Lily

[Lily]

Did anyone else actually watch or have an opinion about the actual topics of this thread.

[Lily]

It’s not picky really, just broken. You can always edit comments on main articles fine, you can never edit comments on the forum. Hence the ‘half the time’ thing.

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I never actually read any of the books. Do they have Kochanski in them?

It’s always seemed odd to me that Lister would ever date series VII Kochanski, or why he continues to wist away after her.

[Lily]

Gone? I watched it this afternoon and it still seems there to me. Maybe it’s just cached my end or something.

Anyway, it was … interesting I guess. At first it was odd watching Gomez as she seemed to have pretty much the same performance as when in Dr Who. I don’t actually know her from anything else. Likewise I only know Natalie Casey from the 2 pints of lager thing, and again it was the same performance. Margolyes was great as normal.

There were plenty of laughs, but it seems a pretty delicate subject to base a sitcom around. Even made me cry nearer the end, although pretty much everything can make me cry. I’d guess it never went any further as there was too high a risk of causing upset.

[Lily]

Either way, I’m going to be up beyond my bedtime to watch it. Last week I just gave up and went to bed, but now I -know- when it’s coming I can’t just go sleep with a new episode sitting there waiting for me.

[Lily]

The upload time is in the source on Siliconia’s page, so I’d like to think it’s an automated thing.

<meta itemprop=”uploadDate” content=”12 Oct 2017, 10:20 p.m.”/>

In which case it took Ian less than 7 minutes to see it was finally up and create the let’s talk page here. Not bad! :D

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Oh poot. I get the crab picture linked embedded right and then bollocks up a perfectly innocent twitter pic. Can’t even edit!

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Um. I’d guess 10:20

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMgMyBSXcAAOQOY.jpg

[Lily]

Another connection is that the last thing I bought on ebay was Red Dwarf DVD. I had to pay out of my arse for a slightly damaged version of the Bodysnatchers boxset that I’ve been trying to get for years.

[Lily]

I’m with Dave, I’ll just put the most I’m willing to pay on an item as my bid.

That doesn’t make the current bid price jump to my maximum though, just one increment (normally a pound?). If I bid £15 on a 99p starting bid, it’ll go to £1 (or whatever). Someone else might bid £3 and it’ll automatically increase mine to £4. It’ll keep on auto-bidding until it reaches your maximum bid.

If someone else bids again after that, then fair enough they win the item as they are willing to pay more than me. Using a sniping tool doesn’t guarantee to win the auction. If I’ve put £50 down as maximum bid on something I’m willing to pay over the odds for and the bid price 10 seconds from the end is still only £20, then sniping £30 isn’t going to get it. I’ve still outbid 10 days ago, and will end up paying £31.

[Lily]

Having promotional merchandise that you can’t actually keep does seem to somewhat defeat the purpose. No-one is buying it for the beer.

Shouldn’t it be a can anyway?

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Well that sounds bloody marvellous. Shame that actual British people are blocked from watched the British TV shows :(

Would love to watch the Classic Who – any suggestions where I can do that (legally)?

[Lily]

I grew up catching and cooking shore food (crabs, cockles, winkles, shrimp, samphire, etc), so yes … I guess I am.

[Lily]

We last see Hogey disrupting the VIII cliffhanger resolution post-credits. He wasn’t keelled.

I’VE NEVER SEEN THIS! :o

I never watch the post-credits. How much other stuff have I missed???

(sorry that the crab bothered you)

[Lily]

Met crew and lived : prisoners and resurrected crew. hogie the rougie. snacky.

Did they though? I did consider the prisoners and crew, but we have no evidence if they lived or died. The crew went off in Starbugs and Blue Midgets, but a panicked escape in what are essentially ship-to-store vessels 3 million years in deep space doesn’t bode well for their longevity. Our guys had years of surviving on Red Dwarf as practice before they got stuck on Starbug, and they had a droid awake looking after them.

Likewise, the options for the prisoners are bleak. Either they’re still down there in the tank, dumped onto an abandoned penal colony, or dead.

Hogie? We last see him plugging a hull breach. I presumed his fate would be like the crab, but again we don’t see it so I left it out.

Gif containing a crab being crushed to death.

Snacky, yup, guess he’s off fixing lifts or something.

[Lily]

It’s just a convenient place to rest your hands. The suit itself looks like it’s got bulkier more recently and considering he can’t stick his hands in his pockets, and the bulk of the arms/chest means it’s awkward to hold your hands together at waist level, resting them on top of the chest is the next most comfortable position.

[Lily]

If I could edit, I’d make Katerina a ‘Hologram murder’. It was the deliberate permanent destruction of her lightbee (smashed by the bus). I don’t believe deactivation is the same as death, as there’s always the possibility of reinstatement. They’ve turned Rimmer off and on more times than the red alert sign and he gives the impression of it being an inconvenience, rather than a painful experience.

I’m not convinced about separating out deaths during hallucinations though. If Kryten gets a pass for killing the fascist, and Lister for killing the creator simply because they weren’t real, then Rimmer should also be forgiven for offing Katerina. For Kryten it caused despair, and for Rimmer it caused joy. If we’re using the “they were made to do it” reasoning, for both of them the squid evoked the appropriate emotion. We could argue that Rimmer only enjoyed it so much because that’s what the squid wanted.

I did have Howard under other deaths – suicide, but he seems to have been missed off during transcription. I guess Lister was indirectly responsible, but I expect Crawford would have started shooting at some point regardless.

[Lily]

It’s all in Excel so I could even do a pivot table!

Also yes, you’re quite right about Katerina, totally forgot she was a hologram. Which is dumb when that was the entire justification Rimmer used for killing her.

I included all the deaths that happened under hallucinations, as although the people turned out to not be real, the crew were not aware of that at the time. The intent was still there, even if the body wasn’t.

[Lily]

“This video contains content from BBC Worldwide, who has blocked it on copyright grounds.”

Woah, they don’t hang about.

[Lily]

40. Was vaguely aware of Dwarf as a kid but my parents didn’t consider it suitable viewing for a little girl.

First broadcast (and series in general) watched: VIII

[Lily]

Doesn’t Pree send the ship in to a sun dive because there’s no registered crew? So even if Kryten was registered in the past, it didn’t carry over to the nano rebuild. So it would appear that there’s no need to be registered to be able to fly any of the shops.

[Lily]

I’d say that that blurring of episodes is the biggest issue with binge watching. About the only show I’ve ever watched in that manner (for the first time, I’ve binged repeats but that’s different) was Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Just looking back there are 13 episodes in the first season. I absolutely couldn’t tell you more than a handful of plot points they covered.

But then again, if it had only been on TV I probably wouldn’t have watched it at all. So there’s that.

[Lily]

At 12, my friends and I all stuffed our bras to get in to see Shirley Valentine, rated 15!

I’ll always remember that one friend added rolled up rubber bands as nipples for added realism.

I don’t remember much of the film to be honest. Considering it was about a middle aged woman, self confidence and sex, most of it went right over our naive little heads.

[Lily]

Unless you’ve got the Evenings and Weekends deal. Then you just have to hang up and redial every 60 minutes and it’s free!

[Lily]

I’d never even heard of the first series until I got the box set. I think it’s one of those things that it’s quite enjoyable, if you un-pin it from the rest of the shows. As a stand alone show it’s still funny, just not ‘Blackadder’ as we know it.

Unfortunately my set only had the main shows on it, so I’m woefully ignorant about any of the specials.

[Lily]

I imagine the most significant point is the marketability. The bottom line is that they want to sell these things. The Red Dwarf fan base is small (in the grand scheme of things) as it is, and then you’re only appealing to the subset of that small group who also want to buy novelty lego sets.

[Lily]

See, it never completed the loop for me. It stopped being funny and went straight to irritating.

On rewatching it now gets a titter as I know what’s coming, but I really didn’t understand the love for it at the time.

[Lily]

I’ve seen fan edits floating around on youtube but never bothered watching them as I don’t see how they can make them much different with the same footage.

Are they worth a watch then? what do they actually do to make a change?

[Lily]

“Arbor Day (or Arbour; from the Latin arbor, meaning tree) is a holiday in which individuals and groups are encouraged to plant trees. Today, many countries observe such a holiday. Though usually observed in the spring, the date varies, depending on climate and suitable planting season.”

Although in the UK it’s not a single day and is ‘National Tree Week’ instead.

Never fucking heard of either.

[Lily]

Speaking of laugh tracks, I just re-watched BtE again and I think the lack of laughing is probably one of the things that makes it feel so ‘not-Dwarf’ to me. The guys are used to having an audience and it’s when they pause that beat after a punchline and there’s silence, it just makes the joke feel like it’s fallen flat.

There’s still an awful lot of things I didn’t like; the whole self-referential meta’ness of it just doesn’t sit comfortably with me. Half the Corrie stuff just felt like padding. The Joy part of the joy squid made no sense to me still – how is having an existential crisis joy? Sure Lister was tempted with a fake Kochanski but that was only after they’d become aware that it was a hallucination. There was no joy there for the others though.

Saying that though, Craig really acted his socks off and it was great seeing that character development for Lister.

I guess on the whole I’m still glad it exists, I just don’t really want to re-watch it much.

[Lily]

Whelp, I’m one of them. I started wondering what the hell I was watching when they were fucking about in a John Lewis and was ready to turn off when they got to the Corrie set. Excruciating nails it, as far as I’m concerned.

[Lily]

I came to Red Dwarf rather late to life compared to most. I was about to move in with my boyfriend of the time when he got really excited about this show coming back on TV and got me to watch it with him. Unfortunately, this was early 1999, it was series VIII, and I was not deeply impressed.

He got me to watch all his VHS tapes and I warmed up to the rest of the shows, having a strong preference for the first 3 series much to his disgust. Then the DVDs came out, which is when I became a real fan. I just LOVED all the extras, docus, outtakes, etc etc.

Has it changed or affected my life? Well … no. I have spent the last 7 years of my life with a man who is uncomfortably like Rimmer but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t caused by watching the show.

[Lily]

The Den of Geek article is certainly a good one to read for the people who haven’t really caught on that there’s a new Dave era.

It’s a fair review of BtE, X and XI, the general feeling that although there’s a few hit and misses, overall Dave Dwarf is an improvement on the low of VIII.

[Lily]

Why did Doug … could be applied to pretty much every part of VIII

It’s been a long time since i watched the series or the documentary. Were there script issues on this one?

[Lily]

I didn’t know that about the budget as I’m a pretty casual fan. I guess I need to re-watch the doco on the dvd (presuming there’s one? not looked at it in a long while)

I have nothing against cheap locations in themselves, as long as it’s the story that needs the location, rather than the location leading the story.

The beach in Better than Life and the field in Meltdown were both clearly cheap locations and looked a bit shit, but I’m willing to overlook that as they made sense for the story. The plot says it’s a beach in paradise so I’m willing to suspend my belief that Rhyll really is paradise.

But with Corrie it was clearly the other way round. If they got it for free it was “OK, how do I shoehorn this into a space sit-com”. It’s like the big fan room in 7, where they found a cool location and came up with a scene so they could use it, rather than it making any sense. I’m sure they could have filmed in Doug’s kitchen for free too, that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to write a huge long scene where the boys decide they need to make a cup of tea and look for the biscuits.

I guess I just found the whole thing too immersion breaking.

[Lily]

As a casual fan, BtE was utterly bewildering and ultimately not very enjoyable. I just didn’t like the basic concept of them being in ‘this’ dimension and found the self-referential stuff like the DVD very uncomfortable viewing. It didn’t help that having a big chunk being filmed in John Lewis screamed of ‘cheap location’ and felt like they didn’t want to write anything that would cost money to produce.

Likewise, I almost turned off when they went to Corrie. I mean … WHY? Did Craig Charles have something in his contract that he had to plug it? Didn’t have enough time released form Corrie to go do other things properly? It was just bizarre.

And then we go all blade runnery. I’d seen the film so got the references, but felt cheated by this point. I wanted normal Red Dwarf sit-com, not some strange Blade Runner parody. Sure Dwarf can have its serious moments, but this whole thing felt very dark and more drama than comedy, the jokes were so thin on the ground.

And then it turns out it’s all down to a joy squid. Wait, what? Joy? Really? How on earth is being taken to a dimension that you’re told you’re a figment of imagination joyous? They had a thoroughly miserable time there. The only ‘joy’ was Lister being tempted to stay with a woman that he knew by any definition wasn’t ‘his’ Kochanski.

The whole thing felt like it was done by a film student, with a limited budget, wanted to get his mates involved, wanted to pay homage to his favourite film and rushed to find a way to wrap it up.

[Lily]

In regard to the original post, I see that Dave is on Freesat now, opening up XII to even more people who perhaps haven’t seen Dwarf for a while so that’s a bonus.

Huh. I have Freesat and didn’t know that. They kept that bloody quiet.

I guess you might pick up a few more people channel hopping, as I presume they repeat them fairly heavily? I’ll still be watching online if they do that whole ‘new episode online week before on telly’ thing.

[Lily]

I’ve found even the people that aware that there’s new series aren’t really that interested. After the sheer bloody awfulness of 8, and the weirdness of BtE, trying to persuade people that “10 was alright and 11 is a lot better!” is a pretty hard sell to make.

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I’m sorry Phobos, but I didn’t say that at all.

I’m totally hyped for series 12. I rewatched 11 last week and thoroughly enjoyed it. After the cringe of 8, the oddness of BTE and a slightly wobbly 10 I feel that the whole team have found their feet again and are producing good telly.

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Den of Geek was the only one I’d found for myself. It’s so hard to pick up on these sites it seems though, as a casual google for ‘doctor who reviews’ brings up all the boring ones by newspapers etc and not the dedicated reviewers. Even when you do find a more specialised site the standard of writing is pretty lacking, with most ‘reviews’ being little more than a recap of the plot. I know the plot, I just watched it, I want opinions dammit!

Without wanting to brown-nose too much, you guys are awesome and I’m really looking forward to the XII coverage here.

[Lily]

Awesome, thanks for the links.

[Lily]

I’ve been trying to get hold of Bodysnatcher for years and only just this week managed to find a UK copy on ebay for a reasonable price. If you set up an alert for UK only sales it filters out all the Aussy versions.

It seemed expensive at the time for a boxset of episodes I technically already had, but now I do wish I’d got it back then.

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