Me Own Stunts

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It looks very good.  And all the snapping sounds are very satisfying in that video.

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So what is it?

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> Yeah but he never tries to sexually assault her in the way that Lister does

This doesn’t mean he fancies her any less.

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Rhyl beach would have looked like paradise.

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Even if that wheel was spinning in front of Craig’s face the whole time?

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> This thread is very close to turning into We Say Bad Things About the Dave Era.

I know what you mean but it’s a mixture of balanced feelings on the Dave Era. A thread that rigidly shows only positive or negative feelings can be quite boring.

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The look of the classroom was never a problem to me. Why wouldn’t a learning environment in the future continue to look more or less like the classrooms we have today?

I was personally grateful for all the additional environments we saw in ‘The Beginning’. Series 10 generally felt too cramped to me, and not in a good, Series 1 way. Series 1 showed us a wide variety of spaces inside the ship, making it feel as vast as we were told, while in series 10 Red Dwarf itself felt like a tiny ship because we mostly saw only the living space, which combined living room, kitchen and bedroom into one space, a drive room that resembled a tiny cockpit, and a tiny bit of corridor that they kept obviously redressing in unimaginative ways.

So yeah, even on their own terms the classroom, the simulant ship and the model sequences all make The Beginning into a highlight of series 10 to me, not a weak link.

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> to be fair though, his actions in Out Of Time do affect his behaviour in VII. in Tikka To Ride he takes the whole time-travel venture rather seriously and is very responsible about it all- pointing out they shouldn’t use the time drive again, quietly reprimanding Lister when he messes up the timelines etc. he feels like a much more serious and leader-ey Rimmer than before in VII.

I feel like that was because the writers and Chris Barrie had respectively forgotten how to write and perform Rimmer, not because of a conscious decision to build on the series 6 cliffhanger. Plus Barrie was doing a more ‘dramatic’ performance due to the single camera / lack of live audience set-up.

In fact the Tikka to Ride resolution to the cliffhanger completely ignores Rimmer’s involvement in it. They don’t say “Rimmer did something that resulted in us being saved”; they say “our future selves killed us”. This is why I was so disappointed by the first scenes of series 7 – I felt Doug had completely misunderstood what the Out of Time cliffhanger was about. For me the cliffhanger wasn’t about how the crew were still alive – I was completely expecting this to be hand-waved. I was interested in what the cliffhanger would mean for Rimmer’s future. And this was ignored, but with very little extra effort they could have built on that cliffhanger properly and made the transition into Ace a part of that.

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I’ve said it before, but giving Rimmer brave moments at the end of a series is akin to the way Scrooge becomes a more generous person by the end of A Christmas Carol. It creates a feel-good ending, but it can’t really be followed up satisfyingly because nobody wants to see the ongoing adventures of brave Rimmer or generous Scrooge. But also nobody wants to see a sequel where Scrooge reverts back to being miserly. It creates an ‘end’, not a tantalising tease for what will happen next.

Which is why I think it would have been interesting at the start of series 11 to explore Rimmer’s misplaced notion that being more like Lister might make him happier.

Character stuff.

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Regarding Rimmer’s revelation in The Beginning, I think some character interest could have been derived from Rimmer attempting to self-identify as working class, and Lister rejecting that (in the same way he rejected Kryten’s dishonesty about being a true human in DNA). That would have been interesting because we’d have seen that actually Rimmer *does* silently and begrudgingly respect Lister in certain ways (his authenticity and his happiness), as briefly witnessed in Thanks For The Memory. And we would have seen that Rimmer’s neuroses can’t be magically erased just by understanding his biological father wasn’t Lecturer Rimmer.

The main problem I had with the end of series 10 is that, along with the end of series 6, it shows that there’s some desire from the writer(s) to push Rimmer towards bravery, albeit briefly, just to see what happens to him. But then in both instances it’s also obvious that there’s no depth to the tease. The best development should have been in series 7, where they could have linked Rimmer saving the crew in Out of Time to his decision to take on the mantle of Ace. But instead they buried the former strand, and the latter came out of nowhere.

I suspect there will be at least one more moment of Rimmer needing to discover his potential courage, selflessness and bravery, but it’s clear that there’s no natural step after this that Doug wants to commit to. Not that he particularly should, of course, but it means we’re slightly within Simpsons character-stasis territory whenever he ignores it entirely.

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Sorry Ian; I don’t know the reference.

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Accepting that continuing the collaboration with Grant would have resulted in completely different stories rather than the same episodes with slightly different content, there’s nevertheless a strong chance that an eighth series would have had the Red Dwarf crew returning to Red Dwarf, and found it populated by the old now-alive crew.

Where I think Grant would have differed would have been the idea of putting our crew into prison. Grant would have seen the obvious idea as the better one. Instead of a prison, put Lister back into the routines of the established Red Dwarf hierarchy, along with all the menial chores he had to do before the crew were wiped out. An infinitely more exciting idea. Rimmer would have been like the Me2 alternate version, not the pantomime Rimmer of series 8. And the rest of the crew would have been separated from Lister for longer, leaving him with only Rimmer for company. Kryten with his corrupted files repaired and put to cleaning toilets, but again without all the shitty pantomime and immediate restoration. Cat put into stasis or something.

Grant and Naylor both spoke of their regret that they never really explored the world of Red Dwarf before the crew was wiped out. The obvious opportunity of series 8 to rectify this would have been taken if Grant had been involved.

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Kochanski probably wouldn’t have been brought into series 7 for a start. Any other member of the dead Red Dwarf crew could have taken Rimmer’s place without creating the complex issue of Lister having his ideal woman right there. For the narrative purposes of series 7 and 8, Lister simply needed a female he vaguely fancied.

No Kochanski means no shrieking series 7 Kryten. Another issue solved.

Rob Grant means fewer crap jokes would have got into the episodes, as well as stories built on stronger ideas in the first place.

Just better, really.

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> And I swear I heard it in Bottom.

One Foot in the Grave too, I think.

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> or i’m misremembering and it’s just a crap joke, i don’t know

It’s that. Any number of things could have shown how the crew had drifted apart more over the years. The ironing sneezes scene doesn’t even do this particularly well, but it’s also painfully convoluted as a joke and performed very poorly. Craig Charles doing his cheeky “Am I pissing Rimmer off yet lol?” face, and Chris Barrie doing his “Urgh disgusting!” face are amongst the least realistic bits of acting in Back to Earth, probably only beaten to worst place by Kryten doing his “What are we going to do?” call-back to “You’re lying!” in the shop later. But the former examples stand out because they are in the first scene of the episode, which we were scrutinising especially closely because it was the first new Dwarf we’d seen in a decade.

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> testicle/tentacle

Blimey, really? I noticed that ‘testicle’ and ‘tentacle’ sounded vaguely similar when I was eight years old, and I couldn’t believe Doug Naylor thought it would sound fresh to any grown ups watching.

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> Is it fair to say the VIII audience are “sycophantic or raucous”? I imagine that any live audience sitcom seems funnier if you’re in the audience for it, and that that’s especially true of Red Dwarf.

Yes, they are sycophantic and raucous in series VIII. This is compared to previous series of Red Dwarf, so it’s not a criticism of sitcom audiences more generally.

The problem might lie with the direction. Compare it with what Andy De Emmony said about Emohawk: Polymorph 2 in the series VI documentary, when he was discussing how Dwayne and Ace’s entrances originally got ridiculously over the top reactions from the audience. De Emmony was concerned about how such a response would play to audiences at home, so he got the actors to retake their entrances until the audience reaction was more muted. This was the correct thing to do.

For series VIII, it seems no such care was taken, and what you get is the audience delighted to be watching the show live, which is fair enough, but their response is far too raucous and this feeds into how the actors perform. The cast start overegging everything and making their performances too big for telly, and the whole thing plays like Bottom Live or some other show that’s intended for a large theatre audience rather than television cameras. You end up with something that was probably wonderful on the night, but is unwatchable in the format that it was being made for.

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Ever since first broadcast I found it immeasurably better than series VIII, too. It was a relief that VIII wasn’t the last ever Red Dwarf anymore.

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I never hated Back to Earth, but it is flawed. It edges further towards drama than series VII, which seems a lot less comfortable in its skin, but still suffers from strange jokes being shoehorned in like the tomato sneezes stuff at the start of episode 1. At times it’s as if Doug would be happier writing more dramatic stuff, then panics when he remembers he’s supposed to be doing a comedy. All in all I think post-Rob Red Dwarf would benefit from more confidently losing the need for a gag every 30 seconds.

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Here you are: https://www.comedy.co.uk/tv/news/3069/red_dwarf_series_13/

Also discussed is the suggestion that they are doing series 13 rather than both 13 and 14 because they want to do a live show at the O2 in between. For an idea of what Red Dwarf will be like when overacted for the sake of a sycophantic, raucous audience, please refer to series VIII.

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> But you’d have thought he at least subliminally knew as he had the idea to put them in wigs.

Maybe Kryten thought when they had become skeletons that they had just ‘gone grey’.

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Brexit Britain’s version of Esperanto.

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> Interesting how he had things to say about the quality of the writing in VI but not VIII. Arguably VIII is more original since I think his gripe with VI was the recycled material/running gags.

According to Doug in the series VII documentary, Chris Barrie wanted to leave after series VI because he couldn’t be arsed with all the effects shooting in Red Dwarf anymore, and wanted to enjoy more straightforward sitcom work like Brittas. Which would explain his preference for series VIII too, since it’s basically just a cheap and simple CBBC show isn’t it, set in the corridors of a LOLwacky!!!1 spaceship.

That said – everyone on the documentary for series VIII apart from Norman Lovett seems to think it’s a brilliant series. Robert Llewellyn calling it “distilled Dwarf” and all that. Doug Naylor, who was racked with anguish about the rubbery crocodile in ‘Stoke Me A Clipper’, seemingly had no problem whatsoever with the rubber and CGI dinosaur work in ‘Pete’. And nobody seemed to notice that the writing was utter guff (only that they ran over-length), or regret their decision to play all their characters with exaggerated cartoony movements and constant gurning.

It’s worth looking again at Chris Barrie’s contribution to the series VII commentaries, where he sits in during episodes in which he only appears briefly. In a nutshell: when he’s not a part of what’s going on, nothing seems to interest him. At first you think he’s criticising the quality of the writing, but then you realise he’s just not fussed about scenes and stories that lack his contribution.

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Quite why the overarching shitness of series 8 passed him by I don’t know, however.

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I think Chris Barrie doesn’t like the series 8 font because it is shit? That’d be my guess anyway.

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> The captain was Dennis the donut boy, after all.

Nope.

Wasn’t.

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> there have been at least two ever since the ship was introduced.

I’ve never doubted this. The presence of the number 1 and 2 on various model shots also conveyed that there were at least 2. I just never imagined that there was a much more vast supply, and that whenever they crashed a Starbug they simply abandoned it, got another Starbug off the rack and painted that replacement with STARBUG 1.

I think I just prefer the sense of continuity of them using mostly one Starbug, and that when it crashed they restored and repaired it offscreen. It’s not a big deal, but it’s what I assumed and took for granted. When there were loads of Starbugs and Blue Midgets at the end of series 8 I put it down to series 8 being shit.

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> it feels like they’re leaving them behind.

It never even crossed my mind that they were doing anything other than constantly reusing the same Starbug, repairing it offscreen when necessary.

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> Off the top of my head there’s Backwards, Marooned, Bodyswap, Terrorform, Out Of Time, Back In The Red Part One…

I thought we were seeing the same Starbug crashing each time, not new ones. There’s even a line about it crashing more times than a ZX81.

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> I’m not sure what’s worse about “rat-arsed”; the idea, the shit CGI, Norm’s delivery of the line or the reaction of the studio audience.

A little of each. For me I just don’t think “rat-arsed” is a very Holly-esque way of saying “drunk”. As with much of series 8 it doesn’t feel like the comedy is coming from the characters as it should; rather the characters are morphing around contrived scenarios that Doug deems to be hilarious.

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I personally don’t think it matters much if Holly doesn’t have many lines or direct involvement in the story. Others will disagree but for me what matters is the sense of this vast ship with Holly as an ever-present background ambience. Just having Holly there on background monitors reacting would be enough.

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The Joel Schumacher ‘Batman and Robin’ movie is essentially a toy commercial.

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And imagine if in Porridge it turned out that Fletcher was his own Dad, but nobody seemed to mind because they had one good scene together in an episode with all racist vending machines.

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>I get that it effectively de-ages the universe because the alignment brackets were misaligned, meaning that it casts its beams outward rather than inward

I’d quite like to know how the misaligned beams somehow had enough range to cover every atom in the entire universe.

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> they explain in Tikka Xtended that they can’t use the time drive to go back to Earth 3 million years ago as they might end up causing another paradox or messing up history, with Lister promising to Rimmer that his timejump to 3 weeks ago to get the ship’s curry back will be the last time they use it.

This doesn’t solve it though. Their single problem with the events of ‘Tikka to Ride’ was the damage they inflicted on the history that should result in Red Dwarf being in space.

They’d cause no problems whatsoever going back to a century that was after the accident happened on the Red Dwarf ship, but before the human race became extinct.

The question is how they justify pissing around in deep space 3 million years into the future, when they actually don’t need to and are constantly complaining about how sick they are of each other’s company. All that time in the empty vacuum of space looking for planets and moons for supplies, hoping they might run into other individuals who aren’t hostile… well just use the time drive, mate.

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> But the (admittedly slightly poetic) point being made by the story is that the time loop creates a new chronology that goes round and round forever, with Lister’s bloodline never ending as his family continues to give birth to descendents for an infinite amount of time.

Am I the only one who hates the idea that Lister is somehow <i>infinitely inbred</i>? This is why I can never like the ‘father’s day’ plot strand in Fathers and Suns. It’s an idea that should have been instantly dropped after series 7, and a new continuity quickly established in its place (they’ve retconned enough other things to get away with this) rather than brought back for series 10.

Inevitably when a show reaches something like its seventh or eighth series it starts eating at its own past. Series 7 was at that point in Red Dwarf history when it had already done the slightly repetitive, formulaic series (series 6) so aimed at more ambitious ideas to keep itself fresh. It would have been so lovely for Lister to have just had an ordinary mother and father, and just been an ordinary bloke who was pulled into a science fiction world. But no, his own birth had to be science-fictionised and now he’s infinitely inbred. Urgh!

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Ouroboros:

“With us going round and round in time, the human race can never become extinct. We’re like a kind of holding pan.”

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Would it really have cost very much to remove the colour from Rimmer for a ten second segment?

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Has Red Dwarf really run into more problems than most other shows? Or do we just know about its problems more than other shows because the DVD documentaries/commentaries are so extensive and candid?

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The skutter clapping in Back to Earth uses the sound of the Cyberman head moving around in the series 5 Doctor Who finale.

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Thanks folks. I’ve decided to get a replacement on Amazon. Just baffled that the disc isn’t visibly scratched or anything, yet struggles to play. Anyway, the process is begun and now I have to return it to them.

Happy New Year!

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>but 2018 is fifty-two weeks long

Not all of it.

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If I don’t get much of a response over this week I’ll assume it’s because everyone else’s DVDs are playing normally.

The reason I’m asking is that if it’s a widespread encoding error, a replacement from amazon won’t make a difference until the problem is addressed.

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The *only* good thing to come out of ‘Only The Good’ is Mac McDonald’s joke in the series VIII documentary that he could play the violin with his left hand in the mirror universe, because that is the opposite of not being able to play the violin.

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I keep my Red Dwarf DVDs in one of those album-style cases that hold around 60 discs. They currently share that space with my Quantum Leap DVDs.

In other news, none of the reversible covers have ever done anything for me. They lack a silvered logo, for example.

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Only the Good is not alright. It is deeply shit.

/thread

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The closest I want to get to a Red Dwarf stage show is Series VIII. That series has all the hallmarks of something like Bottom Live: overegged performances that seem to be pitched more for the live audience than the viewers at home, and a raucous, sycophantic audience cheering and clapping.

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Suddenly there are teeth and they go shopping.

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I’m glad that my iPhone isn’t one of the newer ones that knows when you’re looking at the screen. I like the perks of ‘watch video’ (of an advert for a random app) without having to actually watch any of them.

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Happy for episodes to be as long as necessary to tell a story, so they don’t feel too rushed or stop suddenly. Good episodes have enough breathing time. There’s a danger though that without the half hour restriction, Doug will turn out flabby scripts again like Back in the Red and Pete.

The argument I would make for flexible running times is that shown on Dave with an advert break, there’s no specific reason why 30 minutes should be used, apart from tradition. As a standard on advert channels you’d get a show that was either 30 or 60 minutes *with* adverts, not 35 minutes with them included. It seems there’s a lot of flexibility around scheduling in that regard, which means episodes could be as long as Doug wanted, presuming it didn’t cost more to do this.

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