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Series VI ended exactly the way it should have. The cliffhanger itself is perfect. Was it Rob or Doug who didn’t want the cliffhanger ending? Or have I made that up altogether?

Realised this convention panel video is where I got that from. Rob is asked about the Series VI ending at 38:30 and says he wasn’t in favour of doing a cliffhanger.

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03/05/2026 

Nanarchy

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All the material from Ouroboros Extended was in there too.

In that case I wonder why it has no laugh track. 

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02/05/2026 

White Hole, BITR2, BITR3

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She goes with them because Kryten hasn’t passed his test yet and Rimmer can’t pilot Starbug because he’s a hologram.

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01/05/2026 

Officer Rimmer

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She’s so definitively Kochanski for us that her pop career and Gregory’s Girl are secondary, but for anyone watching the initial broadcast, she’d surely be extremely “distractingly familiar”

This got me wondering whether casting Clare Grogan was part of the plan to get big names for the crew, such as Ronnie Barker as Hollister, so that killing them off in the first episode would be even more of a twist, but of course they only got her when original Kochanski Alexandra Pigg wasn’t available after the strike. I suppose the idea might have still been in the back of their heads. 

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30/04/2026 

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The point of the cliffhanger is that you don’t know which Starbug just exploded. I mean surely that was their intention. Having said that, why would future Starbug explode instead of simply disappearing or whatever.

The blast from future Starbug before the explosion was always in Out of Time, but I also didn’t register it as a kid (when watching at least twice on repeats before VII). Unless it was being interpreted as some kind of… time blast hitting future Starbug.

This is what I thought when I first saw OOT too. It could be a blast from the future Starbug’s laser cannon, or a timey-wimey thing that happens as the timeline begins to reset. And the future Starbug blows up because the space-time continuum has showmanship I guess?

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29/04/2026 

Epideme

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So maybe that’s what should have happened. Rimmer blows up the time drive, thereby saving them all, and then just as he’s basking in the glory of being the hero and Lister and even the Cat are bigging him up, Kryten figures out that the end result would have been exactly the same if he’d done nothing and their future selves had killed them all. 

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My issue with the resolution is just that it renders Rimmer’s actions in the cliffhanger inert.  

They set it up like it was going to be Rimmer destroying the time drive that saved them (I always thought the exploding Starbug would be revealed to be the future Starbug being obliterated from history), but by having it be the deaths that save them means it made absolutely no difference whatever Rimmer did in that sequence.  

He could have died in the cockpit with the rest and the same thing would have happened, so that whole brilliantly dramatic cliffhanger sequence is then pointless.

I mean, that’s why I prefer it. Of course the one time Rimmer does something heroic he’s not actually going to manage to save the day. 

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I never got the derision of the opening to VII, they deal with it in a short, funny (yes) sequence and move on.

The only thing I really dislike about the actual pre-title sequence is the stupid exploding cameras gag. Doug clearly wanted to ring the changes with Tikka to Ride and after such a long time perhaps a quick handwavey resolution wasn’t a bad way to go. I think maybe what doesn’t sit right is doing a glib handwave like that, but then using it to create Starbig (sic) and make it so that the time machine is also a teleporter now. It feels forced. 

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‘Smeg, I’m a hero!’ is just a corny line and Chris’s delivery isn’t very good. Plus I think it’s better for Rimmer to try but fail by a gnat’s wing to save the day. I suppose in that regard I prefer the resolution we got. 

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I’ve never understood the anger the resolution gets. Although maybe that’s because I was sure that’s how it would resolve, because… well, it makes sense.

But doesn’t Rimmer fixing everything by blowing up the time drive make just as much sense? 

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The only thing that unused ending really has going for it imo is that at least it wouldn’t have been contradicted by JFK disappearing after he assassinates himself. The urine recyc gag is decent I suppose, but I hate ‘Smeg! I’m a hero!’. Obviously I don’t like the resolution we got in Tikka to Ride either. They should have had it turn out to all be in a reality bubble.

Isn’t this more “how Series VI should have ended”? It would have been really weird to start VII with a deleted scene from VI and then suddenly switch to the rest of the series looking completely different. 

I know you aren’t suggesting otherwise, Dave, but regardless of how the story got resolved, Series VI ended exactly the way it should have. The cliffhanger itself is perfect. Was it Rob or Doug who didn’t want the cliffhanger ending? Or have I made that up altogether?

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28/04/2026 

Camille, Waiting for God

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27/04/2026 

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26/04/2026 

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He’d definitely rather watch the golf than Back to Earth though, he was very clear on that. 

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25/04/2026 

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Good question. I wonder the same about the theme tune, which is also heard in a character’s dream, in the saloon in Gunmen. Also the creator’s doorbell in BTE, and presumably the skutters are playing the version at the end of DJ. 

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24/04/2026 

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I don’t think I’ve ever used a DwarfCast as a proper commentary track, except alongside the Smegazine.

I always sync it up for the Re-Disc-overy episodes. I don’t know the DVD bonus features well enough to get anything out of the commentary without the visuals. 

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23/04/2026 

Officer Rimmer

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I like that first one especially. A bit Saul Bass. 

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22/04/2026 

Stasis Leak, BITR1

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I read The Mindworm, a cracking short story by C. M. Kornbluth this afternoon and wouldn’t be surprised if it was an inspiration for the Polymorph. Emotion eaters are a reasonably common trope of course, but the manner in which this character goes about inducing strong emotions (not always negative ones, mind you) in his prey stood out to me. Especially reminiscent of some of the inner-monologue stuff in the novel actually, about craving new and different flavours as well as a big helping. 

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21/04/2026 

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Even though I love V and would probably have to say it’s objectively a better series than VI, I wouldn’t rather have a Series VI that’s more like V instead of the one we got. I pretty much agree with all the usual criticisms directed at VI – it’s formulaic, broader and less character-driven, reuses ideas from previous series and has less heart than the rest of the bubble – but none of that hinders my enjoyment. Arguably it’s the most purely fun Red Dwarf. 

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20/04/2026 

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19/04/2026 

Timeslides, Backwards, Marooned 

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18/04/2026 

 

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17/04/2026 

Epideme

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Robert Llewellyn has updated his Bluesky to announce that he’s updated The Man in the Rubber Mask again.

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16/04/2026 

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15/04/2026 

DJ, WH

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14/04/2026 

SMAC, FE, Epideme

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13/04/2026 

D&A, The End

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Is Doug Walker more or less entertaining today than when I last watched one of his videos in 2007?

I would say yes.  

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Maybe I’m being overly generous but I think there’s a really fun meta aspect to the whole three-sequels-in-one thing in Emohawk. Arguably it was a cleverly contrived way of bringing back ‘Ace’ especially, instead of just having another version of the character dimension-jump, like in SMAC. It kinda feels as though they made the decision to bring back Ace or Duane as a fun bit of fan-service, and then reverse-engineered it, and then decided to go the whole hog and do both. 

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It might be so voluminous there because it was dishevelled when he was pissed earlier in the episode. 

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