Flap Jack

[Flap Jack]

For videos game, I think the way ratings get treated is a natural consequence of how expensive and time consuming they are compared to other art forms. People do mostly understand that a 6/10 translates to “pretty good” whether it’s a film or a game, but for the film, it’ll take just a couple of hours of their time and plausibly just be a few pounds to rent or free on a streaming service you already have. Whereas a video game might cost you £50 and take a dozen or more hours to finish. (On top of that, there’s the fact that video games inherently demand more committed engagement and skill from their audience.)

So a pretty good movie is basically always worth it if there’s something about it which interests you, but a pretty good video game? Why would I spend my limited time and money on a 6 when there are SO MANY 8s and 9s coming out? This is why people jump to interpreting a rating of 7 or below as a “don’t bother”, and it’s why people harass critics who give highly anticipated AAA releases “only” an 8 or 9 out of 10. (OK, the real reason is that those people are toxic and entitled cunts, but you get what I mean.)

Seriously, I watched SPACE JAM in the last year just out of curiosity. If a video game has Space Jam’s reputation, I’m guaranteed to never play it even if it’s cheap.

[Flap Jack]

I watch old films where the credits are just a couple of cards at the start and it ends abruptly with a The End caption.

I prefer things where the caption at the end says “THE BEGINNING”.

Tangentially related, but I’ve found that a film gets free respect from me if they actually put the title card at the beginning instead of at the end. Obviously I already know what film it is either way, but the title is meant to be an introductory detail, so it feels weird if it’s only at the end.

Bonus points whenever a film has a full length title sequence and theme music.

[Flap Jack]

16/10/2026 

X/5 

Rare Smegle where you lose and automatically make the face depicted in the Smegle.

(The Inquisitor, Polymorph, Beyond a Joke, Epideme, Nanarchy.)

[Flap Jack]

The Paternoster Gang is like backfiring worldbuilding. In A Good Man Goes to War the fact that The Doctor had a bunch of friends we’d never heard of to come to his aid painted a picture of how expensive his life and adventures are off-screen. But then when they kept coming back it was like, oh, OK, no, he actually doesn’t have a huge expanse of off-screen friends from unseen adventures, it’s literally just these guys. Suddenly the world felt weirdly small.

I did enjoy them as characters though, putting aside the fact that Strax’s “what if a Sontaran were a fucking idiot” shtick got tiresome relatively quickly.

Also they did literally get a spin-off at Big Finish but I guess we’re not counting that.

[Flap Jack]

Interesting. I think it’s using a system which discards common words.

In the case of “he’s right”, the “he’s” is ignored entirely. You can see that if you just search for “right”, the results are the same.

As for “right”, it seems that it’s excluding all of the exact matches for being too numerous, and only returning results with words which contain it (rights, righteous, right-handed). That’s quite a strange behaviour given that you can get common words to return full results sometimes. It’s like if it knows the too-common word you’re searching for has derivatives, it only returns the derivatives, but otherwise it works normally.

[Flap Jack]

It’s probably good that some people don’t remember, because between that and the Many Ampersand Symbols mention my ego was in danger of getting too big.

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Timeslides opens with Cat and Lister playing some holes of tabletop golf, foreshadowing all of the holes Rimmer gets blown into him at the end of the episode.

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Camille begins with Kryten mostly failing to lie. This foreshadows him not lying to Camille at the end.

[Flap Jack]

I’m honoured that you remember MAMOTFALLOEEORD fondly!

This book would surely be perfect for Kryten:

[Flap Jack]

Better Than Life starts with Rimmer being a terrible chef, foreshadowing him unintentionally ruining another group recreational experience.

[Flap Jack]

Ah, I can see the vision but a helmet slam wouldn’t happen in 1 frame. The faked version is pretty good though.

[Flap Jack]

I guess it’s not really surprising that the “You” typo goes largely unnoticed, because a lot of people don’t even notice that the title has the word “Looping” in it.

[Flap Jack]

So it’s basically a Back to the Future situation. At least Billie didn’t get replaced with Elisabeth Shue.

Personally though I never really noticed the discontinuity going from The Parting of the Ways to Untitled 2005 Children in Need Special.

The one I did notice was Doomsday to The Runaway Bride, when Donna appears in the TARDIS. In Doomsday the whole set is bathed in green light, but in the Runaway Bride it’s just standard white light.

So if you’re reading this, uh…. (looks up the Directory of Photography on The Runaway Bride) RORY TAYLOR, you absolutely fucked that.

[Flap Jack]

It’s called “Thanks for the Memory” because “Thanks for the Memories” is the actual expression.

[Flap Jack]

I like the Lion Guard fine, but why? The Lion King is good for toddlers. Plenty of colour, laughs.

I guess everyone will just have a different opinion about when to introduce kids to the “traumatic parent murder” genre.

Interestingly, the original Lion King was given a U by the BBFC, but the CG remake was given a PG for “mild threat, violence”. Does the original not have those things???

Maybe standards changed a little over the years, but what it tells me is that the original U classification was likely borderline. And even a U only assures suitability for a 4 year old. Below that a U can be fine, but you have to use your own judgement. For me I’d want it to be an unambiguous U, not a borderline PG.

[Flap Jack]

It’s like if you have the option to put on the Lion Guard or the Lion King for your toddler. You put on the Lion King, innit?

For a toddler? I’m picking The Lion Guard for sure.

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Holly assumes that as Queeg has a military commander type personality that he would prefer to play a character with a military rank.

[Flap Jack]

03/10/2026 

5/5 

FUCK MY ARSE I almost lost.

[Flap Jack]

I realised the other day that it’s been over 5 years since I first visited the beach from that M. Night Shyamalan film. God I’m old.

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Back to Earth is old enough to be a father next year. 

Surprising choice of benchmark, because I think in the UK that’s only true if you’re talking about sperm donation specifically.

[Flap Jack]

OK, just finished Season 14/11, and overall I enjoyed it a lot. Probably about on par with Season 13/10, albeit it didn’t have any episodes quite as good as “The White Hole” nor any quite as bad as “The World is Hot Enough”. “Beef” and “Lord Nibbler in the Nothingverse” were my personal standouts. I’m looking forward to the feature length specials, but I’ll be sad if that means we won’t be getting any more normal seasons (and especially sad if it’s just the end, obviously).

Weakest episode was easily “Oceans Three”, even if it wasn’t terrible – although I did seriously groan and roll my eyes when they leant on the lazy “laugh tracks just tell you when to laugh” point during the Love Boat segment. I tell you, they must just really love making these anthology episodes, because they surely aren’t making them due to public demand. There have been 9 of them now, and only 3 of them were particularly good.

I enjoyed the Disenchantment crossover episode more than I expected to, but alongside the anthology episode I object on principle to them spending their perpetually dwindling episode count on this sort of thing. I only saw Season 1 of Disenchantment so I’m missing tons of context, but it was surprising that the episode was (or at least seemed to be) an actual narrative follow-up to the ending of Disenchantment. I wonder how the fanbase felt about that? “Simpsorama” wasn’t a direct sequel to “Meanwhile” and I don’t think I would have liked it if it was. (“Simpsorama” also didn’t happen in a possibly- final season ever of The Simpsons which only had 10 episodes in it.)

I’ll avoid saying too much about the finale as it only just came out, but my impression is that it was overly safe. Which is fine, because at least it didn’t shoot for something greater and miss like “Otherwise” did, but it does make it a weaker overall episode than either “All the Way Down” or “The White Hole”, which weren’t even written as series finales. Still fun though.

–

I’ve been doing a Simpsons run and I seem to be stuck around season 21 so I’m thinking of cracking out the Futurama DVDs. I have seasons 1-4 and I’m expecting some pretty decent extras. Is it worth getting season 5 onwards on DVD or is it best just to stream?

If you find yourself enjoying the audio commentaries for Season 1-4 then I definitely recommend getting the Seasons 5-8 home releases as well to continue those; they kept up the tradition of recording one for every episode. But you could always stream them first and then get the home releases later for the special features – especially as the streams will be in HD, but the Comedy Central era Blu-rays are somewhat rare and expensive.

Don’t forget that in between Seasons 4 and 5 on DVD are the 4 movies, and the home releases are better versions than on Disney+/Hulu where you get the 4-episodes-per-movie TV cuts. Only the latter 2 movies were released on Blu-ray, but if you buy any of the movies on Apple TV/iTunes then you can get proper HD versions. (But as usual the home releases are worthwhile for the extras.)

–

I’ve been watching the Hulu era of Futurama since it started.

It’s shit.

[Flap Jack]

Duct Soup and Thanks for the Memory.

[Flap Jack]

This is great but I am offended by the use of the new Mr Chips.

It was just the first image of him I could find with a transparent background. I’m not backing a horse in the Walker vs. Mulhern race. Do people think the new version is shit?

[Flap Jack]

Is this one of those times where being American is specifically why I have no fucking clue what’s happening on this site?

This is all the context you need:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqb-j1cNPhQ

[Flap Jack]

[Flap Jack]

Regenerations in the new series also take a bizarrely long time. Basically all of the main ones except for Nine’s gave time for The Doctor to at least have a sizeable farewell party before the actual change kicked in, Twelve’s took an entire episode, and Fourteen’s is arguably still ongoing. Plus both Ten’s and Eleven’s cheated by having them be healed and youthed before they even changed.

It’s OK if The Doctor is dying in a slow but unavoidable way, but if they cross the threshold where the regeneration should kick in, it should actually kick in. No “I refuse to change!” shenanigans unless they’re actually choosing to die.

These regenerations play out less like deaths and rebirths and more like they’re just retiring and are basically fine and healthy but are leaving anyway just ’cause. (I mean, I know that’s the metatext, but it shouldn’t be so close to literal.)

[Flap Jack]

You know I did think as I posted that, “Should I clarify that I don’t mean it in the romantic or sexual sense? Nah, it’ll be fine”.

[Flap Jack]

Preventing Lister from being put into stasis or just getting him off the ship entirely would be sufficient to save the universe, but saving the lives of everyone on board Red Dwarf is a desirable stretch goal.

The Destiny Engine is definitely the most confusing aspect of Titan, because it’s essential to everything, but I finished the story with basically no clarity on how it works or what it even is. I get that it’s a malevolent force which is distorting reality so that events are so similar to those in the prime universe that the universes destroy each other, but why are some defiances of destiny merely difficult while others are impossible? It’s apparently critical that the Zorro virus is set, and that Lister gets put into stasis for smuggling a Cat on board, but Lister replacing his cat with a cat-like humanoid and escaping the ship is doable, while warning the Captain about the virus just isn’t.

Maybe the Destiny Engine can be defied more easily as long as it’s still possible for things to get back on course (Lister could go into stasis for a different reason, and they plan to come back to the ship), but that just makes it seem like things are ultimately hopeless no matter what they do.

[Flap Jack]

So basically,

[Flap Jack]

The pre-Series 8 Clara era did bring us the iconically creepy “A mystery wrapped in an enigma squeezed into a skirt that’s just a little bit too… tight”. I don’t know if it was Moffat or Gaiman who wrote it, and I don’t know which would be worse either.

So I prefer the Capaldi era just because it stopped writers trying to give The Doctor sexual tension with Clara. Ageism is still bad but it came in handy there.

[Flap Jack]

Somewhere out there, there’s an EastEnders fan who got into it because they saw Dimensions in Time.

Bonus points if they’d never seen Doctor Who before either.

[Flap Jack]

Asylum of the Daleks is shit, so I’d say there are better first stories. I’m not a fan of Clara so I’m not keen on the idea but Snowmen’s good.

AotD is shit, but is it shit to the same degree if you’re a Doctor Who novice? Not having any prior familiarity with the Daleks or Amy and Rory might be the optimum conditions to enjoy the episode, even if it won’t become great (you don’t need to know the show to know how contrived it is for a couple to finalise their divorce without having a single honest conversation about why they’re breaking up). But more research may be needed.

[Flap Jack]

I think I would be annoyed if I primarily wanted to watch Doctor Who for Jenna Coleman and my fan friend compelled me to watch the prior 88 episodes before she first shows up. Even at the height of Moffatian excess, Doctor Who isn’t THAT serialised – starting at Asylum of the Daleks surely would have been fine. TV shows are generally written to bring new viewers on board, at least if you start at the beginning of a series.

It’s just that if you’re a fan you want newbies to experience things in the ideal order and have maximum context for things, but it’s not really necessary. You can become a massive Red Dwarf fan even if you start with Back to Reality. Luckily it worked out in this case though!

[Flap Jack]

Well the Time Lord Victorious arc for a start, and how having a companion like Clara who fed into the Doctor’s bullshit instead of opposing it led to disastrous consequences. It’s a pretty big theme in New Who.

Ah, I see. So I think you and Nev Fountain mean different things when you talk about there needing to be checks on The Doctor. A companion will sometimes persuade them not to abuse their power or cross ethical lines, but the Time Lords would hypothetically directly limit their capabilities, in particular making it more difficult and risky to do standard hero stuff that companions typically do not have a problem with at all.

It’s like “Superman is too powerful – there’s no tension in his stories because we know he can take down any threat” vs. “Superman is too powerful – what if he enslaves humanity?”. It’s debatable if either or both these things are actually problems, but saying “Superman would never enslave humanity because his friends and family are too strong of a moral influence” does not solve the issue of Superman stories not having enough dramatic tension.

The Time Lord Victorious example is an interesting one too, because while a companion would probably not support The Doctor’s subsequent megalomaniacal attitude, the instigating incident – risking the integrity of space-time in order to save more lives – is something a companion would usually be on board with. The Aztecs, Father’s Day, The Fires of Pompeii… it’s always the companion who’s trying to get The Doctor to abuse their time travel privileges for a perceived greater good, while The Doctor pushes back and acts as his own check. Just think of Genesis of the Daleks, where The Doctor is saying “Do I have the right?” while Sarah Jane is in the back of the shot saying “Oh my god, who cares, they’re Daleks, just kill the bastards already!”. (Ironically the Time Lords were actually on Sarah Jane’s side in this instance, but the principle is still there.)

[Flap Jack]

I don’t think the Time Lords ever really functioned as a “check” on the Doctor. On two occasions, they were a major nuisance (War Games & Trial) and the rest of the time, they basically popped up once every few seasons to give him a job to do. 

Well I can see where Fountain is coming from, because that War Games instance did last for multiple full seasons and create an era which was both popular and critically well received. So it’s proven that a cosmic authority putting hard limits on The Doctor’s freedom can work, I just think that only works as a temporary subversion of the status quo, not as the status quo itself. And the suggestion that it “is not drama” if The Doctor isn’t being frequently bothered by the Time Lords or some equivalent to them is pretty silly. I think if you actually committed to this idea (while still having the show explore time and space, because that’s the premise), then The Doctor avoiding or outright defeating the Time Lords would quickly become routine and they’d lose all their bite.

The classic formula of “the Time Lords are around, and they generally leave The Doctor alone and don’t get involved in things, but on the rare occasion they do intervene, it’s serious” is fine though.

The companion is the “check” for the Doctor, not the Time Lords.

In what way? They definitely serve as emotional grounding, but I wouldn’t say they limit The Doctor’s freedom or power at all, at least not usually. Unless you mean that they prevent The Doctor from going all out against their enemies because they can’t risk them getting hurt?

[Flap Jack]

Interesting Bluesky thread from Nev Fountain:

https://bsky.app/profile/nevfountain.bsky.social/post/3mvpvqhqs2c2d

I find myself agreeing with most of it (although saying things like “The Doctor does not have a character” feels needlessly provocative), but I definitely disagree with his point about there needing to be an authority figure like the Time Lords acting as a check on The Doctor, and the one about it being bad if “aimless wandering” is the only thing connecting the stories. As far as I’m concerned the show is at its best when the stories are standalone, and throwing in Time Lords seems like treating the symptom instead of the disease.

[Flap Jack]

I would never de-canonise any era of the show, and Capaldi was probably the modern Doctor with the highest average episode quality after Tennant and Eccleston. However,

[Flap Jack]

Good news! It might take a while, but new Doctor Who will happen.

– The show will be back in 2028/2029

Technically it just said “28/29” so knowing our luck it’ll be 2128.

– The pitches don’t necessarily have to follow the showrunner model that’s been used since 2005

Oh god, do I dare to dream?

[Flap Jack]

Ah yes, I think the minimum is three characters.

So that’s why I can never get matches for most of Marooned.

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It’s the Silverberg.

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I had had a dream that I made another Red Dwarf connecting puzzle. Oh, hang on, that wasn’t a dream, I actually did.

[Flap Jack]

[Flap Jack]

BED DWARF: TITAN

Red Dwarf flies in range of a Casper Sleep Station, which sends the crew an automated sponsorship offer: 100 years of luxury food and entertainment supplies, in exchange for them replacing all of the ship’s mattresses with Casper Mattresses, adding Casper promotional graphics to all their intra-ship communications, and painting the Casper logo onto the side of the ship. Lister remembers that they’re down to their last 10 years of vindaloo sauce, and agrees.

However, they soon discover that all of the new mattresses are painfully uncomfortable, due to Casper specialising in holo-mattresses for the post-dead and skimping on quality for all other markets. The Dwarfers try to get out of the contract, but realise that they’re legally locked in for the full 100 years. That is, until they find out that their contract actually clashes with a pre-existing deal that the JMC made with Titan Mattress (headquartered on Callisto), who make vastly superior quality mattresses, have options to suit every living humanoid, and offer a 120-year trial period, a limited lifetime warranty, and free delivery to all residences and businesses between Earth and Uranus.

Unfortunately Casper aren’t as friendly as they first appeared, and won’t leave without a fight…

[Flap Jack]

Marge, they’re just synonyms, okay.

I wouldn’t say they are synonyms, and that’s part of the problem. For Rimmer, the Emohawk just sucked out a bunch of his bad qualities instead of focusing on a specific one. But bitterness is kind of the main one, because it’s the one he says first and repeats later, and it’s the one which is actually an emotion. Snidiness – or snideness, as the internet insists it’s spelled whenever I search it to double check I have the definition right – is more of a behaviour.

Fair’s fair, though, snidiness is on the list. I’m sorry for falsely correcting you on that.

[Flap Jack]

I like Emohawk, it only bothers me that it steals Rimmer’s snidiness and Cat’s vanity for no particular reason. They’re not in a heightened state like in Polymorpth. It could have picked any random emotion but, surprise, surprise, it picks those. Just a bit lazy.

It didn’t steal Rimmer’s snideness or Cat’s vanity.

Cat’s vanity would have been a particularly crap choice, because that was literally the exact same combination as in Polymorph 1.

The actual ones aren’t much better though. “Cool” is NOT AN EMOTION. Bitterness is, but it felt too reductive to say that removing that one emotion would simply turn Rimmer into Ace (even superficially).

[Flap Jack]

(This is why everyone should be a G&T forum completionist.)

[Flap Jack]

I’m a bit late but I am a big fan of like two thirds of Emohawk. Not that the last third is bad or anything, but I feel like the writing is really sharp in all the cockpit scenes. But that also might be partly because I hadn’t rewatched it in eons unlike most of the other VI episodes and so it was better than I remember it being.

It’s interesting because I had kind of the opposite experience. I remembered the episode fondly, and although I didn’t think it was bad on a rewatch, not only did it become clearer how weak the last third was as just a sequence of directionless fanservice, I found the early cockpit material to be pretty weak as well. Lots of diminished returns of earlier gags, lots of overexplaining:

https://www.ganymede.tv/forums/topic/refresh-for-the-memory-series-vi-byte-2/#post-278875

I am also duty bound to remind everyone that Emohawk was the episode with the shite looking spinning police disc.

I do still enjoy the episode, but I rated it as the second worst bubble episode, and every post bubble series bar VIII has multiple better episodes than it.

[Flap Jack]

I wonder, would Emohawk be as well regarded if the exact same episode existed outside of the bubble? Or was that the *one* time the callbacks were justified, in fans eyes, compared to what came later?

I know 2 things to be true:

1 – Emohawk is genuinely well regarded by some/many fans.

2 – Technically an episode can have anything other than the minimum amount of regard and still be hypothetically less well regarded.

And yet, this question still hit me like “Would Timewave be as beloved if it didn’t have Rimmer’s inner critic?”.

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