International Debris

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Not come across a Blue Midget dance one yet. Must be some kind of mistake, surely?

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Yes, the end of The Beginning really does warrant some serious development for Rimmer, I hope Doug’s up to the task of incorporating it into the show seamlessly.

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Kryten + food in Legion is my favourite, I think. Although I’m a sucker for anything Tonk Hawks based, so Caligula is also high on my list.

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I’ve been wracking my brains for a link, somebody who was very obviously in both shows, and somehow managed to completely forget her. Jesus.

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His repairman poet in 15 Storeys High is marvellous.

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Don’t think I was even lurking when this was posted, so thanks for the bump, I enjoyed that a lot! Always love a bit of ‘mooching around the ship annoying each other’ Dwarf, and this hits every beat of series 1 in that regard. Great stuff. Suppose I should have a look at that Jump Leads thing too now…

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Yes, I’ve often wondered at what exact point the crew were revived. Did they notice notice any changes at the moment of resurrection. Anybody in the same room as Lister or Kochanski would notice they’d disappeared. Unless Lister was meant to be in stasis by that point (if so, why no “why aren’t you in stasis?” conversation?)

Guys I think I’ve found a slight flaw in the premise of series 8.

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Doesn’t Holly talk about having nobody to talk to for three million years? Which suggests he can’t have been around for all that long.

Rimmer I imagine has had a debriefing and, in typical Rimmer style, makes it his priority task to immediately go and blame Lister.

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The problem with the argument that commercial channels can be “run out of town on the strength of their programming” is that it immediately discounts the idea of niche programming, and discourages channels from taking risks, or letting shows develop.

These days the BBC does put out an unnecessarily large amount of shit material, and there are definitely problems with how the license works (paying it in installments is strangely staggered, and there are no concessions for the unemployed), but even ignoring the argument about whether commercial television produces better results, in the past I’ve been ok to pay £10 a month to watch TV without advert breaks. At no point has an ad break ever improved my viewing experience. I hate adverts and avoid them at all costs (I’ve been pursuing a fruitless endeavour to block every Twitter account that has a ‘promoted’ tweet in my timeline for a couple of years now) and don’t enjoy the narrative or flow of a television programme being interrupted by such things.

Mind you, I don’t even have a TV any more, and do everything via my computer. iPlayer is wonderful. And, of course, license funded.

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Obviously the answer is: none.

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Thanks Jonsmad, that was already brilliant, and then came “Then Norman Lovett walks in and asks for the football back.”

Doug, please make this episode.

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That cover makes my eyes itch.

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I’d be happy to overlook a male T-rex laying an egg without being fertilised, and said egg hatching within a matter of hours and giving birth to a staggeringly well grown and adapted baby T-rex, as long as I knew what happened to said baby once the episode was over.

Obviously I wouldn’t, but it’s another plot hole I didn’t notice before to add to the ‘Series VIII is shit’ armory.

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No.

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Polymorph IV – In Space!

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The biggest crime is the cutting and replacing of dialogue. Otherwise, it does an ok job of ‘updating’ it for overseas use, although little else. Certainly doesn’t warrant being the only version broadcast and sold in the UK for a number of years.

To be honest, anybody who would compare the originals to Last of the Summer Wine would not actually be paying attention to the jokes, plot, characters or setting, so probably wouldn’t be too interested in it anyway. Certainly comparing a programme that opens with an impressive fly-by model shot and an epic sounding science fiction theme tune, in which almost all of the characters die halfway through the episode to ‘stuffy’ programmes like Summer Wine is the thought of an imbecile.

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I remember my first ‘er, what?’ Simpsons episode (other than The Principal & the Pauper which, satire on reset buttons aside, is shit) was Screaming Yellow Honkers, although looking back at season 10 now, I remember Bart the Mother, Kidney Trouble, Mayored to the Mob, Viva Ned Flanders, Mom and Pop Art and Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo also left me pretty cold on first viewing – some good jokes, but they definitely left me with a feeling of ‘this isn’t the same programme’. They just break with the reality of the show a bit too much (particularly stuff like ending the episode with Homer flooding the whole of Springfield)

Yeah, I stand by Seasons 2 – 9 being the period of the show I like. Eight series, not much in the grand scheme of how long it’s been on.

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The problem with the bunkroom scenes in VIII is they’re shit. The early bunkroom scenes usually explore something about Rimmer and Lister’s characters and their interactions with each other – they even have moments of poignancy. The ones in VIII are almost all whimsical, often with Lister playing a far stupider character than anyone in a believable programme would (dot-to-dot, Petersen planning his own funeral, etc.). They’re usually just a chance for a bunch of very weak gags: something VIII is full of, but by putting them in a bunkroom, the comparison with previous series is actually accentuated – like when a band have past their prime and do shitty re-recordings of their classic songs and end up highlighting just how far they’ve fallen.

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VI is my least favourite of Rob & Doug Dwarf, with action taking precedence over character stuff a bit too much for my taste (I can’t help feeling Rimmerworld would have actually been explored in more depth a la Terrorform in earlier series, rather than it just being the climatic five or ten minutes of the episode), and bringing back three elements of earlier episodes in Emohawk. I also miss the more run of the mill / everyday life aboard ship stuff, which had, admittedly, almost gone in V. I don’t mind some of the formulaic running gag elements of it, though, as they’re pretty much all gags that work well. And, crucially, I still enjoy watching it and find it very funny, which are the most important things.

I do wish they’d left in the original ending of Out of Time, though, largely because VII would have been better set on Red Dwarf – partially because it would have got rid of the nonsense of Starbug being somehow massive on the inside now. And it would have meant no video camera gag. And VIII would have been different. Etc.

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I think you’re being very kind on The Simpsons season 10 there.

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“Hopefully”

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C’mon now, this is the thread for talking about how shit VIII is. Get your own thread, VII bashers!

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I’m really quite amazed that anybody ever thought VIII was up there with the others. Even on first watch, with the (relatively few) good jokes new to me, so raising some big laughs, it was clearly weaker than everything so far.

VII was obviously an experiment into taking the show in a new direction, one which certainly didn’t work, partially because the loss of Rob and Chris made it just seem TOO different. If there was a gradual move in the direction of the dramatic, that would be much better as it would be more finely honed and the humour would have been developed to suit the style better (i.e. you don’t end up with daft VIII-style shit like pipes that say hernunger). Although personally I’m not sure if the more cinematic style would ever have suited the show well. I like the grimy look of the first six series, which was lost in the polish of 7 onwards.

Anyway, yes, VII is bad Red Dwarf, VIII is bad television.

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Even though it does have standalone stories, VIII still can’t really be played in any other order apart from moving Krytie TV to episode 7, so in many ways it does feel like one long story, all based in one setting. Episodes can be condensed into scenes of an ongoing narrative. VII does have the Rimmer / Kochanski arcs, but on the whole is full of standalone episodes in different scenarios and places, largely resolved by the end of each episode, which means I can’t actually envisage an hour long version of it – so I’m very curious to watch it once it’s done. I do like the idea of restricting Beyond a Joke to the opening section, as that’s actually believable as a single scene in a feature length episode.

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Yeah but how funny was it when he didn’t know the dot-to-dot was a bucket and spade?! lol

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I was 14, I cringed a lot.

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I always liked the idea that Lister would have to go back to work, and nobody would believe him about his adventures in space – suddenly he’s living a menial technician’s life again, and he begins to question whether he was happier when he was the last human being alive…

Of course this would still leave open the utterly ridiculous plot hole of just *what* the crew of a mining ship are going to be doing 3 million years into deep space other than panicking and working out how to get home.

Ugh. Obviously pointing out plot holes in VIII is old hat now, but it never fails to anger me how little of the series actually makes sense. Even now it still bugs me that technically, out there somewhere, the crew of Red Dwarf are still around in countless Starbugs and Blue Midgets. I’m terrified the Red Dwarf lot are going to stumble across Captain Hollister, probably having killed the rest of the Starbug crew so he can munch all their supplies, the fat bastard. Actually, Lister being sad again about being the last of his species in X is nonsense, isn’t it? There are 1,167 of them out there that you know of! Like Lister wouldn’t go off in serach of his best friends Petersen, Chen, Selby and Bent Bob.

I’m beginning to remember why I use the ’10 Years Later’ caption at the start of BTE as a resolution for the VI or VII cliffhangers, depending on my mood.

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Caligula is fine because he’s only one element of the threat. If the episode was just the Dwarfers vs. Caligula it’d be crap. I’m not sure if Hudzen really counts as a ‘silly’ character entirely, there’s enough genuine threat in his performance for him to seem genuinely off-kilter rather than just camping it up. The Simulants in The Beginning I’ve been unsure of since I watched them. I do enjoy the sycophant scene as it fits the psychotic nature of the character, but the hari-kari one I always found a bit broad.

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I remember hating BTE when it was broadcast. A couple of years later I showed my girlfriend RD from the start as she’s never seen it before (it’s amazing how funny a joke you’ve seen a hundred times can be when you’re in the company of somebody who’s never seen it before and laughing heartily!) She bailed out after Tikka to Ride (without forewarning of VII’s reputation – she was actually struggling with elements of VI, saying it had become formulaic), but I decided to watch on to the end.

Having just watched the first six series, almost vicariously through the eyes of a newcomer to the show, I truly realised how utterly horrible VIII is. My biggest issue in the past was how broad it had become, but it was only then that I noticed just how at odds it is with pretty much everything that made the show great. It was genuinely depressing viewing. I picked up a copy of BTE just to round things off, and was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Even though I didn’t laugh that much, and still found some of the jokes appalling (the letterbox one being a particular low point for me), it was amazing just how ‘Red Dwarf’ it felt. Not great Dwarf, of course, but the tone of the show was definitely in keeping with the spirit of the earlier series, as opposed to VIII which bears no similarity other than the actors. Listening to Doug’s commentary was even more enjoyable, as it was so relieving to hear him talk about what he’d learned from the mistakes of the previous series or two, and it was obvious that he was making a genuine effort to reconnect the show to what made it great in the first place.

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One of my favourite DVD features is the full-length Back in the Red, because it allows me to watch VIII without reference to Dennis the Donut Boy, a gag which shits on almost every pre-accident scene in the first two series, without even having the decency of being funny whilst doing it.

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Pretty much completely agree with the analysis of X (although not some elements of I-VIII) – while I was able to get past most of the slightly rough-around-the-edges elements, I do find myself wishing for less focus on unnecessary B & C-plots – something the early series never felt the need to do – and fewer direct references to previous episodes (no more post pods!) when watching the series.

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There’s a chap over on DWO doing the same thing, he’s nearly finished in fact:
http://news.drwho-online.co.uk/

There are a handful of gaps in my Who knowledge, entirely from the ’80s, so I’ve been watching from the start with my girlfriend. She’s a complete Who virgin, right down to not knowing when enemies are returning, and even when Doctors regenerate, and as I’m not even showing her the DVD sleeves she’s coming to it fresher than most people ever get the chance, which is a real joy to experience. We’ve not set a specific limit on episodes per day – it’s been between one and ten (the whole of The War Games) so far – and we’re in the middle of an enforced week-long break between Planet of Evil episodes 2 and 3 at the moment – but it’s very rewarding, and watching it like this I’m finally able to really appreciate some of the companions in the way I’d never had chance to before.

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Oh that is absolutely lovely.

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Series three to five are among my favourite sitcom episodes ever… before and after that they’re patchy but have some great moments (the episode in series six where they’re watching Star Trek is a particular favourite).

The romantic in me really likes the ending of the series and therefore writing Debs and Dorothy out for this skit has made me very unhappy.

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“I’m quite confident that whatever comes off that pen will be quite funny”

He probably said that about VIII.

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Both were under the tree for me. Wonderful stuff – learning a lot as I’m a relative stranger to the Smegazines and games. Feel it might take me a very long time to get through. This is a good thing, of course. Top work!

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