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Apologies, I’d delete my comment if I could

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I forget where I read it, but they’ve mentioned Masterplan and Marco Polo as stories they won’t animate. Too many characters to build animation rigs for, too much action. Evil was 7 eps, but nothing really happens in it til the back half of Episode 7.

If stories like Meglos were missing they’d be quids in cos it’s one consistent cast standing around talking for four episodes, and one of them is a copy-paste of other cast members.

Personally I’d like to see The Massacre done, but considering it’s a historical with no marketable monster (when The Wheel in Space is sitting right there), I’m not holding my breath.

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Pfft, forget all that nonsense, get yourself some legitimate sci-fi “action”

You know things are bad at GNP when there isn’t even a Gary Downie type around to slap their name on this and make it official. But hey, fodder for 237 DwarfCasts?

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This is the story of an actor named Patrick Stewart who came in the middle of a book about a stellar mission to a red dwarf star called Alpha Proxima 4.2 light years away. The pages then got stuck together. 

But, PLEASE, don’t tell anyone the ending.

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Glad it landed, making memes out of the extras without the Smegadrive to do the work for you is a complete pain in the arse

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I was used to funky theme tunes like Count Duckula but the new intro didn’t sit well with me. Too snazzy, too good.

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I was considering making a whole new thread just for specifically Red Dwarf lines that sound like they’re from Homestar Runner, but then I doubted how big the overlap between “G&T posters” and “HSR fans” was. So here’s all the ones I did combined into one post:

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An adaptation of Yeah, No, Yeah, No: The Movie with extremely unflattering likenesses of all involved. The Grinch keeps appearing in panels for no discernable reason, and is never acknowledged. Due to likeness rights issues, the part of Mr Flibble will be played by Christopher Plummer.

As for non-comic-related content:
– Ref Dwarf entries on such Dave era luminaries as Equahecta, Crit Cop, and Reg Warf. Almost all of the entries will be N/A or otherwise trying to talk around the fact that there’s next to no information about any of these characters.

– An in-character “interview” with Kryten that is actually just the interviewer reading the ActuallyKryten tweets, a la that one Slate article from 2010, “Kanye West Has a Goblet”. The interviewer will of course be written in the 90s Cor Dear I’m Mad, Me style (complete with abuse of brackets).

– An advert which tells you to get your finger whetting machines working overtime and send off for a full year’s subscription to the Smegazine, or else be judged an absolute slag.

– Red Any Good Books Lately? An extremely non-committal and “it’s alright I guess” review of The Quanderhorn Xperimentations. It becomes increasingly clear over the course of the article that the reviewer hasn’t actually read either of the books being reviewed, and is going off of plot summaries.

– NEWS FROM THE DWARF. A blank page.

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There’s also the fact that the Series I doc on the Bodysnatcher DVD revealed Craig thought the script wasn’t that funny or good, but he went for the part anyway because of Paul Jackson’s reputation for knowing a winning series when he sees one.

And iirc Danny’s situation was a) the fact that he didn’t know he was late, so he played off being late completely cool without realising it, and b) a long-time professional stage dancer is exactly who you need for a Cat-like character, if he can pull off the dialogue “ooh-ee-ooh-ahh-wee how am I lookin” as well as Danny can

EDIT: one thing I don’t recall ever being mentioned, apart from the Comedy Connections narrator joking about it, is whether Doug/Rob/Ed/Paul went out of their way to avoid casting “proper actors” like Alfred Molina and Alan Rickman, since it is odd how your main recurring cast in the first series consists of:
– punk poet who’s never acted before
– impressionist who’s mostly done voice-over for radio and Spitting Image
– dancer
– stand-up comedian
– the guy who does the warm-up
– the guy who was going to do the warm-up before the strike happened

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Also:

stumbled headfirst into a garish yellow shit and floral garland

isn’t that basically everything Lister wore in Series I

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Not exactly beating the “sounds like AI writing” allegations

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Endless black was replaced by seemingly endless red. Miles of industrial metal hull, laced with prongs and pipes and protrusions, swept by underneath him. His quest was at an end, his final destination was within reach.

It had been a long road to Red Dwarf.

Millions of years of tireless trudging through the cosmos, visiting each and every person in turn. It was hard work, it was long work, and now it was just four people away from being finished work.

He had had better first impressions. Upon breaking into the ship, most of his senses were assaulted in ways that would get 10-25 at least, possibly life if the judge was feeling frivolous. The stench of decay hung so heavily over the deserted corridor you could almost see it. Unfortunately for him, you could definitely taste it.

He grimaced, only partly to try and see through the gloom. Hadn’t these people heard of LEDs? He’d been in Berni Inns more inviting than this. They hadn’t heard of much else either, given the tiny storms of dust that whipped up whenever he moved, the bare corrugated metal cramping the space even more than necessary, that weird sucking sound-

That last item hadn’t been there a moment ago, had it? He wracked his ancient mind, sieving through enough memories to make a mere mortal’s mind go mad. No, there was definitely just the anaemic background hum of the miles-distant engines a moment ago.

He’d also been on his feet a moment ago. That was also something he was certain of. Yes. On his feet, inside the ship. Some kind of embuggerance had occurred a moment previous, and he had spent his only split-second in arm’s reach of anything but vacuum pondering it.

Typical, he thought. Countless trillions of lives ticked off the list, and he would forever be doomed to float aimlessly through space with only four to go. Absolutely bloody typical.

Actually, no. Sod that for a game of Pin The Tail On The CEO. He wasn’t going to take this lying down, then vertical, then lying down, then vertical. He was going to make it. He was going to finish his task if it were the last thing he would do until floating near a planet in a few billion years or so, which it probably would be.

Summoning up all his experiences with situations like these across the millions of years of his life, he angled himself with several undignified-looking flailings of his limbs.

Careful to avoid sending himself careening with the movement, he reached behind himself for the oxygen tank on his back. He felt around delicately, slowly tracking down the transfer line. It wasn’t easy in spacesuit gloves, he thought bitterly that he was effectively trying to perform brain surgery under seven feet of treacle.

Regardless, he eventually got his imprecise gloves around the precise tube he needed. Now all he needed to do was aim it precisely, not use up too much air, and get the tube reconnected again, all without seeing what he was doing and with the dexterity of a dead sloth.

He’d had worse, he thought with a grin.

It took more attempts than he’d liked, but the ship was swallowing up his field of vision once more. He was also going more sideways-ish than he’d liked, but any direction vaguely shipwards was good enough for him.

Especially with that one bright light up ahead.

Out of all the windows, only one seemed illuminated. One twinkling light in a vast wall of red and black. And he’d managed to aim right at it.

His hands grasped for purchase on the outcrops of metal zooming past him. Each time, they failed. The light got closer and closer, and alarmingly fast.

He only had one option.

He tensed, not taking his eyes off the edge of the window carooming towards him. If he could just…

He was almost blinded by the light blasting out of the ship at him, but his fingers found and clutched the window pane. His arm muscles screamed as they took the full brunt of his momentum, but he held. Against all of his body’s rather firm complaints, he torturously pulled himself up against the prevailing wind pushing him past and away from the window, because that’s how space works.

He’d just managed to pull himself into view of the window when the sight inside almost made him lose his grip.

All of his reindeer, rather than working desperately to try and rescue him, were boozing and schmoozing with the four gits he’d had left to deliver presents to, and no doubt had just flushed him into space!

The jammy, spineless bastards, he thought.

“One word!” he said in response to Rudolf’s charade, because Father Christmas could never bring himself to say something so rude.

You pack of turncoat robbing shits! That’s friendship for you, is it? Millions of years and the hopes and joys of countless people across time and space, all means bugger all if it’s worth some crap lager and some crackers? I should have left the lot of you to die in the tundra all those years ago, was what he thought.

“Whole thing,” was what he said.

Then the wind that exists in space now I guess blew him up and away from the pinprick of light into the neverending void.

No, he thought. I’m going to jolly well give those bloody reindeer a piece of my mind. Those four gwenlans on the ship, too. He’d teach them to blast Father sodding Christmas out an airlock like he was a female character in a Doug Naylor sitcom!

With some nimble bursts from his oxygen tank, his precision fuelled by millions of years of pent-up spite and frustration and burn-out, he was heading for the window again.

I will make sure you curse ever crossing Christmas himself, he thought. I will make you weep and beg for not just death, but the death of the universe itself. You will want all of existence swallowed up and destroyed because it could possibly hold the amount of pain I will inflict upon you. Armageddon is the only thing that could spare your souls from me, and you will desire it like you’ve never desired-

He sped past the window, not realising he was approaching it so quickly. Startled, he shouted out one word before speeding away out of range:

“ARMAGEDDON!“

“Oh, well done Mr Christmas, sir!” was all he heard in response, from that one with the stupid head, before he was completely out of earshot.

As Father Christmas resigned himself to an eternity floating among the stars, not even any oxygen to breathe to help pass the time, one thought limped across his very tired mind.

How the smeg did I hear them? How the further smeg did they hear me?

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If you’d indulge me, this is like Series XI-XII in that it’s a first draft in desperate need of a second, but here is some rough sketches of what I’d do, from my own brain with no AI involvement whatsoever:

—————————————————————————————————————–

He rummaged and rummaged, before triumphantly pulling a tiny disk with BLACKMAIL MATERIAL – USE ONLY WHEN FUNNY scribbled on it in felt tip. As he did, his hand brushed against something that felt round and sounded glass-like.

Rimmer wasn’t sure what he was expecting to pull out when curiosity overtook him, but two perfectly undamaged phials, one containing dark red liquid and the other dark blue, wasn’t hitting number one on the list.

He angled his wrist so that Holly could see them.

“Holly, why did the others keep the confidential crew files in the same bag as Lister’s Baby’s First Mad Scientist Starter Kit?”

“Oh, that,” Holly nodded. “We got those yonks ago from this scientist, Langstrom. Positive viruses, y’see. She theorised that there were types of virus that could not only benefit you, but shape reality around you for the better… until your body’s natural defences combat the virus, that is.”

“So, I’m holding two tickets to the Admiralty?!” Rimmer said, completely forgetting the disk.

“Not quite,” said Holly. “The blue one’s luck, that’ll make you incredibly lucky for a short time. The red one’s the Naylor-Alexander virus. That one rewrites reality around you, and anyone you get within six feet of, into one of those bawdy end-of-the-pier postcards that are charming and funny, apparently.”

Rimmer recoiled slightly. “Holly, forgive me for being perchance a trifle thick, but how is that a positive virus? Why in smegging hell would anyone want to live inside a video cassette of Carry On Emmanuelle?”

“Ooh, well,” Holly inhaled like a cheap mechanic who’d just identified tons of excuses for upsells under a car bonnet. “Lots of reasons, I s’pose. You do have to put up with dialogue that would make Ken Dodd weep, but it does mean that conventionally unattractive men repeatedly have it off with conventionally attractive women because that’s theoretically funny instead of just desperate and you’re not supposed to swig it all at once!”

Rimmer wiped some Naylor-Alexander residue from his lips, stoppering the now half-empty phial.

“Holly, didn’t you know? The world loves a bastard!” He strode off confidently through the Starbug wreckage into the cargo bay.

“Unfortunately, I did,” Holly murmured into the side of Rimmer’s pocket.

———————————————————————————————–

“You weren’t here for that time Hollister did a roast, were you Listy? We all had to sit and watch the most painful standup routine this side of Butlins. They dragged Dennis off the donut shop on C Deck and made him listen to Hollister ‘make fun’ of him.”

Lister straightened, staring like a headlight-lit deer at the figure that appeared in the doorway.

“God, if that’s what ‘fun’ looks like to Captain Hollister, Champion Bigot of the Year 2244, well, no wonder he’s hurtling through his fifties with nothing in his bunk but a old pinup calendar so crusty and stiff you could use it as a poppadom…”

He was going to continue, but was distracted by Lister’s incessant nodding towards him.

“But, I mean, HE is a good captain though, Captain HOLLISTER, isn’t HE? Eh? On the ball, doesn’t miss when people are IN the ROOM, QUIET…”

“Quiet?!” Rimmer continued. “The only time he’s quiet is right after he tells one of his jokes. Even then, he’ll be right in there, insisting ‘you can’t just ignore it!’ in between explaining why the most obvious fat jokes you can fail to imagine are funny, actually?”

Lister was now staring pointedly over Rimmer’s shoulder while he nodded in what was certainly agreement at everything Rimmer said.

“You do admire HIM though, don’t you?” he said, making weird flailing motions with his arms.

“The wacky inflatable tube man routine? Again? God Lister, you’re as pathetic as Hollister. Going around with material that Bernard Manning would tell you to do a second draft on. Doing ‘har-har man in dress isn’t that disgusting’ gags like it’s 1972. You should go to one of his open-mic nights, you’d be the first person to laugh without a pink slip at your throat.”

Lister was so awed by Rimmer’s truth that he was now sweating profusely, having to wipe it all off his brow so violently he was jabbing his finger towards the door.

“But you ARE AWARE ENOUGH that YOU respect HIM and-“

Rimmer didn’t give him time to finish.

“Respect him? A man who does stand-up like a concussed rhesus macaque who’s only ever watched 20th century American sitcoms? A man who thinks the answer to people not laughing at his prison rape jokes is to bring out the Asian woman driver routine? A man whose idea of a light entertainm- he’s standing right behind me, isn’t he?”

“Yes he is,” said Captain Hollister, standing right behind Rimmer.

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I’d love it if someone wrote the conventionally revised/expanded novelisation of series VIII. Not to try to make it good, but taking the piss. Inconsequential early chapters fleshing out the doctor who inflates Kryten’s hand, the woman who doesn’t get to shag Rimmer because he’s too tired, that sort of thing.

I would never be so gauche as to derail a thread by offering my services in pointing out I have experience in doing pisstake novelisations of shitty instalments of otherwise beloved British sci-fi TV.

So I will not do that. The link below is completely unrelated to the above paragraph.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/15268269?view_full_work=true

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*Kryten enters wearing one of those cardboard cut out Alan Carr masks and a grey hoodie*
…well, you said ‘look inconspicuous’!”

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