Ben Saunders

[Ben Saunders]

It’s very broad slapstick, but his energy is infectious and it’s worth a giggle.

[Ben Saunders]

I think you can transfer the data manually but I doubt there’s any automatic process to help you. Just drag the game folder over from one phone to the next on your computer, I should think.

[Ben Saunders]

Ed Bye commentaries, but only on episodes he didn’t actually direct.

Why has Ed not come back for the Dave era? Is he busy/too expensive/retired, or does Doug just want to do it himself anyway?

[Ben Saunders]

There is a docco on the DVD. Unfortunately I think it was very much a case of them needing to use mega cheap locations or being completely unable to make the show. I think they also felt like they had to do a fairly big, important story – waiting a decade for new Dwarf and being hit with an hour and a half of Lister and Rimmer arguing in bunks might have been a little anticlimactic.

[Ben Saunders]

I like the Future Echoes/Out of Time idea. Makes more sense than a lot of Dwarf/Who plots!

[Ben Saunders]

While we’re on the subject of predestination; shouldn’t Lister have married Kochanski by now, as per Stasis Leak? Or did that happen offscreen?

It’s almost as if Red Dwarf has little to no regard for it’s own continuity (^:

[Ben Saunders]

I’d rather trade the novels for ten more episodes.

[Ben Saunders]

>”It felt like they didn’t want to write anything that would cost money to produce”
It’s not that they felt like making it as cheaply as possible, they had no budget (I’m sure you know this)
Same with using Corrie as a location – they got it for free and it allowed the show to actually get made.
I thought BtE looked rather good, and I enjoyed the drama aspects. Didn’t care much for the joy squid reveal, but it was some nice continuity porn.

[Ben Saunders]

Was the radiation so bad he had to fly ~3,000,000 light years away from the Earth just to be on the safe side?

I also used to think that given Rimmer is Dead, going into stasis and flying right back to Earth again in Future Echoes was actually perfectly logical, since switching off a hologram isn’t murder… after 11 series of character development however I think I’ve changed my mind. I think.

[Ben Saunders]

Anyone who has a problem with the word slag is a slag

[Ben Saunders]

They travelled at different speeds past light-speed, not a constant one, because the future echoes came from both relatively soon and far into the future, depending on which speed they were at.

Why would Holly not just orbit Earth/remain close to the solar system anyway? Did he just fancy a joyride?

[Ben Saunders]

It’s a bit presumptuous to ever mention in your argument that “I have a critical eye”, because it implies that other people don’t – specifically, other people on a forum that spends 80% of its time criticising things. Which is absurd.

[Ben Saunders]

Isn’t that more of a Channel 4 stereotype, though?

If Channel 5 made Red Dwarf, nobody would have seen it

[Ben Saunders]

If Holly can give Rimmer Peterson’s arm, could he give him Peterson’s cock?

[Ben Saunders]

I’m exaggerating with the “how could they broadcast this” obviously, but it doesn’t look great. I can forgive it I GUESS, but it’s interesting that at age 7 or whatever I could recognise a fault like that, as a technical fault.

Also
>Space
>Atmosphere

It’s cold outside….

It’s possible it is a higher bitrate, but only slightly, to the degree that it’s pretty much unnoticeable. If you can find the individual files, shouldn’t a right-click -> properties sort this out?

[Ben Saunders]

I have the Just The Shows DVD, and it looks fine to me. A bit too good, actually, because you can really notice when the quality degrades because they’re into the fourth generation of video tape, and you can see all the blue screen fringing and where all the split screen lines are. Bring back my choppy, low quality telerecordings of the original transmissions.

The blue screen fringing on, I think it’s the Cat walking towards the Blue Midget model in series II, and/or Ace’s ship in series IV, was always -dreadful-, though, even to my child eyes. How could they broadcast something so shit? Doctor Who had been doing much better blue screen work for years by that point.

My original point, anyway – what’s wrong with the releases we’ve got?

[Ben Saunders]

If the crew can turn into claymation, the cat can dance with blue midget. It’s designed to mimic reality but it isn’t reality so surreal things can happen.
I was being facetious anyway, I see the dream sequence excuse quite a lot but I don’t think it really matters. The dance was funny and memorable, so it gets a pass from me, in the same way that Backwards makes less and less logical sense the more you think about it but it’s funny so and memorable so who really cares

[Ben Saunders]

Legion is a gestalt of minds, and apparently physical appearance, not a gestalt of whether or not you’re a soft-light hologram. Also, he clearly has hard-light tech, so he could probably just make himself hard-light if he wanted to.

[Ben Saunders]

Why would you not like the cat pulse joke? Why would you not like VI?

Why doesn’t everyone just like what I like? Weirdos.

[Ben Saunders]

Glad to see another sixer. Tikka and the Rimmer munchkin song are bona fide classic Dwarf to me. I also remember quite enjoying Back in the Red.

>Which may also be why I am still willing to defend the Blue Midget dance to this day.
“It was a dream sequence!”

[Ben Saunders]

I remember an old synopsis for the movie, and a poster as well – were they legit? It was something about simulants hunting down the last of humanity.

[Ben Saunders]

When I was young VI was my favourite by a country mile. Now I’m aware of its flaws (running gags, thing on characterisation), but I still think its pretty fantastic. I’ll never accept anything less for Tikka than it being the best episode of VII, though. VII always felt a bit slow, but enjoyable, and my VIII video only went up to Cassandra so I thought it was a fairly decent series, lol.

RE: Running gags, I love the space corps directives, but I hate the Cat saying “we’re deader than x”, except for “we’re deader than tank tops”, which is one of the funniest and most memorable lines ever to me. Over time I forgot there were even any other examples of that “deader than x” gag, and only noticed them on a recent rewatch, when they annoyed me, purely for not being as good as tank tops.

[Ben Saunders]

Holograms could be there for morale – your best mate dies, you’re not going to be able to give it your all when it comes to doing your job; your best mate comes back to life, at least you can pretend he’s not dead. Also the “if anyone of a higher rank dies they become a hologram” thing could be to ensure the ship is never captainless and/or that very important minds like particularly clever people or leading scientist’s minds aren’t lost

[Ben Saunders]

Thayt’s pretty morbid. Imagine you’ve got the final stages of cancer, so they send you off down to the medibay to have your personality scanned so they can bring you back as a hologram to keep you working after you imminently die.

[Ben Saunders]

Tell them there are no opening credits for Back In The Red I because Doug wanted to avoid spoilers or something.

Twentica is a decent episode but actually ended up being quite low in my XI ranking. The pace of it is INCREDIBLY fast and I think a lot of the jokes work better if you’re more familiar with the show. But that applies to pretty much every good episode – Holoship is a strange thing to start people off with because it too benefits from knowing the characters

[Ben Saunders]

If holograms can’t cum, what do the crew of the Enlightment do when they shag? Just stop when they agree they’ve both had enough?

These are important questions. Much more interesting than “what’s your favorite episode” for the 700th time.

[Ben Saunders]

This list alerted me to the existence of the original assembly of The End, which I just watched, and wow. If I had one work to describe it, it would be “bleak.”

One or two funny lines they should have kept, and Lister giving Kochanski a funeral was unexpectedly heart-wrenching, particularly with the hindsight of eleven future series. Another thing they should have kept.

But for the most part, that was terribly boring. Thank God they reworked it.

[Ben Saunders]

Yeah, I sort of guessed that must be it. Meh.

Now let’s turn this into a 5,000 reply debate about whether or not holograms can shit themselves or if it’s just another shocking example of the writers eschewing logic for cheap laughs, shall we?

[Ben Saunders]

Fast forward through the opening credits when they’re out the room.

There’s good stuff in every series, particularly XI, I’d say it’s worth a shot.

Also, why would you give up after a fantastic episode like Tikka? Unironically.

[Ben Saunders]

I don’t think the show’s budget would stretch to 400 extras, or a set big enough to contain them

[Author]

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