GlenTokyo

[GlenTokyo]

Intriguing…

Doug said the quality wasn’t there a few months ago so it got canned, bluffing?

Here’s the info page from blu-ray dot com

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Red-Dwarf-Series-1-Blu-ray/157922/#Overview

I’d happily buy them on blu-ray, they have value to me if they have the model footage scanned in full HD, a re-edit would be nice to include them but that’s an ask, and if they have everything on one disc.

Any updated “tour of the ship” menus and any new material is a bonus (Rob and Doug commentaries for some episodes? Rob, Ed and Doug?)

Cautiously excited, just because it’s the 30th.

[GlenTokyo]

Too big to film in the place they decided to film, not too big to film elsewhere as proved by the movie concept footage.

They could have just planned ahead and booked a studio big enough, just proves how rushed it all was, even before set backs. Only the audio side (minus the library music and incongruous sound effects) got it right.

[GlenTokyo]

What gets me about that model though is in Re-Dwarf Doug explains it all and says that as a piece of model making it was lightyears ahead of the OG one, I just don’t see how. It’s better than the rebuild one, which didn’t have the weathered look (due to potentially only being built to get blown to bits/smaller budget and timeframe) but even in the film concept shot and the unused end crawl on Bodysnatcher, I just don’t see it. Scale wise it looks small, like the empire state building laying down or something, not 5 miles long.

I don’t really have a hatred for the new model in its original form, prefer the OG one, but even if they’d filmed a model it still would have been worse.

The model we have now though is even worse that that imo, too short, cone too long. I’d honestly take a CG Dwarf now, some hybrid.

The big section too has horrendous light leakage that really makes it look like some plastic sheets over a strip light.

[GlenTokyo]

It’s a series 3000

[GlenTokyo]

Probably a really fucking awful 2D picture of the new Dwarf cut up and flying away with a soft yellow particle effect behind it.

[GlenTokyo]

Yeah that is awful. Don’t know what Chris Veale was working with back then but I found myself thinking to myself many times why he didn’t render out separate shots because even a lot of the flybys are a blue screen Dwarf comped in to a starfield.

That shot though, it doesn’t even make sense, they’d have hit each other I think, and the foreground one isn’t big enough.

I quite liked the disappearing ship from Parallel Universe, but that was one of very few good shots, that and the Polymorph opening are the ones that show what could have been done with more time and money but so many are poor.

[GlenTokyo]

Because it can’t be erased from memory and it’s existence has repercussions for the rest of it.

Also that post makes me sound entitled like Doug owes me something, he did co-create the show so he’s still on my Christmas card list, but yeah.

[GlenTokyo]

Not an error I suppose, but ignorance.

Kochanski not being there after a time jump was explained at least, even if it was done in an easy, ‘btw she dead/fucked off’ way.

I really don’t like the sort of jokey “what am I like” attitude around the unresolved VIII ending from Doug, regardless of the fact VIII should be erased from existence and memory, it just celebrates previous shitness and as Dax says, he gets away with it because we’re a forgiving bunch largely, probably because Red Dwarf has been with a lot of us for a couple of decades.

[GlenTokyo]

Red Dwarf has ship wide bioorganic networking so why not. Also, long shot but would wood be organic, it was once part of a living organism like the curry and Rimmer’s dandruff, maybe it was a tasteful oak spaceship? Or just a wooden/ organic by product.

Kryten being part organic seems to suggest that humans managed to make synthetic brain matter for computation pretty well, so why not use that to run a ship too.

[GlenTokyo]

Same Dave. Also not of Earth construction could just mean made on Titan or something, it’s clear in Legion that other planets have different cultures, Jovian boogle hoops, Mercurian boomerang spoon etc

Could also be Kryten is just talking out of his arse since he’s probably only remained in contact with Earth for a couple of centuries after creation, so it might just be after his time, but I choose the ‘transmogrified beyond recognition’ explanation, as it goes with the double dog head fella later.

The pan dimensional liquid beast from the mogadon cluster, Vidal beast are questionable though to me though. Though I suppose if humans made the polymorph and can cross dimensions then they could make a beast that can cross dimensions which they fired off into deep space.

[GlenTokyo]

You know I’d never really considered how Kochanski must have been feeling, in VIII Doug just binned the idea of her missing her Dave and her previous life.

They could just do an episode set in that universe, and cut between sort of Samsara but with the main cast. Our crew find a beacon with a video explaining it and they go through the story. Actually sounds a bit Thanks for the Memory. Might be decent, get the crew in snazzy alternative outfits, Craig gets to do a bit of acting, bit of a mystery.

[GlenTokyo]

I do sort of want them to resolve Only The Good… not because it deserves it but because I fucking hate continuity errors. Such a massive cop out, I suppose I’m the ‘you made your bed, lie in it’ type haha

Also the longer it goes the more starts to conflict with all of VIII which just annoys me more than it should. That series was wank, but it exists and I’m a big fan of a universe with rules and lore, and Red Dwarf (it seems accidentally because from interviews neither Rob nor Doug seemed to have that in mind) had/has quite an interesting one.

The II to III continuity disaster I really didn’t mind because even though the scroll was a cop out, so much changed with that series for the better from sets to character back stories that it was worth it, and the scroll did sort of make sense.

[GlenTokyo]

Didn’t it say approximately on The End the original assembly? Or am I making that up?

The other points I’m with you. At a push Butler could have been the cheap 3000 series that looks naff, or the unreality bubble could have fabricated Kryten’s memory of the 3000 series, but I think Doug admits in the doc that he fudged the age of the universe for the sake of a joke.

Kochanski wise, if they’re going to ever resolve it, which I don’t think they will, I think she has to have been on the ship all along in stasis somewhere and fiddled with Kryten’s memory, all the other options (apart from ignoring her) are a bit too tragic for a 27 minute sitcom on Dave to handle properly.

With the broader strokes the series takes now, and emphasis on gags above all, any resolution to the Kochanski story involving her being found in any state other than lovely smiley Chloë Annett just couldn’t be done. If they make light of it it won’t fit with the characters, if they make some harrowing we’ve found Kochanski’s remains episode and make it like an episode of Happy Valley it’s out of character for the show.

Doug has fucked himself really, but he doesn’t dwell on continuity problems, he moves past them. I’d love to see him have a go at digging himself out of this one though.

[GlenTokyo]

It’d be interesting to rewatch some Gerry Anderson or anything pre Star Wars really and see if any familiar sounds turn up there too.

I’ve hear that Dagobah/ Starbug noise in other stuff too because it’s caught my ear but off the top of my head I can’t think what.

[GlenTokyo]

The t-shirts have been particularly poor this time round. London Jets and Mugs apart, which are hard to get wrong (though I could do without the series branding), almost all of the others I have issues with. The Leopard lager one has the wrong font, the XII one where they’re all Kryten is just bad, the Red Dwarf Haynes one has spelling and factual errors, and all the Haynes share the issue that they’re obviously ripping off Haynes but didn’t bother to do a mechanical drawing with internal gubbins.

I like the no longer insane one design wise but not as an item of clothing you’d actually wear, and the hoodies are hit and miss. The technician one is nice but is ruined by the series branding.

[GlenTokyo]

Can I say neither. One looks like Norman Lovett with a dodgy video effect over the top, one looks like Bobby Charlton covered in foundation.

[GlenTokyo]

Let’s hope that works. Otherwise

https://i.imgur.com/yRAsM5Ir.jpg

[GlenTokyo]

There’s a few moments in that episode that make me think handheld was either unplanned or they didn’t have enough time to get stuff to patch the sets up. You can see through the roof of Starbug, the dodgy bluescreen, in the eating curry scene you can almost see the audience seating, and there’s the bit at the end where they composited some foreground tat in to cover the studio floor.

[GlenTokyo]

What’s with the shutters? Starbug has shutters. They’re bronze and clearly visible on the outside of the windows, they close vertically.

The remastered one has a horizontal wiping shutter which is actually just black fill which makes the blue shimmering edges on Craig, Chris and the cockpit stand out even more than the grey that was there in the first place.

Also the order of operations in that Starbug. Start with the shutters open and fire her up, then close the shutters for the launch sequence, then open them seconds before you need to see where you’re going.

It’s a mess. There’s all sorts of stuff, basic commonsense stuff that’s just wrong. Timeslides, the gout of flame that comes out of the screen looks decent but is in the background, yet it covers foreground objects so it looks like it’s coming out at an angle that would miss Lister anyway. Another Timeslides audio one is the Blaize Falconburger bit has had its music replaced, but they’ve replaced it with a 2 second sting type thing, and just repeated it over and over. It’s terrible.

[GlenTokyo]

Having a watch of some series III remastered episodes. Jesus Christ. I honestly don’t think I’ve watched remastered since what I remember being an inflated price was paid at a local science fiction shop for then on VHS. There is some truly awful shit I’d completely forgotten and that didn’t make it into the High and Low either I don’t think. How about the abysmal attempt at a cloaking Starbug landing that looked like someone had cut out Starbug from a publicity shot in MS Paint and animated it all in PowerPoint. The aliasing alone should have got it cut, nevermind the fact that it’s a 2D image in a moving shot so none of the angles change.

Then there’s the cockpit windows in Marooned. I nearly puked. Looks like Starbug is at sea in a force 5 wind. It’s quite a feat to make something look worse than a mistake made in 1989.

Also Robert is credited as such in some episodes so fuck knows. It’s all incredibly slapdash.

Interesting though because I’d say I could do a lot of stuff better in one afternoon (excluding rendering) in after effects and premiere, so now would be a good time maybe to do it more authentically. Blu-ray release with all 3 series and a minor upres and grade, get rid of the film effect, but key stuff in windows and such, try and find the model shots and scan them in a higher resolution. Would be worth having that I imagine if they had the budget for it.

[GlenTokyo]

is this it?

If not I give up.

[GlenTokyo]

Fuck

[GlenTokyo]

It’s difficult to remember how to do it because it’s so inconsequential

I always get confused because under the post box it has you may use these HTML tags and attributes with <> and </> and when you insert images it’s so when quoting is [ ] I’ll never remember that.

10% of all posts on this forum are people fucking up quotes or expressing anger at not being able to quote or insert images correctly haha

[GlenTokyo]

Why can I not quote on this website?

[GlenTokyo]

<quote> A stick-on ‘H’. </quote>

Got that one. Would be pretty easy I reckon. Just make them as plastic keyrings but include some double sided tape.

Do all the various H’s in a pack.

[GlenTokyo]

Pepakura Kryten kits might be pretty doable.

[GlenTokyo]

Yeah that’d be nice. No spelling mistakes would be great too. There’s no such things as ramscopes and anti-mater.

[GlenTokyo]

CONFITANK & PANZERNOIA
CATANKRA
PETE PART TANK
ME <small>TANK</small>
KRYTANK
BACK TANK REALITY

[GlenTokyo]

Forgot to end it with a question, not much of a discussion topic.

What would you like to see on the store in 2018?

[GlenTokyo]

Balance of Panzer?

[GlenTokyo]

I like the Who movie. Best theme tune too, McGann is great aswell. In fact it’s all great apart from Eric Roberts I’d say. Sets are good, McCoy is good, and looking back now after the Russell T Davies reboot, it doesn’t seem as out of character for the Doctor to be interested in relationships. I prefer it to a lot of new who to be honest.

[GlenTokyo]

Nice. I’ll have to go back and finish the others in the new year, maybe redo the DVD covers for a Blu-ray version too. My computer literally died mid way through, catastrophic motherboard failure, saved the HDD though so I’ve still got all the stuff somewhere.

[GlenTokyo]

Galifrey & Titan amirite

[GlenTokyo]

Oh apparently you can have SD DVD content on Blu-ray, they’re just called SD Blu-ray. Concert DVDs release on them with SD picture but a lossless audio track and apparently there are some benefits regarding compression and bandwidth.

[GlenTokyo]

Network Access Storage?

Anyway, as with season 1 of NuWho which was SD but released on Blu-ray, as long as the content was better than DVD, could they do it? Was Red Dwarf broadcast at 576 lines? That’s better than DVD quality if they can release it at that resolution, would that qualify? Wouldn’t the higher bandwidth also help? Not that I’ve noticed any compression on the DVDs but someone might have.

[GlenTokyo]

The first episode of Ecclestone Who was like Zzzapp made a sex tape with EastEnders and someone who really wanted to be Edgar Wright directed it.

My memories of that first series include lots of quick pans and whoosh noises

[GlenTokyo]

Aren’t they redoing all the model shots for that? Well it looks like it from the Model Units Instagram anyway. I’m sure they’ll take advantage of the extra resolution.

Mike Tucker’s tash needs to be committed to Blu-ray for future generations.

[GlenTokyo]

Since it’s Doctor Who I imagine they just thought they’d get a bit of money out of it.

I think everyone is aware of the one inch tape related issues, I just want stuff on one disc to be honest, and it’s an excuse to re release the Bodysnatcher Docs with the early series.

[GlenTokyo]

Elvis Presley is real and was a popular rock and roll singer. #DwarfDidYouKnow

[GlenTokyo]

Pretty sure Happy Heart is in a big advert at the moment, that’s a James Last song.

I’d say he’s quite famous. It’s shit your Nan likes. Though my Nan is in her 80’s, maybe you have a cool young Nan that didn’t get bombed by the Nazis.

I’m not grandmother age just so it’s clear. I’m in the autumn of my twenties.

[GlenTokyo]

Yeah I’m saying it’s a good thing, should be as realistic and as informative as possible. The people complaining about it are cretins and have no place in modern society to be honest.

[GlenTokyo]

Did none of you watch TV in the 90s?

Kryten has been led to believe that sanitary towel adverts are fact, so asks her why she isn’t doing the things they do in adverts, namely pour blue liquid on things and do various strenuous activities in light/ form fitting clothing.

[GlenTokyo]

Yeah iconic sanitary towel adverts. The blue stuff has only just stopped being used, and it was a big deal when they switched to a red liquid because that’s the state of society.

[GlenTokyo]

I hate the grim reaper because he’s apparently real now in the Red Dwarf universe. I’d blame hallucination but they show him waking up before death appears.

Had similar feelings with Jesus in Lemons but thankfully that wasn’t Jesus Jesus.

[GlenTokyo]

All he said was the quality wasn’t there so who knows, they weren’t for us though were they? Didn’t they turn up on non UK Amazon first? I got the impression it was for foreign markets as a slightly better looking just the shows, and so they could give better versions to TV channels. Not sure the scope included rescanning film and re-editing stuff.

[GlenTokyo]

All captions in VIII are shit and almost entirely unnecessary.

Font, accompanying sound effect, content.

[GlenTokyo]

I’d only go back to the BBC if they offered some massive leap in budget to be honest, because I think that’s the only thing Doug doesn’t have that he’d like. Maybe a bit more time too.

Can’t see it myself, maybe they could show the episodes on BBC2 after they’ve been on Dave or maybe they’ll have some 30th anniversary deal with UKTV to show some as a one off as part of a celebration that’s unlikely to happen. I can’t think of an example of that happening though, and would the BBC have the ability to do it anyway? The adbreaks make it more unlikely I think because it by default makes the ones broadcast on the BBC superior.

You have to think also that Dave would be majorly miffed if Doug packed up and went back to the BBC, and if the BBC suddenly decided to not do it anymore after one series, Dave might not want it back, or they’d have it back but slash the budget as punishment or something.

Of course it’s probably not anywhere near going back to the BBC.

Maybe a dramatic spin off, Mimas, the seedy underbelly of the Dwarf universe starring Sean Bean, with BTTF2 style background footage of Lister composited in haha

[GlenTokyo]

I’d love Rob and Doug commentaries for 1-6 but I think making Rob do everything after is a bit perverse.

Ed and Doug maybe, Ed has previous when it comes to talking about episodes he wasn’t involved with on Six of the Best.

Yeah Doug said on the BtE commentary that they’d lost them around then, so between 2001ish and 2009, assuming they had access to them for the DVDs and didn’t use something they had at GNP, a highish quality (good enough for DVD) betamax or something.

I wondered if they’d found some due to the old model shot in Skipper which seemed of no worse quality than the rest of the episode when viewed at 1080p but no-one engaged on that at the time.

It’s a shame. I’d hope that for the 30th something could be done. Get a PI. I bet Doug is planning like crazy for the massive 30th Blu-ray mega box set.

[GlenTokyo]

Haha, 3 hour long series 8 documentary of just the cast saying it’s the best dwarf they’ve ever done, interspersed with the rapiest moments.

It’d be great if they did a TNG if they could find the model shoot film, redo any video effects and have the models in HD re-edited into the existing episodes.

Can you trust it not to turn into remastered 2 at that point though.

[GlenTokyo]

Get it on Blu-ray. Find the model footage and scan it in HD. Episodes and other extras in SD but on the same disc, updated interactive menus. Cast commentary for the Dave episodes. Laaavely

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