Ben Paddon

[Ben Paddon]

Did anyone else catch that lyric in “The Kryten Song (Spin My Nipple-Nuts)” alluding to a possible return of Selby, Chen, and Petersen? Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I thought that the bit that went “and Petersen is coming back / Chen and Selby, too / anyway, it’s Kryten’s song / we wrote it to pad the episode” pointed at the possibility.

[Ben Paddon]

Red Dwarf I was the very first DVD I owned – purchased before I even had a DVD player of my own – and the quantity of special feratures absolutely blew me away. Those I-VIII sets, along with the bulk of classic Doctor Who stuff, set a gold standard for me that few releases have ever been able to live up to.

[Ben Paddon]

Just seems so slapdash and sloppy now, even down to the point of the Doctor Who Series 10 boxset not giving any indication whatsoever of what is on each disc, and fans having to create their own leaflet. Very sad.

The US release has the edge there, for what feels like the first time – they continued the trend of having episode titles around the rim of the disc (careful now). I did buy the UK set though, both for the superior cover art and better picture quality, so I need to make my own leaflet too.

Is there a leaflet on the internet that can be downloaded, or do I have to make my own?

[Ben Paddon]

Oh, someone punch him out!

[Ben Paddon]

Back in the Red, it seems.

[Ben Paddon]

That’s her day-to-day makeup. They didn’t have time to redo it before the studio taping. That’s why she looks so radically different in the location and pre-taped stuff.

[Ben Paddon]

That over enthusiastic person in the audience for ‘Backwards’ who tries to start a round of applause at the “do you think Wilma’s sexy?” joke.

My first thought when I saw this thread.

This reminds me of a conversation I was having with a friend of mine. His name is MIke, and he absolutely detests studio-audience sitcom. He’s one of those people who says he hates hearing a live audience (he almost always calls it “canned laughter,” which in most cases it isn’t, and I’ve long since grown weary of trying to correct him), he hates “being told when to laugh.” Not an uncommon attitude among people who hate studio-audience sitcoms. But when I probed him further on this, it went further.

I suggested, “A sitcom is like seeing a recording of a play, or a standup special. You wouldn’t hate the audience so much if you were sitting in it.”

He countered, “Yes I would. The other audience members are the price you pay for going to see a comedian perform.”

Which absolutely blows my mind. I’ve performed standup for an audience of thousands, and for an audience of six people, and the energy is so different. There’s an awkwardness to as smaller crowd, or a crowd who doesn’t want to be there. The energy is different. It’s why I can’t watch those Maria Bamford specials on Netflix – one is her doing her show for her parents, and the other cuts to different locations showing her doing a show one-on-one with another person. It just feels so awkward to me, I can’t stand it.

(Which is a shame, because I love Bamford. But oh well.)

How do you explain the benefit of an audience, recorded or otherwise, to a person who would rather have that one-on-one experience? Who thinks the other people in the audience, in an audience he’s in, are a nuisance? It shorted out something in my brain.

[Ben Paddon]

Interestingly, that’s not the same photo! Though they definitely came from the same photo session. The photo in the paper shows Chris’ head at an ever-so-slightly different angle, and the light is catching the crease in his tie a little differently.

I’m sure I’ve seen the full version of this photo somewhere. Is it on the Series I DVD?

[Ben Paddon]

Seems a bit weird that they’d confirm Series XIX during the ad break for episode 5 when we don’t even have XIV-XVIII locked in yet. How’s that gonna work?

[Ben Paddon]

Petition to have a toilet emoji marker next to Jawscvmcdia’s threads so I know which ones to avoid.

[Ben Paddon]

The thumbnail Netflix has is the same one Netflix US used to have when they had the show, which did include everything up to and including BTE (I don’t believe Netflix ever had X). If they’ve just recycled the same thumbnail, that might be why.

[Ben Paddon]

I really liked a lot of the visual effects in VI. There was some surprisingly sophisticated stuff going on there.

[Ben Paddon]

*primordial glooping sounds*

[Ben Paddon]

I always took that Death Day tape to have been tweaked by Rimmer for dramatic license, rather than a literal presentation of exactly what’d happened.

[Ben Paddon]

Someone else tell him. I’ve got gussets to scrub.

[Ben Paddon]

Hercule Poirot’s just stepped off the steaming train, and if you want my opinion, I think they all did it.

[Ben Paddon]

The BBC are a public broadcaster – they’d receive no end of flack for that.

[Ben Paddon]

Just popped to the loo, but really loving the dynamic between Lister and the Captain in that scene about the cat Lister smuggled aboard! Can’t wait to see how that pans out across the remainder of this series.

[Ben Paddon]

The Ganymede & Titan Forums.

[Ben Paddon]

I’ve not seen any of these.

[Ben Paddon]

I can’t believe I said BTE was the only example etc. etc. wow, I’m an idiot.

[Ben Paddon]

Yes he was.

[Ben Paddon]

The way Red Dwarf typically handles references compared to the way it handles them in Back to Earth, is like comparing Spaced to Ready Player One.

I think that is more often than not the case, yes, but the show has plenty of overt examples of parody. “DNA” is one of them, specifically the Jaws reference, and the Casablanca stuff in “Camille” isn’t exactly subtle.

Granted, BTE is the only example I can think of where the show actively states the name the thing it’s parodying, and we can argue about whether or not that was appropriate until the cow’s come home (or not, let’s actually not do that, please for the love of God) but it’s not something that bothers me, it doesn’t stick out much more than other overt parody in the show, and I’m fine with it.

[Ben Paddon]

The Blade Runner stuff didn’t bother me any more than the Terminator stuff in “The Last Day” or the Casablanca stuff in “Camille”. I think it worked just fine.

[Ben Paddon]

Why are we spending so much time talking about how crap Red Dwarf used to be when we’ve got plenty of new Red Dwarf that we can complain about?

[Ben Paddon]

nice-neighborhood.mp4

[Ben Paddon]

One idea was to have the audience for everything before they go “back to earth” and then the laughter track would be gone for their earth adventure. which would certainly add an even more meta feel to it.

I always thought that was a fan-idea rather than one that’d come up during production, but it was something I always liked the idea of.

[Ben Paddon]

Well, that’s put a crimp on an otherwise damned fine episode!

[Ben Paddon]

I really think it needed some kind of audience laughter on its TV broadcast though.

Every time someone’s tried to do this, it’s been terrible. It wasn’t written with an audience in mind, and showing to an audience after the fact a la VII wouldn’t have worked. BtE is better without one.

That being said… so is VII, sometimes. The Xtended versions are a brilliant exercise in showing us why stuff that winds up on the cutting room floor should probably stay there, but awkward pauses aside VII fares a lot better without the audience laughter.

[Ben Paddon]

Back to Earth, while not perfect, is genuinely brilliant.

The worst part is, a lot of people agreed with me as it was going out. We loved it. And then at some point after the shine wore off, people started to talk as if it had been an unmitigated disaster on all fronts. The idea that BTE is a bad show became accepted wisdom, and I don’t get it. I don’t get that transition at all, from adored to deplored in under five years.

It puts me in mind of Avatar, a film that is universally reviled (and one I’ve somehow never seen) but managed to make nearly $2.79 billion at the box office. It’s still, still!, the highest-grossing movie in history – if nobody liked it, how come every bugger went out and saw it eleven times each?

For my money, BTE is still some incredibly strong Red Dwarf, and a good template for how a complete reboot/reworking of the series as a single-camera dram-com could work. Certainly it’s a lot better at the comedy/drama balance than VII (which I also like, though nowhere near as much). For its flaws, BTE is the Dwarf I have revisited the most in the near-decade since its broadcast, and whenever people bash it – on here, on Twitter, at Q&As, wherever – it always feels like they’re squinting at a Magic Eye picture that I can see and they can’t.

I can see the sailboat… I wish everyone else could, too.

[Ben Paddon]

That’s the ones, yes.

[Ben Paddon]

When I bring up Pot Noodle to Americans, they invariably understand what I’m talking about. You have to make weird logical leaps to go into the weed place.

[Ben Paddon]

Having rewatched them the other day, “Duct Soup” and “Blue” kind of feel like Red Dwarf VII doing II and I style episodes. With “Duct”, the plot kicks in around the halfway mark and involves some new locations, kind of like a series II episode. With “Blue”, it’s almost all character stuff; slower-paced, scenes that are only one or two lines of dialogue long… it has an old Dwarf feel to it with that VII aesthetic.

I still don’t hate VII, mind. VIII can get in the sea, but VII has a lot more going for it than I think people give credit for.

[Ben Paddon]

That’s the joke though, surely; that Pot Noodles are so bad that even Lister, a man who eats garbage, will not touch Pot Noodles.

[Ben Paddon]

I think he’s just having fun.

[Ben Paddon]

You’re right, if someone told me that my dad wasn’t my dad, it’d definitely lessen the importance of his influence on my life.

[Ben Paddon]

My mum quite liked Dark Ages.

There’s a joke in there somewhere.

[Ben Paddon]

I think there’s an interesting story to be told about a society that doesn’t allow for any sort of criticism, but “Timewave” is not it, and I don’t suspect that Doug Naylor is capable of writing it.

[Ben Paddon]

Hoguey the Roguey was a brilliant idea undermined by a daffy accent and less-than-ideal costume design.

[Ben Paddon]

One of my roommates wanted to watch Red Dwarf. He’s heard people singing its praises but knew nothing about the show. So, naturally, we started with “The End”. He was genuinely shocked by the crew being wiped out, and immediately wanted to watch the next episode.

“The End” can be an effective episode. It’s compelling, it establishes characters, it has some solid gags. It’s only a weak episode if you know what happens, which of course we all do.

[Ben Paddon]

I suspect it wouldn’t still be on the air. ITV sitcoms aren’t known for their long shelf lives.

[Ben Paddon]

I think one aspect of Red Dwarf discourse that will never, ever get old is the ongoing debate of whether Rob or Doug was the Good One™. Definitely a conversation that is absolutely worth continuing 25 years after they split.

[Ben Paddon]

Again, it’s a pretty standard industry thing. I have friends who write for a few shows here in the US who, as much as they’d love to, absolutely cannot look at fanfic for the shows they write for.

[Ben Paddon]

Back to Earth is a lot better than people give it credit for. Beyond that, the single-camera studio-audience free take works very, very well indeed. I think, meta story aside, BTE provides a template for which a single-camera comedy-drama version of Red Dwarf could be like.

I feel much the same about some of the Xtended versions of VII. Not all of the jokes land, but the show works a lot better without a studio audience than people seem prepared to admit.

[Ben Paddon]

Coupling also gave us the line “I’ve got the key to the gates of paradise… but I’ve got too many legs!”

[Ben Paddon]

Dismissing Joking Apart and Coupling as rip-offs of American sitcoms rather does them a disservice. For a start, Coupling is actually good.

[Ben Paddon]

As seen on Tumblr:

[Ben Paddon]

I always interpreted that one as “You’ve got a small donger, but you didn’t arf make me come a bunch.”

[Ben Paddon]

It’s a bit Partridge, this, isn’t it?

[Ben Paddon]

Wilma is Lister’s Waifu.

Fucking Hell.

[Author]

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