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Tell you what though, I think I’ll follow John out the door. Bye.

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I mean certainly you’d have to be insulting and ignorant to a fault to think that Grant Naylor’s writing process consisted entirely of two chuckling savants who existed somehow in a political and socio-economic bubble pulling wacky space shit out of their heads at random like a Mancunian Beavis & Butthead or a pair of PG Tips chimps flailing at an Amstrad.

It’s neither my fault nor my problem that someone might be less interested in the social and cultural history of the 1980s than I might be, and there’s no point anybody flapping at me because they can’t be arsed reading about it.

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Summarised, it’s a satire of free market economics/free enterprise and yuppy culture. Bodyswap is more or less about the same thing – the politics and psychology of yuppy greed. Both episodes have tangible influence from the film ‘Wall Street’ (released in the UK in 1988).

The Last Day is sharply resonant of issues that came into sharp focus at the end of the 80s/start of the 90s after the retirement/pensions equation was altered in a fundamental way by utilitarian Thatcher economics. These ideas were newsworthy when The Last Day was written and made, and despite all the robot jokes and the prominent Terminator parody elements in the Hudzen 10 character, the episode is essentially a satirical, post-Thatcher take on Logan’s Run above all else. The original themes of the episode are a bit muddled these days when planned obsolescence of technology is not only a real-life thing but a major moral and ecological issue of our time, but the effect as intended is about hyper-capitalism versus the elderly – another Thatcher story.

Saying it can’t be so because Margaret Thatcher didn’t travel through magic polaroids is like saying Close Encounters isn’t about Watergate because Richard Nixon never boarded a flying saucer. Sci-fi has *always* articulated political discussion in a lateral way. I’m not trying to be pretentious or put forward an outrageous theory here, this is in the text and the context.

Pretty much the entire original premise of Red Dwarf is a state-of-the-nation address about the class system and working culture in 1980s Britain, and Rob and Doug solidified the political elements around the time of III – see also the relentless allusions and imagery in the first two novels about the heroin problem in working class Britain (just as urgent and newsworthy as Third World famine and the AIDS crisis were in the late 80s before it became normalised out of antipathy).

There is a definite gear change from IV onwards towards less heavy going subject matter, and a bigger focus on pop-psych and film parody (Polymorph becomes the template for IV-VI really), but I’m honestly not talking bollocks about how much politics and topicality was in the original incarnation of the show.

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Why is that mad? Particularly as we are currently in a world where a good 50% or more of popular drama is explicitly alluding to Brexit and/or Trump – this is surely not a wild concept to backdate 30 years. Dozens of big shows were modelled as attacks on the government of the time, some more subtly than others. Then again, if Timeslides was any more on the nose about Thatcher she’d be in the bastard thing.

Only Fools and Horses covered all these *exact* same themes in the same year, btw. And that show wasn’t written by the former showrunners of the UK’s most popular political satire show and produced by the man who had been behind 90% of all the left-wing political TV comedy made throughout the entire decade.

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Nice to get a glimpse onto the factory floor to see the Ben-being-a-dick-to-me production line in all its joyless glory though.

Bonus points for sarcastically referencing an unbumped post of mine in another thread from about six months ago. Not that you’re obsessed or anything.

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Okay, I’m balls deep in this now, it’s got me. I didn’t expect the central plot to be so forward moving and engaging.

(The ref to the “Huawei wars” took me by surprise, mind. Surprised that wasn’t cut in light of current events.)

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I am trying very hard this year to become more passive as a viewer – less critical, engaged in things in a less intense way – to get my enjoyment of TV back which I think has been ruined by overanalysis, overinteraction, too much personal investment, hyper-criticism, entitlement (the end product of me using TV for three decades in quite a toxic way, as a self-medicating salve against a traumatic and stressy life – the reason I’m still sometimes a bit explosive and hairsore on here at times). Contrary to my posts about show 1, and in light of my pleasure at show 2 and Quinn’s post above, I think Avenue 5 might actually be doing the trick…

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If they were to make Red Dwarf now they’d probably insist on a 50% BAME cast and a disabled writer.

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Watched ep 2. Either it’s settling in or I am (or both), but I’m quite engaged with it. Laughed out loud a good few times, particularly at “keep naming limbs”.

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Stereo dubbing for TV was surprisingly crude right into the early 1990s, so I wouldn’t put too much stock in that.

The stereo version of the 1987 end theme, heard between IV-VI, definitely is true stereo. Much is bounced into the middle but the ten-to-two on the double tracked tambourine is genuine.

The Elvis version is definitely stereo.

Something I noticed a while ago – the Smeg Outs version of Tongue Tied, with the finger clicks? The song is mono, the clicks are mono, but the digital reverb on those clicks is stereo, meaning they foleyed those in especially for the video. The actual master of Tongue Tied used across all versions also has a compromised freqency response and bass artefacts which suggest it can only have come off a domestic compact cassette.

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Oh and the stereo version of the 1987 ending is mostly quite mono-ish anyway, due to way it was produced in a Wall Of Sound style – you mention the split tambourines at ten to two – they’re the only really wide part of it. But that’s just what the stereo version is like. It might be why they favour the mono mix or reprocessed versions of such later on. And the records it is a pastiche of were famously, aggressively, resolutely made in mono right into the stereo era.

I did have notes on all of this once, when I thought I might do some fan writing for the anniversary. And I do have a CDR somewhere with every mix on it, in case the world ends.

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Both of the ending themes were recorded in stereo originally, as was all the music. The mono mixes are just folddowns of the stereos as the episodes themselves were dubbed/delivered mono until series 4. Series 4 is indeed the first time that you hear the end theme in true stereo, and you’re right that some episodes of series 6 feature the series 3 end theme in stereo. Additionally, the Clayton Mark/Elvis theme is based on a remixed backing track of that 1989 version. It gets complicated after that, but everything later is either the stereo 1987 ending or the mono one with stereo reverb added. There are still essentially only 2 versions.

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He’s got a guest role and also he’s written one.

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Its tone is definitely that same fight-or-flight, aggressively hostile thing of everything Iannucci’s done since Thick Of It. I just struggle to buy into *any* sitcom, not just this, where most of all the characters are varying degrees of school bully/sociopath/nihilist and every other line is a put-down. It’s utterly dispiriting.

It might settle down, and I’m intrigued enough by the world, cast and story to continue watching, especially as there’s a John Finnemore episode coming up. But it needs to lighten up as it is fighting itself. The best joke – the background screen with Laurie’s multilingual greetings – was its daftest. If it just relaxes out of that angsty Thick Of It default it’ll work.

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I enjoyed it but I am also uninterested in ‘a load of cunts being cunts to each other’ as a sitcom genre so we’ll see as it goes on.

It did feel like the violence and swearing was quite tacked-on though, as though there was something more accessible and networky at its heart that had been dressed up unconvincingly in ‘adult’ clothes. There’s something jarring about its shoutiness/grimness that felt to me like they were embarrassed that they’d come up with a solidly mainstream show, panicked and jammed it awkwardly back into their comfort zone.

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You make it sound like he’s bedridden.

Lots of low-level ageism around these parts lately. We’re not in Logan’s Run.

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I think you might be too young to fully understand the old religion of Light Entertainment, so I don’t blame you, but it’s pretty much one of LE’s Sacred Texts.

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I would also like to point out that the distance between Hugh’s last appearance in ‘Descent’, and the Picard show, is longer than the distance between An Unearthly Child and Survival.

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I love The Five Doctors, it is 90 minutes of solid joy and probably my most rewatched DW story of all time. I wasn’t aware there was much dissent tbh. What miserable sods are saying otherwise?

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I wouldn’t even call it nostalgia bait, it’s more just the reactivation of a machine that was rolling relentlessly from 1987-2002 and then – as near as damn it – was turned off ever since.

To me it *is* very much assuming the viewer is a veteran of the Berman era and can carry on where it was left off. And however much they’re trying to bring newcomers in gently, it’s unashamedly fanwanky in ideology. Hugh hasn’t been seen for over 25 years, for instance, and Seven for nearly 20. Picard is the Five Doctors of Star Trek and should be embraced as such.

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Happy to hear it all kind of makes sense at this stage. When you’re very deep in it all, it becomes impossible to tell.

It does look though like it’s explicitly trying to tie several unconnected loose ends together from various Berman-era shows/films continuity, so if it does commit to going down that route the revision may become more essential as we go on (or it might not!). For example, the ‘B-4’ scene in episode 1 addresses and begins to resolve a story left open for 18 years (kind of Trek’s equivalent of the end of Only The Good).

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Just seen your signoff – The Offspring wouldn’t hurt, but it’s a resonance/character thing rather than a continuity element. I would avoid Lore episodes unless you have to – they’re hugely enjoyable bits of Star Trek but they might overcomplicate things for you at this juncture.

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Forgot Hugh was a part of it. Just realised you’ll need some Voyagers as well to contextualise the Seven/Borg stuff. Scorpion, Drone and Dark Frontier at a bare minimum. Don’t think you’ll need further Romulan grounding as it’s fairly straightforward and Nemesis goes over it anyway.

But it’s definitely a prep heavy show as it’s specifically aimed at avid fans from the 90s/early 2000s. Enterprise, the Abrams films and Discovery were all designed to swerve the immediate needs of the diehards (and all fractured, factioned and made very febrile the Trek fandom in turned), so the self-indulgent back referencing of Picard is earned three times over. This show is a peace mission for people who spent a lot of money on VHS releases in 1998 and have felt a bit fucked-without-a-kiss since Nemesis came out.

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At a push you could do it on that one, The Best Of Both Worlds, Family, and the films First Contact and Nemesis. It’s difficult to know what might pop up in upcoming shows though.

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THIS I DID NOT KNOW.

I didn’t know it had been recommissioned either.

Be still my ruined trousers.

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I really enjoyed it, and am enthused to see the rest. Being a quisling turncoat I do rather wish they’d plopped all four online at once to enjoy as a big film but hey.

I have no comments or criticisms really, I just was in a very happy place as a viewer. It was enough like Star Trek to feel like Star Trek, but didn’t feel like a tired pastiche either. This hasn’t been achieved in quite a while.

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“When most people think of classic wines, they are unlikely to consider the Estonian reds, yet Estonian grapes are among the fruitiest and most subtle!”

Mostly because of the way Danny sings the word “fruitiest”.

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To be fair, that was happening for a while and he was doing it more frequently as a result. At least continually calling him a cunt in every possible way underneath his bollocks seems to keep his attention for a while in one place.

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I already knew, but I had a 0.0001% sliver of optimism that it was genuinely beyond his control and I might be being needlessly nasty and cynical about it all. But no, he’s just a shit.

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If this thread has taught me anything it’s that Alex knows *exactly* what he’s doing despite all his many and various protestations to the contrary. The very last smidgen of plausible deniability just crawled back under its rock – he’s a wilfully obnoxious troll and a threat to the online safety of women, end of.

We need to stop pretending that it’s all fine or that he can’t help himself. He is fully capable of behaving himself (just like all the other neurodiverse people on here who seem to be able to keep ourselves largely in check), but chooses not to.

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There is a much longer 3 hour rough cut of Nemesis with a lot more character stuff and humour, and apparently it’s much worse than the one that came out.

I suppose the big issue with Nemesis now is that virtually every action, horror, scifi and fantasy film from about 98-04 shares an aesthetic that looks laughably cheap, naff, small and thoroughly unappealing now. From when they were starting to do a lot more digital grading to push more extreme and high contrast photographic looks and it’s just ridiculously amateurish to modern eyes. And Nemesis definitely has that Blade/Underworld-esque shiteyness to its look…

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A lot of the criticism of Nemesis comes down to how unfamiliar with Star Trek Stuart Baird was – a few of the cast have been exceptionally bitchy on this score. But given that virtually all the criticisms of Insurrection correctly focused in on the point that it was too obviously the product of a well-oiled clique of tired creatives all giving it More Of The Same (TM), then bringing in newcomers was literally the only solution to that. I agree that the tone of the film is unpalatably nasty and that it’s downright dull in places, but none of these are the fault of the fact the director wasn’t a chummy veteran of a hacky production line already on the bones of its arse. A few more cringey comedy set pieces with the regular cast members wouldn’t have undone the fact that the public were bored of Star Trek and its ubiquity, and that 15 years down the line TNG had not only outstayed its welcome but was too evidently pleased with itself to a slappable degree. A truly noble failure is worth ten mediocre minor hits, and it *was* a noble failure, which Insurrection and Enterprise weren’t. There are only two hours of Star Trek that resemble Nemesis, and about a million hours of the version people say it should have been more like. In a world where the same Marvel film comes out every three months with the title changed we have to cherish the idea of franchises leaving their comfort zone once in a while. Even if – especially if – it doesn’t work.

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Video standards compliance is a bizarre and confusing universe at the best of times though. They’re incredibly strict about anything that flashes, flickers or strobes (this is why they were worried that the camera fault on Trojan would make the episode unbroadcastable), and certain shades of white and red are literally illegal. It’s all so boring though that it’s not really known about, but all TV goes through it.

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It does but it’s still airing in 50i with repeated frames. The frame rate is refreshing twice as quickly as it looks to be doing.

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Scrolling credits on UK TV shows must run at maximum temporal resolution as part of video standards compliance. The only other solution is to run the credits as static caption cards.

The BBC will often run credits on feature films at 2x speed (and therefore videolook) as well though this is mostly to save time I think.

Either way all UK HDTV output is being transmitted via a 50i carrier regardless of production source or how some higher-end smart TVs decode that at point of delivery. Everything is going through the same standard, so whether it was shot, partially shot or even delivered at 25p makes no difference to the way it’s being transmitted as a 50i picture.

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Yes, a maship.

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Real cats do regress massively over time in terms of general competence and coolness, though. By the end they are happy idiots and un-self-consciously goofy. I don’t think it’s deliberate character development (the Dave version of Cat is basically a greatest hits maship of the most comedically fruitful elements of his past characters – the naivety and selfishness from s1-2, the wisecracking smartarsedness of s4-5, and the childlike impatience of the s7 version). But it makes me smile.

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I love the XI/XII Cat. Probably a happy accident but it’s in tune with when an actual cat hits middle age, the hunting instinct falters, and they become slightly more vulnerable and slightly less bothered about stuff generally, but everything else ‘catty’ about them exaggerates.

I still maintain that all four main characters have been through bigger, more life changing experiences during the Dave era than the BBC. Whether these are things that are actively referenced later in script or performance is irrelevant, these are things that are still there for the viewer to accumulate.

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Oh, Danny’s “I will!” after his bulk order of trout a la crème.

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Not sure about Henry – possible as you say! Seems like Henry was just a more powerful build of Harry, and pioneered the ‘layers’ system we now know from Photoshop etc. It would certainly make sense for SVC to be taking on some extra ‘paying for our Henry suite’ work around that time.

Not sure what was powering the morphing in Emohawk – those are proper morphs aren’t they? A couple of early attempts at that done for TNG on Harry are essentially manually animated, so maybe this is indeed a clue to use of Henry…!

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I *think* that is HARRY as well. I’m not 100% though so just guessing. But there’s nothing as good in McCoy Doctor Who suggesting it probably wasn’t Paintbox. If it is Paintbox then it’s virtuoso stuff. But I agree, it’s a very impressive sequence.

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Interesting to hear comparisons about the Polymorph/Emohawk VFX, as for VI SVC worked entirely on the HARRY suite, which was previously used on III, albeit for one day. In theory… they could have used it on Polymorph transitions instead of the moving photos sequence. Who knows.

The HARRY stuff done in the first few years on TNG by the way – none of it is as good as that Timeslides shot. Saying that there’s a HARRY showreel from the late 80s on YouTube which is flawlessly impressive even now. It’s just beautiful.

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They are cheaply-made ‘seconds’ – official Penguin editions yes, but not true ‘reprints’ as such, done to order on cheap paper stock in very small quantities. I mean it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, but they are poor quality and quite expensive, and I would assume the new editions will be more robust and collectable. Assuming we’ll get new forewords too.

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I still haven’t watched any of series 11. They’re all piling up on the planner as a massive box set. Partly because my DW enthusiasm is on a temporary leave of absence, partly because I really like the idea of watching the entire Whittaker era in one go when it’s over, in a Netflixy kind of way. I got the feeling in the Smith era that I was really losing out by keeping to the one-a-week pace rather than just waiting for a bit. As an experiment I saved up and watched the last Capaldi series in one go at the end of 2017, leading slap bang into Twice Upon A Time, and got so much more out of it by being patient and giving it that focus. So I’m doing that on a grand scale with a whole Doctor’s era.

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The other interesting thing about that song is that it was written the year after number 1 smash The Chicken Song, penned by one of the Red Dwarf composer’s best mates and the two writers of Red Dwarf. I do wonder if there was a conscious decision there to attempt to bathe in the same river twice.

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But it’s not supposed to be about space!

It’s supposed to be an early 60s girl group song about a tropical holiday, a 20th century anachronism a bit like how the Michael Crawford film is used in Wall-E, Daisy Daisy’s appearance in 2001, or indeed how the Joan Baez songs sit against Silent Running. The idea of all of those is to ‘look how much humanity we had to lose in order to get here’. None of which works if it’s a sassy Hitchhikers-esque number about how groovy corporate space travel is.

I only think those extra lyrics are incredibly rough draft placeholder ideas he’s singing out by the way, rather than an intended extension of the song we know. Any theoretical full length version would surely have had a full middle eight for variety’s sake, and the musical setting would suggest by example the addition of both a sultry intro and an instrumental with a breathy spoken section…!

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I think the problem is that for MCPS reasons they are only *supposed* to play published recordings on air, from their original sources (David Arnold’s Little Britain theme which he played at the start just about counts as it’s on a David Arnold sampler promo), and nobody ever thought to put a true authorised version of ‘Theme From Red Dwarf’ out in 32 years. Which is ridiculous really, given that plenty of its TV contemporaries had their themes turn up on singles or compilations, particularly in the 1990s and usually in their TV versions. Few are as demanded but also as elusive as Dwarf’s – maybe the TV version of Father Ted (which has never turned up anywhere, although it probably would have appeared on the cancelled 1999 single of Songs Of Love alongside My Lovely Horse) too? And I think an attempt to put out Absolutely Fabulous was thwarted at the eleventh hour for publishing reasons and necessitated a repress. But at least they were trying…

Even Danny’s cover is only on the 7″ of Tongue Tied, so not even easily obtainable. Particularly as the last time Craig Charles tried to play the A-side, in Danny’s presence, their source was clearly YouTube.

So yeah, if they want to play the Red Dwarf theme on air, they have only terrible versions to choose from.

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“I swear, one time I caught this two pound black-ribbed knobbler”

“Look at that! It’s a bucket and spade! Look at that… it’s, it’s clever that, innit?”

(I’ve just realised one of my favourite Red Dwarf bits is in Pete. Something for everyone.)

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Well that’s this thread ruined now.

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With respect, this is supposed to be a thread about Sonic the Hedgehog and I’d appreciate the conversation being kept on-topic.

[Author]

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