Ben Saunders

[Ben Saunders]

Alright, here’s the full list you smegheads. God knows why they kept switching between versions – ignorance?
Was the mix always in stereo, but TV was broadcast in mono before Series V?

ORIGINAL
Series I, Series II, Series IV (mono)
Holoship, Demons and Angels, Back to Reality (stereo)
Psirens, Rimmerworld, Out of Time (stereo)
Series VII, Series VIII (stereo)
Dave era (assumed; stereo also assumed)

ALTERNATE
Series III (mono)
The Inquisitor, Terrorform, Quarantine (stereo)
Legion, Emohawk (stereo)

[Ben Saunders]

>Personally I’m more likely to skip Helter Skelter
Heathen.
I bet you don’t like Tikka, or some equally abhorrent opinion.
Unbelievable.

[Ben Saunders]

Just doing Series VI.

Psirens – Original
Legion – Alternate
Gunmen – N/A
Emohawk – Alternate
Rimmerworld – Original
Outoftime – Original

I think the stereo mix sounds different on Out Of Time?? Aaaaa

[Ben Saunders]

Yeah I was immediately taken aback as well.

It gets more complicated, lads.

I was going to say “it sounds more spacious because it’s in stereo”, but in Series I and II, it ISN’T. It’s in stereo for Series VII, though. The same version/take of the song seems to be used in I, II and VII onwards, but in mono first, then stereo later.

It gets more complicated, lads.

Just checking Polymorph II, they use the shit series III take/version of the song – but now that’s in Stereo, too!

Am I going to have to listen to the credits of every episode to make some sort of list, or has somebody already done it for me?

The tambourine is loud as fuck in both stereo versions, it dominates the mix, I never liked that.

[Ben Saunders]

It isn’t music, though

[Ben Saunders]

I couldn’t take anything with Seth MacFarlane playing the lead role seriously enough to care about the plots, the exception being American Dad, mostly because I don’t need to look at his smug fucker of a face

[Ben Saunders]

I’ve listened to The White Album countless times, but always skip Revolution 9. It’s utter shite.

[Ben Saunders]

The End is very good and very funny, but the original assembly of The End was dire and depressing before they reshot large swathes of it. It ends up being one of the fastest paced episodes of Series I – after re-watching I and II recently, I’m stunned by how slow it all is, and how the laughs are fewer and further between (but still very strong)

[Ben Saunders]

I can say I’m guilty of watching the first episode of Back, Mitchell and Webb’s new sitcom, and denouncing it as mediocre and “to be forgotten”. I’ll watch the second episode but I don’t have much faith in it.

[Ben Saunders]

Alright, there is piano, it’s just quieter, and neither the piano nor the brass do many of their little fills/flairs, if any at all. Could just be a different take and they just threw in the tape that said RED DWARF CLOSING THEME if nobody remembers re-doing it, as the conspiracy states

[Ben Saunders]

Toxteth – that’s supposed to be the definition, I think, but many shows I’ve seen end up using the term “pilot” to just mean “the first episode” – Doug himself does this in the Remastered documentary, and both Chuck and Friends seem to be unable to make their mind up between calling the first episode “Pilot” or giving it a proper title.

Just checking, I always thought they called the first one “Chuck versus the Pilot”, but now apparently it’s called “Chuck versus the Intersect” or “Pilot”.

The first episode of Lost is called Pilot.

[Ben Saunders]

You mean it was Red Dwarf that started this stupid trend of avoiding the number 9?

[Ben Saunders]

Interesting thread though, thanks

[Ben Saunders]

Sheesh, people who can’t hear a difference between the two versions – there’s no piano, the bass is too loud and the vocal is different! Come on people!

[Ben Saunders]

>No Jane Leeves in Frasier
>No Malcolm in the Middle
Good God, what a horrible universe to live in

[Ben Saunders]

I’d happily trade the people of Stoke for another Series IV

[Ben Saunders]

That said, I don’t watch any other modern audience sitcoms, so maybe they’re all shite and look like arse

[Ben Saunders]

I guess I’ll just have to strongly disagree with you and wonder in the back if my mind if you’re slightly mad or not

[Ben Saunders]

I searched the first four pages of the forum vigorously, I honestly did. Thanks though

[Ben Saunders]

I like Lister winding Rimmer the fuck up, shoot me.

An 83 year old dad….

[Ben Saunders]

Nothing in any universe is worth trading for Kennedy assassinating himself, the opening and ending to Stoke, and BOTH CHEEKS MAN, sorry. It’s just too much of a gamble for something that -might- be good. Red Dwarf IS a British show – Americans aren’t really into the whole self-deprecating shtick quite as much as we are.

[Ben Saunders]

The idea of Grant Naylor hiring DeEmmony so they could push him around reminds me of the story that George Lucas pretty much directed Return of the Jedi, bossing Richard Marquand around, because he was seemingly unhappy with aspects of how The Empire Strikes Back went down. Similar to what they’re doing now with Star Wars/Disney films, really – firing directors who are too stubborn about “having a vision” and hiring newbies they can mould into their own autonomous directing machines.

[Ben Saunders]

Absolutely not, what the fuck?

[Ben Saunders]

The direction in X was pretty pedestrian for the most part, didn’t he just film as much as possible and then zoom it all in in the edit? I guess you can’t give people reading letters for 25 minutes much directorial flair. It would be annoying if anything.

[Ben Saunders]

Yeah, that one I think. Interesting that it’s a composite of two shots – that explains why it looks so SHIT

[Ben Saunders]

In that particular shot the perspective just makes Starbug look too big/Dwarf look too small.

Not to be a negative Nancy, but there was one model shot towards the end of Series XI, of Starbug flying into the Red Dwarf hangar bay, that looked dreadful – it was shot from a really weird angle we’d never seen before and either composited oddly or the perspective was strange.

Most of the rest of them were decent, though

[Ben Saunders]

That’s what I always thought, as well. Paying another outside director was probably financially unviable, especially for BtE. They can -probably- get away with paying Doug less for direction because he’s already on the writer/producer payroll, and maybe he’s willing to take a cut if it means the show will get made.

I don’t want to imply that I think I know anything about how much Doug is paid or how much another director would be, though, so it’s just speculation

Doug did a really good job on BtE and XI, in any case

[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

[Author]

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