Flap Jack

[Flap Jack]

Blimey, they’ll be on Series XVII of the TV show by then.

[Flap Jack]

The miserable bastards of G&T, though they do deserve constant mocking and derision for their life choices, are not to blame for Poe’s Law.

[Flap Jack]

In The End, Rimmer says “Death? It’s like being on holiday with a group of Germans.”

This is a reference to the real life countries, East Germany and West Germany.

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, I enjoyed this one a lot! I even correctly predicted that Ruth was the real fugitive, and that there was a chameleon arch in play (though I thought it would be Lee’s medal box), but that didn’t hamper my enjoyment because the twists were just that wild. I definitely didn’t see the final twist coming either. Pour one out for all the fan theorists desperately hoping that one day a mysterious female character in Doctor Who will actually turn out to be Susan or The Rani.

This episode will live or die based on how much they screw up the conclusion. It could be great, but we could also end up with another A Good Man Goes to War on our hands.

As far as criticisms go, my only major one I have is how completely separate and superfluous the Captain Jack stuff felt. Fun to see him again to interact with the new companions, yes, but he was just there to tease future episodes, not to actually contribute to this one.

It’s also not a great sign that the best episodes of this series are the ones where Graham, Ryan and Yaz are separated from the plot for most of the episode and do something inconsequential while The Doctor carries the story.

[Flap Jack]

Fun fact about the production of Timewave: the costume selection was done by Linda Glover, the casting was done by Doug Naylor, and Howard Burden wrote the script.

[Flap Jack]

Red Dwarf has addressed social issues? When?

[Flap Jack]

I more or less enjoyed Orphan 55 as I was watching it, but it definitely seems more shit the more I think about it.

– Pretty good monster design (though perhaps a bit generic), as well as a name that is actually memorable (!), but the design for the people was extremely basic. A couple of them have green hair, and one of them is in Cats cosplay. That’s it.

– The twist about the planet was OK, but The Doctor’s speech at the end felt like it was filling time more than anything, and it was clearly directed at the audience more than the companions. Plus, the part about it being only a “possible” future was a serious cop out considering the subject matter. Doctor Who doesn’t usually treat the futures they visit like that? Also, there was a serious gap in the script where we ought to have got clarity about whether Orphan 55’s true nature was supposed to be a surprise to everyone or just to the time travellers. (Maybe I’m just misremembering bits there.)

– You could feel the painful grinding of the plot as they justified the action of having literally every character leave the safety of the dome to go look for someone (“BENNNI!!!!”) who was so clearly doomed, especially considering the fact that the monsters kept him alive made no sense.

– The villain here had the thinnest motivation and stupidest plan combination of any Doctor Who villain I can remember. And yet by the end we were supposed to sympathise with her, I guess? So bad.

– Yeah, have to agree with quinn that it’s always frustrating when they’re like “we need enough energy to teleport everyone out!” and I’m like “No, you need enough energy to teleport ONE person out: THE DOCTOR, so she can rescue everyone with HER GODDAMN TARDIS”. It’s quite a contrast when you consider the liberal use of Bill and Ted time travel solutions in the last episode.

– Anyone else confused by that bit where they were sure Ryan was dead, even though there’s no reason the system would register him as such?

– “Leaving the safe area in a huff” and “leaving the safe area to pick up a hat” definitely rank up there as cringeworthy ways characters get themeselves in mortal danger.

– Graham is a treasure as always. Protect Graham at all costs.

– Siliconia still has the better characterisation and costume design for a James Buckley guest character.

[Flap Jack]

That’s cool, it can just be hard sometimes to tell how much is in the “stuff I noticed” column and how much is in the “stuff I have a serious problem with” column.

Obviously you know that you’re not making these minor observations as a thesis about how bad the episode is, but people have built media careers doing just that, so it’s not too strange.

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, I thought that was pretty great. It was well paced, the action was good, the characters all made an impression, the monsters were sufficiently threatening, and I didn’t see the reveal at the end coming either. Let’s just hope part 2 sticks the landing!

I think the only complaint made here that I agree with is that the dialogue is frequently overloaded with unnecessary exposition. Not a big deal and the cast to their best but it always comes across as awkward.

It can be easy to fall into the trap of nitpicking every minor incidental detail of Doctor Who, CinemaSins style (e.g. Ben assuming that a death ray can’t be reflected by a mirror, or that the blue box being a disguise would make it impossible for there to be wires hanging out of the bottom of it), and conclude that because you’ve uncovered X number of trivial complaints, that’s enough to make the episode bad. But that’s a bad outlook to take with sci-fi shows or with fiction in general. Those nitpicks don’t really matter individually and they don’t really matter collectively.

Also, it’s a minor point, but I’m glad to see the return of multi-parters and the return of giving stories an overall title. Of all the things for Russell T Davies to bring back from the William Hartnell era, making multi-parters all have individual titles with no overall one was always a bizarre choice, and equally bizarre that it persisted through the Steven Moffat era. Having to refer to stories like ‘Extremis/The Pyramid at the End of the World/The Lie of the Land’ is just annoying.

[Flap Jack]

I’m sure RJ got a fair amount of freedom to work out the details, but I doubt Disney would have let him deviate from the overall plan for the trilogy.

To be clear, I wasn’t saying that Epsiode IX hasn’t been written partly as a reaction to how Episode VIII was written (because obviously that’s how serialised storytelling works, regardless of which aspects were written and when), just that The Rise of Skywalker’s writing and direction would not have been reworked in response to the *reception* of The Last Jedi. That would be too late.

The map question is a good one, and I don’t have a definitive answer. People seem divided between “he didn’t want to be found, but was open to being found if there was an *extremely* good reason” (which Rey wanting him to help with the Resistance is not) and the explanation you off-handedly dismissed, that Luke didn’t make the map as a breadcrumb trail for people to find him, people just deduced/knew that he’d gone to this jedi temple area, and had to go from there. Take your pick I guess.

Thankfully the map question is at worst a minor plot hole. It’s not a big deal.

[Flap Jack]

… it may be a TOUCH premature to say what The Rise of Skywalker feels like. XD

Honestly though, the production of these movies is too quick and too planned for the fan narrative of “OK if unoriginal start with TFA, screwed up by TLJ, Disney panicking to fix it with TRoS” to be at all reflective of reality. The broad strokes of this trilogy would most likely have been fixed since 2014.

They “mystery box” aspect to people’s complaints can get a bit odd, too. The only real mystery box of The Force Awakens is the quest to find Luke, and at the end they find him, and then in The Last Jedi everything that happens with Luke and all we learn about Luke makes perfect sense with what had been set up in the previous film. Rian Johnson didn’t throw away or “subvert” J.J. Abrams’ mystery box, he satisfactorily solved the mystery.

OK, maybe giving a mystery box a satisfying conclusion that doesn’t immediately set up another bigger mystery box is incredibly subversive in itself, but still.

[Flap Jack]

Seems like some hefty projection there. Rian Johnson is proud of his work (as he should be!) and so naturally he’s going to act as he feels. Taking this as him being some sort of smug, self-important arsehole is just a way to feel more resolute about hating the movie.

This is another thing that’s reminiscent of the reaction to the prequels. There was a persistent projection of George Lucas as an arrogant, lazy, selfish control freak who had contempt for the fans. It was no more true for Lucas then than it is for Johnson now. As I’ve said, people like what they like and dislike what they dislike and that’s fine, it’s just the level of vitriol around this topic that is not cool.

Also pretty funny that you keep going back to the “criticising older movies is not a defence of the newer ones” point, when you criticised the sequels by defending the prequels earlier. Comparison doesn’t suddenly become an invalid critical tool just because you’re talking about similarities rather than differences.

[Flap Jack]

Actually, I’ve become convinced over the years that Lawrence Kasdan got too much credit for having “written Empire”…

But becoming convinced that Kasdan fluked his way to Academy Award victory and didn’t actually care about The Force Awakens is not based on actual evidence, you’re just jumping to that conclusion because you don’t like some of his (cut) ideas or like The Force Awakens itself.

Just as it’s completely unfair to give George Lucas little credit for writing Empire Strikes Back just because you hate the prequels (*cough* Red Letter Media *cough), it’s also unfair to do the same to Lawrence Kasdan, or, say, to give Rob Grant majority of the credit for Red Dwarf Series 1-VI just because you hate Series VII and VIII.

Also the Michael Arndt dismissal is even more baseless. You don’t just write a modern classic like Toy Story 3 without any talent just because Disney is in charge.

I wasn’t asking you to praise their writing on TFA or anything, just saying that it’s unreasonable to retroactively class people as hacks who don’t care about their work just because you personally didn’t like the result.

“Subverted expectations” is basically a meme at this point, but I really do get the impression that Rian Johnson believes that just the simple act of doing so is clever or satisfying in its own right, when it really isn’t.

But again, you’ve been given no reason whatsoever to think this (other than the fact that if it were true it would make your anger towards the movie feel more fair and righteous). Johnson subverted expectations in some ways with TLJ, but it all had a purpose beyond the subversion. You hating it does not mean it was done for no reason.

There’s probably no merit in debating the actual content of The Last Jedi here (such as pointing out how many of your criticisms apply 100% to Empire Strikes Back ;-P), and if you hated it, then fair, you hated it. But it’s not helpful to invent this idea that Rian Johnson made The Last Jedi purely to fuck with the audience. The people who made this film tried their best to tell an engaging story, and it sadly failed to please everyone. That’s all.

[Flap Jack]

You absolutely don’t need to defend liking the prequel trilogy, Ben. If it’s good for you, it’s good.

Though the discourse surrounding Star Wars films would be a bit nicer if people refrained from hyperbolic harshness like “Imagine what good writers who care about telling good stories could have done with Star Wars Episode VII”. Come on, man, The Force Awakens was co-written by Lawrence Kasdan and Michael Arndt! Those are both great, Oscar-winning screenwriters and obviously they cared. Saying this stuff doesn’t help your argument.

Also, I don’t know why people keep pretending that any critic was making “it subverts your expectations!” as the entire argument for why TLJ was great. Obviously it was the particular ways they did this that helped make the film great, not just that it did it at all.

Flap Jack I think you are taking my off hand/ hot take comments as some sort of research paper that is going to get published and get a lot of traction.

It’s not and I don’t really care, it’s just my opinion. Not trying to upset anyone with it.

It’s OK, GT, I’m not upset, just… confused. Opinions are all well and good, but “I don’t think any adult is fanatic about the new Star Wars films” is not a subjective statement, it’s an observation of an assumed objective truth.

Sure, of course I’m not worried about your personal influence on this topic. I’m not worried about your influence on the classification of all the different types of birds either, but I would still very much be taken aback if one day you said “you know, I don’t think emus actually exist, I think they’re made up, I’ve certainly never come across one, just my opinion”.

Then next thing you know everyone’s accusing me of caring too much about emu conservation.

[Flap Jack]

at the moment I don’t think there are adults that are fanatical about the sequels, more Star Wars in general.

It’s so odd to take a stance this absolutist. (Only a sith etc.) Most would just say that people who love the Star Wars sequels are a minority, which can’t be disproven just by anecdote, but all you have to do to disprove yourself here is find 1 adult who genuinely loves The Last Jedi. So… congrats! Job done.

[Flap Jack]

I would rather have more good Red Dwarf episodes than perfect versions of Series 1-6.

Shitey VHS versions would be bad, but they’d still have the jokes, the characters, the ideas. It would still be worth it.

[Flap Jack]

Plenty of people care enough to see it, but I don’t think there are people who are fanatically interested in just the sequels.

You mean people over a certain age who love the sequels but either dislike or are uninterested in the original trilogy? Or just anyone who loves the sequels for their own sake?

Because if it’s the former, then that’s a pretty weird bar to set. I’m sure many people like that exist, but Star Wars is too ubiquitous a property to conclude anything from that.

If it’s the latter, then you can rest easy in the knowledge that the Star Wars sequels have a specific, massive and dedicated fanbase. Maybe even bigger than the Red Dwarf fanbase. ;-)

[Flap Jack]

OK, GT, art is subjective and thinking the current Star Wars films are unwatchable garbage is just a valid opinion as any, but surely you must realise that “I don’t think there’s anyone who gives a toss about the current trilogy now” is pure projection. A rejection of reality.

Like, the popularity of, for example, Fortnite confounds me, but I’d have to pretty deep in delusion to say “don’t think anyone actually cares about Fortnite tbh”.

[Flap Jack]

Well, either The Force Awakens was good enough on its own merits to take The Last Jedi to a billion dollar gross, or hype around the Star Wars brand is persistent enough to take The Last Jedi to a billion dollar gross (or more likely a combination of both), but either way, it all comes down to the same thing: Star Wars is a big deal everywhere, and everywhere lots of people would have signed up to Disney+ to watch it.

Like, it’s immaterial that Marvel is bigger than Star Wars, because Disney chose to prioritise Star Wars in America anyway, so it would be just as valid to prioritise it internationally too.

Though it is a bit difficult to talk about the development of the Star Wars series when we disagree so hugely about the quality of the recent films. ;-)

As far as I can tell (and probably as far as Disney can tell, too) the recent Avengers films are hated just as much as the recent Star Wars films. The difference is that Star Wars is a revived 40 year old series while the MCU has only been around a decade or so, so therefore much more of the Star Wars detractors are likely to be former fans – with all the incredibly vocal, often toxic online “engagement” that entails – which can make it seem like The Last Jedi gets a lot more hate than Avengers: Endgame or Captain Marvel, or that said hate is more valid. But it doesn’t, and it isn’t.

[Flap Jack]

Not sure that tracks. Marvel movies may be bigger than Star Wars (mostly due to variety/volume and the last 2 Avengers ones), but Star Wars is still a hugely popular, multi-billion dollar series globally. The last 4 films have been good to amazing, The Force Awakens is the 4th highest grossing film of all time, most of the Disney era stuff has been critically successful etc. If The Mandalorian is a draw in the US, it would be a draw in much of the rest of the world too.

I can definitely see execs depending on Marvel for a backup plan of new launch content for the international markets, but it still feels like a backup plan.

[Flap Jack]

I agree totally that Disney have only got themselves to blame for so many people pirating The Mandalorian. If Disney+ isn’t ready to launch internationally yet, either due to technical problems or because so much of their archival content is still licensed out to other networks, then they should just sell The Mandalorian to a regular TV channel. They can still make it exclusive to Disney+ when it finally arrives.

And pretty much the same logic should apply for Batwoman… though irritatingly I actually did find a way to legally pay to watch Batwoman in the UK, so I can’t morally justify the piracy route in that case.

From my perspective The Mandalorian doesn’t seem like a show that I need to watch urgently because it’s a prequel and it doesn’t even connect to anything else in the broader story as far as I’m aware. This puts it more on the level of The Clone Wars or Rebels cartoons in terms of importance, and I haven’t even watched those yet, so I’ve no issue with waiting and deciding later. But I still understand why people don’t want to wait.

Though maybe if I did watch it I’d find out why people keep calling the main character “Mando” when surely it should be “Manda”.

[Flap Jack]

At least The Mandalorian is a standalone thing and Disney+ has a confirmed UK launch window.

The TRUE streaming-service-bullshit of 2019 is Warner Bros. declining to sell the Batwoman TV series for UK broadcast, even though it shares the same continuity and has crossover specials with 4 other DC Comics series which we do get, and the rumoured reason is that they want it to be exclusive to their own streaming service. A streaming service which not only doesn’t exist yet, but hasn’t even been announced yet.

[Flap Jack]

Alas, this show has not received a UK release! Sounds like I’m not missing out on much, though. There’s probably enough high quality Star Wars available between the movies, cartoons and books.

[Flap Jack]

Ohhhh, OK. Somewhat confusing for people to compare the frame rates of PAL and NTSC if the frame rates vary based on format for NTSC but not PAL.

[Flap Jack]

So even though NTSC standard is 29.97 fps, American TV shows run at 24 fps?

Rude.

[Flap Jack]

Isn’t NTSC a higher FPS than PAL, not the other way around?

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, 16:9 Simpsons has been a problem for ages. I guess Fox wanted to present classic episodes as “modern-looking” and therefore wide-screen, even if it required disastrous amounts of cropping.

Sky insists on using these shittier versions of the episodes for repeats, and they always look and feel wrong. Credit to Channel 4 for not doing that and using the 4:3 versions, last I checked.

Apparently in the US the 16:9 versions were the only options on FXX and the Simpsons World app, until people complained so much that they put up the 4:3 versions as well. People assumed that this correction would be carried forward to Disney+, but WHOOPS, guess that would have been too much work.

It’s like Red Dwarf Remastered all over again!

[Flap Jack]

– Lister and Rimmer’s superior is called Todhunter, which foreshadows the grisly fate of the crew. Tod is German for Death, and Hunter is English for Hunter, meaning that Todhunter was “hunting” death by working for a mining company / calling Rimmer a smeghead / using too many takes to explain what stasis is.

[Flap Jack]

The End

– Although this episode is called “The End” it’s actually the first episode of the series.

– The episode title “The End” is a reference to the boss character of the same name in ‘Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater’ (2004), who dies on his own if you save in the middle of the battle against him and then load the save after 3 million years.

– Rimmer says that death is “like being on holiday with a bunch of Germans”. This is a reference to the anti-German sentiment that was stirred up at the time of the 2016 European Union membership referendum in the UK, which hadn’t happened yet for the viewers, but was in the past from the perspective of the Boys From the Red Dwarfers, who come from the 26th century.

– Lister’s cat is called is called Frankenstein. This is a reference to the groundbreaking sci-fi horror book by Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. In the show, Frankenstein is brought back to life as The Cat just as Frankenstein in the book was resurrected from dead bodies (and Hollister threatens to cut Frankenstein up just like the dead body parts in the book are cut up, and Lister asks for the parts to be put back together just like book Frankenstein’s body parts are put back together before being reanimated). Lister is also saved from death by science, and spends the series trying to win love and respect from his spiritual father, Rimmer, who initially ostracized him as a monster. Later, in ‘Confidence & Paranoia’, Lister demands that Rimmer makes a Kochanski hologram for him, just as Frankenstein in the book demanded that Frankenstein make him a woman. Also like in the book, this plan goes awry.

– Rimmer says that death is “like being on holiday with a group of Germans”. This is a reference to the fact that Rimmer is a racist.

– At the very end of the episode, Lister says “look out, Earth – the slime’s coming home!”. This foreshadows the episode ‘Out of Time’ where Lister in the future is shown to be a brain in a jar which is filled with a liquid that could be slime or similar to slime.

[Flap Jack]

OK, I’ve thought about it, and this one is definitely my favourite:

DNA

– This episode has several (subtle) references to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. D.N.A are the initials of Douglas Noel Adams. It is episode 2 of series 4, which could be written as episode 4.2 – leave out the dot and you get 42. The skeleton with additional heads could be be a reference to Zaphod Beeblebrox.

“Subtle” is definitely one way of putting it.

The “Series 4, Episode 2 = Episode 4.2 = 42” part is even better if you remember that DNA was filmed last.

[Flap Jack]

Only the Good…

– Die Hard fans wrongly assumed that (#8.8) was the last ever episode of “Red Dwarf” because of the caption at the end “The End. The Smeg is it!” and that it would be a decade until the series returned.

Well of course Die Hard fans would get this wrong. They should have asked Red Dwarf fans.

[Flap Jack]

Wow, that’s a pretty comprehensive selection of content.

Can’t wait to marathon the Carry On films and The Only Way Is Essex back to back.

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, I thought about it while watching Me² again the other night, and it has to be at least 32-33 really doesn’t it?

Which makes his complaint that his failure is all down to sharing a bunk with Lister very silly, given that they must only have been roommates for a fraction of Rimmer’s career. Still, that’s in-character for him to come up with such a spurious self-justification.

I can totally imagine Rimmer believing that he was on the verge of a breakthrough in his career progression after 12-13 years, but then Lister came along and made him go off the rails. That’s just classic Rimmerishness.

[Flap Jack]

Ashes to Ashes is just a rip-off of Red Dwarf Series IX.

[Flap Jack]

Signed books are bad sellers generally. It’s not really a currency like it used to be even 10-15 years ago – the only autographs that move are (a) by the long dead or (b) frameable display pieces like prints/photographs/small posters.

I get what you’re saying, but Agaly, please don’t murder Rob and Doug just to increase the value of your signed copy of IWCD.

[Flap Jack]

They should know from experience that a chicken is approximately the size and shape of a Quagaar warrior.

[Flap Jack]

I buy Lister trying to seduce Rimmer, but Rimmer coming up with that plan to defeat Epideme? Pull the other one.

[Flap Jack]

I think that Blue is after Duct Soup for 2 very good reasons:

1. It’s not exactly as exciting to see Rimmer again if he’s been in every episode before it anyway. If you have Duct Soup first to cement the new status quo, it makes Chris Barrie’s appearances in Blue more of a nice surprise.
2. It’s cruel to let people watch Duct Soup without giving them a proper palate cleanser the week after.

[Flap Jack]

They should release the Mobisodes in 4K 48FPS 3D, exclusive to IMAX.

[Flap Jack]

Oh man, I often expect to miss the whole point, but the whole entire point? That’s just upsetting to hear.

[Flap Jack]

It doesn’t really matter what the specific details were. Of course The Doctor was frequently butting heads with UNIT and was ultimately not happy to be there, but regardless UNIT were allies to The Doctor in every episode and were co-heroes of the show. You physically *can’t* make a TV series with that set up without said series being pro-military. Even if the Producer is a Buddhist hippy.

Got to remember that the politics of Doctor Who itself is separate from the politics held by The Doctor personally, but even for the latter it’s still very inconsistent. The Doctor is so OK with the Brigadier’s military involvement that he salutes his corpse inside a cyberman, but in that same series he basically sees Danny Pink as a child killer for having been a soldier, before he even has the opportunity to find out that he actually did kill a child.

[Flap Jack]

I don’t think Three himself is actually especially right wing, but it’s inevitable that if your status quo for 5 seasons is “The Doctor works for a military organisation to fight off alien threats to Earth” then inevitably your show and main character are going to have a much more pro-military vibe.

[Flap Jack]

The question of “Was the first Doctor a racist/sexist/homophobe etc.?” is a little tricky. Because obviously nobody writing, directing or producing the show was actively trying to craft a racist character, but given the time it was made and the people who made it, that doesn’t mean he didn’t end up racist regardless.

I mean, the guy literally referred to Native Americans as “Red Indian” and described them as savages in episode 1 of the entire series. That’s clearly racist by the standards of the 1860s, let alone the 1960s.

I sympathise with Steven Moffat’s desire not to sanitise the first Doctor and the real world context of the show’s inception, but unfortunately he did overcorrect by making One’s bigotry so blatant in Twice Upon A Time, so in the end in just seems like he’s patting himself on the back for not making the Doctor an overt bigot in his episodes, which is like the bare minimum you should do.

Also, I agree that Doctor Who’s politics were always a bit inconsistent even if they generally trended progressive. The Green Death is pro-environmental, The Sun Makers is anti-tax, The Happiness Patrol is anti-Thatcher, the Pertwee era is (broadly) pro-military etc. It’s all over the place, really. The Doctor will be a revolutionary in one story and fighting to maintain the status quo in the next. Nothing wrong with that necessarily! But it is wilful misremembering to say that Doctor Who is by default an anarchic, leftist show.

[Flap Jack]

I wouldn’t put too much stock in what Rob says. He’s probably too focused on The Quanderhorn Xperimentations.

[Flap Jack]

All?! Now that is an impressive endeavour! I’m not sure I even have the time to read the titles of all of the published Doctor Who novels, let alone the content.

Seriously, if anyone at BBC Books, IDW, Big Finish etc. is reading this, could you maybe just… stop? Come on, just give me a few decades to catch up. It’s only fair.

[Flap Jack]

POE: “What? Am I the only sane one here? Why don’t we just do another lightspeed jump and escape into hyperspace?”

HOLDO: “A superlative suggestion, Captain, with just two minor flaws. One, the First Order can track us through hyperspace, and two, the First Order can track us through hyperspace.

Now I realise that, technically speaking, that’s only one flaw, but I thought it was such a big one it was worth mentioning twice.”

[Flap Jack]

“Dave, you switched off your planetary pool targeting computer. What’s wrong?”

[Flap Jack]

Lister discovers that 3 million years ago he accidentally left his kitchen light on, and as a consequence has accrued such a debt that he is forced to become a carbonite statue in Jabba the Hutt’s palace.

[Flap Jack]

The forum Edit and Reply buttons should just be removed or hidden, tbh.

[Flap Jack]

…

Understandable.

[Author]

Replies