Phobos And Deimos

[Phobos And Deimos]

Damn it, that wasn’t meant to work. Delete this or I’ll start posting my opinions again with alarming irregularity in between deferred, half-hearted apologies.

It’s easy being me, it’s harder being you and I can’t quite grasp the subtle line.

I hate Series VIII.

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It’s the American Reeves & Mortimer.

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I am, I live in the Grassmarket so I’m only a jaunt down the road.

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There’s something whimsical and relaxing about watching Bullseye repeats on Challenge late at night. As if you’re the last human and you got to schedule anything you liked.

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Is it along the lines of no matter the initial thread subject matter, it always descends into a discussion about post-’93 Red Dwarf?

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I just couldn’t get into Final Fantasy after FF7. The main draw for me was the sheer openness of the world and the ability to drop in and out of the story and find yourself in obscure yet believable locations talking to characters who had little to say regarding the main plot but had a lot to say about themselves, their lives and hometown. Regardless of the fantasy elements of the game, the world, the characters and the story were utterly engaging and grounded. From FF8 onwards, it started to become more linear, more tightly wound towards the main story and random characters were either scaled back or spoke more about the plot. I never felt as if I could explore the world within FF8 and I was always gently pushed towards the next stage of the story. FF9 is a load of twee mince and FF10 was where I swapped my PS2 for a Gamecube and never looked back.

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One of these days, I get the feeling Richard Naylor is gonna offer me out for a rumble.

And he’d be right to.

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It’s so strange the wide reactions to VII and Back to Earth as I see Series VII very much as Series VI – Part 2. I have a strange affinity and need to protect Series VII as most of it is quite endearing to me and it’s not linked to memories of watching back in ’97. I just like the tone of it, I like Kris, I like watching her and the boys adapt to each other and I like the way it takes on a more dramatic look but still maintains the evolution of the visual aspect of the show and sets from Series III onwards.

I can’t reconcile Back to Earth though. I mean, I don’t hate it, I don’t put it in the non-canon pile with Series VIII but boy, I’ve maybe watched it all the way through once since 2009 and I think I’ve watched the department store scene a few times since then but that’s it really. It’s a drag, you get to a scene where it starts to ramp, things are happening and then the tyres burst again and you’re left waiting around for another plot point to show up because Doug backed himself into a corner regarding the amount of material he had versus the running time.

Series VIII is a load of wank shit fuck wank cunt piss fuck cum fuck wank fuck.

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It’s a shame in a sense because he had three episodes worth of time to play with. If Dave had gave him six extra months and a budget, he could’ve made a moonshot for the movie and adapted it for the telly. I mean, follow the Pratchett on Sky TV route, get your resources in place, get your crew drilled and you adapt. You slim down certain action-heavy parts, you ramp up in other places, bingo. You may not have the big-screen movie you wanted back in 2002 but you’ve got something special and something that suits Christmas perfectly that isn’t so fucking obviously done on the cheap.

In hindsight, it’s bizarre why they never went for the movie. I can understand that Doug took a look at the budget, took a look at the format being offered and said I’ll do a multi-parter. Perhaps he was tired of thinking about the movie or it never even crossed his mind. A push here and there and a promise to deliver a television movie with all the rights, international sales, DVDs and all that malarkey that goes with it.

So in the end, we get what is essentially one episodes worth of material stretched out to three with a couple of fancy effects but the zero-budget foundations and the structure of it all is so painfully clear. He can’t go outside certain elements because he literally has no resources to work with yet he’s somehow able to utilise virtual sets, 4K cameras and introduce a film-esque feel to certain scenes.

Back to Earth was built off the back of a promise to make a one-off special but without any of the resources you actually need to make it worthwhile. Now, there’s another puzzle, why not do three episodes? Why not dial back and type up some nice scripts that invoke the slower, steady pace of Series I & II? Couple of sets, bring in an internal threat if you must, have Lister and Rimmer examine their place in the cosmos. Nice and theatrical, little wink to Marooned, hey presto.

Damn frustrating at times. Red Dwarf has been damn frustrating for a long time.

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I’ll put it like this, a tad more succinctly.

The dynamic changed in the writing after Series VI, from wanting to write comedy as the priority and from that, finding situations that fit the premise of Red Dwarf to what we seem to have now, which is finding situations and scenarios and in that, placing the comedy, regardless of how good the joke is.

Now at first, it doesn’t seem that different, maybe even the same but it’s a subtle shift in the thinking of how to approach a standard half-hour script. The whole dynamic of the show changes at that point. The end result, the comedy, the drama, everything is contained in the premise rather than the premise ably assisting the number one priority, the comedy.

Series VIII is the gold standard from which all writers, all that aspire to make people laugh should watch and remember every single time they get more excited about the premise rather than the set-up, the woofer and the need they have to make the audience laugh.

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Necessity dictates that you put forward a blindingly funny script first and foremost before you go shooting what is at the end of the day, a half-hour sitcom, on cameras more commonly found in multi-million dollar Hollywood productions, especially circa 2008-09. What the fuck was Doug Naylor thinking he needed a 4K camera for back then? To make it four times as clear that it’s not funny?

Back to Earth aspired to look fancy, feel fancy and failed because all other elements of the production were scraping by on picked-up pennies and it was as comically dull as ditch-water. The comedy felt like the last element to be slotted in.

It was a tribute to Red Dwarf, nothing more. Not a total loss like Series VIII, more like a strange remake of a show you liked a long time ago.

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What are they and can they be combined with my forthcoming weekly podcast about obscure in-vision regional presenters from the 1980s?

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Botz.

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For all my grumpiness and moaning about post-’93 Red Dwarf at times, it’s not once felt like an old fashioned cow milking.

Doug, the crew and the cast really do love the show and what adventures can come next. I mean, I may not like some of the episodes but, and you’ll all understand this, the DVD extras, the commentaries, the documentaries, the sheer amount of material handed to us where they could simply dish out vanilla episode-only discs for £12.99 is astonishing.

Look at ‘We’re Smegged’, the Series X making of. The only non-Dwarf documentary I can think of that gets into the heart of the subject so well from all sides and all departments is ‘Dangerous Days’, the 2007 Blade Runner making-of.

And we’re talking about a half-hour sitcom set in space, it’s mental.

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With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
Here’s Series VIII now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here’s Series VIII now, entertain us

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I dunno, Series IV feels more like a KitKat Chunky and the Bodysnatcher Series I & II documentaries are the foil-wrapped KitKats.

I’m not sure what to think anymore. Series V is starting to imitate the 1985 CD pressing of Dire Straits’ ‘Brothers In Arms’ rather than confectionery.

Or maybe a well-used Commodore 1541 floppy drive.

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Series I is Malteser, Series II is more Aero Mint and Series III is a Smarties Easter egg with the classic brown mug.

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Series VI is toffee. You have to persist with them but you enjoy the end result.

Series VII is orange creme. Nice flavour but there’s something amiss, a certain sourness and you can’t eat too many.

Series VIII is coffee, naturally. You like them at first but then you feel sick as fuck after a few and you just throw the whole packet away and makes you appreciate the sweet, Vice Versas goodness of Series V.

Now, if Series VIII was a war crime, what war crime would it have been?

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I know you didn’t, what I meant was you hit the nail on the head in regards to the coverage being excellent.

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Series VI is Be Here Now? Series VI is The Masterplan, Series VII is Be Here Now and Series VIII is a video of Liam Gallagher knocking the fuck out of Patsy Kensit.

Back to Earth is Standing on the Shoulder of Giants, Series X is Heathen Chemistry and Series XI is some arsed-up free with the NME tribute to Oasis by a bunch of no-mark indie synth wanks.

I just don’t understand people who dislike Series VI.

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Maybe the camera linked into the time drive and saw Series VIII.

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Lily, you’ve hit the nail on the head. I look forward to the coverage as always, but not so much the episodes.

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To document life on-board ship, which is code for ‘can’t be arsed weaving exposition into the story-line so here’s a big, steaming data dump at the beginning’.

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That was bloody marvellous. I wasn’t a fan of SNES SimCity as it felt too cuddly but the music was cracking. The apex was forever SimCity 2000 for me before the bloat started to creep in.

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Exploding cameras, half-arsed explanations, tedious shots of massive wind tunnels, macabre violence to end the episode, all that and more will be resolved and tidied up in the all-new, all-saucy special edition of Tikka to Ride, now titled ‘Out of Time – Part II’.

DISCLAIMER – Will still include The Fat Basteria joke.

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I know what we would all do with the time drive.

Snipe Hitler? No.
Persuade Rob Grant to remain on for another two series? No.
Forge the signatures on contracts promising at least two American seasons of Red Dwarf? No.

—

We would crowdfund an entire series worth of barely watchable, badly compressed mobisodes and then fuck each other!

That’s what we would do!

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All I’ve ever wanted was a standard issue Aigburth Arms Grav-Pool table held up by chains.

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Torchwood Declassified was where it was at.

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Godley & Creme – The History ~ Of Changes To Starbug’s Interior Volume ~ Mix Volume 1

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I regenerated?

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:-/

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Well I can’t bloody well make it all non-canon. Right, here we go…

Rimmer destroys the time drive, Starbug explodes in a ball of temporal flame and nineteen years later, we’re somehow back on Red Dwarf as Lister watches a pig race. At this point, we’re going to be down to the second half of Marooned and a seven minute video of autograph signing at Dimension Jump XV in which I’m caught almost tripping over in front of Chris Barrie.

It’s never irked me how big Starbug is in Series VII up to recently. Now I can’t shake the ridiculousness of it.

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But I like the joyless bollocks of it all.

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I know but it’s the casualness I find funny. Older Doctor Who was the same, they would just chuck canon, continuity and whole characters out of the window with no explanation, leaving that canon-loving bastard tinker Moffat to skip amongst the ruins and pick off the best bits.

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Thank fuck the Duke of Manchester nixed the idea then.

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Pray I don’t go any further.

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Now that I think about it, we all casually accept that they just lost a five mile long interplanetary tramp steamer between Series V and VI and there’s nary a peep as to how, why or exactly when. If Doug had pulled that trick, say between Series X and XI, they’d be fucking mayhem on this forum.

So it’s not out of the question that they’re on a Sunday drive one day between Tikka To Ride (OUT OF TIME – PART II) and Stoke Me A Clipper, Cat’s at the helm snoozing and they whack straight into the side of Red Dwarf purely by chance.

I think the original arc of the movie was to be on Starbug for Act I, find Red Dwarf with a full crew mysteriously enough for Act II and some heroic simulant bashing and saving the ship and the day in Act III so it made sense to keep them on Starbug for Series VII which also acted as a visual test-run for the movie.

[Phobos And Deimos]

The Kryten retrofit does work in that deckplan, the cargo hold is a touch too small but overall it makes sense given the limited internal capacity.

As for the Series VII Starbug, oh boy, you have to assume the inside was expanded by a factor of a hundred to even begin to make sense of the gargantuan engine deck, the crawlspaces, the medi-bay, everything. Plus, some of those areas didn’t exist even as more compact versions before the temporal paradox so I’m leaning towards the idea that the future and present Starbugs amalgamated somehow, retaining features of the present-day ship and adding new volume and features of the future craft.

It begs the question, why didn’t the future crew upgrade to a luxury cruiser? Were the time and faster than light drives hardwired into Starbug and unable to be transferred?

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I always thought the Starbug expansion between Series VI and VII was down to the future Starbug and present Starbug somehow amalgamating in some space-wacey, time-wimey dimensional hoo-hah resulting from the temporal paradox. I assumed the future crew had a dimensional expansion machine that gave them more space within Starbug to fulfil their decadent ways.

As with between Series V and VI where they lose Red Dwarf and go into hyper-sleep, I thought Kryten spent the best part of a few decades completely retrofitting the ship to accommodate a permanent crew.

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I’ve had a fan-edit of Tikka running around my head for a while and I might just give it a shot.

– You trim the opening down, you start the episode with a stylised, widescreen recap of the final scene of ‘Out Of Time’ without any dialogue by utilising the soundtrack audio and then you fade to black and onto the Lister camera scene. Trim out the fat, trim down the camera explosion and just tighten it up.

– New in-episode title – ‘OUT OF TIME – PART II’

– The larger Starbug scene can be halved in running time or thereabouts. Shots of them climbing down stairs and so on can be whipped out.

– The chicken joke is great, you need to show how far the other way Kryten will lapse when not fully moralised up in the head.

– Fat Basteria, come on, the delivery is great even if the joke’s a bit iffy.

– Trim the ending down to one kick or punch each and freeze at that point. It’s funny with one or two smacks but I agree, the prolonged beating is a bit crazy. Hell, even fade out from the beating into a final scene taken from the extended edition, there’s plenty of ways to go about it.

– Reformat the titles and credits and remove the bloody Times New Roman font. Every time I see it, I feel like I’m watching an episode of Keeping Up Appearances.

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It’s my Trek background, y’see. Nanites, nanobots, nanos, they’re all nano-bastards in the end. I’m pretty sure there’s no nanotechnology in the third episode of series one of ‘Agony’, a sitcom starring Maureen Lipman.

There’s no easy way to reconcile the return of Rimmer and we should vote to just treat the entire show and the majority of the cast and crew as non-canon. Saves a lot of headaches and repeat broadcast payments.

Series I & II – Feels like theatre productions directed towards the audience because they mostly hang around the bunk and there’s a lot of back and forth. That’s not me dismissing the humour though, they’re mighty fine episodes and I like the slow build of them. You could imagine a third series of Red Dwarf along the same lines of the first two but I don’t think you could’ve got away with a fourth as Series II has moments in it that are clear nods towards what the cast and crew wanted to in the future such as ‘Better Than Life’.

Series III to V – The Boys from the Dwarf. We’re taken on merry adventures, both on the ship and beyond and we can really see how Rob and Doug wanted to branch out and not only use locations and more expressive studio sets, but push the concepts that will drive the episodes.

Series VI – It can easily be grouped with III to V but it does have a distinct feel. We’re off the ship, there’s an immediacy and cosiness to the sets and it feels like a weekly serial. Plus it has ‘Out Of Time’, my favourite episode.

Series VII – I like Series VII, I really do. It has some duff moments but it has a heart to it and in terms of design, scope, the shift from comedy with some drama to comedy-drama, it holds up. If you take off the film filter and tighten some of the editing and remove some of the right dodgy moments, I’ve always maintained that Series VII is a good candidate for the title of Series VI – Part II.

Hell, I’ll say it right now, take out Emohawk in Series VI, push it as the first episode of Series VII and put Tikka to Ride into Series VI and rename it Out of Time – Part II and have Series VI end with a bumper double episode, cliffhanger intact and everything. It bloody works.

Series VIII – Fuck off.

Back To Earth – Fuck off, slightly less.

Series X – Lovely stuff.

Series XI – Well…

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Those jokes are related to events now off-screen and unseen and that’s why the context of them has changed because we’re told of Rimmer being the hero and yet he isn’t given a platform to brag about it. He’s cut off by more pressing matters such as actually being the hero onscreen in ‘The Beginning’.

See? There you go, fixed! Now go into the night and write a comprehensive fan-fiction about the twelve year gap between Series VII and Back To Earth.

Issues to be resolved…

Why is Rimmer back? Could he not hack it as Ace or is this a new Rimmer generated by Lister to keep himself sane?
Why did Kochanski hop it? She seemed settled in by the end of Series VII.
Where did ol’ half-eaten lollipop head go for his first holiday in the ship?
Why didn’t the nanites resurrect the crew and long-rumoured prison population while they were at it? That would’ve made for the best series of Red Dwarf yet.

Good call on the PBS idents, they are funny. I remember someone posting a BBC-era Red Dwarf IX trailer years ago using the ident footage, pre-Dave revival and it was heartbreaking to watch as it seemed like another series of Red Dwarf was very unlikely at that point.

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At least with that ending there’s the possibility of wrapping up Series VIII as one of Lister’s mental curry-induced dreams.

I’ve always maintained that Series VIII is non-canon and is no more than a sideways ‘Carry On’ style look at Red Dwarf and that’s about as complimentary as I can be. For me, the nanites rebuild the ship, there’s a bit of fit and finish to be had in terms of the ship shrinking but it settles down, they escape Starbug and we cut to ten years later with Lister walking down a service corridor with a bag of tomatoes. No resurrected crew, no prisoners, no fucking nonsense.

I admit, I get a chuckle from Krytie TV but come on, there’s limits.

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I’d love to see that, the Bible Belt just upping and leaving and seeing how far they get because of some misplaced reliance on historical revisionism and good ol’ pride blinding them.

When your mentality and inner worth as a citizen of the land you were born in relies on believing a buncha colonial Yankees are picking on you and have been for centuries, you need to get a fucking life. The South Shall Rise Again my arse.

Same goes for my lot, the bloody Jocks. We’ve had a bee up our kilt about the English for years but I don’t see many Cockneys jumping Hadrian’s and poking me with a stick. No no, my colonial master is the fucking imbeciles in Edinburgh. Devolution? They got that right, just the wrong context.

Where was I? Oh yes, slaves are bad, up the Union, three cheers for big Abe and his undivided house.

And I quite like Series VII.

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There’s big, what-if concepts on the go, realised through grindhouse-esque, black humoured scripts and shot on very cluttered yet cosy sets via cameras and equipment that was for the knackers yard soon after but give an immediate life to it all. So you end up with a third series of Red Dwarf which is wholly unique visually, sets the tone for the three series after it and most importantly is very, very funny and for many, a great introduction to the show as a whole.

I’ve always maintained that a proper restoration of Series III would look remarkable and very fitting in the modern era. You’ve got that one-time, almost accidental combination of scripts, sets and cameras that all gel seamlessly.

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It’s always the bloody Confederacy. How about a timeline where the American Revolution was crushed? You’d likely see four or five different nations take the place of the United States over the course of 150 years.

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That’s a great idea!

I feel like I don’t know any of you.

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No, you’re absolutely right, Phil.

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That’s the thing, I’m very glad the next Doctor is a woman as we get to see that shift in the dynamics of the show alongside the weekly adventures but it doesn’t smack of box ticking. It feels very natural that the Doctor should change gender now from a point of story-telling and from exploring the Doctor’s inner-self.

It seems the Twelfth Doctor really has had enough, he didn’t want to regenerate but finish his story there and then and lo and behold, the First Doctor comes along and will show him why the Doctor is always needed. So ol’ Capaldi Doctor thinks… well, if I’m gonna continue along, let’s go for it.

Hey presto, Jodie.

Real storytelling is hard work, I know and at the point where you give a character a trait but expect that to be the work done, the exploration of the character done, you’re gonna have real problems and a character that just doesn’t work and isn’t going to be much remembered.

I suspect Jodie might be the one we truly remember and celebrate from the second era of Doctor Who.

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