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Oh yes, Baldrick turning into the Alsatian – that mask looked pretty mangy too, IIRC.

I always thought Rimmer’s ‘now you’ve turned into a chicken’ line was reminiscent of that scene.

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An interesting thing I noticed recently about the ‘keep our heads’ scene (well, it was interesting to me) is that Lister’s wolf head is a recycled prop from the Box of Delights.

I’m now wondering where the others came from – the chicken/rooster’s head that Kryten’s wearing looks decidedly ropey.

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Could be Kate Bellingham? She presented Tomorrow’s World in the early 90s, but before that did a BBC Schools programme called Techno (though she appears to be credited as Dilly Bellingham for this on Genome).

From 19th March 1990:

Techno

9: Dilly Bellingham tries out a robotic fashion mannequin in Tokyo and visits pneumatic rock stars in London. Why is taking a picture of a rubbish skip as difficult as a falcon in flight? To help with this, Mat Irvine and Dilly explore the world of model engineering. Assistant producer Derek Butler Series producer Robin Mudge

Well none of that makes much sense to me, but a possible contender?

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Wasn’t Mac McDonald in The Empire Strikes Back? As a rebel pilot apparently, though I’ve never noticed him myself.

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Looking ahead at the TV schedules, it appears that Dave will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the exact moment when Red Dwarf was first broadcast with a repeat showing of Timewave.

That’s… somewhat disappointing.

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Interesting. To be fair to the Dwarfers, quite a few on that list wanted to suck out their brains, or erase them from history altogether – but yes, still pretty damning.

I’d possibly also add Howard Rimmer’s demise to the list of hologram deaths since it’s brought about by Lister’s reckless and unnecessary phone answering.

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Oh, and in answer to Dave Wallace: I have kids aged 13 and 10 and they both love RD (my proudest parenting achievement! Possibly my only one, mind). My eldest was about seven when he first got interested – watching Back to Earth, curiously enough. I distinctly remember us watching Series X together and he was really into it by then. Bloody hell, just realised he would have only been eight years old back in 2012! Series X really was a long time ago.

Anyway, he’s a total teenager now so we don’t watch much TV together anymore, although he’s said he’ll definitely watch XII with me. He’s also reading – and enjoying – the novels. This is pretty amazing, as it’s really hard to get him away from a screen these days. Testament to how great they are, I think.

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I’m 41, and I’m not old, so 34 definitely isn’t ;)

I was going to start a thread to introduce myself (I wasn’t really – I saw how the last one went) but here’s as good a place as any.

I started watching Red Dwarf in Series V and it was love at first sight, absolutely, totally, utterly. I couldn’t believe I’d managed to repeatedly miss this amazing programme – for four years! It was relatively easy to catch up with III and IV, due to repeats and borrowing friends’ taped-off-the-TV videos (I didn’t know you could buy official videos then), but I and II seemed to be unobtainable, and as a result acquired an almost mythical status. No one I knew had seen them, and there were rumours that Kryten wasn’t in it and they wore different uniforms…

I used to massively regret not watching Red Dwarf from the start, but when I think back to how exciting it was when they repeated Series I for the first time – I almost think watching it in the knowledge of what it would evolve into made it far more compelling than if I’d been watching it completely afresh. I do wonder what I would have made of the first episode if I’d been watching on that day back in February ’88. I like to imagine I’d still have loved it.

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Definitely a date that sticks in my mind, can it really be half a decade ago already?

I’m still extremely fond of Trojan as it totally exceeded my expectations (which, admittedly, were fairly low). Watching it for the first time, I felt the same excitement as I did for Psirens, which was the last series opener I didn’t find utterly dispiriting. More than any other episode in the Dave era, Trojan reminds me of those heady early ’90s days – it’s not my favourite, but I can’t shake that feeling.

Anyway, list (off the top of my head):

1. Moose (I find it gets funnier when you know its coming)
2. “We’re in search of Lemons in general”
3. Give and Take in general
4. “You are very handsome” (but not Can of Worms in general)
5. That moment in Officer Rimmer where Rimmer chucks champagne over his bioprinted clone to stop him getting in the lift and then drains the glass. Pure Rimmery goodness.
6. Just thought of another – at the end of Krysis, the line about all being in the same boat, and even though the boat has a hole in it, “at least we get to see the sea”. I think it’s Lister’s perplexed face that does it for me.

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So Kryten was ‘registered’ in The Inquisitor, but apparently not by the time we get to Quarantine (and The Inquisitor was recorded first).

Did Kryten and Cat ever become officially registered crew members though? In BITR Part 1, Lister is charged with smuggling two stowaways on board; there’s also that instance in Fathers and Suns, as mentioned above (would Pree have really suggested terminating registered crew, even if she *was* a mad goth bastard?).

Perhaps Holly informally gave Kryten that registration code just so he could open all the doors.

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I also happen to love pointless, Red Dwarf-related minutiae, so great work ;)

The gap between VI and VII felt the longest for me, probably because I did a fair bit of growing up in the meantime and also because of having to wait for the resolution to that damn cliff-hanger!! After series VIII, my interest in Red Dwarf waned a little – well, quite a lot actually – so when it suddenly appeared again, it was a lovely, unexpected surprise (as was discovering online fandom at around the same time). It’s been interesting catching up on all that went on in those ‘lost’ years – makes me realise how lucky we are right now.

I remember there being a bit of a discussion on here last year as to the longest gap between the recording of an episode and its transmission – now we’ve got the XII dates, it seems it’s a tie between Siliconia and Timewave, with 629 days each. Another bit of pointless trivia for you!

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The cutest thing ever was watching my two boys play Red Dwarf when they were little, pretending to fly a Starbug made out of chairs and cushions. The younger one didn’t really understand the game or why his older brother kept calling him a smeghead (he was the designated Rimmer, which amused me greatly).

As far as sneaking Red Dwarf into lessons goes, I did once attempt to translate several pages of Primordial Soup into Latin for a uni assignment. Ruber Nanus – that’s all I can remember!

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I sympathise Sofajockey – it can be quite difficult being an obsessive Dwarf fan when your partner isn’t.

I guess mine knew what he was getting into when we met – I think the books, the posters and smegazine postcards all over my wall, and the fact that our first conversation consisted of me repeatedly declaring the shitness of the American pilot that I’d just seen (he’d never even watched the original) might have given it away.

I spent the next couple of years introducing him to the show, which was just lovely as he really enjoyed all five series that I let him watch. (Strangely, I ‘hid’ series VI – I was still thinking of it as the new series, and I wasn’t sure whether it was quite in the same league as I -V. I’m still undecided on that actually.)

All was going swimmingly, Dwarf-wise, until January 17th 1997 – and I think you can guess where I’m going with this. Needless to say, that was the last ‘new’ Red Dwarf episode that we ever watched together. Luckily, my teenage son is now a big fan, so balance has finally been restored to the force :)

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