RunawayTrain

[RunawayTrain]

I like it when Russell Porter says lol.

One of the highlights of the Zoom format for me is seeing (and hearing) the cast enjoying the script so much :D

[RunawayTrain]

If anyone missed it and wants to watch, the video is up on YouTube and Facebook

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Hc7UO47Gb8&t=521s

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=4966049723466669&id=585564628134691

[RunawayTrain]

When Lister changes the past, he, the, Cat, and Kryten disappear (because without Lister on RD, there would be no Cat Race and Kryten was never rescued).

Well, Rimmer should have disappeared too, because, without Lister, Holly would have had no reason to activate him.
And Holly should have had no memories of the Dwarfers, since they never existed in this timeline.
Of course, had that happened, that would have meant the end of the series.

Rimmer was human in the first new timeline, I’m fairly sure. Doesn’t explain knowledge of the previous timeline and the other three though.

Edit: actually I might be wrong, because Rimmer appears to have a H on his forehead when visiting Lister in the mansion. Further investigation is needed …

Edit 2: (thanks Netflix!) Nope, I was wrong. Huh.
Maybe needing a crew member to still have a purpose would explain Holly turning on a hologram, or maybe with the onset of senility realised she needed company so and turned someone on before she went too senile to do it, but why Rimmer?
Certainly not for intellectual stimulation, or for someone to keep to their rank … maybe senility is the only explanation for the choice of Rimmer!

(And *still* doesn’t explain the memories.)

[RunawayTrain]

There are alot of celeb names in Red Dwarf in the early days that i have no idea who they are still. like glenn miller. i think its a joke that works best if you know who that is.

Just checking – do you know who Glenn Miller is and how he disappeared?

[RunawayTrain]

Wow!

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I haven’t read the novels so this may be an answered question, but: is there any basis in canon for the London Jets being specifically the English Zero-G Football team? The Wiki says they are but provides no source.

[RunawayTrain]

There’s a short time limit for edits. Five minutes I think.

I’ve seen the 5 min countdown on replies to articles, but didn’t realise the time limit applied on forum posts too. Evidently it does – thanks for clearing that up!

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^ Oops, I was thinking of the unreality bubble in OOT*, forgot there was an actual joke about it before that! Well, the hand-wavey sci-fi reasoning still stands I think, but I too now have questions!

(*See also, “Baldrick, who gave you permission to turn into an Alsatian?”)

However in Googling it (because after I posted I had a feeling I was thinking of the wrong thing) if turns out some guy claims to have done head swaps on corpses … I couldn’t dig much deeper than 2 articles because the thought of it in reality (rather than an abstract concept) is horrifying me. But if anyone is curious, Sergio Canavero is his name.

Edit: huh, apparently I can edit this comment but not my previous. Weird.

[RunawayTrain]

Alsatian dog after a headswap operation is one that’s always had me puzzled. Is a headswap operation a real thing? Swapping heads with what, another alsatian? Is it something to do with brain surgery, or do they mean decapitating two dogs, swapping the heads, then stitching them back together? Surely the dogs would be dead by then, or is that the joke?

I actually thought they turned into humanoid versions of the animals, but with the heads being instantly recognisable for the gag to be obvious. Maybe I need to rewatch to check though.

If it was headswapping, that far into the future it is probably conceivable (in the sense of hand-waving it away with ‘they’ll have had time to make the technological advances to make it possible’). The first thing that came to mind reading your comment about head swapping / transplanting was all the heads alive and functioning in Futurama, and that’s only 1000 years into the future – and you have the Borg Queen who is a head and spinal column. Of course they are in different universes, but a fairly common sci-fi concept. Well, anything is possible in sci-fi within the established rules of each universe anyway!

[RunawayTrain]

Robert Addie got a raw deal from life. Being told he had terminal cancer just three weeks before he died. See also Graham Chapman (who would have been much better than Ruby Wax) dying at only 48.

Wow, I had no idea Graham Chapman was that young. And Robert Addie was 43 when he died – for context, he was born the same year as Chris Barrie and Danny John-Jules. Sobering.

As for a buttle-off, Butler might think it beneath him now, although if he deigned to serve I’m sure he would do so marvellously well. I didn’t see Lara Croft but in promo pics Hillary appears to be a bit handy with weapons, and being willing to travel and get into hairy situations in order to continue serving probably gets some butlering (buttling?) points. Gilbert seems the long-suffering type, putting up with Lister having more money than taste.
… what are the criteria in this buttle-off?

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Yeah he bottom bunk is clearly taller than the top bunk, right? It’s no longer or wider, but it had more height to it thus more space

https://www.reddwarf.co.uk/series/12/sets/sets-4.jpg
That’s clearly bigger to me.

In my experience the top bunk in actually bunk beds has always had a lower clearance given that it is right up by the ceiling so you couldn’t sit up right.

I must have been fortunate with our bunk beds then, as I could sit upright on the top but not the bottom! On holiday in various places we could never sit upright on the bottom bunk when we had them – although caravans are almost always smaller, so sitting up on the top bunk wasn’t possible either in those.

Completely agree about the set photo though.

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I feel like use of Fahrenheit has declined significantly in the UK since the 90s – it doesn’t even get a mention now on television weather.

I have an irritatingly vague memory of the weather forecast consistently telling us both for a few weeks within the last couple of years. I can’t remember whether it was a new presenter or we were on holiday (I did say it was vague!), but it was very unusual and I wondered if it was a new thing they were trying. Clearly not a new thing, but I’ve not heard it since then either.

For context, I was born during the early years of Red Dwarf; I didn’t know people used Fahrenheit outside of science until my 20s, when I became aware of American daily life (thanks to the internet). Interestingly in The Brittas Empire the pool temperature was displayed in ℉ for the first couple of series but was then mostly in ℃ thereafter – I think. [Oh no, what a terrible chore it will be to check … (!)]

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It’s a very weird one. We do tend to use imperial measurement – weight, height, measures of beer, clothing sizes – but temperature is always talked about in C here. I think most people still have a vague idea about the metric equivalents to an extent, but whenever I hear people talk about temperature in Fahrenheit I genuinely have no idea how to convert it in my head. I know body temperature is just over 100 and freezing is 32, but anything outside of those two and you might as well just call it bingleworm degrees plastigrade as far as my understanding goes.

From The Big Bang Theory I know that 72℉ is some sort of room temperature, though I can’t remember what that is in ℃.

92 degrees? Well that’s not quite right.

Very good ;)

[RunawayTrain]

RIMMER: (Reading the marker) “Nodnol? 871 selim?” Nodnol? Where’s Nodnol?

KRYTEN: It’s London, 178 miles. It’s backwards.
CAT: What’s the selim?
LISTER: Well, that’s obviously Bulgarian for kilometres, isn’t it?
I do find it odd that Canada seems to have embraced kilometres more than the UK when we have the US for a neighbour.

Ha, I completely misinterpreted your post to start with and typed this all before realising my mistake! But in case anyone else on your side of the pond is curious:

None of our road signs are in km, mostly miles. The countdown signs to a slip road off the motorway are in yards (300, 200, 100) and we have fractions of miles on road signs. The only explanation for km in Backwards I can think of is that at the time of writing they reckoned in the future things will all be measured in metric.

(Incidentally we buy fresh pints of milk but longlife milk is sold in litres. Honey is sold most commonly in weights of 250g(?), 340g (12oz, or 3/4lb) and 454g(1lb). We buy fuel in litres, but measure efficiency in miles per gallon. So yeah, just slightly mixed up over here!)

[RunawayTrain]

But once you start discussing it in a thread, you can’t get rid of it.

Very good!

[RunawayTrain]

But “Dave ‘red wine’ Lister” isn’t funny.

Although the bit in Stasis Leak when Lister is bemoaning the kind of person that routinely drinks wine does show that Craig Charles can make ‘wine’ sound funny.

It would be a strange nickname for his social group to have given him though anyway, with wine being considered way above his class.

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“They used to call me Dave “Cinzano Bianco” Lister ‘cause once I was on the table, you couldn’t get rid of me.”

I was all for the staining being plausible, because any liquid not thoroughly cleaned from baize (or left to sink in and dry up on wood without being wiped up) would leave a watermark even if not a colour. But then I wondered – why would *open* bottles or glasses of a drink nobody likes be left on pool tables (or even just general ordinary tables) to be knocked over so often and cause so many stains that it’s notorious for it? If nobody likes it, they wouldn’t have ordered it anyway to leave a glass around to be knocked over. It might be plausible if people order it for their friends as a joke, but for that to happen so often that stains are attributed to it enough for it to become notorious seems a bit of a stretch.

The ‘can’t get rid of’ implies attempts to, and I don’t know how often pubs would worry about trying to get rid of stains – I genuinely don’t, but my impression of pubs from the rare occasion I’ve been in one is sticky beer mats and sticky tables. Very much not my area though so I could be wrong.

[RunawayTrain]

Oh wow, I thought correction: assumed Cinzano Bianco was a reference to a pool player or something like that!

(I’m going to have to pay more attention and in future challenge my assumptions about the references I don’t actually get.)

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https://www.thecompanion.app/2020/11/10/how-red-dwarf-fandom-broke-all-the-rules-part-1-red-dwarf/

I find stuff like this difficult, because there’s obviously love and enthusiasm for the show, but the first paragraph also talks about Kryton and Hattie Heyridge.

Well quite!

It’s also going behind the paywall from tomorrow; I want to sign up for a free trial for part 2 but there is an almost 100% guarantee I will forget to cancel it.

(They have the promise of SG1 material too, which makes it even more tempting *sob*)

[RunawayTrain]

I think as a design it looks really nice and makes sense narratively for VIII, it’s just the CGI is really rather poor and the shade of red they choose is nightmarishly ugly.

Putting it in Remastered does not make one lick of sense, because VIII establishes that the ship looks different because it’s been changed to its original design… if Remastered went all the way to VIII, they’d have to change the ship again or else that line wouldn’t make any sense.

They took out lines and changed scene orders in Remastered, so if it had gone to all the way they would likely have just taken the pertinent lines out.

Absolutely agree about the CGI. I would love to see a modern, sympathetic remastering, making use of infinitely better CGI and reining in the excessive changes. [Just out of curiosity mind you, not as a replacement!] I really like the clearer audio and some of the sound effects such as the hum of the ship. It’s just a shame they went too far with so many of the changes.

[RunawayTrain]

I actually like the long, remastered version of the ship. I don’t prefer it, and it’s established throughout I-VI (and VII? Can’t remember if we see any picture of the ship at all) that Red Dwarf *is* a short, squat ship so it would be a bit stupid to try to change it, but I think as a design and model it’s actually pretty good. I like some of the shots of it, especially all the lights. It was just designed at the wrong time (and in the wrong place, ending up too long for motion control).

If it were the original Red Dwarf instead of having been foisted upon the programme as a replacement, I don’t think anyone would have an issue with it. If the model had still been built too long for motion control, that would likely have been dealt with and absorbed into the show’s history, just like everything else that went wrong and had to be accommodated/worked around in those early years and still gave us what we see as classic Red Dwarf.

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They had some really great guest stars.

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I know it’s all a little fun and games for a digital convention, but would it have been so hard to get the cast to read through this? Or is Rob that disconnected from the company he is a Director of to even manage to do that?

The page says the winners have to sign an agreement with GNP.

I had mixed feelings about it, wrote out a rambling paragraph in which those feelings became less mixed, and ended up realising that I’m sure it will be great – maybe a bit odd, with a different cast, but great.

And what an opportunity for fans who can act! Not just actual Red Dwarf (wow!), but Red Dwarf written by Rob Grant (wow!) and directed by Ed Bye!
[My fandom experience is limited and only within a few fandoms, but I cannot think of a single show where that might plausibly happen in anyone’s wildest dreams.]

[RunawayTrain]

I used to share bunk beds with a really annoying and sometimes disgusting person. Looking back, I was also quite horrible to her :(

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Yeah, counting multi-part episodes as one will never happen in any poll we run. We are slavishly devoted to “as broadcast” being sacrosanct.

Ah, makes sense.

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There was a lot of potential in a lot of VIII that was ruined by stupid stories, slapstick and poor jokes. A lot of it (Pete aside) could have been salvaged if someone had been on hand to say NO to a few things, and rewrite a few others. We had the crew back, we had Norman back, we had the ship back, and the budget wasn’t exactly S1 and S2 poor at this point. IMO Cassandra is the best episode, but if more time, effort and rewriting had gone into BITR and Only The Good, they could have been classics. They had all the parts of a Tripple Fried Egg Chilli Chutney Sandwich and they ended up with vomit.

Honestly I think this is the most annoying thing about VIII. All that wasted potential.

[RunawayTrain]

I did a big re-rip of all my Red Dwarf (and other DVDs) recently and sooo many of them have episodes 1 to 6 as separate files, and then another file for ALL files for when you click Play All. Rather than DVD software stitching together the episodes from markers or something, every DVD that has a play all feature it seems just as 1 big file for “All”

But I agree with KT, whilst those episodes will always be counted separately so anyone that gives a shit can say there are 74 rather than 72 episodes of Red Dwarf, when considering BTE for a poll it should be counted as one whole thing.

Whilst I can see that leading to an argument of counting Back in the Red and Pete as wholes also, that’s silly and we all know it.

The Bodysnatcher set is very odd – it has blocks of some episodes without commentary, and the ones with commentary as separate files, and then the ones with Text Track in other blocks. So not quite separate episodes but also not the entire series in one as it appears to be in a normal disc player. I haven’t finished going through them to work out exactly what’s what yet though; I do know that in series II I’ve got episodes 3-6 in one block but series III there are 2 together at most. [Ideally I’d like to make the text track and commentaries as options for the episodes with only subtitles so I don’t need 3 copies of the files, but by the time I’ve done that I may as well have just watched and listened to everything 3 times!]

The Brittas Empire, on the other hand, had each episode separately which is what you’d expect (from discs which do have a Play All option).

Agreed. I actually started typing why BTE shouldn’t be treated like BITR and Pete but found the points didn’t really stand up … so I think I’ll have to settle for ‘it’s a weird blip in the ouevre that is best tolerated as one single feature-length episode’!

[RunawayTrain]

Back to Earth shouldn’t be counted as separate episodes in the next big poll. Nobody watches it that way and all it does is hurt its position by forcing its weakest parts to stand on their own. I literally haven’t rewatched BtE as three episodes since the DVD came out except to hear the cast commentary.

Even when I ripped it from the DVD, the 3 episodes with the cast commentary are one big file! (But with credits at the correct points between eps, which is a bit jarring.)

[RunawayTrain]

does the sofa in the bunkroom in Red Dwarf X prove that Gareth Gwenlan was right all along?

Haha! No French windows though.

I wonder what he thought of dinnerladies.

Actually ‘Allo ‘Allo had neither sofa nor French windows as I recall, nor did Dad’s Army, Blackadder, Open All Hours …

[RunawayTrain]

Got it, recommend it.

I’m so used to seeing bloopers by series on DVD – for any show, not just Red Dwarf – that it didn’t twig until a couple of days ago that the Smeg Ups and Outs were stepping off the ‘Auntie Bloomers’/’It’ll be Alright on the Night’ type of format, but also were the next step, of being from all one show rather than a mix.

I’m not 100% versed in the DVD smeg-ups by series to know if there were definitely any in the Smeg Ups/Outs that weren’t on the main DVDs, but it did seem there were maybe a few seconds of extra footage for some of them that I didn’t recall seeing before, and a couple that weren’t familiar to me. However, although I am obsessive enough, I don’t have the brainpower to go through them all to check! ;) Some of them also seemed to be better picture quality than I recall from the series smeg-ups?

Also enjoyed the character links, just as something I’d not seen before (mostly Kryten but also Lister and some Rimmer) and the footage from DJ 1995.

[RunawayTrain]

For the longest time I thought it was the green urine Rimmer (obviously now) jokingly mentions later on.

That would actually still make sense, urinating with his eyes closed then having to take an incredulous look because it hurts or otherwise feels very wrong. You know how we adapt to the little aches and pains and quirks our bodies have, we just tend to compensate and get on with it – it is entirely possible to do that with urinary problems too, especially if other more urgent (heh) or worse things are happening in life. You just adapt to the urinary situation because you have to, if you don’t have the time or energy to try and sort that out as well as everything else. Not pleasant of course, but entirely possible.

Also, isn’t beer full of B vitamins? If you have an excess of one of them in particular it turns your urine an almost neon yellowy green.

[RunawayTrain]

I’ve never read it that way, always how messy it is. Because I’ve made that sandwich, and it just falls apart in your hand and gets everywhere.

If it were just the sandwich, I don’t think I’d ever have thought anything else – but it’s because they’re drunk. It only just twigged today the connection between the state of them and ‘the state of the floor’.

[Although hologrammic vomit arguably would be far simpler to clean up than real vomit, I guess Holly would just rather not have to deal with it if it can be prevented.]

[RunawayTrain]

^ ah, I thought ‘inny’ and ‘outy’ could both apply to breasts. Edit: though reading that back, that makes no sense – I was thinking of ‘in’ being where they go back in and meet the ribcage. Ah well. It would apply to waists though, in the stereotypical ‘curvy’ sense.

I have *just* got “it’s the state of the floor I’m worried about” – not sauce dripping from the sarnie, but vomit.

[RunawayTrain]

I’m still not entirely sure what “in and out bits” are.

I assumed it was to do with women typically having curvier bodies than men. I may be wrong though, of course.

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Well that was interesting. I think I largely agree re: pacing and Platini. The main things I’d liked to have seen kept in the episode are the parts with Rimmer and Nirvana, and possibly some of the extra discussion about replacement hologram candidates and the odd line when Rimmer originally returns.

The Holly scene doesn’t *quite* work for me, because with her already in the background of the replacement interviews you’d think she’d let the others know Rimmer was on his way. Maybe if they had the first part of interviewing replacements, then cut to Rimmer and Holly, then cut back to the sleeping quarters when they’re about to interview Murray (the second one candidate the audience see) just before Rimmer arrives. But that may not make sense because he would take longer than that to arrive, as shown in the original sequence. Okay I’m overthinking it, time to shut up now.

[RunawayTrain]

I gave it a go a while back. https://www.ganymede.tv/forums/topic/holoship-xtended/

Thanks, and the videos are still up! I’ll have a watch later :D

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Not an in-universe question, but was there ever a fan edit of Holoship with the cut scenes added back in?

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I’ve just been wondering whether Norm’s Holly ever interacted with Bob’s Kryten. I guess it would have had to have been in S8 if they did.

The only instance I can think of is in Nanarchy, when Kryten welcomes Holly back online. Holly doesn’t recognise him and asks if his face is like that because of a cheap razor.

Oh, that made me snorfle – maybe Nanarchy is worth watching again just for that joke.

[RunawayTrain]

{*facepalm* accidentally pressed ‘Submit’, ignore!}

[RunawayTrain]

Wow, well all of the above really is a ringing endorsement that these are still an essential part of the canon then!

Incidentally there are loads of VHS copies going for almost nothing on eBay, if that interests anyone. (We do still have a VHS player connected to our TV but for my own watching I find DVDs far more convenient, especially when they have subtitles. You had to have a very snazzy expensive VHS player to be able to record or watch anything with subs!)

[RunawayTrain]

I’m assuming both ups and outs ?

Ah fair enough.

Can anyone tell us for sure whether the Smeg ups/outs contain material (other than the links, of course) that didn’t make it onto the series DVDs?

[RunawayTrain]

(after searching round this site it seems most dvd series outakes were taken from smeg ups)

Ooh, so not Smeg Outs? Interesting!

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I’ve never actually seen smeg ups/outs. For some reason I just kept forgetting to. I guess it’s a piece of RD history I have to get round to.

Me neither.

Do they contain ones that aren’t on the DVDs?

[RunawayTrain]

By bootleg, do you mean unlicensed or just the really naff stuff with spelling mistakes or bad pictures?

[RunawayTrain]

Youngsters today. Do they teach them nothing?

Apparently not! Most of it was literally before my time … but then so was the beginning of Red Dwarf so I guess that’s no excuse ;) I’m going to blame it on growing up without a TV and then no Freeview channel showing it 20+ years later (which is how I got into Star Trek).

It actually looks quite interesting, hmm.

[RunawayTrain]

Although funnily enough, I stumbled across an old article of mine the other day in which I put forward the theory that all that JMC computer stuff is completely automated, and that it’s always been running in the background, it’s just that previously Holly had been around to countermand it.

Ah, excellent article! Yes that makes sense that what they now call JMC is the computer.

(Also, I did not know there was a sitcom called ALF! I do now.)

Yeah, it’s basically the automated personification of JMC bureaucracy. Now that Holly’s gone, everything has to be done ‘by the book’.

One thing that does bother me about it is that, up until IX, Holly was the JMC computer. The idea that there were two separate systems running seems a bit odd. But obviously there’s a very practical reason for it, re: Norm.
In terms of them getting the update, I assume it’s much like the post pod, in that it’s been on its way to meet them for millions of years and finally caught up.

I sort of see it as Holly (and Gordon, and their equivalents on other ships) being AI overlaid on top of the pure programming of the core computer, if that makes any sense at all. So the computer can run without intervention but for all intents and purposes the personified AI pretty much *is* the computer ordinarily. Sort of like how our brains control all of our automatic functions as well as being our consciousness, and can still keep the automatic processes functioning even if parts that affect our personality and ability to make conscious decisions become damaged or are missing.

For the updates, do you mean similar to how Star Trek sends messages through subspace – so the signal’s been travelling for all that time and has met up with them? That would make sense.

[RunawayTrain]

From series X:
Why does Kryten moan that he always knew the human race would let Lister down, that they were never good enough for him? He didn’t know Lister until all others were extinct already.

Given that humans are extinct apart from Lister, are artificial life forms running JMC? For whom – ALF society?

How are they able to receive an electronic communication from JMC via the computer about Rimmer’s record?

Who or what is in charge of budgets and different departments on Red Dwarf? Where would they return the toilet rolls for a refund, and who would give it to them, and what use does the medicomp have for money in the first place? On the ship there are only two humanoids to use the toilet roll, and we know they’re running low on supplies like anaesthetic. I can run with the idea of external trade but I’m not sure how a crew of 4 would justify having different internal departments beyond food, energy, other supplies directly used by organic humanoids, and maintenance. Surely all in the third category would be amalgamated and decided based on need, not budget size.

I also haven’t quite understood why or how they encounter the M-Corp upgrades in XII – basically the same question as number 3. I have paid attention in that ep, wondering about this, but not for quite a while.

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That’s a good point. In that case seeing someone eat an egg is no different to watching someone throw up, which doesn’t sound like entertainment, or even astonishing. Just weird.

Well, watching someone regurgitate something *whole* would be unusual for us. Considering the reaction the backwards eating got from the real-life audience, as a novelty it evidently does fall into the category of entertainment (not high-brow, certainly, but it did its job) ;)

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Wouldn’t 1985 be too late to influence the initial script, given when it was written?

1985 isn’t a stretch, since Son of Cliche ended its run in December 84. Although the pilot script was drafted in 1983, Lister may have been “Hollins” as per the Radio sketch.

I think he was originally Hollins, then they changed it because there was a footballer with the same name – I don’t know at what point in the process that was though.

[RunawayTrain]

I’m sure I’ve heard a few times that they used names of people they knew from real life. The inspiration for the look of the bunk room set is certainly plausible though, at that time.

(The opening titles on the video suddenly transported me back to school when we’d watch BBC Schools clips in the mid-late 90s, on a setup looking very much like Holly’s portable monitor!)

[Author]

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