Me Own Stunts

[Me Own Stunts]

“I love Revolution #9, it’s one of the best things on the White Album. So ner.”

I thought that said “so far”, which I liked. I like the idea of the White Album being a process.

[Me Own Stunts]

When I say “that’s where I got off”, I meant it like “that’s where I got off a horse”.

I hope that clears that up.

(This post was sponsored by Kleenex.)

[Me Own Stunts]

I just never know how to take Helter Skelter. It feels like it wants to be a parody, but also more like it just doesn’t understand what it’s doing. Like a new certain type of music was emerging so Paul McCartney thought “eh up, I’ll do my one of that and show them I can do it just as well”. It feels very self-conscious.

A lot of “feels like”, basically.

I’ve already covered Tikka in previous posts. Doug forgot what the cliffhanger of series 6 actually was; that’s where I got off. Also it was where the quick-one-liners model of series 6 started to fall apart. They have to be funny. If they’re not funny, you start to notice the humour isn’t coming from the characters and their situation anymore.

If you’d like to hear more of this particular drunken trajectory, press ‘red’ now.

[Me Own Stunts]

“If we’re just arbitrarily making up rules then can I be in the no-Brexit, no-Trump universe where Victoria Wood is still alive and making a new series of Dinnerladies?”

Having Rob Grant onboard for post-series 5 Red Dwarf isn’t arbitrary! I had it in my mind to include it in my original post but I forgot to put it in.

I’m trying to tempt people over to my alternate universe, alright, and I promise it isn’t as shit as the one where Captain Hollister could play the violin with his left arm because doing that was the opposite of not being able to play the violin.

I promise it is not the same as that.

Well alright it is the same as that but Series 8 wasn’t a documentary.

Alright then it was.

If you think this has crap comedy timing, blame whoever decided on the maximum one line between paragraphs rule.

Thank you.

[Me Own Stunts]

“Revolution 9 is great. Dad played it to me when I was 10 or 11, totally changed my perspective on music.”

(notice I have abandoned trying to use the blockquote thing that MADE MY POST GO WRONG EARLIER SO THAT NOBODY READ IT)

I agree that Revolution 9 is great, but most people don’t love to hear the whole track when they’re listening to the White Album. Usually I am in the mood for it once Cry Baby Cry has ended, because you get used to a certain track sequence don’t you. Personally I’m more likely to skip ‘Helter Skelter’ or ‘Birthday’.

[Me Own Stunts]

Well, I did say “most people”.

[Me Own Stunts]

No it was most people who listen to The White Album.

[Me Own Stunts]

The pilot would have been a successful pilot with components that worked (at least enough for the show to go to series). There’s nothing in my premise stating that Jane Leeves and Linwood Boomer would have been tied up with Red Dwarf, as we don’t know what differences made the pilot successful, but it’s a gamble.

I forgot to mention the Rob Grant factor though, and somebody above brought it up so I should clarify.

In the alternate reality, Rob Grant never formally left Red Dwarf UK. He probably would have ultimately tired of the US version but who knows. Anyway because the UK show never had “post-Grant” period (which he has said he couldn’t really engage with, likening them to seeing your ex-wife out and about with another man), the opportunity in 2009 to make a 21st anniversary special may have appealed to him.

So yes, Back to Earth and then series 7, 8 and 9 (thanks for correcting that earlier, Dave Wallace) could have all involved Rob Grant, at least until he’d had enough.

[Me Own Stunts]

Just imagine the first chunk being a reply to “We’d also lose Fathers and Suns” and the bit that’s in a quotation box being a reply to “as well as having to go through ever-more-increasing workarounds to account for Rimmer still being soft-light throughout all the recent series”.

[Me Own Stunts]

Arrgh what happened to that post?? I thought I was quoting Seb and it ended up like that.

[Me Own Stunts]

This is true, but for me only the scene with Lister playing back the footage of his ‘Dad’ matters to me, and it’s nevertheless polyfilla over the horrible crack of Lister not only being his own Dad, but his own Grandfather, Great Grandfather and so on to infinity. He is infinitely inbred; an idea I entirely hate.

It would have been lovely if Lister had just had ordinary parents who’d abandoned him rather than a science fiction background. That’s what we had before Series 7 started looking inwards for what to do next. A show that runs for several series runs the risk of becoming stale and formulaic, and around this time they sometimes start to look inwards for ideas to reincorporate and put surprising spins on. Eureka – Lister’s parents were never explained so let’s have him be his own Dad in a surprising time-loop twist! I hate it, and after it had emerged in Series 7 I didn’t appreciate them going back to it in Series 10, albeit for one good scene.

So yeah I don’t mind that subplot going from Series 10.

I actually wish Rimmer had stayed soft-light anyway. It was good for Legion, and it was perhaps necessary to make Rimmerworld work, but I can’t really think of anything in Series 10 that absolutely needed Rimmer to be hard-light (a few things, but not in the sense of enormous workarounds). It’s just more convenient for the writers (as well as Chris Barrie and the prop team) to allow Rimmer to touch stuff. But for me Rimmer was so much more effective when he couldn’t do things his own way without the assistance of Lister, Cat and Kryten. So officious yet depended on the cooperation of people he struggled to have any respect for and vice versa. It added so well to his layers of neuroses, and I always felt that once he became hard-light a lot of his character was lost. I think in the back of my mind there was the sense he only really stayed hard-light to make it easier for everyone producing the show, as well, which rankled a bit.

[Me Own Stunts]

Blimey, somebody who thinks BOTH CHEEKS MAN is good.

I never thought I’d live to see the day!

[Me Own Stunts]

Red Dwarf USA could be as good as early Simpsons for all you know. You absolutely certain you won’t take the gamble?

Don’t be so anxious; at the very worst you’ll only be trapped in an alternate dimension forever.

[Me Own Stunts]

What more could a special edition X-XII release include though, apart from commentaries?

I agree that sometimes a bit of time needs to pass for the extra material to be interesting, but the series 8 commentary is a prime example of pretty much everyone in the cast laughing along to something that was patently unfunny. And hardly anyone was candid in that series’ documentary ‘The Tank’, either. Naylor was full of disappointment for the rubber crocodile in series 7, but seemingly not bothered at all by the absurdly fake CGI dinosaur in ‘Pete’. Everyone seemed to think the basketball scene was hilarious, and the mirror universe sequence fantastically clever. No perspective appeared to have been gained in the years between the series being made and the DVD coming out.

I’d say the series 10 documentary was far more revealing than that, even though no time had passed at all. And it’s been almost two years now since they filmed series 12. While I agree it’s quite unlikely, I still hope that they’ve used the extra time to really polish up the series and make the DVD release as strong as possible.

[Me Own Stunts]

It’s a shame. The DVDs feel incomplete without commentaries, regardless of their quality. They give the episodes another layer of rewatch value.

[Author]

Replies