RunawayTrain

[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.)

[RunawayTrain]

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.

[RunawayTrain]

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 :(

[RunawayTrain]

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!

[RunawayTrain]

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.

[RunawayTrain]

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) ;)

[RunawayTrain]

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!)

[RunawayTrain]

I always find it a bit sad coming across a forum set up in the traditional way that doesn’t have much activity (especially when it becomes clear it’s never had much activity!), and I personally rather like the unstructured nature here. The other two fora I frequent are in traditional form but they have thousands of users and at least a hundred active at any one time, covering a wide range within their main topic of interest so they really need it. Here very much does not – at most the useful categories would likely be Red Dwarf and Not Red Dwarf, with maybe a subcategory for cast/crew (non-Dwarf projects) and … I really don’t know. And that’s coming from someone who used to border on the obsessive when it came to categorising everything and anything!

[The thought of tags did cross my mind as a possible step towards categorising forum threads, but it may not be worth the effort and actually the search feature maybe makes that a redundant idea regardless.]

[RunawayTrain]

The choice of Barber’s Adagio for Strings in the final scene. I think a lot of that final scene worked very well – made me cry the first few times I saw it, even though it was after BTE so I already knew the characters would be back – but I’d have to rewatch to point out other specific bits. The music pulled everything together and really gave it that impact though.

[RunawayTrain]

oh yeah, and I thought Rimmer being “old Rimmer” again was fun.

I’ve not watched the series often enough to pinpoint what exactly changed, but to me he just seemed a lot more relaxed, happy at times, and smiled a lot more than we’d seen previously.

I’d have to rewatch to pinpoint much more, but one thing that does stands out is the ridiculously long salute to Hollister. I know there are people who don’t like it, but even seeing just that clip never fails to make me laugh :D

[RunawayTrain]

@Ben Saunders Ah, maybe that was the intended joke then: taking the virus backfired because he got far more than he bargained for.

[RunawayTrain]

If we’re being serious, the Blue Midget dance has to win surely? Dream/AR sequence or not, that’s just a waste of screen time.

Yup. Not much of VIII actually made me physically cringe, but that did. Yeesh.

The assaults on Rimmer still confuse me. He took the sexual magnetism virus to become irresistible to women, then when they can’t resist he tries to refuse? I’m not victim-blaming at all, but at the same time the women were not in control of themselves – we saw how it affected Kochanski, and how she felt disgusted and mortified once it wore off; her actions were not willing – so the women with Rimmer would feel similarly, and equally their actions were not willing either.

(Btw if the genders were reversed I would still be confused; it just would may have been more immediately recognised as problematic.)

I can only conclude that Rimmer trying to refuse was another thing for the sake of ‘oh this’ll be funny’ without thinking through the implications. The implications of the virus making someone actually irresistible – not just attractive – are problematic in themselves, too. I cannot see a way around the situation (e.g. Rimmer consenting) that would make it okay.

[RunawayTrain]

Meltdown I’m not sure I fully understand, I feel like there might be a layer to it that I’m missing? It also feels odd because there are so many extra characters which is unusual for the show – and we don’t actually get to know any of those characters at all (beyond knowing who they are, of course), unlike most others they meet throughout the rest of the show. There are still bits that make me laugh whenever I do watch the episode though.

Backwards was a real technical feat, but I don’t enjoy it as much after the first several viewings. There’s nothing wrong with it, and the attention to detail when they’re on the backwards earth is remarkable (occasional lapses in logic/chronology aside) – I enjoy watching it occasionally, but it’s not one I would necessarily choose to watch even once a month, whereas some episodes I would happily watch on repeat (no exaggeration).

I think I read a comment about Bodyswap not having the foley in with the overdubbed voices; if that’s the case then that would explain why I enjoy it less than I feel I should. When I do watch it I enjoy it more than the others on this list, but I’m never quite drawn in, and I think that might just be because of the missing foley. (Can fan edits rectify that sort of thing?) Everything else about it I enjoy which is why it feels odd to be including it in this list.

Back to Reality I don’t enjoy as much as it seems others do – but when looking at it in context in the original run, I absolutely get why it’s often cited as a fan favourite. It feels a bit like Backwards in that respect, that in context it’s much greater than what the episode does with the characters, for me. Again, enjoyed more with infrequent viewings rather than frequent.

I absolutely would not say any of them are ‘bad’ episodes, just … ones I overall enjoy less. They all have scenes or lines I really enjoy, and the beauty of watching some eps less frequently means I forget about some of the great lines in them and enjoy those all the more when I hear them :D

4 lesser out of 18, not bad. From the same 18 I would rate 6 of them as my favourites, leaving 8 of them in the ‘good’ area between favourites and … whatever this list is.

[RunawayTrain]

This was an online feed. There was no TV involved to set to anything.

Ah right. Yes I think someone mentioned on another thread that via UKTV Play it was a different aspect ratio – very odd. I know nothing about the software that goes into this but I do know they had issues in the past with subtitles for on-demand when the broadcast versions were fine (took them a couple of years to sort out), because of technical differences, so maybe there’s also a difference in what aspect ratio it can handle?

It’s frustrating to argue against, because the demographic that will actively complain about this are mostly the ones who have the DVDs/Blu rays on their shelves so don’t exactly need to watch Dave, and the casual viewers will just assume that it always looked like shit.

Ugh, yes that’s true :(

[RunawayTrain]

Dave is apparently broadcasting BBC-era Dwarf reruns stretched into 16:9. It sucks.

I watched BTL on Dave and it was 4:3. Actually I don’t remember seeing any stretching of BBC-era Dwarf on Dave in the last few months (except the cropping in the documentary).

The TVs in our house are set to ‘Auto’ for this reason, to show things in the actual aspect ratio broadcast rather than arbitrarily stretching everything. Yesterday – also part of UKTV – tend to show other old sitcoms in original aspect ratio too (e.g. ‘Allo ‘Allo).

[RunawayTrain]

The knight escaping from the VR machine makes no sense. its a joke that’s forgets its not a holodeck from star trek.

It was Lister dressed up, wasn’t it? To convince Rimmer he could become Ace. He was supposed to think it was an escaped knight from VR (which indeed wouldn’t have made sense, but as has been said before, stranger things have already happened so why should he not believe this?) but in reality it was Lister, who had also put the blanks in the bazookoids.

Unless I’m misremembering. Edit: someone also commented upthread that it was Lister, so I’m not going mad after all ;)

[RunawayTrain]

Do people like Lister really pronounce Michigan with a hard CH sound?

I’m very much not a person like Lister, but not having heard ‘Michigan’ pronounced until my 20s, before that I thought it had a hard CH. I don’t know whether Lister as a character would have had that reason though (nor Craig Charles as an actor – if he didn’t initially know, plenty of people around him for rehearsals and whilst recording would have known). Maybe a flub – just like I think “a whole lease of line” was – and for whatever reason just wasn’t picked up, or at least not picked up in time to do anything about it.

[RunawayTrain]

Well, he’s working on it:
a reply to the above tweet, in part said
“Please, Doug
Stop Tweeting and get on with it”

To which he simply responded, “I am”

I am.

— Doug Naylor (@DougRDNaylor) June 7, 2020

[Author]

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