Professor Flibble

[Professor Flibble]

[Professor Flibble]

I’d cast Johnny Vegas as the Monk. I can genuinely see it. 

[Professor Flibble]

I’m equally happy with Matt Berry as the Doctor or the Monk. Though admittedly, he’d probably be better suited to the Monk in the long run.

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I used to think it was a dead cert that Richard Ayoade would probably get the role someday.
Well I hope I’m not being too picky, but I was hoping that we could avoid having an open transphobe play The Doctor.

Him too? Bloody hell.

Also I’ve never seen him give a compelling acting performance that wasn’t comedy, but never mind that.

I think those people genuinely just want him to play the Doctor exactly like Maurice Moss. I mean, I basically want Dylan Moran to play the Doctor like Bernard Black (but a bit nicer) but that’s totally different because he’s actually Doctory.

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Tom Baker said in a couple of interviews that he wanted Miriam Margoyles as a companion in the 70s.

I can’t accept Margoyles as anything less than the Doctor. She just is the female Tom Baker. 

I used to think it was a dead cert that Richard Ayoade would probably get the role someday. 

I think as a kid, I liked the idea, then I grew up and realised how bland the idea of Richard Ayoade as the Doctor is.

That would at least finally let Sylvester McCoy out of the worst-actor chair.

I will not accept this McCoy slander, he is one of the best actors to play the role. But I can’t even say there is a worst actor because I like them all. At that point, I’d say a fan Doctor and that doesn’t feel very fair.

[Professor Flibble]

I’ve always liked Alan Davies, and I wouldn’t mind him in the role but I’ve never been 100% convinced for some reason. 

The thing I am a bit tired of is all the popular Doctor choices with fans just being whoever’s in the latest prestige BBC crime drama or Netflix horror show or something, so I’d actually like to see a fairly well-known British comedian (at least one I know and like) take on the role and surprise everyone. I suppose the issue becomes how recognisable they are already. Like, I’d like to see Diane Morgan but everyone would call it “Philomena Cunk in Space.”

I mean, as if Peter Capaldi’s Doctor Who wasn’t “Malcolm Tucker in Space.”

[Professor Flibble]

Been rewatching Black Books recently, Dylan Moran is one of my top choices to play the Doctor. It’s just a shame he’d likely never do it.
Additionally, Miriam Margoyles is another one of mine, she would be absolutely perfect in the role, but obviously it wouldn’t happen now. 

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Maybe, maybe. I have heard the “Gallifrey sounds like Welsh” thing before, though, definitely.

I think it’s a reference to Galway.

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While I’ve seen practically all of Star Trek up to a random episode of Picard Season 2, my memory of the franchise on a “names of species and planets” level isn’t the best so uh, I forgot there was a planet called Korma. 

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Are you lot not thinking of the “Gallifrey? Must be in Ireland” joke, first seen in Hand of Fear?

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This is perhaps the most bizarre conversation I’ve seen on the site so far.

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I never thought it was a joke specifically about Rebecca Blackstone. In fact I thought it was a set-up totally disconnected from what Pree actually looked like because the frame only shows her shoulders anyway, and I always assumed she was a brunette maybe because of how dark the lighting is on her hair.

Was it the Space Corps Survival Guide that had a drawing of a blow-up doll with big boobs (Rachel?) being used as a make-shift parachute? God knows why I kept looking at that page when nobody else was in the room. I was an odd boy.

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Vengeance on Varos’ cliffhanger is where I notice it the most 

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I don’t see the issue that’s fairly vague on its own, unless the next parts have Mel in the thumbnails.

Tbf they don’t but in the context of the story, it’s a bit risky.

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I mean, it’s not literally saying it but come on

Also, *the* Kiv?

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Wish Back to Earth was in its 3 part version on iPlayer, or at least that the option was included 

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You brought her up!

True, but it’s the difference between her opinions and how she acts on them. Maybe. Oh idk, I just want to voice how how much she pisses me off.

[Professor Flibble]

I just saw Frontier in Space for the first time and really enjoyed it. I’ve always had a bias against Pertwee due to my family hating him and me being expected to follow suit. But he comes across as really kind in this story, and in what I remember of his last two series in general. I have a whole new appreciation of his interpretation of the character.

He’s excellent, my only issues have been how much the exile dragged on through his era and the once or twice he acts like an arsehole (namely The Dæmons and The Sea Devils).

Frontier in Space is one I’ve always liked (I mean I like practically all of Classic Who) though it does suffer from the capture and escape thing. But then it makes good use of that for worldbuilding

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I would have maybe some amount of respect or generally any consideration for El Sandifer if she’d ever actually made any meaningful contribution to Doctor Who or the conversation surrounding it. As far as I’m aware, all she’s done is write some essays as an outlet to personally slag people off and provide no evidence to back up her claims, and supposedly that gives her carte blanche as some very important figure in Doctor Who fandom. No. All it means is she can use the death of a writer as an opportunity to get a little jab in about his Doctor Who work and how supposedly mediocre it is. Oh, yeah, condolences, whatever. She thinks she’s above basic human decency cause she’s some hoity-toity academic. But her opinion is completely irrelevant. She’s not done anything to earn anyone’s respect. She’s never been interesting. It’d be one thing if Justin Richards once told her she was very smelly or something, but somehow I doubt that happened.

[Professor Flibble]

What an absolute prick.

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Did he do any new cues for the Red Dwarf establishing shots? 

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Rewatching M-Corp, “Yes please, man!” has me pissing myself laughing 

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I’ve been reading the TARDIS Eruditorium, and while a few of the posts are undeniably pretentious and I don’t agree with all of them, I see no reason to attack them over anything. Saying Nick Briggs can be an uninspired writer isn’t a controversial opinion

Saying Nick Briggs helped John Hurt waste the last years of his life and using Justin Richards’ death as an opportunity to slag him off, I don’t think that’s just a little bit of harmless criticism.

[Professor Flibble]

She wrote that TARDIS Eruditorium thing, not that I’ve ever read it or would want to read it. A pretentious arsehole who says some very wild, usually quite nasty and baseless things about the cast and crew. And for some reason, people willingly feed her ego. She’s just a self-important bully.

[Professor Flibble]

Idk why anyone’s ever taken this edgelord’s opinions seriously. 

[Professor Flibble]

The music that plays when Lister is removing Kryten’s inhibitor chip in Tikka is absolutely fucking everywhere. I’ve heard it from Spongebob to a visitors video at the Stade de France.

20th Century Gothic. I actually quite like that one, when I was growing up I assumed Goodall did it alongside the JFK assassination music, so when I put on the music cues on the Series VII DVD I was a bit disappointed to find it wasn’t included.

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I really like the stock JFK assassination music through the end of Tikka to Ride, for years I thought it was Howard who did those pieces, but what he actually composed for the final sequence was an Indian cover of the Red Dwarf theme, which is utterly bizarre, cause…what, was that supposed to go over JFK getting killed? At one point I wondered if it was an unused end credits theme variant, but no it does seem to be literally intended for the JFK assassination scene. I don’t think it would’ve gelled with the drama of the scene at all. It’s probably the one time I think, yeah I can see why they replaced it.

Actually I might be in the minority because everyone loves it, but Lost in Space by Nigel Bates never sounded that Dwarfy to me either. I don’t dislike it, it’s a nice ethereal piece but Goodall did a score with a proper motif for Ouroboros that would’ve been so much better. 

[Professor Flibble]

Dominic Glynn’s Doctor Who incidental music is fantastic, but that potato virus music in Pete Part 1, it’s just awful. I don’t mind Future Conflict so much, but it doesn’t sound very Dwarfy. For me, all the lack of Goodall music does is rub in how unlike Red Dwarf everything from VII-Back to Earth is

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You’d expect him to have done a lot more Hinchcliffe-lite stories given his predilection for horror but he seems to veer more towards doing campy stories celebrating British conservative historical figures

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Do my eyes deceive me or did I just see “great” and “Mark Gatiss” used in the same sentence?

Those sketches were great tbf. I particularly like The Web of Caves.

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Just finished Kryten, and noticed that the starscape he flies off to (great new ending btw) is the one from the Series V credits. 

I’d heard not so long ago that they were done by Sid Sutton, the one who did the 1980s Doctor Who starfield title sequences. I mean I’d always wondered because those glowy stars are identical to the 80s Doctor Who ones.

Is there any basis to that? I tried looking it up to no avail.

[Professor Flibble]

That’s why the covers said “The Original Series”/”The Original Second Series”/”The Original Third Series” which probably looked nonsensical without the context (switching to “The Entire Fourth Series” after).

Huh, I never knew that.

[Professor Flibble]

You mean The Beginning DVD box set, released 30th January 2006, BBCDVD1882, containing An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, The Edge of Destruction and a 30 minute reconstruction of Marco Polo? 

[Professor Flibble]

I’m sure this has come up before, but did anyone else have the experience of not being allowed to buy the “lets get out there and twat it” shirt by their mum?

My dad had that t-shirt, and the “smoke me a kipper” one.

[Professor Flibble]

The only updates I want for Red Dwarf are reedited versions of Series VII and VIII with the CGI totally substituted for new model shots, the film filter on VII removed (idk if they’d have to go back to the raw material and rebuild it from scratch), and a lot of Howard Goodall’s unused music in VII restored in place of the library music. For VIII…god knows what they’d do for the music, just reuse some of his stuff from previous series? I can’t imagine they’d be able to afford him to do a new score for Series VIII. Unless they could, idk. But even with all the shit that, if removed, would basically amount to excising entire episodes, at least they’d look and sound more like normal Red Dwarf.

And a laugh track on Back to Earth. Well, two versions. One with a laugh track throughout, and one with a laugh track that stops when they’re in the “real world” and returns when they wake from their hallucination. 

[Professor Flibble]

I feel nostalgic for the XI-XII lighting because at the time I was very much into neon lighting and heavy blues and pinks, though now I do think it was a bit overboard. And I just rewatched Series X and there are points it feels more like the “classic” episodes because of its lighting.

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Oh, of course, the thread’s supposed to be about positives.

Well, it gave us an excuse to have another I-VIII style DVD release, and kept the Red Dwarf fanbase going for just another year before Back to Earth was announced.

[Professor Flibble]

I’ve still not actually sat down and watched an episode of Remastered. I think I saw one or two episodes repeated years ago, but generally all of my knowledge of it comes from documentaries and clips. So I knew about the model shots being replaced but I didn’t know for a long time they actually replaced some of Goodall’s music.

I never like when Goodall’s music is replaced because it’s the sound of the show. There are only one or two exceptions to that, the JFK assassination music in Tikka to Ride I genuinely thought was a piece of Goodall music for years (can’t believe he originally wanted to score the scene with an Indian cover of the Red Dwarf theme.)

Ouroboros and Duct Soup though have really nice unused pieces that I’m baffled went unused, the original music for Kryten’s vision particularly. 

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Never bought the whole Ace becoming a Time Lord thing. 

But what I don’t get is why Big Finish haven’t done a definitive Ace departure story. I mean, I certainly don’t think they have. Didn’t they even alter Love and War’s ending so she stays? 

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I appreciate McCoy based entirely on his TV stuff. The VNAs have always sounded like utter wank to me, and from what I’ve heard they absolutely butcher his Doctor.

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McCoy is probably my least favourite Doctor. 

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TGSITG is my second favourite of his after the Dalek one. I don’t normally like Dalek ones, which is how good that one is.

The Happiness Patrol is my favourite McCoy story but it’s very close. 

McCoy also has (I think) the winning structure of three and four parters, so everything feels the right length.

Yeah, and with each season having 4 stories, it’s very consistently good.

It also helps that the era nostalgically evokes the 1987-89 TV vibe of my early childhood, from CBBC dramas to Pat Sharp’s Funhouse.

Yeah! I was thinking while watching it there’s a lot of early 90s British kids TV shows I’ve seen that have the same kind of feel.

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Greatest Show in the Galaxy has some great characters in it, particularly Mags
She absolutely should’ve been a companion and I’m glad Big Finish had the common sense to make her one.
It’s surprising how little interaction there is between the Doctor and the Chief Clown considering (aside from the Gods of Ragnarok) he’s sort of the poster villain. The Whizz Kid reminds me a bit too much of myself, but I do find him absolutely hilarious. They were planning to make Captain Cook abusive towards Mags but I’m glad they didn’t because it would’ve been a step too far, I think. And I enjoy him as just a bit of an ignorant bastard.

Incidentally, Danny John Jules was considered for the Ringmaster, and Francesca Folan (Rimmer’s Camille) was considered for Mags. Interesting how it could’ve been the Doctor Who story with the strongest ties to Red Dwarf in its cast.

The McCoy era, even in Season 24, knows how to use its budget, and it means that every story just looks fantastic. Greatest Show is no exception, there’s nothing unconvincing about it. And the circus model is seamless, i’ve never noticed the joins.
There’s something quite melancholic about the fact this is the last time we see the classic console room in all its glory. In Battlefield, it’s drenched in darkness to the point you can hardly see it. 
The whole final act is why I love McCoy’s Doctor so much, this nerdy little man in his funny jumper and umbrella taking down gods. It’s been said many times but the shot of him walking out of the circus as it explodes behind him is one of the greatest shots in Doctor Who history.

Also, have to say, Mark Ayres’ score is excellent. Part 3’s cliffhanger music being a particular highlight. 

[Professor Flibble]

Rewatching Greatest Show in the Galaxy, fantastic stuff. The McCoy era really is just perfect Doctor Who.

[Professor Flibble]

21/06/2026

Demons & Angels, Parallel Universe 

[Professor Flibble]

There were three things in Doctor Who that scared me to the point I couldn’t watch certain stories for a long time.

– The sequence in Inferno Episode 1 where the Doctor and the TARDIS console go between universes

– The time scoop in The Five Doctors (I think the “Mr Whippy” version particularly)

– Sylvester McCoy’s silver face in the title sequence

[Professor Flibble]

19/06/2026

Meltdown, Emohawk: Polymorph II

[Professor Flibble]

It’s a small one but “Kryten bring those forks we might need them” in The Beginning should’ve got a bigger laugh than it did.

Oh, I quite like Rimmer telling Kryten to fill up the staple gun in Cured

[Author]

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