Seb Patrick

[Seb Patrick]

I have extremely fond memories of the existence of Spatz that would, I’m sure, be ruined if I ever tried to watch it again. But yes, it’s also where I recognised Jennifer Calvert from when I first saw Gunmen.

Also, were the writers of Spatz (1990-1992) aware of the weird trend of black superheroes having electricity-based powers and were knowingly parodying that, or were they just unknowingly contributing to it?

Haaa, excellent point! I’m going with unknowingly contributing. It’s such a bizarre trend, though, and there doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for it and yet it keeps on happening, right the way up to Miles Morales.

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I’ve got them, but, er, I’m probably not the person to ask about scanning and distributing copies of RD materials.

[Seb Patrick]

The truth is that any recorded show with a studio audience will by its nature have a small subset of people who know more about the content of the episode than most people do ahead of transmission.

This is true of any recorded show without a studio audience as well, though. From people on the production (or people who are friends with people on the production who get told things), to journalists given preview copies… there’s always a situation where there are people out there who know more than the general viewing public.

But when that general viewing public is a million or so people, and the number of people who’ve gone to see an audience recording number 250… I’m really not sure it’s all that big an issue.

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1. I’ve seen “USian” before, I definitely remember movement in online circles from a particular kind of, as you put it, “progressive activist” to try and steer towards it (because yes, “American” should technically mean “anyone from the Americas”); however, I’ve not seen it for a while, and while I do take the pedantic point I also think “American” is perfectly reasonable as a term given that (a) “America” is in the country’s name and (b) there aren’t many situations where people have cause to refer to someone from all of the Americas, compared with how often we might say “North American” or “South American”. It’s not, after all, like the same people are pushing for “UKian” instead of “British”, despite the fact that you can be that nationality but not from the island of Britain.

2. As regards the Hollywood movies thing, I think it’s simply that Rob and Doug are clearly both enormous film buffs, and fans of classic cinema in particular; and naturally, with a few notable exceptions (your Ealings, your Powell/Pressburgers, etc) that’s naturally going to mean that your frames of reference are American. I don’t think it’s a conscious effort to appeal to American audiences by referencing those films, it’s just “these are the films that we like”.

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>In Mania he fights you in a game of Puyo Puyo

In Mania he fights you in a game of Dr Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, thank you very much.

[Seb Patrick]

I enjoyed it. It’s largely a middling kids movie that I wouldn’t have bothered seeing if it wasn’t Sonic, but it’s elevated by Jim Carrey being spectacularly Peak Jim Carreyish as Robotnik. Maybe he’s not a “classic style” Robotnik but he’s an awful lot of fun and you can really imagine him going further with it in the sequel. Mid-credits scene was an absolute joy, really didn’t expect them to do that in as full-on a fashion as they did (I expected a teasery hint and nothing more).

In not unrelated news, I’ve only recently started playing Mania, when it showed up in a Humble Bundle a little while back. It’s taken me fucking ages to get past that fucking spider on Flying Battery Zone but I’ve finally just managed to do it without throwing my controller through my laptop screen, so that’s nice.

[Seb Patrick]

On the subject of the video release dates, incidentally, I’ve recently found more specific information about the dates for Series II and III (the ones where I’d previously had to be more general on TOS). Every episode/series in the Complete Guide on TOS should now have a VHS release date, so if anyone wanted to go through and add them on the Wiki as well, they’d be welcome to…

(I feel like, much as I’d like to, in my capacity I can’t really go messing with the Wiki any more, as I know they frown on people actually connected with a thing working on it. But if you go back to the mid-late 2000s you’ll see an awful lot of work done by me to try and get it up to scratch from where it had been before then…)

[Seb Patrick]

I quite enjoyed the first episode and I liked the twist about Hugh Laurie’s character as a meta joke about his terrible American accent.

But blimey, eh, considering Iannucci’s on the record about never having been interested in Red Dwarf… very familiar aesthetic in the scenes in the engineering area, eh?

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It’s already been said, but “It’s you, isn’t it?” is probably The One for me.

And “I’ve always got a pen.”

[Seb Patrick]

it kind of depresses me just how many of us nerdy Brits/UK people have an emotional connection to Sonic/Mega Drive. All of our parents really should have gone a bit extra to get us those SNESes.

The Mega Drive was out in the UK for fully eighteen months before the SNES came out. It’s no surprise that it stole a march. Also, from advertising to packaging to aesthetics to range of games, it was by far the more desirable object. Without the cultural memory of having grown up with the NES the way Americans did, Mario alone was never going to capture the imagination.

(I love the SNES, it’s got some of the best games ever made and its versions of Street Fighter pissed all over the Mega Drive. But it’s really not hard to see why ’90s UK kids grew up so loyal to Sega.)

[Seb Patrick]

Rachael’s been doing RD stuff on there for a while, she’s particularly good at Rimmer:

Grand Canyon nostrils pic.twitter.com/7eRVkzm7WG

— Rachael Stott (@RachaelAtWork) October 29, 2019

She commented a little while back that she didn’t think her likeness-realistic style was a good fit for comedy, but I think those page samples show she’d work just fine. The love of the characters really helps to lift and give it life.

I do still think that the ideal RD comic would maybe have a slightly more cartoony style on interiors (someone like Max Sarin would be perfect) but Rachael on covers. Not sure there’s anyone better at actor likenesses currently working in comics.

[Seb Patrick]

On the main Red Dwarf page on Wikipedia, someone’s bothered to list all the obsolete video releases and include arguably unnecessary details such as their respective UK and US catalogue numbers, but gave up while researching the release dates.

Speaking as someone who spent a lot of time researching release dates for the VHSes for the Complete Guide on TOS, I can tell you it’s really, really difficult to find precise release dates for VHS in the UK in the 1990s. Especially seeing as (a) they often don’t seem to have had a specific “day one” release date so much as filtered out into shops roughly at a certain time and (b) in some cases the planned release date kept slipping and slipping to the extent that it became a running joke in the Smegazine.

(If anyone does have hard evidence of more specific release dates for the videos than the ones I’ve got on TOS then I would be delighted to hear about it.)

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IT’S THE ORIGINAL MUSIC. Or at least, Wild Horses is definitely in place, which is the one I knew about.

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*checks for music substitutions*

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There’s a “smegging” in The Dying Days.

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Of the two most recent threads at the top of the feed, I’m surprised that it was this and not the dick-sucking one that was spam.

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Back in the old, old days of this site I was going to do an article about Red Dwarf references in pop culture, actually. Some others:

– “And it’s all my arse, Red Dwarf is all my arse” in Half Man Half Biscuit’s On Reaching the Wensum

– Little Britain, the hypnotist at the car boot.

– TBBT and Buffy

– Marvel’s Super Hero Squad Show

– Unexpected question on Pointless

[Seb Patrick]

In a 1990s Roy of the Rovers issue, artist Rob Davis:

In an issue of Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye, written by noted Dwarfer James Roberts:

[Seb Patrick]

It’s probably like the Crystal Maze experience type things, where you can either book as a group, or on your own, and if you’re on your own you get lumped in with other people who are on their own.

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“I’ve got to get back to the Priory.”

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I’ve got a notebook at work that my colleagues made as a birthday present by finding this image on Google, printing it off and glueing it to the front.

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I then told her to imagine being an 11-year-old

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That Blue Midget is a replica, if it’s the one I’m thinking of – it’s been posted about on the TOS forums.

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From the colour it certainly looks like it’s a piece of the Remastered ship from prior to its RDX refurb. So while I don’t doubt that it’s possibly a legit piece, the description certainly seems dodgy.

And legit or not, that is an utterly ridiculous price, as good a piece as it is.

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Ghostwatch, which is already a bit rubbish

[Seb Patrick]

Is this the first time Who has mentioned a real life politician? I mean, we’ve had two story lines involving prime-ministers without mentioning real politicians, why bring Trump into it?

Ann Widdecombe endorsed The Master for Prime Minister. I’m sure Ken Livingstone got a namecheck when a cab driver was grumbling about traffic in an early RTD one, too.

Also: Churchill, obvs.

[Seb Patrick]

Re the spaz thing, Weird Al Yankovic had the word “spastic” in his Blurred Lines parody (“Word Crimes”) but after it was pointed out to him how offensive it is here, he’s stopped using it in live performances.

Brian Michael Bendis used to use “spaz” loads in Ultimate Spider-Man, too. It was a while before I discovered that it’s just not offensive over there in the same way.

Same goes for “retard”/”retarded”, although they are starting to cotton on to that a bit more now.

[Seb Patrick]

Bizarrely, on the first BBC2 broadcast they just took Burns saying “ow” and doubled it up again to dub over “wankers”. It was just odd and distracting.

I REMEMBER THIS it was incredibly cack-handed.

[Seb Patrick]

Ah, okay. AFAIK it should still work on IE (the underlying tech is largely the same as it has been for years), but the blank screen on Chrome does suggest a connection/firewall issue at your end more than anything. Does seem weird that it would be singled out by a policy, mind!

But yeah, happy to look into any potential compatibility issues (or, I should say, get them looked into) as we would always want it to be as accessible as possible…

[Seb Patrick]

Given the number of shits and bastards in it, you’d have to assume Back to the Future would have been a 12 if the certificate existed then. Ghostbusters, too, primarily for the blowjob gag.

[Seb Patrick]

>The first Batman in ’89 was a 12 too I think.

Faaaaaairly sure Batman ’89 was the first ever 12. The rating was pretty much created for it, as it definitely wasn’t a PG but they couldn’t have kids not come to the film given what a merchandising juggernaut it was.

It’s often thought that the first 12A was Spider-Man, as well; but it actually came out as a 12 and was later reclassified. The Bourne Identity was the first to be initially certified as 12A.

[Seb Patrick]

>official site doesn’t work on my browser

Off the main topic, but what’s your browser, and in what way doesn’t the site work?

[Seb Patrick]

Me2 covers it pretty comprehensively, I think.

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The options you can pick being limited to only four kind of defeats the whole point of it, doesn’t it?

Not really, it’s just a fun little Twitter poll designed to give people something to engage with and chat about.

Also it specifically asks for your favourite bunkroom on Red Dwarf. The ones in VI and VII are on a different ship, and the one in VIII is a prison cell.

You could split hairs over the difference between X, XI and XII but they’re fundamentally the same setup, just with cosmetic changes – just as between I and II. Given that the poll only allowed four options it did rather make sense to combine them.

In short, don’t overthink it.

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I’ve had both shami and seekh plenty of times, and they’re both lovely. But yes, what Lister has in the episode is far closer to the latter than the former.

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I love how, being an American, he even had to change the direct quote “the crew are dead” to “the crew is dead”.

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They do exist in a very similar style to the X ones (backgrounds almost identical) but no, I don’t think they’ve ever been put out there. Not for any particular reason, I don’t think – just more that there was never really a reason to use them in that way.

They might do one day, I guess.

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And why not cheer instead of murmer.

Speaking as one of the audible “murmurers”, the simple answer is that you react how you react at the time, it’s not a choice to make a noise that you know will be heard, it’s a natural reaction that you can’t control. It was a genuine expression of what I/we felt at the time, which was basically “Awww, that’s lovely”.

I don’t see how an out and out cheer would have felt less awkward, to be honest.

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In any sense that would give the term any kind of meaning, Doctor Who 2005 is not a reboot.

We have a word for what it is, and that word is “revival”. Why ruin the meaning of “reboot” by using it to mean that?

[Seb Patrick]

The dog food was found “in the tool cupboard”. Maybe it was in a toolkit left there by a forgetful engineer who serviced Starbug on shore, and also owned a dog.

[Seb Patrick]

Ha! I don’t think I realised at the time (or indeed since) that that was where that came from.

Or maybe I did and forgot.

[Seb Patrick]

And: https://www.ganymede.tv/2011/11/ill-say-goodbye-to-love-no-one-ever-cared-if-i-should-live-or-die/

[Seb Patrick]

DwarfCast 33 – Out of Time Commentary

[Seb Patrick]

It doesn’t take that much to be an officer on RD – Petersen is a Catering Officer, after all. Kochanski is shown as having a roommate in Stasis Leak, as well.

That’s part of the joke/irony around Rimmer’s desperate desire to join the “officer class” – he’s putting a status on it that it doesn’t really deserve.

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I don’t think you can say that for certain. There’s nothing in the dialogue to indicate that it’s the first dimension he jumps to. In fact, I’ve always found the line “I’m sorry, you reminded me of a fellow I once knew” jarring, as it could be read that he hasn’t seen Spanners for quite a while.

I mean, you could infer it, sure, but the through line of the episode is very much “Ace goes to another dimension and meets Arnold Rimmer. He then, according to the text scroll at the end, goes off through countless other dimensions and finds other Rimmers who aren’t as pathetic.”

I think that’s somewhat scuppered if the time he arrives to meet “our” crew is just the latest in a long line of other meetings. It would also be a bit weird that he talks about potentially staying, but then decides to move on because Arnold is such a maggot. He brings up the possibility of countless other universes as if it’s the first time it’s been thought about.

IN CONCLUSION if you want to retrofit a load of different Ace adventures (and possibly even this being an actually different guy from the start of the episode) inbetween the first few minutes of Dimension Jump and the rest of it, there’s nothing in the episode that specifically precludes it, but I also don’t know why you would or what it would serve.

[Seb Patrick]

Right, but in Stoke Me A Clipper Ace specifies he took over from the Ace they met in Dimension Jump. Which would mean there’s only a total of 2 Aces- and yet the planet’s ring contains the corpses of millions.

He says he took over from him, but it’s later clarified that he didn’t do so directly.

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And it would be a really weird episode if we met a guy at the start of it and then it cut to a completely different guy arriving for the rest of the episode with no explanation whatsoever.

[Seb Patrick]

>is the Ace in Dimension Jump meant to be the original Ace, though?

Well… yeah. His jump into “our” universe is the first jump he ever makes.

[Seb Patrick]

>It’s like how in Stoke Me A Clipper, the Nazis are around at the same time as jet-powered rocket bikes.

Well, they’re around at the same time as Ace’s jet-powered rocket bike. He could have brought it with him when he travelled through time. Then again, he’s rescuing someone called Princess Beryl Bonjela who I don’t think is an established part of mid-20th century German history, so it is probably just that he’s in a universe where Nazis are more widespread/longer lasting.

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How does Ace know what a series 4000 mechanoid is? Rimmer and Lister are from let’s say the early 23rd century and Kryten the mid 24th, at best the series 4000s would be getting designed by Mamet and going through testing while Rimmer and Lister are approaching their 120th birthdays.

The computer onboard Ace’s ship did a scan of the lifeforms onboard and gave him a rundown. He didn’t necessarily know what a “Series 4000” was, just that Kryten was one, and because he’s a really nice guy he immediately told Kryten that he was the salt of the space corps.

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