Plastic Percy

[Plastic Percy]

I do rather like the VIII sets. They seem to mesh the Ocean Grey and the white plastic of previous years.

[Plastic Percy]

I think the original intention for Cat was that he’d always be sort of aloof and off doing his own thing, rather than hanging around with Rimmer and Lister too much. Much like your average cat tends to do.

[Plastic Percy]

I’d like to see Rimmer get a costume change. At three series now, its his longest serving outfit. I wouldn’t mind seeing a switch away from blue, as I’m not totally in bed with the ‘red = soft light, blue = hard light’ notion. Maybe back to green for a bit.

[Plastic Percy]

I figured it’s the same reason as to why Rimmer identifies himself as First Technician in Trojan. Although Doug had previously incorrectly identified novel Rimmer as Second Technician in Last Human.

[Plastic Percy]

She nicked the last of the strawberries.

[Plastic Percy]

I figured it was a joke about Ronald Reagan being a decreipt old man and looking like the living dead.

[Plastic Percy]

The totally shit Talkie Toaster interviews on the official website covers the matter in its interview with Admiral Bongo.

“Father Cat? Now there’s a remarkable guy. Passes for human incredibly well, doesn’t he? I mean, you occasionally find him scratching at his dog-collar with his foot, but generally speaking he’s indistinguishable from the rest of the guys. The Padré was part of an experiment the boffins had been working on, something to do with hyper-evolution. I don’t know the science stuff – I’m the guy who wrote to the TV networks asking them to ban documentaries during prime time – but they were working on Darwinian logics and came up with a theory that, over time and given the correct surrounds, almost any life-form will evolve into humanoid form. They eventually moved to full animal testing and Lister volunteered a cat he’d rescued on Titan. They shoved the moggy into an accelerated-time environment – kinda the opposite of a stasis booth – and the Padré was the first successful result. His religion’s a little quirky – it’s not really Christianity, but has something to do with, I don’t know, some promised holy land and an ancient star map. Crazy stuff, but he’s a top guy, great for morale – except when he sheds on the furniture.”

“Mellie is a Model 101-type android. Tenth generation, AI. Quite brilliant. And she’s programmed to be the ideal secretary. Never misses a call, never forgets a message, and only flirts within certain operational parameters. I’ve got her set at low-level – just enough that I don’t feel guilty. But you can crank her up to full-blown ‘affair that the wife will never discover’ if you choose. It’s up to the user. She attends the company fundraisers and so on, and I can’t have her making embarrassing innuendoes in front of the brass.”

[Plastic Percy]

BACKWOODS

The crew visit a parallel dimension populated entirely by hillbilly Ents.

[Plastic Percy]

I’d quite like Jawscvmcdia to join the chat. I’d love to experience his arse-achingly banal crapness in real time.

[Plastic Percy]

I rather liked the Rabbit Nazis put forward in the roleplay game. Less so the racist Lizard Rastafarians.

[Plastic Percy]

I guess there’s an irony in that it means Captain Hollister’s worrying about Frankenstein breaking quarantine was a moot point.

[Plastic Percy]

Well it probably is beautification, it sounds like it.

[Plastic Percy]

Also, Lister is mentioned as using a sonic screwdriver when repairing Kryten in ‘Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers’.

[Plastic Percy]

If it helps, the novel ‘First Frontier’ by David A. McIntee has Ace saying Smeg a lot.

[Plastic Percy]

DAN!

[Plastic Percy]

One way or another, I’m just glad the show hasn’t ended (for the time being, at least) on a cliffhanger.

[Plastic Percy]

A New Hope Defeats Despair, Despair – the Despair Squid.

Princess Leia sends R2-D2 to find Obi-Wan Kenobi on the planet Tatooine, to let him know that the Death Star can be destroyed with the laser canons on the, whatsit, Esperanto.

[Plastic Percy]

The Empire Strikes Back to Reality.

After crashing his X-Wing on Dagobah, Luke Skywalker awakes to find he’s spent the last three years playing the Total Immersion Videogame ‘Star Wars’ and is really Dwayne Dibbley.

[Plastic Percy]

What about the aging career woman with a strained marriage and worries about her femininity?

[Plastic Percy]

You didn’t have the right edit and reply buttons? Whose edit and reply buttons did you have?

[Plastic Percy]

(Spoilers)

Yeah, the Bashirling thing doesn’t make sense in retrospect. We’re led to presume that it’s this Bashir who performed the delicate brain surgery on Captain Sisko in ‘Rapture’ and didn’t take the opportunity to kill him with a slip of the scalpel.

[Plastic Percy]

Nevermind that, there’s still that issue of the Smegazine that proclaims Craig Charles as the Gary Glitter of outer space.

[Plastic Percy]

I’ve got the complete run of Doctor Who DVD releases and I won’t be buying the blu-ray sets. To be honest, there’s a lot of fans out there thinking we’ll get all 26 seasons… but I really can’t see the BBC doing that, especially for stuff like Patrick Troughton’s first season where most of it’s missing. The general public aren’t really going to hand over £40+ for some recons, one or two animations and a handful of orphan episodes – the earliest surviving episode of his is, I believe, the second episode of his third story. Likewise, I can’t see the fans rushing out to buy the first seasons of either Colin Baker or Sylvester McCoy.

[Plastic Percy]

That shuttlecock was a great brick joke.

There’s a nice subtle foreshadowing of John’s sexual harassment in the archive footage of This Time 2012.

Alan and Garfunkel’s picking over John’s bones to be the next presenter of This Time was nice. I especially loved Alan’s confused reaction to how Home Secretary was a popular choice for a boyhood dream, as well as subtle digs about how his story about John helping get him his big break was bollocks and it was down to his father being in BBC senior management.

I’m loving Lynn’s little moments, she’s turned into Alan’s Kingmaker. She’s clearly got a bit too hooked on Game of Thrones.

[Plastic Percy]

Yeah, you have to wonder how quickly Denise Crosby realised she’d shot herself in the foot. I think she’s the weakest actress out of the initial crew, but Tasha as a character had a lot of potential. Of the original three female characters she’s the only one not in a ‘caring’ job and is shown to be tough and capable without compromising her femininity.

The character of Sela, the convoluted daughter of alternate Tasha, feels like an awkward idea for Crosby to get her foot back in the door.

[Plastic Percy]

I’ve been watching Trekkies again, and it’s brought up a bit of mixed feelings.

I was far too young for it, but there’s a cosy nostalgia to life as a Trek fan in the nineties. All those small town conventions and homemade costumes that don’t look quite right; but get 10/10 for effort and imagination. It’s quite refreshing in this day and age where sci-fi conventions are big, sleek corporate affairs and people spend hundreds of pounds on screen accuracte costumes (honestly, I’ve seen people pay over £80 just to get the right buttons for their Matt Smith Doctor jackets).

But also, and I’m not entirely sure this is deliberate on the part of the producers, but in making a film about how Trekkies are just everyday people with a passion for Star Trek, the first film in particular just showcases the worst of fan excess. I also felt a little sorry for Barbra Adams, the Whitewater juror who turned up in her Starfleet uniform. The second film, where we get to see more of her day-to-day life, gives the impression she’s stuck in a dead-end job and has retreated into Star Trek as an escapist fantasy.

I was googling randomly and discovered that Douglas Marks – the crossdressing Wrath of Khan singer – was imprisoned for elder abuse in 2010, having left his elderly mother in a bathtub unattended for 18 hours. And, more worryingly, came across what appears to be the genuine Twitter profile of Tony Alleyne – the guy who transformed his flat into the Enterprise and was arrested for downloading photos of child abuse.

[Plastic Percy]

With Tapestry, I’ve always liked how you’re never quite certain if this is Q attempting to once again fuck with Picard’s head; or if it’s a dying fantasy Picard is having as he flatlines on the operating table.

[Plastic Percy]

Never noticed the Space Princess in the asteroid field. The only ship I ever recognised was the Eagle from Space: 1999. Isn’t a Klingon Bird-of-Prey in there as well, somewhere?

[Plastic Percy]

I liked it in Red Dwarf: Can’t Smeg, Won’t Smeg: Re-Mastered when they replaced Danny’s chopping action with a CGI Skutter.

[Plastic Percy]

I think generally the season cliffhanger/openings are filmed months apart. I don’t know about dates of filming but Part I’s final draft was completed on 6th April 1992 and Part II’s final draft was completed on 2nd July 1992, with filming coinciding with filming of Emissary in August and September 1992.

I think this is standard for previous seasons. Geordi La Forge is notably absent from The Best of Both Worlds, Part II for most of the episode due to LeVar Burton being sick. And as of the broadcast of the first part, it was still uncertain whether Patrick Stewart would be returning as his contract was up for negotiation at the time.

[Plastic Percy]

I never had too much fun with the novel ranges. I respected their notion of telling stories “too broad and too deep” for TV but found the ones I read to take them very far away from what I like about the show. There was a period where they even made life after the Doctor a bit of a doom fest – Jo Grant a divorced single mother, the Brigadier a bitter widower, Dodo a victimised psychiatric patient etc.

At times I half expected the Doctor turn up as a heroin addicted Jazz critic who wasn’t an alien.

[Plastic Percy]

Avery Brooks had a very minor hand in changing Sisko’s ending. As originally written, when Sisko appears to Kassidy, he would have told her that he would never return. Brooks felt this reinforced a negative stereotype of absent black fathers and the line was changed to Sisko saying he would return someday.

And I think Kira is a better fit for the show. There’s an uneasiness early on to Kira, where she resents the Federation getting involved and even sides with Vedek Winn’s conservative religious teachings. She does have the fantastic character arc of being able to grow beyond hatred and end up helping the Cardassians retake their planet from occupation.

I know it’s resolved in the novels that Ro escaped the collapse of the Maquis, and ends up back in Starfleet, but I prefer to think of her going down fighting against the Cardassians/Dominion.

[Plastic Percy]

As I understand it, ‘Disaster’ was partially written to see if Colm Meaney and Michelle Forbes had on-screen chemistry, as they’d already decided O’Brien and Ro would be transferred to Deep Space Nine.

Also, I know it would have made fandom explode, but I really liked the pitched idea of Deep Space Nine ending with a fadeout to an elderly Benny Russell, sitting about Paramount Studios, holding the script to ‘Deep Space Nine: The Emissary’ as the cameras start to roll.

[Plastic Percy]

Why does Jonathan Pie always have his shirt done up but his tie loosened?

[Plastic Percy]

Egg in soup. Serve that with a pork pie or sausage roll.

Or you can just grab a Wimpy.

[Plastic Percy]

I was watching the Star Cops episode ‘Trivial Games and Paranoid Pursuits’ and noticed that the chairs on the American space station they’re investigating were the same yellow high chair in the I & II Sleeping Quarters.

Bonus points, the flashing lights on the Star Cops’ computer BOX was recycled to make the flashing lights on Talkie Toaster.

[Plastic Percy]

I figured they just lumped in four random patrons with Duane being the first to sign up – he seems the most likely candidate to spend years on a waiting list to play a computer game. If I recall, it’s mentioned in his personal effects that he’s got a key to a room in a Salvation Army hostel.

I’ve always wondered about Jake Bullet, though. We have credible explanations for Sebastian, Billy and Duane playing the game, but why a macho cop with a frustrating and demeaning job would choose to spend four years dedicated to cleaning toilets is anybody’s guess. Maybe he had a deep seated masochistic side?

[Plastic Percy]

Additional: I’ve never had a Sugar Puff sandwich, but I did make a Coco Pops sandwich once. The chocolate mixed into the butter. Nice.

[Plastic Percy]

I was wondering, does Cat ever refer to Lister by his name? To my mind, he only calls Rimmer by his name three times – in Better Than Life, Bodyswap and Blue.

[Plastic Percy]

Given that Rimmer’s light bee can replicate a sense of smell, presumably it’s able to pick up traces of something in the atmosphere and relay it into his system. So maybe breathing in the ink also has hallucinatory effects.

If there’s a fault in the episode then it’s Rimmer being able to affect the crate he’s sat on. I guess it’s a holocrate.

[Plastic Percy]

Wouldn’t be surprised if they meant Paul McGuigan. The ‘Supersonic’ documentary reveals that his biggest passions were football, cricket, getting stoned and watching ‘Doctor Who’.

[Plastic Percy]

I think one of the DVD booklets points out how Frank has had a resurgence in popularity in the future.

[Plastic Percy]

My head canon has always been that Duane’s costume in Emohawk is from Rimmer’s belongings. The sort of casual clothes his mum would buy him.

[Plastic Percy]

<<The Schizoid Man was very good, despite the fact that I absolutely hate the cunt who inhabited Data’s body.>>

Interestingly, the role was intended originally to be played by Patrick McGoohan.

[Plastic Percy]

Good thing Data didn’t use the holodeck to talk to Bernard Manning about comedy.

[Plastic Percy]

Best: Kexonplastic, for giving us a truly fantastic opportunity to buy PE bottles.

[Plastic Percy]

Nothing Dwarf related, although I do watch It’s a Wonderful Life every year. Just got standard bloke presents – aftershave, socks etc. I did get the fifth, sixth and seventh series of Doctor Who on bluray but I’ve got to take them back tomorrow as HMV left the security tags in them.

[Plastic Percy]

Worf was originally conceived as a ‘glorified extra’ or secondary character, much like Chief O’Brien. I think Roddenberry’s idea was to him to illustrate about ‘present enemies becoming future friends’ (much like Chekov in TOS). Denise Crosby leaving – apparently with a rather huffy “nobody treats Bing’s granddaughter like this” – worked in his favour as Michael Dorn is a better actor and allowed them to do more with Worf, who was a more interesting character. When she comes back in Yesterday’s Enterprise she sticks out like a sore thumb with her acting. Everyone else has settled into their roles, got to know the characters, but she plays alternate Tasha in a very flat way.

It always sticks in my mind that Crosby clearly quickly regretted leaving the show. Robert Beltran hated doing it as well, but he had the common sense to stick it out for the whole run because it (most likely) netted him a nice little paycheck and royalties over the years.

[Plastic Percy]

Whatever. Some country that’s big on curly shoes and slzhnjhmwu.

[Plastic Percy]

Even ‘Timeslides’, which opens as a Lister episode, ends up being a Rimmer episode.

[Author]

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