulting in a slight reduction in speed. They also pitch-correct so it doesn’t sound like it’s been slowed down, so only people who have seen the original versions will really notice the difference. The US release of Red Dwarf X wasn’t pitch-corrected, though, so it’s incredibly noticeable. There’s also a history of BBC Video using frameblending (BTE) or changing the picture from interlaced to progressive (RD XI/XII), so the US releases are usually inferior on a technical level as well.

BBC Video US also tends to strip out special features to reduce the number of discs – all of the Peter Capaldi sets are knocked down to 4 discs, and there’s huge swathes of content missing. As an example, IIRC, the Series 10 set omits the spatial sound mix for “Knock Knock” entirely.

For Doctor Who season 12, however, there are additional problems. Firstly, it’s labeled as “Tom Baker Season 1”, which is accurate only in the loosest of senses. Secondly, the packaging is horrible – nowhere near as good as the UK/AUS packaging – a single slim-line pack, no sleeve, no special box, no additional trinkets or dooberies. It looks cheap and nasty. I was, in fact, given advanced warning from someone who works at the BBC not to buy the US version because of how fucking awful it is. I was going to get the UK set, but I lost my job and had to cancel my preorder.

[Ben Paddon]

Yeah, the American version is fucking garbage. Not to mention the ongoing framerate issue that exists with US releases of BBC shows on Bluray.

[Ben Paddon]

I actually really like the XI-XII Kryten costume and mask, though the ear “vents” are slightly too big for my liking. I think part of the problem, if it can so be called, is that Robert has changed shape over the last thirty years. Entirely understandable – he’s human, after all – but it does mean he’s lost the svelt look he had when Kryten looked his absolute best during IV-V.

[Ben Paddon]

Quinn was referring to the remastered version of Kryten.

[Ben Paddon]

Still available in Oz by the way with the same UK packaging ;)

Ah, nuts. They don’t ship to the US.

[Ben Paddon]

Why does it bother you so much?

The “it” you’re referring to there is rape. You’re asking why rape might bother someone. You are actively asking that question, publicly, on an internet forum at least partially operated by a man with an active interest in archiving websites for as long as possible.

This question, in all its glorious stupidity – indeed, possibly the stupidest question you’ve ever asked which, given your track record, is quite fucking impressive – will be preserved for ever.

I hope you ruminate on that for a bit, but realistically speaking you’re already thinking about the next inane thread you’re going to post. “Would you watch Red Dwarf if all the main characters were made of cheese,” style of thing.

Jesus fucking Christ.

[Ben Paddon]

Watched “Samsara” with the flatmate last night. Blimey, that one really does plod along after Lister and the Cat get locked in the cantine, doesn’t it? Four minutes of plot stretched out over fifteen minutes. Wasn’t quite enough meat on that particular bone, was there?

[Ben Paddon]

I’m really glad this turned into a debate about the merits of The Last Jedi. There really hasn’t been enough discussion of that movie online, and this – a thread about whether or not we’d watch an all-female Red Dwarf reboot or not – certainly seems like the best place for such a discussion to occur.

[Ben Paddon]

Trouble with that is, we’re veering into Sequel Trilogy territory. Make it echo the older stuff, and people complain that you’re just “ripping off” what came before, but make it too different and you’re in “rabid fanbase petitions DIsney to let them remake The Last Jedi” territory.

Personally, I like Discovery. Initially my thoughts were, “Well, this is very good, but it isn’t what I come to Star Trek for.” By the time I finished that first season and I saw what they’d been doing as a whole, I was in love. It’s easily the best first season of a Star Trek series since TOS, and it contains one of my all-time favorite Trek episodes ever. So… yeah.

Different isn’t bad. It’s just… different. And people are inherently scared of different. It’s why people’s first instinct when they hear about something getting a remake or a reboot is to sort-of balk. It’s why some old-school fans of Doctor Who had already decided to hate the revival as far back as 2003, before they’d even shot a single frame of it. It’s why nerds are lashing out at the new ThunderCats and She-Ra cartoons despite the fact that we’ve seen virtually nothing of them. Different is scary, and so people get on the defensive about it when really there’s just as much a chance we’ll end up with a Battlestar Galactica or a Next Generation as there is we’ll end up with a Life on Mars or a Total Recall.

FWIW, I’ve long thought a reboot of Red Dwarf – one that leans in a little to the comedy-drama tone of VII or BTE, though obviously funnier – could work. Like a comedy Galactica. Hell, I have part of a pilot script and a series bible sitting on my hard drive, because sometimes the only way to deal with a depressive bout is to sit and rework your favorite TV series into something new. I really think it could work.

[Ben Paddon]

Controversial and objectively wrong opinion from Ben Saunders, there.

[Ben Paddon]

Beyond A Joke’s ending is pretty lousy, I thought- the final Curry World scene feels like an unnecessary addition that just kills the momentum of the episode.

Not to pick nits, but… it’s an epilogue. It’s not supposed to contribute to “momentum”. I mean, yeah, it’s a crap ending, but still.

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Aye Caramba!

[Ben Paddon]

I used to be quite anal about the way people used the word “reboot,” until I realized it didn’t actually bloody matter – a reboot can be a revival, a remake, a ground-up reimagining of a premise. I’ve no qualms referring to modern Doctor Who or Dave era Dwarf as reboots.

Language is fluid and words change depending upon usage. We lost the battle when the definition of “literally” got amended in the dictionary to incorporate its frequent figurative use in modern parlance. It’s over. Let it go.

[Ben Paddon]

Nopw I have a USB adapter for my Amiga joystick, I suspect I’ll be playing a lot more Amiga games.

[Ben Paddon]

TERRY PRATCHETT’S BOGBOTFATHER

The Dwarfers arrive on a flat, disc-like planet currently observing a winter festival that bares a remarkable similarity to their Christmas. Only their anthropomorphic personification of that festival has gone missing – it’s up to Kryten, aided by his grumpy but affable pixie in the form of Lister, to fill his shoes.

[Ben Paddon]

Well, the Series II Blurays would look a bit better, for starters.

That’s basically it.

[Author]

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