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Do we have much clarity over whether it really was “Grant Naylor” in the back half of V? I’ve always assumed it was more Doug than Rob who got hist hands dirty with some early directing efforts, whilst Rob stood there chain-smoking and thinking about more ways to abuse and/or mutilate his characters.

I don’t think there’s ever really been a truly bad period for Dwarf when it comes to directing. Even though they chose to move on from her early there’s some beautiful stuff shot by Juliet May. Doug’s early work is definitely a bit rough – but then we know that BtE wasn’t what he wanted to be making and had so many compromises that it’s hard to be too critical of it – same with X really, Doug having to deal with the shit show that was in the background can probably help forgive any occasions where the directing felt weaker!

Ed was obviously incredible with what he achieved in the early days, though I think it’s fair to say his later stuff doesn’t really stand out as much – but then when the material was getting as weak as Krytie TV it’s hard to think of how a director could save it!

Not much you can say about De Emmony other than that he came in and did great work on VI – a consistently great looking series that gets excellent performances out of everyone and has some impressive technical achievements behind it as well

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That money is just resting in their account 

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Do we get clarification behind Lister’s designation in series 1 – “Lister RD 52169”?

“169” was obviously his crew registration, being the lowest ranked on the ship – which in itself is kind of weird when you think about it. Did everyone have to get a new number every time they ranked up? And those they overtook would need to get bumped down a number? Feel like that would get annoying! Or maybe you just get stuck with your initial ranking number as your registration for your whole time on board?

“Lister” is obviously pretty self explanatory.

But the RD and 52 bits seem the most curious to me. Most logical assumption for RD is that it’s just indicating the ship “Red Dwarf”, but I guess at a stretch it could be his initials? Maybe Dave isn’t actually his first name but his middle name and he just prefers to use it as his given name over whatever R stands for? (Hey, maybe he really was a Rob or Ros?!) Annoyingly he’s not identified as “Lister FD” as then he could be another Frank.

“52” seems most likely to be his date of birth? Pretty sure the accident happened in 2077 and he’s established as 25 years old so that would put his birthday as reasonably being in 2052? Before they retcon everything to 2 centuries later of course!

But then it seems slightly odd that if 52 is his date of birth and RD is the ship, why does it come in the order “Lister RD 52” – surely your date of birth is more relevant identifying information that the name of the ship you are currently registered crew on? Perhaps “RD 52” is the ship registration then?

Maybe I’m just bored and thinking about it too much!

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“Garbage World” is just any foreign country to a Reform supporter

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Gotta feel for poor old Dick Klinger there, must have been a hard name to get through school with!

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As well as the various aspects of video quality, which clearly do have an impact on how “believable” these kind of split screens are, I do just think that at times Dwarf does a better job in terms of shot composition and where the characters are positioned with respect to one another that sells the illusion in a better way.

Those TNG examples above are so bizarre in terms of how close up they are, you’d never actually frame a normal dialogue scene between two characters like that!

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Simon the Sorcerer traded a lot on the fact it had Chris Barrie doing the voice. From what I remember it was utter dogshit as an actual game!

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Discworld Noir is probably the best of the games – benefits massively from doing it’s own thing more and not trying to tie in or replicate plot points from one or more novels too tightly like the first two point and click games did.

They also have some of the most annoying random puzzles in them – when people moan about how unintuitive the solutions to point and click game puzzles were in the 80s and 90s it’s always Discworld that pops into my head!

I liked the Hogfather adaptation a lot, even if I don’t think they got the character of Teatime right. Both Death and Susan were excellent in that. I’ve never actually watched the Colour of Magic or Going Postal adaptations, I should probably get around to fixing that at some point.

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One of the debates that goes around a lot regarding Me² is whether the second Rimmer is an earlier personality which is why he’s somewhat more extreme than “our” Rimmer – and this borne out somewhat in the dialogue, “Look, I was here first. I nursed Listie through those early, delicate days” etc. 

However it’s just struck me that new Rimmer’s very first line of dialogue in Confidence & Paranoia is “well, he did warn you” in reference to what the first Rimmer just said to Lister before he switched him on. Which implies that our new Rimmer is at the very least aware of everything that has happened right up until the point he’s activated. Now obviously there’s still the possibility of difference between the “lived experience” of those events which original Rimmer will have compared to the possibility that the new Rimmer is just aware of them as “memories”

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I have a high opinion of Pratchett the man, to be fair. After all, among other things, he liked Red Dwarf. Did Adams ever mention it? 

Good question! I’m not aware of any Adams quotes that reference Dwarf, I would be really interested to know if there are any accounts of his thoughts on the show (or books!)

Doing a quick Google of Adams and Dwarf did turn up this early G&T article which was quite interesting to read, if nothing else for the fact it has this quote attributed to Rob:

I’ve got no objections to being the comedy person, but I have got objections to not being the science fiction person. I mean, I don’t think you’d get Doug to say he was a major science fiction fan, I was the one who was trying to drag us into writing a science fiction thing. I am the SF freak. I am a fan. This is why it’s so much fun for me doing Red Dwarf. I am a Star Trek fan, I’m a Next Generation fan, I love science fiction.

So there it is, confirmation from 2004, Rob was in fact both the funny one AND the sci-fi one!

I also simply prefer sci-fi to fantasy, and honestly can’t claim to have ever dug that deeply into his work. 

Generally speaking I’m no big fantasy fan myself (an unpopular opinion of my own is that I really can’t get on with Tolkien!) so Pratchett is definitely the anomaly there. Normally I’d go for sci-fi any day but Pratchett fantasy just hits me in all the right places (and ironically his sci-fi never quite gets me the same!)

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The closest I’ve come to trying Pratchett is getting through about a third of The Colour of Magic, twice, before getting annoyed by it both times and giving up.

Colour of Magic is far from his best work. I mean as a fan I still like it personally, but I would definitely not recommend it as a starting point for getting into Discworld specifically or Pratchett’s work more generally.

In terms of Discworld anything from Mort onward is some degree of great in my opinion – up until about Making Money/Unseen Academicals where sadly you can really start to see the impact of his Alzheimer’s 

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Terry Pratchett is a national treasure and I will not hear a bad word about him or his works! 

Pratchett > Adams for me, though they are both incredibly different writers and I do have a soft spot for Dirk Gently

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Scary image of Doug when you click through to that link.

Oh sure, actually address the interview…

I know, it’s practically a crime! 

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Scary image of Doug when you click through to that link.

Still, he’s got some good advice for what to do when people include the URL in the thread title by mistake:

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I think it’s a reference to “environments that are easy to do in claymation”

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Regarding Cats outfits, anyone else miss that there’s used to be more variety to them? Series III – VI Cat wore all kinds of different looks and styles of outfits but since X he seems to largely just wearing similar types of suit just with different elaborate fabric choices each time. 

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Yeah my headcanon has always been that the ship is massive but the parts where people primarily exist day to day are a very small percentage of it. It makes sense that most functions of the ship – command, navigation etc. would be contained in a small area, and thus likewise habitation and recreation type spaces would be located nearby as well. For the most part the more remote parts would be managed by Holly and/or the Skutters where required and actual crew travelling to these would be for out of the ordinary circumstances rather than routine.

This doesn’t explain why there was a stasis booth on such a remote floor from them, but I’m choosing to put that down to bad planning!

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All of his looks are good, favourites for me are the III-IV green tunic and the hard light blue from VI. Although I must stress that this is a love for the version in VI only, and not the shit changed version for VII where they decided to make the trim black which ruins the overall look.

Series VI – beautiful wonder outfit of joy.

Series VII – garbage outfit, not fit for latrine duty

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Frank

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The only other thing that I did manage to watch and love back then was the first two Patlabor movies – absolutely loved those, but I rarely find anyone else who has watched them! 

Have you ever played Shogo: Mobile Armour Division? It was almost literally made as Patlabor meets Quake.

Which, if we count it, was my actual first and favorite anime…

Yes, and I loved it!

Monolith were such a good developer, sad to see them go

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I assume that Dennis murdered and stole the identity of the real Frank Hollister.

[series 8] By the look of him he murdered and ate the real Frank Hollister. [/series 8]

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I’ve never managed to put the time into it that I would like to in all honesty. I’ve watched and enjoyed the mainstream old boys of Akira and Ghost in the Shell, and always liked the look of other stuff that was trailed on the home media releases of those back in the 90s but back then it was harder to get hold of more stuff. 

The only other thing that I did manage to watch and love back then was the first two Patlabor movies – absolutely loved those, but I rarely find anyone else who has watched them! 

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STATUS LEAK

The crew are shocked to find that the read status of all of the G&T forum threads has been lost

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Most of the UK right now when online:

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Nick’s post in the Mundane Observations thread got me thinking about Simpson’s x Red Dwarf crossover memes and this popped into my head:

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And while we’re on series 3:

If you’ve crashed and have no heating/power maybe try harnessing whatever is powering that massive fucking light shining out of the exit door?

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Fucking size of that fish. I’d have stayed on the bug if that was outside the window

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This, of course, was the peak of space age futurism

Whilst I appreciate there is something to be said in terms of this not being ” a new thing” it still feels like this example fits better within the established aesthetic for the show.

Plus 1988 broadcast quality means it’s much harder to look at that and be like “ah yes I can identify the exact make and model, John and Tracey next door have the same one!”

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Always annoys me how little effort they made to not make this look like a flat screen TV circa 2015. 

They didn’t even take the fucking stickers off saying it supports DVB etc! 

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Could be worse to be fair

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Wait, I forgot the date, as you were.

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This worked better as a concept when, for some reason, I thought that Kryten presented his work already in a picture frame. But I’m posting it anyway damn you!

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Not everything has to be a Rob vs Doug debate guys!

Lets face it – Red Dwarf, despite being a 30+ year franchise that has consistently performed well in terms of ratings, is always going to be something that struggles to get made for a whole host of reasons ranging from the classic “we don’t want sci-fi” angle, through the ever increasing challenge of organising and enabling a bunch of aging blokes to perform one more time, to the simple complexity that it represents as a production with its sets, props, effects, models etc.

Doug having some recent leverage with Dave and Baby Cow is good, but only goes so far in terms of resolving the above.

Rob on the other hand probably benefits from the fact that Titan (and whatever else he’s got lodged up his buttski) isn’t “Red Dwarf” as we know it – the fact it would be a different setting, cast, scenario etc. might allow it to be 1. more appealing to someone commissioning something new and 2. allow them to sidestep some of the production and logistical challenges of making traditional Dwarf.

Basically whatever way you look at it anyone making something Dwarf or Dwarf-adjacent is going to have a hard time!

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V > VI > II > IV > III > I

None of them are anything less than great though. I’d struggle to give any “bubble” episode less than an 8/10 personally

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V is of such a consistently high standard that I can definitely understand someone having an episode above Back to Reality in their series rankings. Holoship, Quarantine and Inquisitor all push it hard for the title of “best one” IMO. (EDIT: Hah, just spotted your post after I submitted mine Moonlight – great minds!)

Speaking of V, I’ve never quite understood the middling view some have of Demons and Angels. It’s not the best of the run for sure but it’s still a great concept with some amazing moments

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Superb.

10/10 sacred gravy marks

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I was alive, but I felt like a significant part of me died when series 7 came out

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Which is another thing that I find hard to reconcile. Have they been accelerating for 3 million years? Why? What purpose does that serve? And it’s oh so incredibly convenient that Lister came out of stasis just in time for them to reach light speed! Good job the half life of Cadmium II was exactly the right value to make that calculation work!

JMC having a default disaster policy of “get the ship out of harms way” when a radioactive disaster happens makes sense, but that policy being “keep accelerating forever” is batshit

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In Future Echoes they achieve (or even break) lightspeed for a period of time, how much further back toward Earth did this realistically get them?

None, they haven’t turned around by that point (hence Lister’s line that it’ll take them 4,000 years to turn around at the start of the episode). So that only takes them further from Earth.

Yeah but that has always made zero sense, just turn around first! Even with the combined intellect on board at that point in time they should know that it makes no sense to start accelerating until you’re pointing in the right direction! 

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Hattie is amazing, it’s a huge shame that we’ve not seen her back whilst that moaning old twat Norman keeps getting new chances to disappoint us

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Neelix copies Rimmer’s role of “morale officer”, it’s blatant plagiarism!!!

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