Professor Flibble

[Professor Flibble]

Yeah, the power of TV networks only wanting to commission series that are easy to film is strong, and Doctor Who itself isn’t helping matters by near exclusively picking characters from modern day Britain for its companions and recurring characters.

Absolutely, it’s baffling how many people have pressed them to do historical companions, alien companions, etc, and they’ve still not tried it in a modern context. The first companion in a new era, fair enough, you need to reintroduce the show. But at this point, I think that’s become less of a priority in media, for the  audience surrogate to be an ordinary person from 21st century Earth.

Although it is funny that for the first modern TV spin-off they just so happened to pick a character who was both from the future and seemingly stranded in the future when we last saw him, yet they still went “Transport this man to Cardiff, 2006 IMMEDIATELY. Don’t even explain it, just do it!”.

Series 1 was very earthbound, so it doesn’t surprise me they had that mentality at the time. The kind of spin-offs I want now are (aside from just giving McGann a series) Dalek Empire but on screen, a Peladon series would be great, stuff like that. Actually, there should be way more animated Doctor Who stuff than there is. 

[Professor Flibble]

I just drink tea all day, and only because it’s not a good idea to drink coffee all day (max 3? I dunno).

I used to drink coffee all the time growing up. Think it might’ve stunted my growth a bit

[Professor Flibble]

I don’t drink. I’ve never enjoyed it and only ever got drunk out social pressure, which you sort of stop giving a crap about as you get older so I stopped around the age of 35. 

…. except when I rewatch ‘Mad Men’ and get an urge to drink whiskey.

Oh I don’t try to get drunk or even drink at all most of the time. It’s only maybe every couple months I think “ah why not?”

Never watched Mad Men. But, um, I like Christina Hendricks. So that’s, um, something, I guess

[Professor Flibble]

I’ve reached the age where I’m tired of being drunk and more tired of being hungover but I love a beer.

I’ve still not had a hangover. Just a smidgen of a migraine each time 

[Professor Flibble]

I think everyone just needs to admit they’re trying to get drunk and stop pretending they actually enjoy the flavor of alcohol.

Oh 100% this is basically why I mix coke with most things, it still kinda tastes like shit but it tastes marginally less like shit so I can get drunk 

[Professor Flibble]

Idk if I’ve tried Bud Light, but yeah I’d probably find that just as crap. Thatcher’s Gold I think I…didn’t…mind…? It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t absolutely terrible

[Professor Flibble]

I like cocktails, actually. But yeah, beer, wine, all that, not for me tbh.

[Professor Flibble]

Absolutely. Even better, her and Duggan. That’s something I really want to see. 

General point actually, I’m weary of how many TV Doctor Who spin-offs there are that are essentially “What happens on Earth when the Doctor isn’t around”

[Professor Flibble]

Yes.

[Professor Flibble]

I hate most alcoholic drinks on their own. I mix pretty much anything alcoholic with coke.

[Professor Flibble]

Only one I remember is the very first shot of Part Two (didn’t have a cliffhanger reprise, but then a lot of the cliffhanger reprises are weird in Season 16 anyway)

I love Stones, Professor Rumford is one of my favourite side characters in Doctor Who and the first three parts have a vibe I honestly prefer to a lot of the Hinchcliffe era stories.

[Professor Flibble]

When it works it works, I like Fendahl, Sunmakers, Invasion of Time, Ribos, Pirate Planet, Tara and City of Death. When it isn’t working it makes you want to peel your fingernails off.

Stones of Blood? I love Stones of Blood, one of my favourite Tom Baker serials

[Professor Flibble]

Did anyone else find the McGann/McCoy commentary a little odd?
McGann seemed so dazed and detached, and McCoy was the one seemingly driving it despite his minimal role in the film

I’ve only seen highlights of the commentary, but I found it a bit odd McCoy was the one narrating the trailer for the 4K release. Almost certainly though they’ll get McGann to film a minisode for the Wilderness Years set. Fingers crossed. Maybe there’ll be some Daleks in it and he’ll get his on-screen Dalek encounter.

[Professor Flibble]

That being said, I don’t think you could have any closure without at least one or two of the original characters. 

Yeah, ideally, it’d have been done when Paul Darrow was still alive.

[Professor Flibble]

Anyone heard of the 2017 Porridge revival? Carried the show’s same spirit (it was the same writers), but with a slightly different cast of characters and prison. It felt like pretty much exactly the same show.
I’d quite like a Series E of Blake’s 7 that has a new cast of characters, maybe with some relation to the original, a new ship, but otherwise picks up practically where the original left off and still has the same vibe, same 70s look to it, maybe shot in HD though idk (get someone to recreate Dudley Simpson’s style of music). I think just to give the show some closure. 

Only problem would be how do you deal with Servalan? 

[Professor Flibble]

Just to clarify, what show are we discussing here?

Sliders (1995-2000). Imagine you were invested in the characters and their relentless search for their home dimension when the writers pull this part way through (it seems to be the bit most people remember).

I’ve only ever heard of the show, never watched it. Regardless of that, this pisses me off

[Professor Flibble]

Aww no, not him too. RIP Michael Keating. 

[Professor Flibble]

I’m watching Nightmare on Eden, and for all that’s been made over the years about this story being a notoriously bad production with famously poor monsters, in actuality it’s… quite good… for the most part. 

I’ve always really liked Nightmare of Eden. And I’m a fan of the Graham Williams era. I will say, Season 17 is definitely the weakest of the three. 

[Professor Flibble]

Chris looking more like VIII Chris than X Chris always throws me off a bit

There is something very weird about BTE where they all look much closer to how they appeared in VIII than X, despite it being ten years after the former and only three years before the latter.

Other than Danny, who never really ages anyway, I see exactly what you mean. That was the last time we had a really good Kryten mask too.

[Professor Flibble]

I’m well past the point where I even think there’s another series / special / TV whatever written by Doug with the main cast coming anymore. Which sucks because in early 2020 I was about as sure as I ever was that there’d be more after TPL.

Yeah, the feature-length special tying up a loose thread format seemed to be the way to go to make things a lot easier, so it’s ironic really. And didn’t Doug say at the time he had at least two more planned? 

I’m not always, but I do try to be a glass half-full kinda guy, so I don’t think it’s impossible we’ll ever get another special. I mean, Doug is persistent. And apparently the new BBC head of comedy is a fan of the show? Idk, I just really, really want to believe it can still happen. 

Are the Series X-XIII sets still in storage?

[Professor Flibble]

A YouTuber’s copy of the TV Movie 4K blu-ray turned up, I’m delighted it’s got a reversible roundel cover (though the lack of a “Starring PAUL McGANN as the Doctor” on the banner is a little odd). The roundels still going strong, now they’re on a 4K blu-ray case!

More gorgeous art from Lee Binding, he’s really pulled all the stops out.

Glad to see they’ve included clean opening titles as a special feature, was hoping they would. I assume the alternative opening has Gordon Tipple’s narration?

[Professor Flibble]

21/05/2026

[Professor Flibble]

Does bringing Hattie back count? I really want Hattie back.
Tbf, I’m at a point now where I think if we get another episode, it might be the last one. I don’t want to think like that, but in that case, I’d be on board with them bringing Mac and Chloë back.
Actually, even crazier, bring back both Chloë and Clare. 

[Professor Flibble]

I hunger for another Red Dwarf thing that takes this wild of a stylistic swing.

I hunger for just more Red Dwarf in general tbh :( 

I adore Series XI in particular, but Dave Dwarf is definitely mostly the “safe” version of a Red Dwarf revival by sticking roughly to the model of III-V.

I will say, I’m glad Doug eventually did safe Dwarf, and I do think he needed to, because there was about 20 years between 1992 and 2012 where the only Red Dwarf that came out was trying to revamp the format in different ways.

[Professor Flibble]

I kept reading people who said at the time that they didn’t think you could’ve followed the plot of Back to Earth without seeing Blade Runner, which is obviously bullshit. I never had a problem. What’s confusing is why it’s parodying Blade Runner in the first place.

Oh yeah, I always understood the plot, just the very specific references to Blade Runner would’ve gone over my head. I’d always assumed that bit of them running down the street and smashing through the window was just trying to look epic (and I have always liked that bit tbf. Though knowing it’s just a Blade Runner parody diminishes it for me somewhat). 

But yeah, there’s nothing about even early Dwarf that puts me in mind of Blade Runner. 

[Professor Flibble]

I was reading G&T, so would have known about the budget limitations of Back to Earth, because I treated it as gently as a school play when it started. But by the end I was less forgiving, it seemed like a waste of the opportunity and just like doing Red Dwarf for the sake of it, without even being able to be very Red Dwarf. All my goodwill’s faded now.

Yeah, I don’t get why the first entry you’d make in a franchise for a decade, why you’d do something so subversive.

I quite like some of the outdoorsy ones. Meltdown, Gunmen etc. So, I think they absolutely could’ve done something very in-spirit. Maybe Doug wanted to do something very daring, but then he should taken into account how VII and VIII did.

I was well hyped for series X and calmer for the later ones.

See, I think Series XI and XII bore even a more superficial resemblance to the III-VI era, and I was a bit more active in looking up news about the show, so by that point I think I was more hyped for XI and XII.

[Professor Flibble]

I uncritically loved Back to Earth because I had only just turned 13, VII and VIII were two of my favorite series and I would’ve liked anything they put out. Granted I am still a defender of VII and BtE, but not VIII.

When I was very young, I wanna say around when I was 9 or 10? I think I liked VIII because it had Rimmer in it and it had the video look and audience and all that. Later on, I realised everything that was wrong about it. VII I still lump in with VIII a bit but it’s by far the less egregious one and it’s a lot more Dwarfy. 

 Coronation Street I only had any context for from reading people talking about everything on G&T because there is no reason in the world I ever would’ve been aware of it at the time otherwise.

Yeah, I’m British and I’ve still never watched an episode. Other than glimpsing it on family members’ TVs, Back to Earth is the closest I’ve got to choosing to watch it. Doesn’t appeal to me at all.

Same.

I remember seeing the initial news about it, the return of the sans serif logo, the Starbug model pictures, it was so exciting. 

[Professor Flibble]

The former wasn’t an issue. It made sense that it was some acting gig of Craig Charles. But I did find myself confused when the premise went from “they’re in the real world” to some bizarre sci-fi setting. I justified it internally by assuming that the writer wanted to parody his own ego (I completely believed that the Creator was played by Doug Naylor, and was severely disappointed when I found out he wasn’t) by depicting himself as the lord of a castle regardless of situational context. 

Yeah, it was all that, and the Blade Runner stuff I didn’t get for the longest time. I only watched the film about two years ago and I still don’t understand the point Doug was trying to make. 

I remember lots of comparisons to Alien in the set design, but I’m not sure Blade Runner was ever mentioned in any of the documentaries.

[Professor Flibble]

Oh, replied before you edited! Curious, what was Back to Earth like for you? What was your reaction to the Coronation Street stuff? 

[Professor Flibble]

I got into the show in 2007 and it became my new obsession, so you can imagine how pleased I was when it very quickly went from a long-dead to active property within two years. As much as I loved it to begin with, I sincerely doubt the show would’ve been as big a part of my life as it has been if I hadn’t been getting new episodes every couple of years from about ages 13-24 while I followed and participated in the hype cycle each time.

Yeah, I’ll always be grateful for the Dave era because otherwise my only formative memories of Red Dwarf would’ve been the DVDs. 2016 was a pretty shit year all around, but Series XI was probably my favourite thing about it.

[Professor Flibble]

I would find it really interesting to see how people who discover Red Dwarf and watch it all from the start NOW compare the “classic” episodes to the new ones. 
I started watching after the Promised Land aired. 
That’s actually why I’m maybe more upset than some at Dave’s failure to produce a new special. I would like to experience ‘new’ Dwarf, live through the excitement and anticipation. 

I sort of have this, but for me, it’s experiencing the hype in a community. I don’t think I’ve ever properly had that with Red Dwarf.

[Professor Flibble]

Had to give a presentation at uni recently about doing interviews with writers. Did a Thunderbirds intro for it, which amused everyone. I also kept putting jars of Dolmio into the slides

[Professor Flibble]

Well, I’m a bit behind to contribute to this. About 4 years.

But I’d like to give my thoughts on each episode.

The End

– Does the full version of the “F” zoom out still exist somewhere? I seem to recall hearing that it doesn’t.

– Weird seeing the Series I-II intro without the Holly introduction after it.

– Not really sure why they put a grate over the opening shot.

– Generally, a good opening scene, establishes the characters’ dynamic very efficiently.

– Interesting to hear Chris Barrie’s first attempt at a Craig Charles impression

– “Yo, Toddhunter, get down!” “Indeed.” This sort of exchange always appeals to me. 

– Remastered’s version of George McIntyre’s funeral scene looks daft but the original does feel a bit empty

– Never noticed the cake before.

– Love Goodall’s “Everybody’s dead, Dave” cue

– I always expect a bigger audience reaction to “What’s an iguana?” and I don’t know why, given I’ve seen the episode loads of times.

– “I can’t write it down, I’ll remember it.” Ask Holly for a holographic pen and clipboard, surely? To be fair, they were just starting.

– I don’t think I’ve ever really noticed the pause in Lister’s final line but I don’t think it particularly bothers me.

A very solid first episode, funny considering it has to spend time laying the groundwork for the show’s sci-fi concepts

[Professor Flibble]

They’ll be great to rewatch once I’ve forgotten everything about them, it’s probably on the way. The only one I remember not liking was the karaoke one, because I find karaoke annoying.

Yeah I wasn’t so keen on the ones that didn’t really have any horror aspects to them, and I remember that being one of them. 

[Professor Flibble]

The Stakeout is definitely one of my favourite Inside No. 9s, and I think The Devil of Christmas is up there too.

[Professor Flibble]

[Professor Flibble]

[Professor Flibble]

Always found Series 12 to be quite poor. At last my unpopular opinion has been vindicated

I find it slightly weaker than Series XI, but I prefer it to X.

[Professor Flibble]

I don’t think Amandaland works quite as well as the ensemble isn’t quite as strong. Although Lumley lifts it and there have been some enjoyable bits. The Christmas special with Jennifer Saunders was quite good fun.

I don’t mind Motherland, Amandaland’s weaker. I do think Joanna Lumley is perfect casting for Amanda’s mother. And I enjoy Diane Morgan doing basically what she does in anything.

[Professor Flibble]

I mean, what you’ve just outlined is the canonical version. “We were no match, they killed us and destroyed everything on board the ship, including the time drive”. Rimmer’s intervention is indeed irrelevant, according to Lister’s explanation. One of the many reasons the opening of Tikka rankles. 

I’d have gone with “Rimmer was actually successful and him destroying the Time Drive reversed the explosion.” Pretty much what Gerry pitched. Even with the Back to Reality music.

I mean, it wouldn’t have had the main episode’s premise fuck itself over.

[Professor Flibble]

[Professor Flibble]

[Professor Flibble]

A bit of balance, please.

Ah but I love this one, perfect blend of disgust and fatigue

[Professor Flibble]

#RedDwarf #Smegle 20/05/2026

Emohawk: Polymorph II, Out of Time, Legion 

[Professor Flibble]

[Professor Flibble]

[Professor Flibble]

Fantastic.
I think the general memes thread is probably the best home for anything that doesn’t suit a particular topic.

Ah thank you. I’m aware there’s still a ton more crap from VII and VIII I could put into it but I think it’s over 50 seconds long already.

[Professor Flibble]

Had no idea where else to put this.

[Professor Flibble]

I’ve only just figured out how to actually make GIFs with the Smega Drive. I’m a bit slow.

[Professor Flibble]

I didn’t notice until waiting for gifs to load how the overlaid sparks go over the edge of the frame at the top.

I’ve always wondered where each element of the explosion came from, especially the bits of debris in the centre. Also I like how you can see the crossfade to the “credits” space background

[Author]

Replies