Mr-Stabby

[Mr-Stabby]

I was frankly more astonished that they decided to use the first episode as an excuse to remake ‘Pete’ :D

[Mr-Stabby]

That cue was one of the first popular pieces of library music. Weirdly i actually remember hearing it 15 years ago on a trip to Elizabeth Castle in Jersey. They had a small theatre where you watched a film that showed the history of Elizabeth Castle. That music was in the background for most of it. Even as a kiddywink i thought ‘WTF, thats the hero theme from Terroform!’ That same film also had another library track, which just happens to be the opening piece of music from the second half of Bottom Live 2001 :D Weird how these things come around :D

[Mr-Stabby]

A commentary on the DVD commentary of either one of the episodes in Series VII where Chris is bemoaning how shit the show is now hes gone, or one of the ones in Series 8 where Norm is moaning about everything.

Not for any particular reason, just a random thought :)

[Mr-Stabby]

I dunno how i feel about a Multi-doctor story. I think the docudrama covering the inception that is being made, plus a couple of documentaries should be enough. I don’t want the anniversary to be a part of the show itself, unless they did something like ‘Remembrance of the Daleks’ did and have a story that subtly revolves around the history of the show without getting in the way of telling a good original tale.

The idea of getting the old doctors back in their old costumes just makes me cringe. Especially with Colin, Tom and to a lesser extent Peter. I just have ‘Dimensions in Time’ revolving around my head (literally, in that awful 3D). Maybe with Paul, Chris and David Tennant, but we know that Chris is not going to do it, and i think even Paul said he wouldn’t too.

[Mr-Stabby]

Oh come on, you have to do ‘Pete, part 2’! Maybe right at the end when you’re pissed and have had enough!

Definitely a Series X episode, either Trojan or Lemons.

Duct Soup Xtended if you enjoy pain.

[Mr-Stabby]

I feel for Doug and other people like Steven Moffat. You can get all the praise in the world from hundreds of people on twitter, but it just takes one cunt to totally ruin it . By all means be critical in a constructive way, or just say you weren’t a fan, but to actively insult it AND the people who watch it makes you a special kind of douche.

One thing i’ve noticed actually (though it’s not always the case but often is) is that people who like something or who have constructive criticism will often put ‘I thought it was great’ or ‘i think that’ whereas people who pointlessly insult something will often state their opinion as fact. ‘It was shit’ ‘That was the worst piece of TV ever made’. That kind of thing. Says something about the commenter.

[Mr-Stabby]

By the way, if you’re into such things (it is an acquired taste) i highly recommend these vids where some bloke has edited Bottom episodes. I dunno why but i find them really amusing for some reason :D

Here’s the one for ‘Parade’. With a bit of Red Dwarf added for good measure :)

[Mr-Stabby]

i have a memory of reading somewhere that ‘Contest’ was indeed the pilot episode. What gives it away is the hairstyles (Richies is shorter, Eddie actually has some) but also it is the only show in the run shot on old BBC tube cameras. Can’t remember for the life of me where i read it though.

[Mr-Stabby]

I think because III tried all the moody lighting that the later series did, but whereas Series IV onwards was in Shepperton, III was still in Manchester, which had those really REALLY old BBC Cameras that had been around for years before that. If you look at the Bodysnatcher Collection you get a glimpse of the old cameras and on the side they proudly claim that they’re in BBC COLOUR. As if colour was a big deal :D Shepperton cameras were most likely quite new at that point. On Series 1 and 2 it didn’t matter so much because they overlit it so much, you didn’t notice it so much.

[Mr-Stabby]

It’s weird. I understand why people would prefer the 50 fields a second look, as it’s more intimate and certainly fits a sitcom. I also understand why a lot of people prefer 4:3 for comedy. In fact it’s well documented that a lot of American sitcom creators didn’t want to move to 16:9 because they thought it too cinematic for comedy. I believe Family Guy was one example that stuck with 4:3 until they were forced to change.

However, sitcoms in America have been shot at film frame rates (and in a lot of cases on multi-camera film) for years. It’s never really bothered me watching it that way, just as watching shows like Big Bang Theory in 16:9 hasn’t bothered me in the slightest.

Maybe it’s what you’re used to do with a show. If a show starts out on 50i VT, then suddenly switches to 25p film, it’s jarring. Whereas if a show was always in 25p, you’re used to it being that way.

Bizarrely Red Dwarf being in 25p never really bothered me. It certainly hasn’t bothered me this new series. Only the re-mastered versions seemed jarring.

Seeing as though old episodes played on computer screens are effectively de-interlacing the footage anyway, do people who love the 50i really have a problem watching old Red Dwarf on a computer screen?

On a slightly different note, i really am worried about films going to 50 frames a second. I really don’t think it’ll work. But then that’s my opinion :)

[Mr-Stabby]

The site has been blocked at my work for years. It’s listed under the ‘adult’ tag. Where the hell is the porn then? Jeezzzz….

[Mr-Stabby]

Don’t forget some 1980s rejected Doctor Who sound effects, turn down the saturation to about 10%, and after all that, copy the finished programme to VHS, smear shit all over it, re-rip it. Then upload :D

[Mr-Stabby]

I love them talking about Norm the way they do.

[Mr-Stabby]

Wasn’t he the bloke who hosted that weird Cyber Zone series years ago?

[Mr-Stabby]

mick_aka – That name is familar. I seem to remember BobbyLlew mentioning your name on some video he did? Am i imagining that?

And NoFro, sorry to deceive you. My middle name is Stabby though :D

…..it isn’t

[Mr-Stabby]

I’m one of those people who doesn’t have any form of internet presence. Well i DO, but i try and make sure that my full name is not used. I either use stupid nicknames like i do here, or as is the case on my profile on my workplace website, i make sure i don’t use my full name. The main reason i do this is i like my privacy, but because i work in a profession that is very touchy about having its employees having any kind of personal internet presence, i have to be careful.

If anything, the nerdy types are the ones who fully grasp what having your name on the internet means, so they are more careful to hide it i imagine.

At work, we actually use sites like PIPL to look up people who want to come and work for us, and we’re not even slightly the only company that do this. It’s AMAZING what we find. One girl came to work for us not so long ago, and within 2 seconds of looking up her name, we’d found several naked photos of her from her Facebook page. She’s not a model of any kind, she just decided to put some naked photos of herself on her facebook profile and not bother to set any kind of privacy settings on them. If she was blasé about having them public, it would be ok, but she seemed shocked that we’d found them. Idiot!

[Mr-Stabby]

They both deserved more laughs than they got. It’s the ‘Pebble Mill Syndrome’ that the Rob and Doug interview suffered with. The audience for these shows are old ladies whose only exposure to TV is Coronation Street and Crossroads! I have to admit that as much as i hate ‘Loose Women’, at least they seem to get the whole Red Dwarf thing more than these shows ever did.

Though lets be candid here, there’s a big chance that the old soaks who watch these kinds of shows now are the people who watched Red Dwarf originally when it came out :-D

[Mr-Stabby]

Andrew said “Not saying it relates to RDX one way or the other, but the BBFC don’t, to my knowledge, rate commentaries.”

How does that work? Would that mean then that on a DVD a commentary could contain the phrase “Norman Lovett is a cunthorn’ and it would still be passed as a U if the show itself was U rated?

[Mr-Stabby]

THIS IS A BORING TOPIC

[Mr-Stabby]

Well the XTended title sequences give you a sort of idea, and i dunno. With the single camera look, and single camera lighting, 50i to me just looks a bit weird…. Especially when it came to effects like explosions and Krytens head blowing to bits. I’m sure what with the Hobbit and all i’ll have to get use to that smoothness of motion as it’ll probably be in a lot more films in the future, but i can’t help but be distracted by it.

[Mr-Stabby]

I hate the 100hz and 200hz TVs that try and smooth motion out. I’m not saying they do a bad job of smoothing out the motion, in fact a lot of TVs do quite a good job. It’s just another ‘feature’ of TVs that takes the picture even further away from what the makers intended. It’s the same reason i hate those stupid ‘Vivid Colour’ modes and ‘Virtual Surround’ modes. The makers spend thousands of pounds on calibrated editing monitors and sound equipment and spend ages grading the picture so they can get the colour just the way they want it, only for a stupid TV mode which is turned on by default and most people don’t even notice to ruin it in one step. Argh it annoys me…

At least if all manufacturers kept to some kind of standard, it would be ok. But look in any normal TV shop, and you’ll notice that not one TV has the picture looking exactly the same as the other. The first thing i do when i buy a new TV is turn all the crappy ‘vivid colour’ modes and stuff off.

As for the whole filmic effect debate, long and the short of it is , i think it worked in VII, whereas the Re-mastered really didn’t.

Anyway moving on :D

[Mr-Stabby]

Is it perhaps deliberate that the Rob Grant credit in BtE appears on a shot of the Smeg-ups :D

[Mr-Stabby]

Yeah I agree. As Series X has been building up, i found myself looking back at the reaction to BtE on broadcast here and on other sites like Gallifrey Base, and was surprised at just how good the reaction was. Especially considering whenever BtE has been mentioned recently, it has always been in a negative fashion mostly.

Even the Instant Reaction Dwarfcasts were more positive than negative. Weird how opinions change. Maybe the original excitement of the actual broadcast may have led people to be more positive, and the later reactions were people giving their measured reaction after watching it a couple of times.

Personally i really liked BtE and remembered laughing quite a lot on original broadcast. I also bought the DVD AND the Bluray when it came out (gave the DVD away to a friend who is a big Dwarf fan and didn’t even know Back to Earth existed. Strange isn’t it!)

There are however, I think, quite a few things wrong with BtE. I really think it needed a studio audience, i know that’s such a cliched line, but a lot of the gags, especially in the first part needed an audience reaction and felt slightly awkward without one. I don’t think it was paced correctly for a commercial half hour 3 parter either. I don’t care if the DVD version is better, you should make a show designed for the slot it is given on TV and Series 8 and BtE suffered because of that not being the case. I understand BtE became a 3 parter quite close to broadcast, but some of the edits seemed very rushed.

Anyway, while it had problems, as i said i really liked it and it certainly doesn’t deserve the bashing it gets. The whole ‘they’re too old, the show is past its best, let it go’ bullshit really fucks me off at times too. BtE was a massive improvement over Series 8 and from what we’re seeing Series X looks to be bloody good, so i wish people would let that crap go and just try and enjoy it. By all means slag it off after its broadcast :D

[Mr-Stabby]

Enjoyed the last chapter. Although most of Red Dwarf has been well documented on the DVDs, the movie is still something i don’t know much about. I knew they went in for some costume tests, but i didn’t know they were basically ready for the shoot and had planned it and everything.

[Mr-Stabby]

If you watch Rob’s recent Carpool with BobbyLlew, it’s clear that he doesn’t seem bitter about the show. He still openly talks about the good times he had making the show. It’s not like he’s Norman. When Robert occasionally mentions post-Grant Dwarf, he doesn’t suddenly puke up in disgust. Though he does say he hasn’t watched any of the newer ones, and makes the ‘It would be like watching your old girlfriend have sex’ type comparison :-D

The thing is, we always assume that people will have the same reactions to events that we do. If it were me, i’d be bitter that Dwarf carried on successfully without me. But Rob might not honestly care or have a different opinion. Lets not forget they re-wrote Bodysnatcher together recently for the Bodysnatcher set, so both Doug and Rob seem ok to be writing with each other again. I imagine Doug at least thought about approaching Rob for Series X. From the little i’ve seen and heard of Rob, i would imagine he would have said no to Series X if asked.

[Mr-Stabby]

I realised after seeing him have a mental rant at a barman in Peterborough, that he was in fact a massive cunt.

What about???

Barman: Here’s your drink Mr Lovett
Norm: Where’s my umbrella?! Give me my umbrella! If i don’t get my umbrella, you won’t get another line out of me!
Barman: You’ve had one too many lines already!

[Mr-Stabby]

For the first time in a long time i decided to listen to the commentaries on the Series 8 DVDs. I can’t believe i’ve never noticed how negative Norm is being in these commentaries. The thing is, a lot of the time he actually has a point with what he’s saying. Mainly with the whole ‘this used to be a sitcom, now it’s panto’ type stuff. Even sighing the occasional ‘Oh my god…’ at points in the shows when i was doing the exact same thing for it being stupid or crap in some way.

But he’s just being pointlessly antagonistic towards the rest of the cast at various points. They occasionally bite back at him. I love it when Chris does his impression of Norm, then when Norm says his career as an impressionist is over, Chris says ‘Well maybe you should be more famous Norm then i’d be back in business’. Classic :D

[Mr-Stabby]

Sort of following on from John’s article about sitcom production value, Bottom had some great studio sets in its time. One of the ones that stood out for me was the ‘Finger’ episode in Series 3 when they go to the ‘Marveloso Splendido Hotelo’. There’s a scene where they steal a car and Richie accidentally reverses into an off license and completely screws it up. Is that actually a TV set? If so, its a bloody good one!

In fact here’s a clip of it:

[Mr-Stabby]

I always preferred the series to the live shows because in the live shows, the plot was so thin it was almost non-existant. In the last couple of live shows, it WAS non-existant as far as i recall. The last one especially. In fact i was rather embarrassed by the last one because it rehashed not only old gags from Bottom and other Bottom Lives, but they also went into some routine about becoming their characters from The Young Ones which i just found embarrassing.

The series (and the film) always had the funny innuendos and hitting each other in funny ways routines, but also had at least a minimal plot to get the show moving. That’s why i loved it.

Though i’m not sure what milage they can get out of ‘Hooligans Island’. They HAVE to have other people on it, otherwise what could they do?

[Mr-Stabby]

>I have PONG!

You mean you haven’t played PONG! 3D!? Your life is without meaning!

[Mr-Stabby]

Is it just me, or does Robert not actually sound like Kryten when he does the voice outside of the TV show? He sounds like someone doing a reasonable impression.

[Mr-Stabby]

Isn’t the new Counterstrike out soon? That should bring some more players back to CS. It always was my favourite FPS :)

[Mr-Stabby]

I like it when Lister is stupid.

[Mr-Stabby]

Is that the TARDIS at the entrance of TV Centre? I had a photo taken there when i was working there:

[Mr-Stabby]

I can’t believe the DVDs of the new series are taking so bloody long to come out. It’s as if they want you to pirate it.

[Mr-Stabby]

I was gutted i didn’t get to ComicCon. I really wanted to meet Jewel Staite and Anthony Michael Hall. Did you meet any of them, and if so what were they like?

If i’d have gone though i wouldn’t want to meet Gillian Anderson. If you saw her on the Graham Norton show a month or so back, you’d realise that she has real contempt for fans. Especially those that CosPlay.

[Mr-Stabby]

It burnnns!

[Mr-Stabby]

Holly is undoubtedly in RDX now!

Ok i’m done!

Yes I know, worst photoshop ever.

[Mr-Stabby]

Ian’s making a habit of repairing relationships these days :)

[Mr-Stabby]

That is quite literally the most disturbing thing i have ever seen in my life.

[Mr-Stabby]

What?! You mean i can’t play this on a loop anymore??

:(Damnnnn

Seriously, i’ve always liked Iain, so i’ve never posted on these threads before. I highly recommend his Pocket Radio Show on iTunes, just skip the ads :P

[Mr-Stabby]

I know BBC Two have shown Dave stuff in the past, but now that digital switchover has happened and most homes can get Dave anyway, it doesn’t really make sense to show a new series on BBC Two as well as Dave. It would be like showing Eastenders on ITV2.

[Mr-Stabby]

I like the fact they actually bothered to get costumes made up for the promo shot :)

[Mr-Stabby]

As opposed to now when they’re…..?

Weird and shite? :-D

As for who did the edits, yeah it would be interesting to find out. Was it ever played like that on stations like PBS?

[Mr-Stabby]

I disapprove, generally speaking. The pause created by an ad break is part of the original show, and is often very important to the pace. I prefer it to be like the Brasseye DVD, with the bumpers intact and a two second gap in between.

Yeah i agree with this.

Who else remembers when the BBC would edit American shows like Star Trek to remove the ad breaks? As has been said, shows with adverts often are paced to lead up to the ad break. In the case of Star Trek for example, something bad would happen like Kirk is captured, then you’d see a closeup of Kirk standing still being pissed off as the music crescendos and then the picture fades to black. A couple of seconds later, we’d fade back into the action. The BBC not only removed the fade to black, but took out the music leading up to it, so you’d get this weird situation where Kirk would be captured and then suddenly stand there and stare at the camera for 10 seconds for no real reason. T’was a weird decision to edit it that way! They also used to move the cold open to after the title sequence, and put the title sequence first. The BBC were weird back then.

[Mr-Stabby]

Stabby: I know lodging costs is hardly the biggest obstacle, but if it would help, you could camp out on our sofa. I ran it by the bf and he’s cool with that.

That’s very kind of you :) And who said Dwarf fans weren’t nice :)

Luckily, i could afford a nice hotel if i were ever to go, its just finding the time (I seem to always have no time).

[Mr-Stabby]

Love this show. Been in the audience several times.

Ah coolio. Is the warmup comedian as annoying as Craig seems to suggest he is? Forcing you to clap when certain things are mentioned?

I really want at some point to see the show, but i’ll have to get to America first. Sadly i doubt i’ll get to see it before they move to their new studio. I’d quite like to see just how small that basement is, it looks very small on camera even with wide lenses.

[Mr-Stabby]

The great thing about Craig Ferguson is how honest he can be. Look up his monologues talking about his parents deaths, or his divorce, or talking about his alcoholism. While he does wacky episodes he can also be really damn serious, one of his episodes had Steven Fry as a guest and it wasn’t a normal episode, just him and Fry on the set talking to each other for an hour with no audience.

I’m not ashamed to admit, i was tearing up when i watched those episodes when his parents had just died. Could you imagine Jay Leno or David Letterman doing anything even close to that in that situation? His monologue about his alcoholism was great too. Just the right amount of serious, but a bit of comedy in there not to make it too awkward. Although the stupid audience were laughing at the serious bits too, clearly not getting it!

I loved that Stephen Fry episode too. As much as the audience can help a dead show sometimes, they can also really get in the way. Doesn’t help that they are clearly told at the beginning to laugh at everything. It’s also clear that the warmup comedian tells them to do certain things like go insane whenever Craig says ‘It’s a great day for America’ or whenever the cash prize is mentioned. That Stephen Fry episode showed how much an audience can get in the way. Though i will concede that the show overall works better with an audience.

He had Hattie on Late Late once and they mentioned how it was a shame they weren’t both on RD at the same time.

Oh yeah i forgot they had Hattie on! She was great on it. Just watched it on YouTube.

[Mr-Stabby]

He’ll be too busy explaining to the airheaded douchebags who host that show what a robot is, or who that whacky guy with the H tattoo on his head is. He won’t have time to actually let any spoilers out.

[Mr-Stabby]

I wonder if he or somebody else considers the “blacking up” of the Kryten mask questionable. In the same way as some may consider a white guy “blacking up” to be Duane Dibbley in a costume contest might be.

I never quite got why people think blacking up is ‘racist’. Could someone actually explain to me succinctly why it is?

[Author]

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