Plastic Percy

[Plastic Percy]

Tikka to Ride also has the awfully acted police officers, who manage to deliver some of the worst exposition I’ve ever heard. They try to cram Kennedy alive, Oswald dead, foiled assassination into just two sentences. Not to mention firing guns that are clearly just sparking and not damaging or impacting anything they’re aimed at.

It’s also bizzare that suddenly Lister has no knowledge of or interest in twentieth century pop culture. I mean, he can play a Michael Jackson song on the guitar and knows who Marilyn Monroe, Brooke Shields, The Flintstones are. Not to mention having seen every episode of St. Elsewhere.

TARDIStarbug is something that’s annoyed me. It’d been creeping in since VI where you had engine decks and sleeping quarters in a ship that had previously been established as being little more than two rooms. VII takes it to ridiculous extremes with having multiple cargo bays, two miles of air ducts, a VR suite, stasis booths and even an entire landing bay so Ace can land his ship inside. Worryingly, X and XI seem to continue the trend – the way the characters leave Blue Midget’s cockpit makes it look like there’s a whole corridor outside, and Starbug in XI has multiple entrances in its midsection and even mentions having a games room with a pool table in it.

[Plastic Percy]

Hopefully the next Ace Rimmer is Suzanne Bertish.

<img src=”http://www.reddwarf.co.uk/features/fiction/arlene-rimmer/arlene_5.jpg&#8221;

[Plastic Percy]

It’s interesting to speculate on the origin of this current Rimmer. Personally, I like to imagine he’s the original Rimmer returned from adventuring as Ace Rimmer – breaking the cycle by retiring whilst he still had a chance to get out ‘alive’ and not killed in a heroically silly manner as his predecessors. If that’s the case, perhaps he did return as Ace to save Red Dwarf and sent the Rimmer clone off as his replacement (or, more hilariously as I read in one fanfic, sent Kill Crazy off as the new Ace).

Of course, if he’s had a couple of years of adventures as Ace Rimmer, it would be a little odd that he’s still hung up about his lack of a sex life and his failure to be an officer (and also ignores how he was posthumously promoted to First Officer).

[Plastic Percy]

I’m glad it didn’t, as it would have been disappointing to end on such a down ending and cliffhanger. Much as I’m glad they didn’t end VIII with the awful idea for ‘Earth’ – Red Dwarf, powered by anti-matter from a parallel dimension, makes it back to Earth and crashes into it, sliding across the world and wiping out civilisations and famous landmarks, with the last scene being Lister climbing out of the wreckage to exchange insurance details with one of the survivors.

[Plastic Percy]

Whilst we’re slaughtering sacred cows, I’ve never been a big fan of III. I certainly don’t think Polymorph deserves the status it gets.

[Plastic Percy]

I think we dodged a bullet with Grant Naylor’s original idea of having Cat contract a virus that would cause him to turn into Dwayne Dibbley in moments of panic or fear. The crew would then have to find ways to stop him getting scared and turning into Dwayne, in fear that his clumsiness would make things worse.

Hilarity ensues…

[Plastic Percy]

Honestly, a fair number of reactions from Who fans have been simply just sexist. Of course they all whinge back “but I’m allowed muh opinion!!” but that doesn’t mean I have to respect it. Not all opinions are equal.

[Plastic Percy]

I presume the bazookoid mining lasers are for breaking up rocks and getting to the ore. Like when we see Lister using one to break up the rocks Starbug’s leg is embeded in during Psirens.

[Plastic Percy]

“You’ve got an MBE?”

“Yes, I know sir, the problem has been reported to the Skutters.”

[Plastic Percy]

John, Paul, George and Fashanu.

[Plastic Percy]

I did really like that Grant Naylor finely got their wish for Rimmer to be monochromatic.

[Plastic Percy]

The design for Red Dwarf on the first issue has some resemblance to the Re-Dwarf.

https://static.comicvine.com/uploads/scale_small/5/58127/2371595-1.png

[Plastic Percy]

Probably just a nice background detail, like the Canary uniform and backpack in the airlock in Fathers & Suns.

[Plastic Percy]

Interesting bit of trivia, I think it’s an interview in one of the Smegazines, but Grant Naylor’s original idea was that Red Dwarf would have been owened by a French company and so they intended to have all the signs and labels written in French – Niveau 592 for example.

[Plastic Percy]

Where are all the Miners?

I dunno, is it somewhere near Uruquay?

[Plastic Percy]

But it’ll make you a multi-multi-multi-millionaire.

[Plastic Percy]

What bugged me more is the incongruous replacement of Holly in the first series. Obviously they couldn’t replace him in all the shots where he’s appearing in the background on monitors, but since they couldn’t replicate the same digital effect as used in that series, they should have just reshot all of it.

Saying that, I’ll always have a bit of time for Remastered as it was the first Red Dwarf I was properly exposed to. I think it was around Christmas 2000, I had expressed an interest in Red Dwarf and my parents bought me Kryten/Better than Life/Thanks for the Memory Remastered and Red Dwarf VII: Xtended on VHS. For my birthday a few days later I used my birthday money to buy to pick up the Smeg Ups & Smeg Outs VHS doublepack in QVC.

[Plastic Percy]

I was always under the impression that since the ship contained geologists and scientists, that the Red Dwarf crew would themselves be doing the mining or were transporting miners and their equipment to Triton.

They do manage to confuse themselves by using various naming structures for the ship’s levels – there’s the stuff like Level/Nivelo 592, then we get mentions of the penthouse suite on A-Deck and the science labs on Z-Deck, then finally the prison is on Floor 13.

[Plastic Percy]

Yes sir, it’s been around.

[Plastic Percy]

The list is full of references to other shows, books and films.

Banzai Institute – Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension
Cavor’s Gravity Devices – The First Men in the Moon
Del Floria’s Tailor Shop – The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Diet Smith Corporation – Dick Tracy
Diva Droid International – Red Dwarf
Forbin Project – The Forbin Project
Milliways – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Sirius Cybernetics Corporation – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Spaceley Sprockets – The Jetsons
Tom Servo’s Used Robots – Mystery Science Theater 3000
Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems – Buckaroo Banzai: Across the Eighth Dimension

[Plastic Percy]

An Adventure in Space and Norm.

Norman Lovett sulks for thirty minutes, then Dona DiStefano gives him his ball back.

[Plastic Percy]

Never knew that about Hudson 10. Presumably Butler is named after Geoffrey Butler from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Hopefully it’s not just lazy, obvious writing on the part of Doug Naylor.

Hopefully the next one we meet will be Carson or Jeeves.

[Plastic Percy]

“You can’t get ahold of these for love nor money. These are like Venus’ arms! These are like Keira Knightley’s buttocks!”

[Plastic Percy]

They’ve never put much thought into it, aside from it’s use as a plot device. They very quickly gloss over how the photographs work in Timeslides and it was left to Craig Charles to point out a logical inconsistency in their writing. The skiers in the photos Lister got back due to a mixup at the developers were originally supposed to have a line about how they got back photos of a stag-do Lister went on, recieving photos of him and his mates drinking and being sick. Charles pointed out that because the photo was taken before they sent the photos off to be developed, they wouldn’t yet have recieved them at the time the photo was taken.

[Plastic Percy]

Perhaps they were amongst the extra thousand that appear out of nowhere in Justice? If the inmates in the Tank make up 200 of that number, and maybe say 100 wardens to guard them, you could potentially have 700 miners waiting to be dropped off on Triton.

[Plastic Percy]

Doug seems inherently more focused on strong, complicated science-fiction concepts… and then adding a few jokes on. It seems a lot of his episodes are dedicated to long scenes of Kryten explaining which concept it is each week that Doug wants to explore.

Red Dwarf with both Rob and Doug was always a simple, science-fiction trope with the focus always being on humour.

[Plastic Percy]

Did Danny John-Jules really see a set builder pulling out a nail with his teeth when you directed an episode of Red Dwarf IV?

[Plastic Percy]

Sad to hear that her mother Debbie Reynolds has passed away now, too.

I was never a Star Wars fan, but she seemed nice. I rewatched The Burbs last night instead.

[Plastic Percy]

I figured they were the same left over metal grating used in Alien and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

[Plastic Percy]

Holly generated a stack of holographic boxes for him to crash into, because he’s a prick like that.

[Plastic Percy]

Rob was bored of Red Dwarf and Doug wasn’t. I think that’s about it, really.

[Plastic Percy]

>>He never had one according to The Last Day.

He mentions his adoptive mother twice, if I recall – in Kryten and Thanks for the Memory.

Much as I liked the revelation of Rimmer being the son of Dungo, it does ruin the rather brilliant fan theory that Rimmer is the only biological child of Mr. and Mrs. Rimmer, with his brothers being the children of other, better men – Uncle Frank, Porky Roebuck’s dad etc.

[Plastic Percy]

On the subject of families, I’ve always wondered what happened to Lister’s mum, his adoptive mother anyway. We know that Mr. Lister died when Dave was five, but anytime we hear about any other incidences in his childhood – coming bottom of the class in French, the Fat Boy Years etc. – it’s his grandmother who seems to be his sole caregiver.

[Plastic Percy]

Spike Milligan’s Q series.

The first five seasons were titled Q5, Q6, Q7, Q8 & Q9, whilst the last series was titled There’s a Lot of It About.

[Plastic Percy]

When Rimmer changes the timeline, he doesn’t realise that he’s alive and still thinks he’s dead. Perhaps the same can be said for the rest of the crew when they return.

[Plastic Percy]

The problem I find with a lot of the episodes in VIII is that there’s not really a plot but instead a series of sketches vaguely connected together. Only the Good… is prorbably the best example of this.

[Plastic Percy]

I dunno, is it somewhere near Uruguay?

[Plastic Percy]

There’s a lot of logical inconsistencies that never made sense to me in some of the premise.

– Lister had the run of the ship after the nuclear accident and points out to Rimmer that he’d had access to all sort of stuff like the crew’s confidential files, medical records, psychiatric reports etc. How did he not discovered the Tank whilst wandering about, reading the files or even just Holly letting it slip? Especially as there appear to be multiple wings and

– If there was a prison aboard the ship already, what was the point in sentencing Lister to eighteen months in a stasis booth?

– Surely the very existence of Kryten and Cat corroborate Lister’s story about the crew’s death to an extent.

– Holly mentions that the prisoners were being transported to a prison colony on Adelphi XII, which is presumably a planet. Seeing as Red Dwarf was a mining ship and officially mining the outer reaches of the solar system, it would be a little difficult to hide from the crew that they were leaving the solar system for another planet.

– I’m sure the female prisoners only showering three times a week in Krytie TV can’t be right. Even if it is a three hour long shower. Especially bizzare as Rimmer and Lister have a shower in their cell.

My biggest criticism has to be how the rest of the crew – Captain Hollister, Doctor McLaren and Warden Ackerman in particular – are presented as just as incompetent and eccentric as the Boys from the Dwarf. Hollister especially goes from being an authorative, intelligent officer to a bumbling idiot concerned with only stuffing his face or getting his leg over.

[Plastic Percy]

I’m hesitant to rewatch anything from my childhood again. I randomly came across an episode of Thundercats on YouTube and thought I’d indulge in some nostalgia. I had to turn it off about five minutes in as it was unbearbly awful and for some reason they were all naked to begin with.

[Plastic Percy]

More to the point, if they are such an intrinsic part of his lifestyle then why do we never see him use them?

[Plastic Percy]

When I was young, I assumed it was to defend himself from the bullies (i.e. in the event something like Private Pyle’s beating in Full Metal Jacket happened).

Now I’m older, it’s clear it was to stop him making stomach pancakes.

[Plastic Percy]

It’s certainly better than that story I read where Rimmer returns and Kill Crazy becomes the next Ace Rimmer.

Or the vast majority of stories online that would have you believe that Lister really wants to shag Rimmer.

[Plastic Percy]

Well, it’s better than the fanfic I stumbled across many moons ago where a horny Kochanski orders Kryten to take a shower with her so she can make use of the dildo that plugs into his groinal socket.

[Plastic Percy]

That was a great read, well done. I think it’s up there with my favourite Red Dwarf fan story, ‘The Last Temptation of Kryten’.

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~polymorp/txt/fanfic/kryten.htm

[Plastic Percy]

I need a Lister hat to finish off my Red Dwarf III outfit.

[Plastic Percy]

Craig probably was drunk. He says as much on the commentary, how he remembers Red Dwarf III in black and white due to him and Danny being hungover from nights out at the Hacienda, or as they did for Red Dwarf II, going to all sorts of weird places like shebeens in Moss Side with Norman Lovett.

The Re-Mastered DVD attempts to patch this up with some footage of blinds on the window opening and closing to reveal the cargo bay, but the camera is almost constantly moving so it wasn’t possible to keep the edit neat. They had the same problem with the stars in the sleeping quarters – they only move when the camera is stationary.

[Plastic Percy]

They probably took out that joke about death being like going on holiday with Germans. Actually, no, knowing them they probably kept it in.

[Plastic Percy]

Happy New Year, you twats x

[Plastic Percy]

To be honest, they can’t do as much harm to the ‘brand’ or ‘franchise’ as George Lucas has done with that terrible Prequel Trilogy. Plus, they have made a successful film franchise out of Marvel Comics.

[Plastic Percy]

It’s a shame you can no longer get the ‘Egburt Arms’ T-Shirt…

[Author]

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