Nick R

[Nick R]

I still have a huge amount of fondness for this, though;

The Tom Baker line that opens that sketch is the one I always remember from Little Britain. It’s the one I always quote in defence of the first series.

There were some good characters at the start but they didn?t seem to go anywhere. Simply rehashing the same predictable scenarios/ punchlines over and over got old very rapidly.

I think Lou and Andy were the characters that survived the constant repetition longest, because watching a fat man go flying across the background of a scene will always hold some appeal. And “She pushed me!” is a great punchline.

[Nick R]

I got #1 Blackadder (yay!), #2 Green Wing (yay!), #3 ‘Allo ‘Allo (never seen it…) and The Wrong Door as the wildcard (never seen that, either).

Re: Nathan Barley, you can watch the whole series on Channel 4’s website. I like it, but having never encountered anyone who’s part of that London media “rise of the idiots”, I still find it hard to believe that such people exist. Although having said that…

[Nick R]

Two awful quality cam copies of the new trailer.

Bright, but blurry and will probably be taken down quickly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhkPpcbu-Ts

Sharper but darker, but it disguises the title so it might stay on YouTube longer…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a47YvdYYYLQ

Well, I’m still excited by the film! When the teaser trailer came out, I was surprised they only mentioned Titanic, but the new trailer includes that knockout sequence of captions TERMINATOR – ALIENS – TERMINATOR 2 – TRUE LIES – TITANIC. A reminder that this is James Cameron we’re talking about, it will be good!

It’s hard to say much about the special effects from video quality that bad (can’t wait to see a HD version). I couldn’t quite understand people’s complaints about the effects in the first trailer, but then I’m always quite tolerant of shortcomings in special effects anyway – The Matrix Reloaded’s Burly Brawl looked fine to me, except for Neo’s coat in the shots where he spins round high in the air. It’s only really bad effects like the infamous ones in Die Another Day that irritate me.

The film’s hype has made a big thing about the way the Avatars’ faces resemble the actors, but I confess that I still don’t really recognise them in either video or stills. :(

[Nick R]

The version I learned has an old-fashioned ending which no-one else I know seems to use:

30 days hath September
April, June and November
All the rest have 31
Except February alone which has but 28 days clear
And 29 in each leap year

The “clear” might be a bit of a filler word, but it works! I was yelling that version at the TV screen when the mnemonic was mentioned on QI and Alan Davies finished on “Except February” then complained about it not rhyming. :(

[Nick R]

There’s a South Bank Show episode about Pixar tonight at 10.15. I think the last one they did about animation was the one about anime a few years ago – should be a treat if it’s as good as that.

[Nick R]

I don’t think the film will be awful, but the characters’ facial animation is definitely deeeeeep into the uncanny valley – probably more so than anything else I’ve seen. I like the atmosphere of the environments, though.

It’s also been announced that Zemeckis will be remaking Yellow Submarine(!) using 3D performance capture. There are many films for which a remake would be pointless, and that’s one of them. Maybe if he does it in the style of the Beatles: Rock Band intro, it could work… but almost certainly not. At least it’ll give them an excuse to get the original’s DVD back in print…

[Nick R]

> I don?t think I?ve ever given anything as much chances as I?ve given Monty Python. I?ve seen all the movies, seen a huge amount of sketches?and nothing. Not a smile.

What do you think of Terry Gilliam’s animations? IMO they’re some of the most consistently funny bits of the series (although admittedly I haven’t really seen many full episodes of the TV series: I’m mainly only familiar with the most popular sketches – the ones that were remade in And Now For Something Completely Different, were included on the “best of” Region 2 DVDs that came out before the full series was available, and always get repeated as clips in comedy documentaries).

> Now could have been a great opportunity what with the new Hitchhikers book out on Monday

Well that’s crept up on me! I haven’t kept up with news about it since its initial announcement. At that time, I was sceptical about it (I haven’t read any of the Artemis Fowl books), but I wasn’t outraged by the idea of someone other than Douglas writing the series.

[Nick R]

SFX has an alternative version with “the logo” and “the insignia” combined together.

I like it.

[Nick R]

ONE FILM – Almost Famous, which I watched last week and really enjoyed. (Some of you have mentioned Eternal Sunshine – yep, it’s brilliant, but I love Adaptation. and Being John Malkovich just as much.)

ONE BOOK – The Player of Games by Iain M Banks. I’ve read three of his Culture novels recently, and this was my favourite so far. Although I’m looking forward to getting to Excession, after what I’ve heard about it…

ONE ALBUM – Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation, because it really is as good as its reputation suggests.

ONE OTHER REALLY COOL THING – This webcomic page

ONE OTHER REALLY COOL THING: Harry Hill?s early stand up comedy, before he became Mr. Family Entertainment Cabaret Act. I mourn for ?old Harry?.

So do I. TV Burp is great, but I miss Stouffer, “and relax”, the Badger Parade, and regular viewer Bunty Hoven.

[Nick R]

Not especially. About as ?clever? as Meet the Spartans. A damn sight funnier maybe, but it doesn?t take much intelligence to take a recent movie and spoof it. The only thing that worked for me with what Eldon and Gattiss were doing was when they called on Brian.

In contrast to the majority of the parodies, it was completely overdone. It took over most of the episode, presumably because the film was so recent and had caught the imagination of Pegg, Stevenson and Wright so much.

That one might have been overdone, but on the other hand, later in series 2 we get what must be one of the shortest Matrix parodies ever, where Mike fantasises about how to get past the lobby of Dark Star Comics (accompanied by a few twangs of “Spybreak”-ish music). Those few seconds might just be my favourite Matrix spoof ever.

[Nick R]

Ben:

I still say that TimeSplitters, the spiritual sequels to GoldenEye 64 and the first Perfect Dark, is easily one of the best console FPS series of all time (assuming you avoid the first game, which is a bit pants). TimeSplitters II has an utterly fantastic singleplayer campaign and has some fantastic multiplayer modes. TimeSplitters: Future Perfect has a disappointing singleplayer campaign (although the time travel shenanigans are a lot of fun) but has pitch-perfect multiplayer. The only thing that would have made it better is if they?d somehow found a way of incorporating GE & PD maps into the game?

TS2’s story mode is only really good for the first level (the dam), but the challenges made up for it. I love the series. I think a lot of people were put off TS2 because it stuck to the GoldenEye aiming method of having the crosshair move around the screen, whereas by that time the convention was to have it stay in the centre of the screen. Most people don’t seem to know that TimeSplitters Future Perfect has the option to switch between the two.

Have you played Free Radical Design’s Second Sight? Great little game, with a fantastic storytelling technique which fits in perfectly with its plot’s big twist.

Seb:

I remain convinced that the majority of people who declared it BEST EVER were people who?d never played a decent PC-based FPS in their lives.

I’d love to be able to dispute that, but I can’t because I think the only FPSs I’d played when I first tried GoldenEye were Zero Tolerance and Corporation on the Mega Drive, and a very brief go on Duke Nukem 3D on the PC (although I may have just watched someone playing that).

So I’m afraid the best argument I can offer is that even the reviewers for multi-format magazines like Edge and C&VG raved about GoldenEye and its multiplayer, despite presumably having access to the best of what was out on the PC at the time. (Which isn’t a very good argument. Sorry.)

Jonathan:

I will still never, ever understand how the control pad is somehow considered a preferable way to play any modern FPS

The consensus is that aiming is quicker and more accurate with keyboard and mouse, but based on my success rate in Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2, that rule applies to everyone except me. :)

I can acknowledge that K&M might be more practical, but I find pads more fun to use. Things like rumble, and having firing/grenades/iron sights on triggers rather than mouse or keyboard buttons, make all the difference to me. All other things being equal, I’d rather play an FPS designed from the ground up for a pad.

and further more, why everyone seems so determined to spunk all over Halo.

Oh, I can prattle on for ages about why Halo 1 is every bit as wonderful as its reputation suggests. And this is from someone who didn’t even get to play it properly until last year, by which time I’d already played later console FPSs that had incorporated features it popularised like a weapon limit, recharging shields, and instant access to grenades and melee attacks.

Essentially I like it because…

– I prefer the design philosophy of having all weapons staying useful in different situations all through a game, rather than your first gun being made redundant when you get better ones.
– The two weapon limit adds extra complications to consider, such as the fact you have to remember where dead bodies are that you can return to if you need a different gun.
– The AI strikes a good balance between convincing believability and exploitable predictability.
– The repetitive level design doesn’t matter at all because there’s enough variety in the setup of encounters, and in the way you can approach each one, for it to stay fresh.
– Legendary difficulty is genuinely worth mastering because of the entirely different feel it gives the game, and unlike in Halo 2 is never unfair.
– The whole thing encourages more spectacular (and funny) near-miss “did you see that?” moments than anything this side of Grand Theft Auto.

Obviously YMMV if you prefer your FPSs to focus on different things, but it nails all the combat elements that appeal to me.

[Nick R]

> To be fair, the game plays and looks like a dog these days. It?s one of those games that helped ruin my A-Level grades with it?s addictiveness, but i just find it painful to play now.

Oh, I don’t find that. Although I can acknowledge that many elements are dated and have been surpassed, I still count it as my favourite game ever. I’ve played it so much over the years that I can quickly switch between it and more modern FPSs without the control system or framerate bothering me. (Although I do find I still have to play GoldenEye and Perfect Dark with inverted aiming, whereas I’ve since switched to normal for all other twin-stick console FPSs.) Going back to it for a time attack session or to mess about with the cheats is always comfortingly familiar.

The GoldenEye Source Half-Life 2 mod is definitely worth checking out. It’s not quite what a full official remake would be like, but it’s great fun and looks fantastic. It’s also possible to play the N64 version online using emulators (and hack the game to make new levels), but I’ve never tried that.

The Xbox Live Arcade version of Perfect Dark is still on its way. I think that of the two games, that is the one that was too ambitious for its host system, and will therefore benefit more from being playable at a consistent 60fps. (Although I doubt it’ll do anything to fix Elvis and the alien levels…)

[Nick R]

I don’t care that he didn’t give a real explanation of how he did the trick, whether it was sleight-of-hand or high-tech equipment or whatever. The problem was simply that this was one of his weakest shows, and felt very padded out (it didn’t really need both of the tricks involving mice). He could have mentioned things like the Monty Hall problem and the way our minds have trouble with the counter-intuitive aspects of probabilities, without his show necessarily becoming a maths lecture. It would have been more interesting (well, to me…) than all that nonspecific talk of DEEP MATHS.

And until now he hasn’t really come under fire from scientific sceptics (other than Simon Singh) because he goes out of his way to make it clear that the likes of mediums are charlatans. But this time the show finished with a lot of people left with the impression that willpower can influence random events.

Having said that, his presentation of how I would have done it (phrase ? OJ Simpson) was pretty entertaining. “Hypnotised the security guards…!”

And if it gets lots more people to play the lottery this week then that’s more money they can distribute to good causes, so hooray for that!

[Nick R]

My mum won a tenner on those numbers! Woohoo!

Trailer for the explanation programme. A snowflake… hmm… freeze-frame?

I noticed he kept reiterating “I’ve done nothing illegal” in his patter. I wonder if that’s got anything to do with anything.

Would the fact that the balls are white like those used on motion capture suits make it easier to track them for any split-screening or superimposing that might be going on?

The problem with all the theories about technology (split screen with digital camera wobble; lasers shining photochemical inks on the balls) is that it goes against the bit at the end where he says “how I did it and how you can do it too”.

Did anyone else see subliminal messages flashing up on screen during the show after the Lottery show? They flashed up too quickly for me to read but it got me thinking about what Derren?s got planned for this ?Event? of his?

The word was “forget”.

[Nick R]

> But what annoys me more is when the analogue signal ?compromises? with 16:9 shows by broadcasting them in 14:9, with a thin sliver shaved off each side and with small black bars on the top & bottom. Thing is, my widescreen TV has 3 settings ? 16:9, 4:3 and Zoom ? so if I?ve recorded something on the VCR I can either watch it with pillarboxes and small letterboxes, or zoomed in with a sliver shaved off the top and bottom as well. Then again, last week we got a digital recorder so it?s not so much of a problem any more.

I think broadcasting 14:9 on analogue is a good compromise – doesn’t annoy the old dears who wonder why their screens aren’t being filled. :) However, our widescreen TV (a CRT) does have a 14:9 setting, but it’s not available when playing back a video recording from our DVD+R recorder (no PVR just yet!), in which case I encounter the same problem as you. And you can only view Teletext in either 4:3 or 16:9, not 14:9 (not that that’ll be an issue much longer… sadly).

For some reason our TV also has separate “wide” and “16:9” settings, which seem to produce identical effects.

[Nick R]

I’ve only seen a few films at the cinema this year:

Watchmen: I enjoyed it, and was relieved it was so much better than it could have been (with an Alan Moore adaptation, that’s high praise!). However I mainly enjoyed it for the spectacle of seeing those familiar comic book panels on the big screen; I didn’t really give it much consideration on any deeper level than that, I didn’t get involved in any debates on the changes they made to the ending. They nailed Dr Manhattan’s origin sequence, though – screw the critics who thought it was a pointless digression that dragged the pace to a halt! (I’m glad the hydrogen symbol explanation is being restored in the director’s cut.)

Coraline: Excellent, although I’m not sure yet if I like it as much as Nightmare Before Christmas. I enjoyed my first 3D eperience (bring on Avatar!), but it was a bit distracting: the glasses were a bit uncomfortable over my own.

There was also a weird, faint ghost image some way to the lower-right of the main image, visible both with and without the glasses, and through both eyes. It was only really noticable with bright parts against a black background – like the shots of the Moon, or the end credits. Like this, only fainter. I don’t know if that’s an inherent side-effect of all 3D films (at least the ones that use polarisation rather than synchronised LCD shutters), or if it’s just the way Birmingham Cineworld had it set up. Only explanation I’ve heard so far is that it was some form of internal reflection within the projector…

Star Trek: I’ve never really been that into Star Trek. Loved the original series when BBC2 ran them in prime time about 10 years ago; seen a few TNG episodes and First Contact; liked the two or three DS9 episodes I saw; haven’t seen anything more recent than that. For me, what I’ve seen of Star Trek has always come across better in theory (via second-hand sources like “The Physics of Star Trek” and Wikipedia character/episode descriptions) than in execution. But like Casino Royale and Batman Begins, this reboot sounded promising from the moment it was announced, and lived up to it.

However, I don’t think it was better than Mission: Impossible 3 (one of my favourite blockbusters of the last few years, which was better-paced, had a better MacGuffin, and a much better villain), but it was definitely tremendous fun, with a great ensemble cast that I definitely want to see playing those parts again.

[Nick R]

Am I right in thinking the cut between takes was when the lid of the trunk covered the camera?

I originally thought it was some time before that, with the swinging kitchen door. But having said that, the lid was moving much less than the door, so it seems like that would have been an easier place to match up the two takes.

[Nick R]

> A few shows that I?ve recorded onto VHS over the years have somehow retained a partial Pg.888/subtitle track. Never thought that was possible, either.

I thought only S-VHS tapes could retain teletext information? That was how the last few days of Digitiser were recovered.

[Nick R]

Samurai Jack Region 2 DVD release, please! (Who needs a Daredevil film when you’ve got the Samurai Jack episode with the archers?)

I like Meet the Beat-Alls – it?s very successful at what it?s doing – but it?s far from my favourite Powerpuff ep. I find other episodes far more emotionally satisfying, have far better stories, and are far funnier.

I think Meet the Beat-Alls even tops The Rutles (which it also references!) as my favourite Beatles homage ever.

I had cable around 1995-96, so I was able to see the original What A Cartoon! pilots on Cartoon Network – but soon after that we went back to terrestrial TV and I lost interest in kids cartoons that weren’t Animaniacs or Earthworm Jim. So I never really appreciated the Tartakovsky/McCracken cartoons when they were first shown. It was only thanks to sharing a house at uni that had NTL/Virgin Media that I was able to watch Cartoon Network’s 11-till-1 Cartoon Cartoon blocks and realised how great Dexter’s Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends are. (Ed, Edd & Eddy, Courage the Cowardly Dog, Kids Next Door and Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy… much less so.)

[Nick R]

The video game Rez has always seemed very 2001-ish to me, especially Area 5… an insane computer; fast, low flight over alien landscapes; the theme of evolution (with the player character’s highest form being a baby)…

I watched 2001 on video when I was very young – I think my mum wanted to explain to me where the joke about Homer’s vibrating chair came from. I think I’ve watched it one or two times since then, so I think I’m fairly familiar with the film and consider it a fantastic achievement… even though I’d rarely set aside 2 1/2 hours to watch it.

I think Arthur C Clarke’s novel (writen at the same time as the film, so it’s hard to say which bits of the screenplay and novel are Clarke’s and which are Kubrick’s) is also excellent. It’s somewhat more literal than the film (what the Star Child does at the end is more explicit), so it probably appeals more to the hard-sci-fi side of me. I think that’s one of the reasons it’s such an interesting film – the science geeks can appreciate the story on a literal hard-SF level, and the wishy-washy philosophers and Humanities students can have fun finding ever more layers of symbolism in the film. :-) And everyone can agree the images and music are incredible.

Some examples:

http://www.modemac.com/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/2001_and_Beyond_the_Infinite
http://www.kubrick2001.com/
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/0009.html – written by a 15-year-old (although it reads to me more like Rorschach…), and according to the blurb at the top, it was supposedly Kubrick’s favourite interpretation.

Although I think that this theory is stretching it a bit:

Wheat often uses anagrams as evidence to support his theories. For example, of the name Heywood R. Floyd, he writes “He suggests Helen – Helen of Troy. Wood suggests wooden horse – the Trojan Horse. And oy suggests Troy.” Of the remaining letters, he suggests “Y is Spanish for and. R, F, and L, in turn, are in ReFLect.” Finally, noting that D can stand for downfall, Wheat concludes that Floyd’s name has a hidden meaning: “Helen and Wooden Horse Reflect Troy’s Downfall”.[11]

@hummingbird:
> I?ve never seen Citizen Kane or any of the Godfather movies.

The Godfather is probably the most disappointed I’ve been in a “classic” film. So boring. And I’ve tried three times to see what all the fuss is about. I can appreciate the film, grudgingly – it’s not technically bad, in that it doesn’t contain cheesy dialogue or plot holes – but I didn’t particularly care about the story of Michael Corleone becoming the monster he never wanted to be. And Marlon Brando? Mumbleman Brando, more like, lol! (Although I would still like to see Part 2, even though I’ve never heard of someone liking one but not the other.)

[Nick R]

I’d like to see (hear) commentaries on:

Holoship
Marooned
Out of Time

And how about doing some Father Ted or Alan Partridge fan commentaries to put on Noise to Signal?

> That?s what I was thinking – I also wanted Waiting for God just because most RD fans consider it to be bad and I wanted to know why?

Waiting for God is my least favourite series 1 episode, but I’ll stick up for it – all the Quagaar stuff is great, and, dare I say it, I prefer that episode’s Talkie Toaster to that of White Hole.

[Nick R]

I’m sure I’ve seen that cover linked to long, long ago as an example of bad cover art. It’s almost down there with Phoenix Games levels of crapness, only with less Disney infringement.

[Nick R]

You’re playing with them?

[Nick R]

I only really caught the tail-end of the ’80s cartoon crazes: I was really into Turtles, Ghostbusters and Thundercats, but not He-Man or Transformers. Sadly I never saw many episodes Bucky O’Hare or Dungeons and Dragons.

But I really loved the pop-culture-referencing, freeze-frame-gag-filled cartoons that came along in the early ’90s in the wake of The Simpsons and Who Framed Roger Rabbit: Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, Taz-Mania, Freakazoid, Rocko’s Modern Life, Earthworm Jim (although I haven’t really enjoyed EWJ as much since I found Doug Tennapel’s blog and read some of his opinions…). I spent far, far too long learning the words to all those “list” songs. Somehow the fact that I didn’t get half the the movie references actually added to the enjoyment (and made me feel like those cartoons were more sophisticated and grown-up than they probably were).

The blog Something Old, Nothing New has done lots of posts about behind-the-scenes stuff on those ’90s Warner Bros cartoons… well worth reading:

http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2004/07/freakazoid.html
http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2004/06/animaniacs-part-1.html
http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2004/06/animaniacs-part-2.html
http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2005/12/puddin.html
http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2008/03/beginning-of-end-for-wba.html
http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2008/10/taz-mania.html
http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2007/11/squash-and-stretch-and-sing-off-key.html
http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2007/03/you-cant-write-drawing.html
http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2005/12/best-gag-credits-ever.html
http://zvbxrpl.blogspot.com/2005/10/pip-pumphandles-deep-thoughts.html

I loved the late-80s Mighty Mouse cartoon, but I was never into Ren and Stimpy. But John K’s blog is a great resource for anyone interested in animation – as long as you can put up with the things he has to say about 99% of cartoons made since the 1960s…

[Nick R]

> For the record, I read the Smegazine adaptation of Future Echoes before I?d even seen the show itself. (And I bet I?m not alone on here in doing that)

These days I go out of my way to avoid spoilers. But when I first got into Dwarf, I eagerly devoured information about episodes I hadn’t seen by reading the novels, the Soup script books and the Programme Guide.

I was really disappointed when I first watched “Holoship” and found that the scene where Holly politely delays Rimmer was missing…

[Nick R]

This whole thread could be filled with examples from Hong Kong action movies, but to pick one each from John Woo and Jackie Chan…

Hard Boiled – THAT single-shot sequence alone includes two examples (at 0.15 and 2.45). But I still say The Killer’s the better film. :-P

Police Story – bus crash

And one with a Red Dwarf connection: just before the tank chase in GoldenEye, James Bond swings out of a window (with a soft landing on a handily-placed crash mat).

[Nick R]

“This isn’t one of those shady ‘pyramid schemes’ you’ve heard so much about. No, sir! Our model is the trapezoid, guaranteed [something something] within hours of your inital… uh-oh, the cops!”

(Forgive me, but I’ve forgotten some of the line, and every quotes page on the internet only has an incomplete version copied from The Simpsons Archive. Sorry.)

There are many other Simpsons examples, including Ned’s talent for arobatics, Moe’s Homer escape strategy, Homer’s gay escape strategy, and of course “Stop him! He’s headed for the window!”

And I know you didn’t specify video games, but Timesplitters 2 and Future Perfect have player statistics keeping track of how many panes of glass you’ve shattered.

[Nick R]

I have fond memories of The Brittas Empire. When I was about 10, I did an impression of him as my entry in my primary school’s talent contest (somehow I came third!). However, it must have been at least 10 years since I last saw an episode, so I have no idea what I’d make of it now, and whether it’d live up to my memories of it…

But having just checked Wikipedia, most of the epsiodes I remember (the leisure centre being computerised, the lion within, the magician one John mentioned) were in the last series. And I enjoyed those a lot. So maybe I hadn’t seen many of the early, good episodes at all…

[Nick R]

Yes, I’ve wondered why this site has never done an article on the Smegazine… I’ve never seen an issue, but it must have been a pretty important part of Dwarf fandom in the early ’90s.

Nigel Kitching?s artwork in particular has always struck me as fantastic, and I loved the way the comics would mix concepts from the TV series with the novels.

I was a big fan of Kitching’s writing and artwork on Sonic the Comic (which Dwarf-disliker Julian Hazeldine wrote about recently). It wasn’t very long ago that I first heard he’d worked on the Smegazine, but since then I’ve been curious to see what his contributions were like.

There’s an interesting interview with him here.

Last I heard, he was a graphic design lecturer at the University of Teeside… a couple of people in STC nostalgia threads in other forums have mentioned they were taught by him!

[Nick R]

I: Me^2 (Runner-up: Future Echoes)
II: Queeg (Runner-up: Thanks for the Memory)
III: Marooned (Runner-up: The Last Day)
IV: Dimension Jump (Runner-up: White Hole)
V: Quarantine (Runner-up: Back to Reality)
VI: Gunmen of the Apocalypse (Runner-up: Out of Time)
VII: Stoke Me A Clipper (Runner-up: Tikka To Ride)
VIII: Cassandra (Runner-up: Back in the Red Part 1)

Having written it out like that, I’ve just realised how many of my favourite episodes from the first six series include elements that were shared with the novels…

Since people are including parts of Back to Earth: notice that with the ad breaks, it can be split into six “episodes”. In which case: episode 2, pre-adverts. :)

[Nick R]

And the decision to make so many references is from Die Another Day?considered by many to be the worst Bond film so maybe not the best idea Doug has ever had.

It’s better than Moonraker!

[Nick R]

It’s great to see Red Dwarf getting an article as in-depth as that. It’s not far off the length of the VFX articles I recently read about Watchmen!

The fact you can’t tell which shot(s) they zoomed-in to crop out Chris just shows how ridiculously high-res those cameras are.

After watching the Making Of, I had a thought about what they might do for special effects if new Red Dwarf episodes are filmed in front of a live audience. Some of the virtual set scenes in Back to Earth (such as the Rimmer/Katerina corridor scene in part 1) were still focused on dialogue rather than action, and only only done green-screen because the budget wouldn’t allow for a full-size corridor set.

If those budget restrictions continued into a new series, they might need many more virtual sets. From the comments in the Making Of, it sounds like green-screen setups don’t have to be as time-consuming as they used to be, and they don’t require as controlled an environment.

My point is: would it be feasible to set up a small green-screen stage in view of the audience, right next to the the bunk-room set and anything else they construct for real? That way, you’d retain the performer-audience interaction (as VII proved, laugh tracks benefit from being captured live), while still allowing the final shot to have all the the grandeur of a CGI set.

No doubt someone’ll point out that it’s already common practice for live audience sets to include green screen elements…

[Nick R]

Bill Bailey’s Holly would probably have more luck decimalising music than Norman’s did.

[Nick R]

V
VI
IV
II
III
I
Rimmer episodes of VII
Cassandra
Rimmer-free episodes of VII
Back to Earth
[[[Everything above this line is watchable]]]
All of VIII except Cassandra
.
.
.
.
Pete Part 2

Bearing in mind my fave episodes of each series are Future Echoes, Queeg, Marooned, Justice, Quarantine, Gunmen of the Apocalypse, Stoke Me A Clipper and Cassandra,

That’s close to my list, although I’d have Dimension Jump instead of Justice, and possibly also Me^2 instead of Future Echoes.

[Nick R]

I like this fan edit. Beginning with the grave scene means you can introduce the Cat straight away and get the plot moving as fast as it would have in one of the old episodes. The jokes aren’t changed, but trimming the time between them makes it all feel funnier.

Well done for making the “it was big” joke work!

…But then again you trimmed Rimmer’s list of things they’ll need to take with them! Booo. :(

It’d be great to be able to keep the corridor special effects shot as the opening, but Lister’s chuckling obviously means it can’t go directly before the grave scene.

(Incidentally, I wonder what the reaction would have been if the episode had opened with Lister singing Ganymede & Titan – perhaps the second verse, Lunar City Seven – while he walked down the corridor? It would have fitted with all the other fanservice…)

Just watched the opening couple of minutes, and I?ve gone from ?fairly sure? to ?utterly convinced? that the grave scene should have been pre-titles after seeing you actually do it. Putting it there accomplishes three things:
1) It manages the viewers? expectations better, as it?s both more in-line with the tone of what?s to come, and gives an important plot point to the viewers straight off the bat rather than burying it in mid-ep
2) It tidies up the transition to the follow-up scene in the bunkroom enormously – originally, that was virtually a jump cut
3) It deletes the ?ironing? scene, which is both pretty much a complete failure in what it aims to do (?be funny?) and doesn?t give any particularly useful exposition for later that isn?t covered adequately by other scenes.

I completely agree with all these reasons. Then again, if it had actually been broadcast like that I’d probably still find some reason to complain…

[Nick R]

Cuts off a bit abruptly, doesn’t it?

He doesn’t seem too keen on Doctor Who… I think I read a transcript of a webchat he did a couple of years ago in which he said he hadn’t been too impressed by the revived Who, but had enjoyed Torchwood, particularly the early first series episode with the children and evil fairies. I’m not surprised; I got a very Lords and Ladies vibe from that episode.

[Nick R]

From that Digitalspy review:

Strangely enough, the Dave channel foray succeeded far more as an intriguing sci-fi drama than as an actual comedy. Naylor, for all his flaws, structured the ‘meeting the maker’ plot very cleverly and Craig Charles engendered Lister with genuine pathos. It was not hard to care for the fate of the Boys from the Dwarf and urge Lister to keep bashing away on the typewriter to keep them alive, especially as the cast still have that special camaraderie. Still, the moment compares unfavourably to Lister’s previous Red Dwarf typing endeavour when he was accosted by a ‘taranshula’ (Kryten’s severed hand and eyeball) making a nest in his loins. It’s hard not to long for the glorious old days, especially as ‘Back To Earth’ is so self-referential.

I agree with this. Dramatically the emotional conclusion of the Lister-Kochanski plot was satisfying, I liked the metafictional mindbendery, the cast had still got it, and as a Red Dwarf geek I appreciated the self-indulgent fanservice (which I think stems from the fact “Back to Earth” began life as 21st anniversary tribute shows). Overall, I’m glad it was made. But purely in terms of comedy: even though it had its moments, the humour was definitely not a patch on series I to VII.*

* (Not a typo.)

I agree with the Digitalspy reviewer’s point that many of the jokes paled next to similar ones from the classic run: the initial recognition of part 2’s twist on a Bunk Scene was much funnier than its actual content. Likewise, Rimmer volunteering his crewmates for the expedition into the tank and then backing out wasn’t a patch on some of his similarly-structured jokes in the past (such as “I’ve devised a fair and equitable system of choosing who should survive…”). Having said that, even though it wasn’t particularly witty I still appreciated that line because of its familiarity – as I mentioned in the part 1 comments thread, it was a nice reminder that we were back with the same characters we know so well.

The reviewer points out that the typing scene compares unfavourably to taranshula. Actually, that didn’t come to mind for me – they both involve typing, but that’s about it. No, that scene merely had to contend with Futurama! ;)

Possibly my favourite joke in “Back to Earth” was the ultra-high-tech image enhancement in part 2. Having forgotten most of Blade Runner, I hadn’t realised it was yet another parody of something specific from that film – I just interpreted it as a sharp (and rather geeky) dig at the “enhance button” trope in general. But I think it’s telling that in this new spin on Dwarf such a visual joke was my favourite, whereas in all the classic episodes many of my favourite jokes involved elaborate, meticulously-worded sentences (preferably involving something character-based, preferably Rimmer-character-based). Maybe in order to give those wordier jokes the funniest rhythm and phrasing you really need two writers to hone them to perfection.

One gag I really liked which people haven’t mentioned much is Katerina’s deadpan description of the over-the-top manner in which Rimmer’s hologram data would be destroyed – “erased, fired from the ship, then detonated with a thermonuclear device”. However, I felt it could have gone further in its OTT-ness – much like Hitchhiker‘s classic “beware of the leopard” dialogue. Again, perhaps that’s the sort of joke that benefits from being written by two people – bouncing phrases off each other in an attempt to outdo each other?

[Nick R]

Dimension Jump:

The elastic was intact on Carbug’s furry dice, which means they had a slightly less tasteful windscreen.

[Nick R]

A separate 18-rated edition with unbeeped versions of all three post-episode Dwarfcasts.

[Nick R]

> There was a guitar in the bunkroom, too.

Lister was also preparing to take it with him through the portal.

[Nick R]

Charlie Kaufman’s film Adaptation. (I remembered the full stop!) is the king of metafictional headfuckery. It seems to get mentioned less often than Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine, but I like it just as much.

I’ve only read one volume of Alan Moore’s Promethea (though the TPBs have recently been reprinted, which is great news for me). I don’t know if anything in there is similar to what was in “Back to Earth”, but given that said volume contained such messing with the medium as double-page spreads where the dialogue looped round on itself in an infinity symbol, and given that it’s about a superheroine who’s the personification of storytelling and this is Alan Moore we’re talking about…
…it’s probably a safe bet!

[Nick R]

In my first post I said…

So I?m wondering: what if part 3 ends with an appearance by Chlo? Annett, and Lister reunited with Kochanski once and for all?

Well, I was right about the first bit… and that Chlo? would appear as Kochanski, rather than “as herself”. But I thought she’d appear on board Red Dwarf, rather than as part of Lister’s happy ending within the hallucination.

I’m quite pleased that I didn’t guess the full story! Quite satisfied with the way it turned out… a good balance between resolution and a jumping-off point for anything else in the future (whether that’s a full new series, specials, novels, comics, or dare I say it: films). At the very least, it was ten times the ending “Only the Good” was!

[Nick R]

> Those with good memories? has any character in Red Dwarf ever been known to speak fleunt Chinese?

M’aiden Ty-One? ;)

[Nick R]

Re: The merchandise in the comic shop:

ARRRGH TOO MUCH PRODUCT PLACEMENT IT’S ALMOST AS BAD AS IN THE LAST TWO BOND MOVIES

…is how some people might react. Not me though!

[Nick R]

Was it just me who, every time the bus took off, half-expected the wheels to fold over horizontally like Back to the Future’s DeLorean, and found it slightly jarring when they didn’t?

[Nick R]

> People at the xkcd forums liking it:
http://echochamber.me/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=36892&p=1500460&hilit=red+dwa…

I started that thread! My review post there was just a slightly altered version of the one I posted in the big comments thread here.

[Nick R]

> There?s also a very positive review in the independent (or was it the guardian?).

In the Grauniad, Nancy Banks-Smith thought that they were too old to be fighting squid, seemed to like the car chases joke, and doesn’t think that repopulating the earth is a very good idea:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/apr/11/red-dwarf-easter-trilogy

[Nick R]

A truly glorious sight.

[Nick R]

> I don?t think they were born, yet.

Eee, where’s my cane?

(I’m 23.)

[Nick R]

It’s disappointing to see he feels that way about the programme and its crew. But compared to the sort of things musicians say about each other after their bands split up, Norman’s comments are pretty mild.

[Author]

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