Moonlight

[Moonlight]

Do you think we’d have gotten to see his penis on Red Dwarf, too?

[Moonlight]

PETE: PART COW

Seriously, what the fuck was that paper mache cow? Was that actually supposed to be a real cow?

[Moonlight]

FUCK MY ARSE WE’RE HALFWAY TO A FIFTH PAGE

cwickham’s obsessive tracking of the progress on the “Idea of an Episode” thread reaches new heights as he begins to forgo sleep every night, lest he miss the transition to a new page. Meanwhile, a very funny episode of Red Dwarf plays unnoticed in the background. The episode title is like a pun on “Stasis Leak”, where they replace one or both of the words in the title with a soundalike that gives it a humorous new meaning.

[Moonlight]

THE THREAD CONTINUUMS THE THREAD CONTINUUMS

Katydid reflects on the amusing nature in which a single title pun can lead to a number of subsequent ideas all basing their puns around the same episode title, perhaps even additional iterations of the same pun being used in a different way.

[Moonlight]

BLACK IN THE DEAD

Lister and Kochanski’s date at the Black Hole Bar and Grill goes hideously wrong when she trips over a box of safety forms and is crushed into a singularity. Lister shakes his head and glances down at the vial of sexual magnetism virus he was saving for when she got drunk. “What a waste,” he sighs quietly, and resumes eating. He continues to eat in silence for fourteen minutes, occasionally glancing around with a look of mild confusion as if he isn’t sure if they’re still rolling or not but doesn’t want to spoil the take if they are. Afterwards, Doug mercifully calls “Cut, no, keep going, no, cut, yeah, no, cut! That’s a wrap” Craig Charles proceeds to packs up his things to go home, but discovers that Chris Barrie has slashed his tires in revenge for the horse incident. “Well fuck me three ways from Sunday,” says Craig, and hitches a ride with Danny John-Jules. On the way home, Craig is in the middle of telling a profoundly offensive jokes, but before he can get to the punchline consisting of screaming the word “Cunt!” over and over, they are pulled over by a police officer. “Don’t worry, bud,” says Danny. “Happens all the time.” “License and registration,” orders the cop. Danny complies, at which point the officer shoots him seventeen times for moving his hands too quickly. Craig shrugs, and looks to the camera. “Well, what are you gonna do?” he asks, us, the audience, before knicking Danny’s wallet and making a run for the nearest bar.

[Moonlight]

Excuse me, that’s not actually the right wording.

Oh for a really world class edit button.

[Moonlight]

A dentist named Crentist?

[Moonlight]

‘Tis a fine barn, but no pool.

[Moonlight]

And basically that’s the gag.

[Moonlight]

HOLLOW SHIP

In a shocking cliffhanger, Red Dwarf is revealed to be totally hollow and filled with raw ore, which frankly seems like a better use of the space than a million different styles of bunkroom.

[Moonlight]

BACK IN THE RAPE

Rimmer has a date tonight! Let’s hit her with the old mesmer-stare and see where the night takes us.

[Moonlight]

THE EXQUISITOR

Rimmer becomes enamored by the finer things and stsrts a wine-tasting club at Parrot’s. Lister sells out and attends. Meanwhile, Cat accidentally crushes his barbed penis after closing a book in the nude.

[Moonlight]

GRANTS FOR THE MAMMARY

Rob Grant’s long-awaited guest script for Series XVII explores an alternate reality where Kochanski used the time wand to get a boob job, only to hideously disfigure her innards and foam blood out of her twat for several minutes in real time, sobbing all the way.

[Moonlight]

BEYOND A STOKE

There are in fact six episodes of Red Dwarf VII beyond Stoke Me a Clipper, but no one has ever seen them until now. Behold this new DVD boxset of the six lost episodes of Red Dwarf VII. Features deleted scenes, and high-pitched commentary by Robert Llewellyn.

[Moonlight]

WHINE WAVE

A supercut of Kryten’s finest VII moments. Featuring special guest YOU’RE LYING.

[Moonlight]

MCGOVERN OF THE APOCALYPSE

In a time travel mishap, President Richard Nixon trips into an airlock and is sucked into space. George McGovern wins the 1972 election and ends up going to nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Can the Dwarfers restore the timeline? Or would America rather burn than deal with the embarrassment of Watergate?

[Moonlight]

STAR? NOT.

Chris Barrie becomes depressed over his lack of current notoriety after having dominated the ’90s.

[Moonlight]

ABDUCT SUIT

Cat’s wardrobe is stolen by a mysterious third party. Lister repeatedly asks if it could be Kochanski, to the annoyance of everyone.

[Moonlight]

I suspect what actually killed the polymorph in Can of Worms was Cat’s barbed penis.

[Moonlight]

I don’t even know how much a pound is, so I had no choice but to see it as a generous tip.

[Moonlight]

TOWEKS FOR THE MEMORY

Kryten accidentally overwrites Lister’s brain with his own. Hilarity ensues as they both mop floors in silence.

[Moonlight]

BANKS FOR THE MEMORY

All the banks go belly-up and money becomes useless.

[Moonlight]

This was an important thread and needed to be made.

[Moonlight]

Because flat, matte walls wouldn’t look nearly as interesting? And the only reason you even notice them as being dinner trays is because they explicitly explained as much on We’re Smegged.

[Moonlight]

The End would have opened with “Singing in the Rain”.

[Moonlight]

I’ll ask Faggot Tony, he’s a bit faggy.

[Moonlight]

Series XI, Episode 6 “The Rebeginning” – Lister emerges from stasis to discover he and Kochanski are the only surviving members of the crew. Unfortunately, the Cat polymorph is still at large. Can a trip to Tijuana and a song-and-dance polymorphectomy by Krytens’s Mexican cousin save the day?

Can we all take a moment to appreciate the amusingly accurate predictions I made in 2012?

[Moonlight]

I’m pretty sure a skutter can go 30 mph.

[Moonlight]

Same with Rimmer belittling Lister for being the lowest rank on the ship.

But third technician _is_ the lowest rank on the ship, even if there’s a bunch of third technicians.

[Moonlight]

Well, you have this thing that makes your hair stand on end. It’s like, a cream of some sort. Grill cream? I don’t know. Well, anyway, Holly says that he’s found this stuff, the hair standing on end stuff, in the supplies. And it’s a cream, right? And he says he’s found stuff that’ll make your hair stand on end, because that’s what the cream does. But it’s like a pun, right, because you think he’s saying it’ll make your hair stand on end like it’s alarming, but it’s actually just Brylcreem. But then he goes and explains that to the audience, in case they didn’t get it.

And that’s basically the gag.

[Moonlight]

I just want Doug commentaries.

[Moonlight]

Rimmer discovering what shirt tails are for and using his uniform as a temporary latrine… Can holograms shit and piss or are these just elaborate ways of joking that “Rimmer shit/pissed himself” metaphorically rather than physically. If it’s an absure idea that holograms could ever piss or shit, what happens the Mimosian banquet Rimmer eats in Legion?

I’m pretty sure we had an entire thread about this before.

[Moonlight]

We’re talking enamel.

[Moonlight]

THE SMEG IT WASN’T

But the smeg it could be.

[Moonlight]

Clearly I am projecting logic onto a poorly thought-out mess. Carry on.

[Moonlight]

???? the line is “i was biting on a stick in the medical room…then there was a white flash….and i died. oh god, i’m dead” which is surely him recovering in the medical unit after his failed exam and then getting hit by the radiation leak.

I took that to be a DNA test or some shit to replicate him as a hologram.

[Moonlight]

THE SMEG IT IS

Or is it?

[Moonlight]

Either way, they clearly had Rimmer remembering up to his death at first.

[Moonlight]

Interesting how Skipper implies that mind backups for hologrammatic projection are performed manually, since Lister’s last one was at 23. I always assumed Rimmer remembered everything right up until the moment of his (first) death, but I guess it’s slightly less horrifying not to remember something like that.

They clearly didn’t think the process through until later. The US pilot has hologram Rimmer saying the last thing he remembers being having his brain scanned, but then later they still recycle the joke about him saying what death feels like.

Call me crazy, but I’m starting to suspect that the US pilot was kind of a confused pile of rubbish.

[Moonlight]

That’s not to say I don’t think Red Dwarf V and VI look fucking incredible, but they’d look a lot more incredible visually if they were shot single camera on film. I’m not saying that would be better for the show, but it would certainly look more expensive.

[Moonlight]

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t permanently associate higher framerates with cheapness and sitcoms, since I was primarily exposed to it in my youth through low budget BBC shows and American sitcoms of the 1970s. To me, 24 is the “proper” framerate for scripted entertainment, and anything higher just feels wrong unless it’s on a traditional multi-camera sitcom.

And since the current Red Dwarf isn’t shot quite the same as a traditional multi-camera sitcom, sometimes looking closer to a single-camera drama production, a higher framerate would feel just as wrong to me as watching the multi-camera BBC series in 24 fps does.

I would aggressively contest the attitude I’ve heard from DwarfCasts that such a look somehow distances you from the comedy. I would personally find new Red Dwarf being shot just like the old series to make it look unacceptably cheap and old-fashioned, because really this is all informed by what you’re used to seeing in TV. I’ve always seen video taped BBC shows as having an incredibly cheap aesthetic to them, and so much of that comes from the video look and how overlit shows had to be for the cameras back then.

So as much argument as I hear for the video look being “more real” and making you feel more like you’re there than the film look, I feel _exactly_ opposite. The video look just screams “YOU ARE WATCHING A CHEAP SITCOM” to me.

Reality is subjective, life is a hologram, we’re all gonna die alone, etc., etc.

[Moonlight]

I didn’t think NTSC viewers would be used to 24fps, I thought they watched stuff in 30/29.97

Basically all scripted TV is in 24 fps now, including audience sitcoms.

[Moonlight]

I guarantee that if you ever saw the dropped frame example you give you’d change your mind – it’s nauseously unwatchable, and would not pass QC.

You’ll never hear more pedantry about framerates than from me, but how in the world would dropping from 25 to 24 frames per second be unwatchable? I can see how maybe somebody in PAL region used to 25 fps would be able to tell the difference, but we’re talking about converting PAL to NTSC. Anyone in an NTSC region has been watching things in 24 fps their entire life and likely never even seen a program in 25 fps. Most shows are now produced at 24 fps, and even 29.97 fps shows are knocked down to 24 when streamed online. That’s the most common framerate for NTSC.

How is 24 fps worse than fucking around with the pitch, because you can definitely notice that without being a pedant like me?

[Moonlight]

Red Dwarf is ridiculously complicated for an audience sitcom. If you know anything about how
TV shows are produced, it’s really not surprising that making a show like Red Dwarf as an audience sitcom with an audience sitcom budget is so much more difficult and strenuous than a normal audience sitcom or even a single camera sci-fi drama.

[Moonlight]

G&T hasn’t had a Good Taste Chip since we swapped it out for Spare Head 2.

[Moonlight]

If you really want the situation to feel bleak and hopeless, you should listen to the casual fans soapboxing about what they want to see in Series XIII.

[Moonlight]

I still think it’s a crime Hugh Laurie was never a guest villain on Red Dwarf.

[Moonlight]

I think Chris Barrie is around the right age for them to break out the yellow quilted jacket.

[Moonlight]

The real crime was posting the article here on G&T, as if it offfered anything even remotely new or noteworthy.

Same on you, OP. Shame. On. You.

Shame!

Shame!

On you!

Shame on you!

Fuck off and die, you twat-munching bastard.

[Moonlight]

The blue is what highlights that Rimmer is a hard light Hologram.

We are long, long, LONG past the point where that distinction matters. Rimmer’s been solid for six series now, nobody is going to get confused about his tangibility if he changes color.

[Author]

Replies