Me Own Stunts

[Me Own Stunts]

> 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.

[Me Own Stunts]

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.

[Me Own Stunts]

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

[Me Own Stunts]

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.

[Me Own Stunts]

>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.

[Me Own Stunts]

> 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.

[Me Own Stunts]

> 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!

[Me Own Stunts]

Ouroboros:

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

[Me Own Stunts]

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?

[Me Own Stunts]

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

[Me Own Stunts]

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!

[Me Own Stunts]

>but 2018 is fifty-two weeks long

Not all of it.

[Me Own Stunts]

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.

[Me Own Stunts]

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.

[Me Own Stunts]

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.

[Me Own Stunts]

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

/thread

[Me Own Stunts]

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.

[Me Own Stunts]

Suddenly there are teeth and they go shopping.

[Me Own Stunts]

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.

[Me Own Stunts]

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.

[Me Own Stunts]

Okay, that didn’t work. It was a spine-ready image of Ziggy, anyway.

[Me Own Stunts]

<img src=”https://i.pinimg.com/originals/2a/3f/db/2a3fdb8917882a6882512a9174235e16.jpg&#8221;

[Me Own Stunts]

Series XII makes the ship feel more spacious than Series VIII. In Series VIII you get things like the warehouse where the dinosaur walks around, but it doesn’t feel like the inside of the ship, it feels like somewhere else entirely. There’s less coherence there. Series XII feels very coherent and it’s brilliant at subtle things like reusing corridors in a way that you don’t notice.

[Me Own Stunts]

> Rundown of the XI extras

We probably don’t need to speculate about the Red Dwarf XI DVD release anymore, though.

[Me Own Stunts]

I’m so sorry because I do respect the effort of trying to fix Series VIII. I’m not trying to be a cunt, but I need to be honest. I am criticising Series VIII, not KyoSo.

[Me Own Stunts]

(It’s almost as if Series VIII has no comedic or narrative worth whatsoever.)

[Me Own Stunts]

“but then the scene would be incredibly short and feel rather pointless.”

It’s a pointless scene already. May as well get it over with, no?

I’ve just sat through Kryten re-corrupting his files through the profundity of ambivalence again, so I’m not in the most generous of moods. That needs to be cut as well.

[Me Own Stunts]

If I was editing this, I would be removing more instances of screws going deep into the ground.

[Me Own Stunts]

“Comment – I don’t particularly like the overly cartoonish joke about The Cat having a “cool” heartbeat, but I feel we need to see where he ended up after they were arrested.”

Solution: Cut the scene after “Those are his nipples, Frank”. Narratively, no more is needed than that.

[Me Own Stunts]

“The Time Wand scene would be SO much better (or less shite) if they’d done it with clever editing, rather than having the actors do it”

This is like trying to pluck the dog shit from a vast dog shit that has had a thin layer of icing sugar sprinkled on top.

If you love icing sugar so much just have some icing sugar. That’s what I say.

[Me Own Stunts]

What’s the big deal about having three separate onions? I eat specifically three separate onions all the time.

[Me Own Stunts]

Cassandra only seems watchable when it’s viewed in sequence after the first few episodes of Series 8, where it stands out and even gives you hope that the rest of Series 8 isn’t as bad as you remembered. Taken without that context it’s a horrible episode, with pantomime gurning, Series 8 lobotomised characters, and illogical plotting galore. Urgh. Hate it.

[Me Own Stunts]

But I like the shit bits. :(

[Me Own Stunts]

> two other people have anything they

Looking for an acronym to repeat the CLITORIS gag, I can only find TOPHAT which is not rude enough; sorry.

[Me Own Stunts]

Yes, exactly. The “condition” would be whatever it is that impulsively turns Camille into a slave of other people’s desires, although presumably that’s what a Pleasure GELF is designed for. Camille and her husband have probably labelled it a “condition” as part of a process of breaking her from her genetic programming.

[Me Own Stunts]

Why are there “examples of the logo in action” for series other than Series 12? And what’s the difference between, say, the “Season 1” version of the Series 12 logo and the “Season 8” version of the Series 12 logo? I am so confused.

[Me Own Stunts]

So I’m presuming M-Corp is the one where they upgrade to iOS 11 and realise their devices can’t play 32-bit apps like the Monkey Island 1 and 2 Special Editions anymore, even though they paid for them with their own money.

[Me Own Stunts]

There’s also the fact that Irene is the first real human they’ve come into contact with for ages. Even taking into account the shamelessly unfiltered guff that was Series 8, encountering real human beings is rare and this should be an ethical crew that cares about other humans. Instead we see Rimmer doing his “ah Bisto” face when his own brother dies, and Lister and Rimmer both deciding to not even try rescuing Irene when she’s sucked out of an airlock.

I’d like to think Lister would quickly put on a spacesuit and do his best to save Irene, not give up the second the airlock door reseals. Would he give up just as quickly if it had been Kochanski? No, of course not. So he shouldn’t have done it here.

[Me Own Stunts]

The prison subplot was entirely unneeded too. How much more interesting it would have been for Lister to have been forced back into the Red Dwarf hierarchy after years of adventure, nobody believing a word of what he says, a metaphorical prison rather than a literal one. It would have been the writers’ opportunity to explore the pre-accident crew in a way they regretted never doing, as well.

[Me Own Stunts]

> Either way Chris has been quite open about the fact, making reference to it in the recent documentary. You seem to be taking it a bit more personally than perhaps he would?

I only said the word “cunt” mate. You’re acting like something important has happened.

[Me Own Stunts]

> Any need to use such derogatory language ‘Me Own Stunts’?

Depends what you think of jokes about receding hairlines, I suppose.

[Me Own Stunts]

I didn’t say “high drama”. It’s a combination of the music and the understandable assumption after the more filmic Series 7 that Naylor would continue pushing Red Dwarf in that direction.

And I’m talking about before we’d seen Series 8. When you’ve already seen the series and you know the scenes that all the clips are from, you’re bound to have a different reaction.

[Me Own Stunts]

> But, with the chances of matching its imperial phase receding faster than Chris Barrie’s hairline

LOL RECEDING HAIRLINES!!!

Cunt.

[Me Own Stunts]

> Can VIII not be Red Dwarf instead?

Only if you also lose Series 6 and 7. Them’s the rules.

[Me Own Stunts]

The trailer gives the sense that it’ll be dramatic and exciting, though. Especially (perhaps only) when you haven’t actually seen Series 8 yet.

It’s logical to presume from the trailer that Series 8 will build on the dramatic elements of Series 7, but with a live audience there to make the performances less dull, and writing that’s sharper due to Naylor’s revisiting of Series 1-3.

It was definitely a shock in 1999 to go from expectations created by the trailer to Series 8 itself – the insanely raucous audience, and performances that are pitched more for a Bottom Live theatre type of audience than a television audience.

[Me Own Stunts]

> Hang on. Do people really think series X is named X because IX is meant to be the lost series, and not because Back to Earth *is* IX? Even if you consider the director’s cut the definitive version of BTE, it was originally broadcast as a series of three episodes, and it was the ninth one, so it’s series IX. Doug has stated that BTE isn’t Red Dwarf, mind you, but this lost series thing is bollocks, surely?

I was personally clarifying that if we had no Series 6, 7 and 8 in the 90s, a special made in 2009 with, at first, a name rather than a series number, would retrospectively be considered Series 6, with the current Series 10, 11 and 12 (although they would differ from the “current” versions for reasons already outlined in posts above) being Series 7, 8 and 9 respectively.

[Me Own Stunts]

If you are watching Series 8 immediately after Series 7, you should build your hopes up first with the Star Wars parody trailer for Series 8 that makes it look good. Tell yourself “Chris Barrie is back, Norman Lovett is back, the studio audience is back, and Doug Naylor has spent a lot of time studying the first three series for the Remastered project, so the characterisation will be spot on. What could possibly go wrong?”

[Me Own Stunts]

I do know what you mean. I think that’s because the technology didn’t exist in the late 1980s to make all the characters into broad, pantomimic stereotypes.

[Me Own Stunts]

Ah yes, I was drunk when I started this thread, but I wanted to make the Series 8 and Me2 connection; Series 8 gives us a ‘rebooted’ Rimmer that we didn’t get at the end of Me2. In the first series, the message was that Rimmer progressed with the Red Dwarf team and softened into a more likeable character. The rebooted version of Rimmer was deleted and we moved on from there. It’s weird to think that without a gap of several years – let’s say if Series 9 had come out a couple of years after Series 8 – we’d probably have been left with the rebooted Series 8 Rimmer forever. It wouldn’t have felt right.

Just an observation, not an interesting one.

[Author]

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