Dave

[Dave]

RED DWARF: FREE CUSTARD

OK, I admit I’m struggling now.

[Dave]

RED DWARF RE-BASTARD

Curiously specific censorship project in which episodes from all twelve series of Red Dwarf are edited and overdubbed to remove any instances of the titular swearword.

Classic episodes now include lines such as “Father Christmas – what a *cheeky fellow*.” and “It’s my duty. My duty as a complete and utter *naughty person*.”

[Dave]

RED DWARF RE-MUSTARD

Sponsored by Colman’s, this ill-conceived product-placement project involves overhauling all twelve series of Red Dwarf to include (via clumsy CGI) small containers of Colman’s mustard in the background of key scenes in every episode, as well as replacing (via clumsy dubbing) some of the best jokes in the series with characters suddenly commenting out of nowhere on how much they like Colman’s mustard.

[Dave]

In fairness, he said this year was the anniversary of her death.

Of course, every year is the anniversary of her death.

[Dave]

With the heaviest rewrites imaginable, it could become an episode of Fawlty Towers.

[Dave]

Generally I think it relates to whether the violence is likely to be imitated by young viewers, which I think is fair enough really. The BBFC definitely does seem to have oddly specific hangups about certain things though.

[Dave]

BETTER THAN WIFE

The Lister from the double double future realises he actually preferred his adventures with his three crewmates to being married to Kochanski.

[Dave]

SMACK ME A COPPER

Deleted scene from Timewave in which the Boys From The Dwarf move from merely verbally insulting Johnny Vegas’ character to actually physically assaulting him.

[Dave]

There’s a florist somewhere in Milton Keynes (I think) called Back To The Fuchsia, which I think is pretty much the best florist name ever.

[Dave]

No. Why?

[Dave]

Or possibly LotR’s literary credentials helping sway them? I dunno.

[Dave]

Yes, I think they’ve cooled on it in recent years.

To be honest though, there was lots of stuff in the first LotR that I think pushed the boundaries of PG.

[Dave]

FUCHSIA ECHOES

When Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen beams on board and insists on changing the colour of the Dwarf from red to a more fashionable but also horrid pinkish-purpley colour, the crew kill him horribly.

[Dave]

The real and boring answer is that there’s a short shot of a headbutt between Jango Fett and Obi-Wan that would have pushed the certificate up to a 12 if it had been left in.

http://www.theforce.net/latestnews/story/bbfc_defends_head_butt_removal_66745.asp

Of course, the best thing to come out of all this is the existence of a news story that begins “Darth Scourge complained most vociferously to the BBFC”.

[Dave]

Region 4 releases are often coded for Region 2 as well, I’m not sure why. I remember picking up the Australian version of Attack of the Clones when it first came out, to get an uncensored version that would work in a Region 2 player.

[Dave]

SHOUT OF TIME

The crew of Red Dwarf travel back in time to the UK before 24-hour licensing laws were introduced, and discover how pub landlords used to indicate that their establishment was imminently about to close for the night.

[Dave]

OUT OF TIMESLIDES

Biopic of Graham Chapman with a very heavy Red Dwarf bias, which omits any discussion of his many comedic achievements in favour of concentrating solely on an episode of a sitcom that he almost, but didn’t, appear in.

[Dave]

OUT OF TIMEWAVE

When comedian Johnny Vegas realises one of his lifelong ‘bucket list’ dreams and is cast in an episode of Red Dwarf, he is subsequently dismayed with the result. After viewing the episode he asks to be edited out of all future broadcasts. This request is refused.

[Dave]

And White Hole, obviously.

[Dave]

Also, nine hours of the Bodysnatcher set runtime is made up of I-III Remastered.

[Dave]

You need to watch Timeslides as most of XII revolves around the Om song.

[Dave]

So are the BBC interested in the type of audiences Dave used to attract?

[Dave]

REGION

The crew of Red Dwarf stumble across a space station inhabited by a gestalt entity who shares all four of the Dwarfers’ different regional accents.

COLLEGIAN

The crew of Red Dwarf stumble across a space station inhabited by a gestalt entity who shares the minds of a bunch of students who live and work there.

GLASWEGIAN

The crew of Red Dwarf stumble across a space station and immediately get glassed in the face after making ill-advised jokes about deep-fried Mars bars.

[Dave]

The 2010 Dutch boxsets have a new commentary track. Which is nice.

Didn’t the US set have different commentary tracks too (I’m sure I remember reading somewhere that they’d actually got Tarantino on to do a track for at least one of the episodes)?

Does Spaced win the award for the sitcom with the highest number of alternate commentary tracks?

[Dave]

Ooh, you need to get the SPACED boxset for the third disc. It’s worth it.

[Dave]

ACE RIMMER

Sophie Aldred guest-stars in a… No, on second thoughts, I’m definitely not going to do that one.

[Dave]

Yep.

And that difference is obviously complicated by the fact that the show itself is quite different now to the show I watched as a kid, which can make it hard to evaluate whether I’m reacting to the show differently now because I’ve changed or because the show has.

[Dave]

Maybe he knows that there is another connotation of the name Frankenstein and is referring to that.

So the “nice job, Jesus” analogy would work better if there happened to be a famous literary monster who was also called Jesus.

[Dave]

Imagine my confusion some years back when I started watching the new Battlestar Galactica from the start of season 1, and soon realised there had been a previous series before that, which I should have watched first.

[Dave]

SNOKE ME A PITA

Star Wars sequel in which Kylo Ren’s boss becomes addicted to Greek flatbreads.

[Dave]

POST ME A TWITTER

The crew discover Social Media and there’s a whole episode about it but it’s a bit rubbish and pointless and filled with outdated jokes about 140 characters and MySpace.

[Dave]

e courage to do so, only for Kochanski to walk through the airlock at a key moment. The episode ends with both weeping.

[Dave]

POKE ME A SKUTTER

When the last human being alive finally accepts that he’s never going to find Kochanski, Kryten encourages him to get “back in the game” and start dating some of the many robots aboard Red Dwarf. But when Lister becomes romantically involved with one of the Skutters, Rimmer and Cat take bets on whether he will actually go through with attempting sexual intercourse with it. In a grim and laugh-free final scene, Lister musters up th

[Dave]

It is literally a series of three episodes. So yes, it is the ninth series of Red Dwarf. But that doesn’t make it ‘series IX’.

[Dave]

Back To Earth definitely *is* the ninth series of Red Dwarf, speaking literally.

It’s just not called “Series 9”.

(Or “Series IX”.)

[Dave]

It’s slightly chilling the way the eyes follow you around the room.

[Dave]

What if The Inquisitor had judged himself and found that travelling through time to judge people wasn’t a worthwhile use of his life?

[Dave]

Thanks for keeping us updated with all this. I’ll definitely check out the XII game when it appears.

[Dave]

THYME-WAVE

Ainsley Harriott returns to Red Dwarf to show the crew how to liven up their roast potatoes.

[Dave]

Are we all being reasonable and coming to an agreement, then? That’s weird.

I think the Internet only gets one of these a year, so let’s enjoy it.

[Dave]

Fair enough, and apologies for any perceived dickishness or being seen to be hassling you about it.

[Dave]

Their review was published on 2nd November. The roundup was published on 3rd November. Articles on TOS have to go through an approval process and so are written in advance of publication. So basically: their review wasn’t published when I was writing the roundup. Fun fact: Cappsy’s Mechocracy review missed the cut for the same reason.

The Gay UK published their Siliconia review on October 19th, but that wasn’t included either.

Like I say though, I’m happy to accept it as oversight or unintentional omission rather than an intentional singling-out of their Timewave review.

To be clear, I’m not trying to have a go at you Seb, or ascribe motives to you when you’ve explained that they aren’t true. I take you at your word that it wasn’t intentional in that way.

I’m just trying to explain how it might come across when you pick just one review quote from The Gay UK, and it’s about *that* episode.

[Dave]

Joking aside, that’s pretty much what I was getting at. Given the controversy over Timewave and its gay/camp/”fruit” elements and the various ways they have been interpreted, having a gay person defend the episode carries connotations that aren’t the same as a review by a non-gay person.

To come back to Seb’s point though, I don’t think one is any less valid than the other, they’re just points of view that come from different perspectives. Which is more relevant for Timewave than it might be for other episodes.

[Dave]

You arse.

[Dave]

As far as your reading of the review goes, fair enough, but I don’t see how that makes the review itself of less merit.

I agree, I don’t think it makes it of less merit either.

And your interpretation of why it was pull-quoted is wrong. It was pull-quoted because it’s a positive review from a site with a significant readership.

Fair enough. Omitting their review of Mechocracy must just be an oversight then. It might be worth adding a quote from that review to the list, as it was even more positive, and it would lessen the impression that the Timewave quote was only added to address the perceived homophobia in the episode.

Here’s a link to the Mechocracy review:

TV REVIEW | Red Dwarf XII Episode 4: Mechocracy

There’s also a very positive review of Siliconia here:

https://www.thegayuk.com/tv-review-red-dwarf-xii-siliconia/amp/

And a really positive one of M-Corp if there’s a review round-up for the last couple of episodes:

https://www.thegayuk.com/tv-review-red-dwarf-xii-m-corp/amp/

[Dave]

Also, not being a gay man surely doesn’t preclude you from writing for an LGBT-orientated website, does it?

I don’t think anyone is suggesting that that’s the case.

When I saw the review quote I did assume that it was the opinion of a gay man, simply due to the name of the publication. I thought it was an interesting reaction given the nature of Timewave, especially when it comes to the perceived homophobia within the episode.

(I assumed the review was included in the compilation of review quotes partly for that reason, especially since the compilation covers four episodes and The Gay UK only has a review quoted for one of them.)

Finding out that the writer of the review is not a gay man certainly changes my understanding of and reaction to the review.

[Dave]

#ME2

The crew of Red Dwarf log on to Twitter to share their experiences of sexual harassment from GELFs, Polymorphs, parallel-universe versions of themselves, servants of their own self-loathing beast, and plenty more besides. Unfortunately the ball-girl from the AR Wimbledon game has tales of her own to reveal.

[Dave]

I don’t mind the ending of Justice as it works as a silly joke that undercuts the seriousness of Lister’s pontificating speech.

[Dave]

Doesn’t it also have “Lister falls down a hole and the crew lock him in there”, which is pretty awful for the same reason people complain about the ending of Tikka etc?

I think you’re thinking of Justice.

[Dave]

SILLY CONE EAR

After a massive bender to celebrate Kryten’s last day before his impending deactivation, Lister is confused when he wakes up to find a large red conical plastic traffic-management tool stuck in one of his aural orifices. Meanwhile, it’s the policewoman’s helmet and suspenders that Cat doesn’t understand.

[Author]

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