Spaceworm Jim

[Spaceworm Jim]

Langstrom and the Holoship crew maybe, but I thought Telford was a genuine human? He’s on Irene’s level. He gave the Cat a gun and all.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I agree there, ID. Red Dwarf is at its best focusing on the relationships between the main cast, especially Rimmer and Lister. More humans distracts from that as well as sort-of cheapening the original premise of the show. I’m not sure if Doug agrees with me.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I think GELFs, Simulants and all the rest are blatant cheats to get around the No Aliens Rule as much as anyone else, but I think there’s a huge difference between that and actual aliens being in the show. Also, Rimmer being right all along about aliens existing in the first two series would retroactively make those scenes poorer. I’m expecting the next special to be about the crew coming across aliens.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I think it helps that the delivery of the material is so good in the show that even if you don’t necessarily understand exactly what they are referring to the general concept of “someone has made a rude/suggestive joke” still lands and the adolescent mind gets that it’s humorous without needing to know the specifics!

Yeah! I had no idea what taramasalata or hummus were the first dozen or so times I saw Dimension Jump but Robert’s performance still made me find those lines hilarious. Same with tarka dhal and Psirens. I saw series three at an age where Timeslides left me wondering why there was a woman called Rachel on board who we never saw and what had happened to her bike. 27 years old I was.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I was feeling smug about having never had trouble understanding even the subtlest of jokes in Red Dwarf, but it turns out I have ample trouble understanding jokes made by Rob Grant at award ceremonies which, in retrospect, aren’t subtle.

Tangentially related, there’s a bit in Colony about Eddie’s dad being a gambler and replacing Eddie’s Christmas present with something else. Readers, what is it he replaces the present with?

[Spaceworm Jim]

Oh holy fuck, this is embarrassing. I guess my post really belongs in the “Jokes you don’t/didn’t get” thread. How could I have made such an elementary mistake??

[Spaceworm Jim]

If you don’t want to be the one giving the acceptance speech don’t be the only one in a white suit!

True, what was he thinking, a WHITE suit?

I vaguely remember this coming up before, so this is maybe one for the Answered Questions thread, but the “not sleeping with her” bit he does at the end, is this a reference to something specific?

EDIT: I don’t mean, “is he talking about sex?”

[Spaceworm Jim]

Yeah, sounds like the audiobook to me. Rob seems so nervous in that clip. He must hate giving acceptance speeches at comedy award shows so much he went and made The Strangerers.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Didn’t even realise Attenborough had an account.

I remember at a thing in Manchester, the guy introducing the two stars of Red Dwarf called them “Chris Charles and Craig Barrie.” Not really an observation, more a recollection please don’t ban me.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I really enjoyed it too! The only time I felt like putting it down was the three or four chapters devoted to the main character getting on a train, but I carried on regardless.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Lister’s comments about the Trojan war are a bit like one of the earlier chapters of Incompetence where Rob stops the story for a paragraph to make an observation about Captain Bligh which I don’t remember being related to the plot in any way. Also, spoiler alert if the titans eventually do a Bookcast on Incompetence and anyone here hasn’t read it, but it ends with a sentence that is a shameless pinching of a phrase from Gunmen of the Apocalypse. I hope I have not ruined Incompetence for anyone.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Put on Justice just now, the sound design is great. When they arrive on Justice world it looks similar to a few corridor scenes set on the Dwarf, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, the sound design really sets them apart and gives off-ship a completely different feel. There’s a lot of examples of this in the show, I’m only pointing this out because I happen to be watching this episode in particular. DNA seems the obvious example, though the alien-ness of the ship they encounter is enhanced by the weird set, I think, whereas Justice World does look a lot like Red Dwarf the ship (no disrespect to designers intended) but there’s something about the atmosphere and mixing (?) of the sound that really makes it feel oddly unwelcoming. Something sterile about it, which intensifies from when they arrive until their minds are read by the probe, and then there’s that sound effect which I don’t recognise from any other episode which reaches the climax of alienation (?) and then it sort of takes it down a gear for the dialogue where Lister poos himself because he stole a bed from a hotel millions of years ago. So there’s a bit of relief in that scene that wouldn’t be there without that sound design, and the pause between the audience realising that Rimmer being found guilty is inevitable is allowed the perfect amount of time before the sinister sound comes back, even more sinister than before. Outright malicious, maybe. Rimmer’s little ‘help’ is louder than the Justice computer’s sentencing, which is the last thing I notice before pausing the episode to make this post.

These are just a few of the thoughts I have, which can probably all be summed up with, when the sound design is good in Red Dwarf it’s fucking excellent.

EDIT: Shit, forgot to pause and Netflix is playing Meltdown now.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I recommend watching Georg Rockall-Schmidt’s video called “Top 10 Bullshit Watchmojo Lists.” Maybe after you’ve got a feel for what their lists and narration are like, but I don’t think it’s really necessary. It’s a thoughtfully funny analysis of the watchmojo pheomina pheonimal phenomenon.

On the very strong possibility that I’ve led you to waste too much of your time, I’m so sorry.”Spaceworm Jim’s Top 10 Ingenious Ways of Wasting Time” – A worm is only as good as their pastimes.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Phew! Thanks!

[Spaceworm Jim]

Worried that I might have used the wrong symbol. I meant G&T are better than WM and reaction videos. I’ve always had a blind spot when it comes to those greater/less than symbols.

[Spaceworm Jim]

First time I saw Justice, I was too young to even know what the Taj Mahal was.

Thirty two years old, I was.

The black and decker drill joke horrified me as a child, haven’t really gotten over it.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I still don’t really get reaction videos, just seems like a bizarre form of content to me. But I guess enough people must be into it as lots of “content creators” seem to be making a good deal out of putting them up.

Philosophically, I agree. In practice, I have just watched watchmojo’s list of top ten Red Dwarf episodes (Krytie TV and Legion are both honourable mentions, Jesus Christ). I think both reaction videos and watchmojo lists prey on the same impulse to hear other people talk about something I love. It’s the same impulse that led me to Ganymede and Titan, probably, although reading an article on G&T is obviously the best choice of something to do at any given time, if we’re not counting the all time number one.

TL;DR?
watchmojo < reaction videos < G&T

[Spaceworm Jim]

Are you for serious? I was not expecting this to happen.

How come? Dave posts here quite a lot and his speculation has never been less than 100% correct.

[Spaceworm Jim]

There’s a youtube person

OK BOOMER.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I’ve looked at it a fair few times myself.

There’s a youtube person, DiamandaHagan, who does reviews of each series which are okay. They go into slightly more depth than Cyborcat’s, though I find Cyborcat’s videos more enjoyable in a way. She comes across as more earnest.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I really love the covers to quite a lot of the VNA. Some are atrocious, yes, but the best of them are so evocative. The Doctor dancing with death with a spacesuit and church behind him on the moon, for example. It’s my favourite. I’ve just had a glance at the rest of them and they’re all shit. I must’ve been thinking of the Deep Space 9 young adult books with Jake and Nog.

EDIT: Checked them, they’re shit too.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Kryten says at the end of the Inquisitor that the timeline is sorting itself out. It’s not intentional at all, but it can be headcanon’d that there is a period of time where events are in flux and memories don’t alter. We don’t see how long it is until the timeline is restored at the end of the Inquisitor, so it could be the same amount of time it takes Rimmer to fuck everything up at the end of Timeslides.

Oh wait, this doesn’t work at all. Fuck.

[Spaceworm Jim]

THE BEGINNING AGAIN

The crew come across an old space station. Inside, they find a stasis booth. After opening the stasis booth, they don’t believe it – it SEEMS to be Hollister, but quite a bit older than they remember. He managed to survive the accident and ran away to get help. To cut a long story short, at the end of the episode Hollister makes a death bed confession (he dies after) – it was HE who caused the accident, NOT Rimmer. He also tells Rimmer that when the accident occurred, Yvonne McGruder was on planet leave, so did NOT get killed. She was PREGNANT. With RIMMER’S baby.

Not entirely confident about the title, but this thread isn’t called “titles for an episode”, the important thing is that no one else has thought of this idea, which is mine.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I’m having a midlife crisis, just like the Universe in that one scene.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Only the Good MirroR RorriM
The End The Smeg It Is

[Spaceworm Jim]

I’m going to be honest. I typed out “at least he didn’t say content” and then worried it came off as curt and typed out the rest of that post without really thinking about it much.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I really hate the way he always describes new Dwarf as “product”.

Came across to me like he didn’t want to use the words ‘special’ or ‘series’ because maybe he doesn’t know which it’ll be. Maybe a novelty condom? Then again, who would buy a condom called ‘the small rogue one’? At least he didn’t say content, eh! But yes, a positive sign!

[Spaceworm Jim]

As long as they aren’t returning Glenn Miller.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I’ve complained about that toilet paper line so many times to so many people because of how it opens up those questions. No one has seems to have really gotten just how fucked up it is, or maybe they didn’t know I was talking about Red Dwarf, so I’m glad to finally hear this occurred to someone else. Thanks, Dave.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I just don’t like the weird tone of Series 8, with this feeling that the characters could be beaten up for saying the wrong thing (and are). I don’t see how the Krytie TV scene which ends with Rimmer having the crap punched out of him could be seen as funny, or the scene where Ackerman beats up Cat for saying he seems like a nice guy, or the scene where Baxter breaks Cat’s fingers for accidentally spilling his food. At least Knot dies, but it doesn’t make him crushing Rimmer’s testicles in front of his posse and the other prisoners any funnier for me.

I know it’s a very boring series, but these kind of scenes are what actually ruin it for me.

[Spaceworm Jim]

But there’s also the end scene of Back in the Red, and all the hilarity that implies.

[Spaceworm Jim]

The Promised Land got something like 2 million viewers. On Dave. Now they can’t all be Duane Dibbleys, can they?

[Spaceworm Jim]

Looks like this discussion is building to a climax.

The smeg it is.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I always think of Fearless Lister from Polymorph when I think of series 3, even though it’s only a few scenes in one episode, so you may be onto something. Series 4 I associate with Lister’s philosophical ramblings in DNA and Justice and the first two series I associate him purely on his interactions with Rimmer (probably an obvious thing to say). I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, but I agree that there’s something different about Lister in the third series. I still love series three though, which I’ve noted a fair lot of people don’t lately.

Also, I think Rimmer is the closest to being a lovely person in some scenes in series 3, like when he’s cheerful and engaging at the beginning of Timeslides (even his digs at Lister seem lighthearted, that’s probably the performance) and in The Last Day he seems to really care about Kryten. Even at the confrontation with Hudzen it’s not like he doesn’t care, it’s just his cowardice outweighs everything else. Then there’s Bodyswap, which completely ruins the idea that he is a decent human being in that series.

[Spaceworm Jim]

That last bit wasn’t aimed at you, Dave, I should’ve made that clearer.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Logged in to basically post what Dave said, so I guess I just want to say I agree entirely with the previous poster. I don’t think Davies’ Who looks awful though, it just looks “of its time” and I don’t think it’s fair to use that against it.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I think my unpopular opinion is that Red Dwarf needs jokes and a studio audience (just not shit jokes or the laughter from the audience too loud in the mix). There, I said it. Phew! This bravery thing is hard work.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I really enjoyed Ubik, and Valis sort of bent my younger mind out of shape for a bit. I think there’s a paranoia in common with Dwarf, that everything that can will go wrong. Better Than Life is very Dickish (no).

[Spaceworm Jim]

I will do so immediately. Sir.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Just wanted to add that I’m fully aware that my liking his films is just as personal as you not enjoying them, Ben, and also wanted to say I didn’t mean to sound like I was having a go at you or anything for how C Nolan’s films make you feel.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I disagree with pretty much every point you’ve made, Ben, but I’m not going to argue because they all seem personal and as such it would most likely devolve into “I feel this way about this aspect”, “well I don’t” and so on. But you did make me feel a little defensive about liking the Nolan films I’ve seen, must admit. I think they do value intelligence but it’s always tied to emotions. At the climax of Interstellar (spoiler warning), yes there’s stuff going on about string theory or something, but the point isn’t the science, the point is this man has missed his daughter grow up and is desperate to get back to get back to her. Nealy all of his films that I’ve seen (not all of them, mind, I haven’t seen the Prestige, Dunkirk, and I think there’s another one…) are about grief and people refusing to grieve in a healthy way. Would a criticism be that this theme of grief may be cynical and used specifically to ground the stories of his films? I don’t know really, I don’t know the man, but I do like his films. If Tenet shows that Nolan has moved on from the grief theme, I’ll eat my hat. Or backwards shit in some bushes.

[Spaceworm Jim]

It was a great, moving, sometimes very uncomfortable program but hope it helps anyone going through similar or even disimilar mental health problems feel less alone and encourgages them to look into getting help, be it psychiatry or even just feeling confident enough to talk to a trusted friend about it. Tony’s partner, Mark, wow, what a lovely man.

Tony voiced an android in Kryten, too.

[Spaceworm Jim]

I like the look of the fight in the auditorium (or whatever it’s called) with the audience asleep, or dear. So it does the job of intriguing me without giving away anything of the plot. That’s pretty good for a modern day trailer. I hope any trailers coming keep it up.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Thanks for the suggestion, although I did see these when they went out on TV. I have the first one on DVD, but this is a good time to get 2-4. Cheers!

I made a tiny fool of myself at the merch table when he was signing DVDs and I gave him mine without realising they were still wrapped in plastic. I should’ve made a bigger fool of myself, really, as it would make a vastly more interesting story.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Ohhhhh Stewart Lee! Saw him in Nottingham a few months ago, saying the unsayable. He’s great, I really should look into more of his stuff.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Don’t worry, you’re not the only one. I also had one prediction for the episode, to do with the reason Holly was in it, and it turned out I was wrong.

I’m having fun trying to decipher Ridley’s comment. Is the umbrella thing about it raining CATS and dogs? Ridley should write some lyrics for They Might Be Giants. WHO has an umbrella? WHO. Doctor WHO. Ridley thought the Doctor would turn up? Some sort of intergalactic vet? Did Ridley write the fanfic? I’m deep into this now. Time to pull out and go to sleep. It’s tomorrow now.

[Spaceworm Jim]

That Napoleon isn’t even real.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Thanks for the tip, although your username makes it hard to not be suspicious.

[Spaceworm Jim]

The ending isn’t even that good.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Is being a transvestite very bad? How come Hoguey has the…gun thing at the end of The Beginning when Lister took it from him earlier? To be honest, the second question I just pulled out of my Quagaars, I hope people will concentrate on the first question.

[Author]

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