Ben Saunders

[Ben Saunders]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 26/07/2026 

Stoke, Ouroboros (lol), DNA, BitR II

9

[Ben Saunders]

The episode established machonite as being some sort of elaborate carved stone, so I think Glitz is asking if the Doctor’s next expensive coat should be a tomb. 
A simpler version of this joke would be: “Do we need to order a multi-coloured coffin?”

Oh, you’re right, it’s a pretty throwaway line to bring back later in the episode to be fair. I googled it and there was absolutely nothing lol. I thought it was just more obtuse Pip and Baker shit.

[Ben Saunders]

They’re gonna be making this shit until they croak

[Ben Saunders]

What the fuck does this mean

[Ben Saunders]

I thought it was legal reasons instigated by Saward as some sort of vendetta against JNT, but I could also imagine it being a BBC bureaucracy thing.

[Ben Saunders]

The fact that Saward didn’t allow any of his/Holmes’ script/plans to reach them is a little insane. He must have bloody hated the lot of them.

[Ben Saunders]

Bloody hell, part Thirteen of the Trial is bloody good. Robert Holmes’ pen was on fire. I wish we got his and Saward’s part Fourteen, but I’m more than well aware of what happened there.

[Ben Saunders]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 25/07/2026 

Meltdown Emohawk

8

[Ben Saunders]

My mistake, it ends with Mel screaming, supposedly in the key of F so that it segues into the credits theme, which I guess she sort of does, but it really doesn’t do anything I don’t think. She screams like four times as well.

[Ben Saunders]

Terror of the Vervoids is pretty shit, Mel is pretty shit, Pip and Jane Baker dialogue is pretty shit. The exact logic of the Doctor showing the trial a story from the future and all the implications of that and how exactly that could possibly work doesn’t really bare thinking about.

But I love the genocide cliffhanger. It’s a real oh shit, how is he going to get out of this one moment. Such melodrama, but it’s great. And he got himself into the situation, really.

I thought every cliffhanger on Trial of a Time Lord famously ended with a melodramatic closeup on Colin Baker’s face, as an edict from JNT. But on this what-I-believe-to-be-Blu-Ray rip, Episode Eleven ends here:

Whereas the original version ends here:

I wonder why they re-edited it for the Blu-Ray. I also swear I read that episode nine doesn’t end on a Colin Closeup either, but checking a YouTube compilation it seems it does.

[Ben Saunders]

I do the opposite – I’m much more likely to watch a show than a movie because it means I only have to pay attention for ~50 minutes at a time as opposed to ~2 hours. I do find it harder and harder to jump into new stuff, though. I play a lot of games anyway and there’s always a new Persona or Yakuza for me to dump hundreds of hours into, or Old School Runescape as I’m doing now. I did watch all the Xmen films last year though in an unprecedented spurt of “productivity”.

[Ben Saunders]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 24/07/2026 

Series 1 in order

7

[Ben Saunders]

How many towels do you think the Hyperion III goes through if they just throw them into the pulveriser and out into space after every use?

[Ben Saunders]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 23/07/2026 

TPL

6

[Ben Saunders]

Yes, that stuff is very very nice.

>Goodbye Peri, hello Mel

[Ben Saunders]

God, the Time Lords are bastards. I have seen this before so I know it gets retconned, but what an insane climax to Mindwarp. While getting married off to a maladapted despotic warrior king is a questionable way to go, I’m sort of glad JNT made the executive decision to not really have Peri die. She doesn’t deserve that. Her time in the TARDIS was so abjectly horrible – constantly terrorised, ogled, traumatised and suffering in what is essentially an abusive relationship she can’t really get out of, being killed off in such a callous way would be a step too far, I think. I know they start acting more like friends during the Trial season, but we hadn’t seen enough of that for it to really take over from the impression that Sixie was constantly horrible to her.

Two gratuitous foot shots in this story, I didn’t know Vince Gilligan worked on Doctor Who.

Brian Blessed is a lot of fun, I have no idea what other people think of his performance, I can imagine it being extremely grating to some, but being able to steal scenes from Colin Baker and his technicolour dreamcoat is quite the achievement.

[Ben Saunders]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 22/07/2026 

Cassandra, Krytie TV, BitR III, Pete 1

5

[Ben Saunders]

My book arrived a couple hours ago and I just opened it. Has anybody done this yet:

[Ben Saunders]

Okay okay, the middle eight to the Trial theme is pretty good

[Ben Saunders]

Me: I enjoyed this

Every single review: This fucking sucks!

Here we are people watching a screen upon which people are watching a screen upon which people are on a screen watching people

[Ben Saunders]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 21/07/2026 

4

[Ben Saunders]

in the hallucinatory universe of Back to Earth, which isn’t actually our “real world”, Blade Runner was the main influence. simple

[Ben Saunders]

This is good stuff. I love the meta aspect of the Trial as a commentary on Doctor Who itself. “I was beginning to think you had lost yourself”, “Why do I have to sit here watching Peri getting upset, while two unsavoury adventurers bully a bunch of natives?”, brilliant.
Six is being written a bit like Four here, complete with jelly babies. The script has humour and confidence and is a huge step up from the bleakness and humourlessness of the past few seasons.

“I only have to look at the Graveyard to see that!”

[Ben Saunders]

Interesting that Robert Holmes’ final (completed) story for Doctor Who (The Mysterious Planet) shares such similarity with his first, The Krotons. A big robot or two, never seen by the public, that every now and then selects two of the brightest young minds from a society kept deliberately ignorant to be its slaves/food.

[Ben Saunders]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 20/07/2026 

SL, BTL

3

[Ben Saunders]

[Ben Saunders]

It’s squidgey. Lacks presence. The ending is nice.

[Ben Saunders]

Yuck, that goopy ass Trial of a Time Lord theme.

[Ben Saunders]

Aww I liked her. I can see why she would annoy somebody, though. A bit like how I can’t stand the DJ in Revelation. Slipback is the definition of alright for me, a pleasant way to spend 60 minutes or so and then basically forget about it immediately. Very light and breezy for a Saward script, none of the pointless sadism on display elsewhere.

[Ben Saunders]

This is a little lightweight, but it’s quite pleasant. Nicola Bryant sounds like she’s playing slightly younger, higher pitched.

An “it all looks the same” gag from Peri on radio! Innovative.

[Ben Saunders]

Listening to Slipback for the first time, which was made during the hiatus before Trial of a Time Lord. Why I’m subjecting myself to more Saward I don’t know. But I like the computer in this one.

[Ben Saunders]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 19/07/2026 

Duct Soup

2

[Ben Saunders]

Attack of the Cybermen, Mark of the Rani and Timelash are all quite flawed but enjoyable. Attack moves at pace and has a confidence to it, Mark has Ainley and O’Mara and all that ridiculous dialogue (and I love Peri’s dress), and I actually think Timelash is alright, the Borad, HG Wells and Paul Darrow especially. The Two Doctors is also flawed, weirdly racist and unnecessarily violent but it has Two, Jamie and Robert Holmes at work so there are almost unavoidable moments of greatness. Revelation of the Daleks is just Saward at his worst, nihilistic and sadistic like his other stories but without any of the excitement or fun. He’s really huffing his own farts at this point with his double acts and his sidelining the Doctor and his black humour. Pointless violence again that isn’t even staged well. Graeme Harper did a brilliant job on Androzani but appears to have lost it here. No need for the Daleks to even be in it, really, it doesn’t say anything about them and the voices are shit. The white and gold look is magnificent, though, they haven’t looked so good since the black and white days. Davros could easily be somebody else.

I forgot to mention Vengeance on Varos, but we all know that one is quite good. Especially Sil, and the meta cliffhanger.

[Ben Saunders]

Tasambeker is an atrocious performance. The DJ isn’t very good either. The effects are so shit I don’t even know what’s really supposed to be happening. This story makes me unhappy.

[Ben Saunders]

They keep doing the “you know how hard it is to find good staff these days” gag this season. In fact I think they did it twice in Revelation.

[Ben Saunders]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 18/07/2026 

Quarantine, Better Than Life

[Ben Saunders]

Doctor look out, about 25 grams of obvious polystyrene is about to split in two near you!

[Ben Saunders]

This Revelation stuff is just deeply unpleasant, horrible shit. What the hell was Eric Saward’s problem?

[Ben Saunders]

Aside from the entry into V’Ger and the wormhole, I’m not sure what’s dull about it

Sssssssspppppppppaaaaaaaaaaaccccccccccccccceeeeeeeeeeeeeee

[Ben Saunders]

It’s genuinely astounding just how dull The Motion Picture gets. I put it on for the first time a few years ago thinking, I can do this, I watch boring shit all the time. But man. I did watch the Director’s Cut or whatever though. The ending make up for it.

Beeelllllaaaayyyyy tttthhhaaaattttt phhhhaaassseerrr orrrrddddeeeeerrrrrrr.

[Ben Saunders]

A lot of things have bad reputations solely because the very end of it is poor. Star Trek V is a big example. It’s a fun movie. I don’t care if you think the last 10 minutes are underwhelming, there are 96 other minutes to enjoy. Officer Rimmer is good for like 92% of its runtime. Justice isn’t bad because Lister falls down a hole. Tikka to Ride isn’t bad because they brutally beat lister to a pulp at the end (no, it’s bad because of all of the rest of it, I hear you say).

[Ben Saunders]

I thought the casting for Continues was pretty good, nothing stood out as particularly egregious. I know the actor for Kirk is a sex pest or something but whatever. Or a MAGA guy. Same difference. Please don’t sue me for libel I’m talking out my arse.

Amazing how Walter Koenig will do anything.

[Ben Saunders]

RIP the Recent Forum Posts feature for the foreseeable future. My book hasn’t even been dispatched yet!

[Ben Saunders]

The fixation on Lawrence’s character specifically is creepy, but the need for some form of companionship is understandable, and at least the morality of it is the main conflict rather than handwaved.

Yeah, rejecting the premise out of hand is slightly bizarre because surely that’s what the movie is going to be about. It feels like an early example of the Twitter brand of criticism, single out one thing about a movie/game months before its release and do a big faux-woke or criticism of it for engagement, gather up all your likes and retweets and discourse and then probably never actually engage with the thing once it’s out, the damage to its reputation having already been done with everybody just parroting your opinion like mindless sheep. The Asmongold Effect. PNG windows, etc.

[Ben Saunders]

Honestly a lot of the 80s making of documentaries feel rather one sided because JNT died before they could interview him.

He was interviewed shortly before he died and he does get some say in some of them. The story behind him trying his damndest to get Greatest Show in the Galaxy made is very impressive. It’s not like he didn’t care about the show. Though he did want out numerous times and the BBC either would cancel the show in that case or simply wouldn’t let him leave, which is all very fucked up. And he did fire Colin Baker over the phone, which lacks tact. He did make a lot of questionable decisions in hiring, costuming, going off to conventions and doing pantos with your two main leads instead of letting them attend rehearsals despite Nicola Bryant protesting, etc. The decisions remain, we just don’t get to hear them rationalised by his talking head on a DVD. 

[Ben Saunders]

Colin’s doing, he liked throwing words out like that so kids would have to find a thesaurus to decode what he had said. It’s probably why he was a fan of whenever Pip and Jane Baker were writing an episode for him.

I really liked “another expedition into the realms of duplicity”, which was apparently the actor’s contribution. 

Eric Saward is very funny in the behind the scenes stuff, “oh look I’m blaming the producer again”. He does a very good job of deflecting blame for anything away from himself, he really makes you believe that this stuff is somehow bad just because of JNT or the director or the inexperienced writers, things are only ever “it might have been me” at a push. I do like his honesty though, saying The Two Doctors is solid but not Holmes’ best work, and that even the greats can falter. His point that bad stories come to be viewed as worse than they are and good stories come to be viewed as masterpieces largely because it’s easy to build upon a pre-concieved reputation is very salient. A lot of the bad stuff isn’t as bad as people say, though some of it is, and even Caves of Androzani has that pointless monster in it (apparently Saward’s idea funnily enough).

[Ben Saunders]

Revelation of the Daleks… never liked this one. Roy Skelton not one of the better Dalek voices. The DJ is cringe.

[Ben Saunders]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 16/07/2026 

Back to Reality

24

[Ben Saunders]

Kind of fucked up how the Doctor defeats the Borad by calling him an ugly lil mfer nobody could possibly love because he’s so ugly. It’s always felt a little mean. After they both re-appear via two deus ex machinas, only one of which they bother to explain. What a story.

[Ben Saunders]

Kryten is happy to serve Lister, he just relishes finally being above somebody and able to boss them around for once.

All those times he tries to trick or coerce Kochanski into sex.

How many times does he do this? He lets her make out with him for a while once. 

[Author]

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