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It’s sad not to see DJJ there anymore. Remember, he wanted to spend more time at home, so he is replaced by an animatronic cat (DNA devolved in episode one), “Sabrina the teenage witch” style, which he records lines for weeks before. However, the new Cat has some funny speeches, that monologue about his spiny penis was hilarious, and the CG effect was the icing on the cake.

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I remember at one point in the early 90s my Dad started complaining that Mr Bean had gotton too nasty. We’d been huge fans but he felt Bean was becoming more cruel and selfish in his antics.

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The first time I saw a photo of Doug was in the Last Human hardback book cover, when I was surprised to see a friendly looking man in a nice shirt. For some reason (those various magazine comments etc) I thought they were like real life Dibbleys and wore thick glasses and wooly hats all the time and never smiled.

However, even a a kid I figured out the “beer mat” was a joke, because it implied they had created Doctor Who and Bill n’ Ted.

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I always thought Rising Damp was ITV’s only really classic comedy. That and one of those racism sitcoms (the one that is similar to Alf Garnett but not as good)

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I can see Stewart Lee and Chris Barrie having a lot of differences somehow. Chris just seems similar in personality/interests to a lot of people Stewart has friction with.

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there’s always the “only fools and horses” risk that they would do a poignant final episode, then everyone decides they want to do more so they have to double back and ignore it.

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The Kill Crazy spin off series is more like classic Dwarf than the main show now. KC alone on his new ship with his small band of misfits has some real pathos. The novels really get into his head too. They’re not just novelisations of the show, they are proper sci fi re-imaginings.

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Jaws Naylor for XIII’s writing duo

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I know Doug wants to wrap the show up, but I’m not sure a big budget literal 6 part adaption of the Last Human novel will work.

I think Rob Grant’s alternative final series on the BBC is better. I know crossing over with the Good Life’s final series was a weird idea, with a reborn Tom and Barbera teaching the crew how to be sustainable in RD’s artificial allotment. But it’s relaxing gentle humour and Penelope Keith is very funny as the captain of the posh ship flying back to Earth alongside.

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I saw some photos of them touring nightclubs for uni students, they seemed to be having a whale of a time, cool old guys.

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star bug in the rats bottom. It’s the only time I can think of where I thought “what a cool effect” and wasn’t just taking it as part of the story.

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– make them care about continuity more such as following up plot points like Toaster’s prediction of Lister jump-starting the universe and how will he have sons on board RD as an old man

– make it more cold and remote feeling like the first 3 series

– not so much silly humor

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I think the Last Human novel (for all its faults) had the only plausible happy endings for the characters. Lister and Kochanski look forward to having a family Adam and Eve style, Rimmer finds out he was really liked by McGruder, has a son, and manages to be a hero (and becomes Ace without dying in the show), ..Maybe Cat could find other cat people somewhere.

I mean does Lister need anything more…? He is a slob and he never really seemed to have close friends before, just drinking buddies. As for if Kochanski deserves to be alone in space or find humanity again, I don’t know how social she was, but if she was a nerd that knew the inches of rainfall for whereever, I’m guessing she was alienated from people too.

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“Can those of us without a penis ignore this thread?”

but how do you write your name in the snow?

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Cat always has bowl hair when it is not gelled up. His teeth naturally stick out but he always wears a brace to keep them in. And, he always carries practical clothes because deep down he knows he may need them. When Polymorph bites him, he messes his hair down, takes the brace out and gets changed.

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it just occurred to me that if the film was a reboot, Cat could be made a different way (if they didn’t want the time skip). He could be a nerdy technician who gets crossed with Lister’s cat by the DNA modifier or something.

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hold on..doesn’t Arthur watch Casablanca in Hitchhikers Guide? rip off confirmed

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i wish when Lister lost his arm at the end of XII they gave him the robot arm

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little off topic here but…There are some entire blogs devoted to 80s competitions that offered unrealistic prizes that were never given, like cereal competitions in the US that promised the chance to be in Ghostbusters 2, or to design your own He Man character that would be made into a toy and put in the cartoon. Just google “fearless photog”.

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The sci fi novel “All the Birds in the Sky” by sci fi blog IO9 editor Charlie Jane Anders has the (present day San Francisco hip software designers) characters “watch a red dwarf marathon”, although there’s no further dialogue as to why they like RD or what they think of it, it’s just name dropped among a bunch of other cool stuff they like. I’ve read it, it’s a pretty good book.

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hey I just thought wouldn’t it be awesome if the BBC did one of those exaggeratedly dramatic dirt-dishing dramas about the real story behind the sitcom like they did with Steptoe, Morcambe and Wise, etc. New young lookalike actors in “when they were smegheads – the RD story”. the trailer would show a tense scene of Barrie saying “I can’t read these lines. what’s my motivation?” and CC screams “just do the scene you middle class git” and attacks him. And Bob L looks sad smoking in a mirror because his make up is heavy.

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holly hypnotized them to forget with subliminals planted in flintstones episodes.

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who went to the cyclical end/beginning of time and jump-started the universe?

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the boys would be stranded in Benidorm and have to beat Jonny Vegas in a pub quiz.

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steptoe and son – Dungo Steptoe, played by inserted dubbed stock footage of Harry H Corbett, comes to Red Dwarf to find his son

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I thought from the novel that the dogs milk is just an extreme bottom of the barrel cheap store for if the ship is stranded somewhere. I thought Holly uses up all the other milk sources.

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they would do a very serious episode without any laughter, like 8 Simple Rules did when John Ritter died. Hold on, that was BTE

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Little off topic but, I read William Gibson’s Neuromancer recently and I was surprised at how RD-feeling it was, everything from the writing style being similar to the novels, VR worlds where people are tempted to stay with lost loves, A.I.s with cheeky personalities running ships, even afro-Caribbean guys with dreads being main characters.

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The voice swapping in Bodyswap is fine and works well for the idea.

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” Chloe…admitted to finding it difficult to work in what she described as a very male dominated environment”

what did she expect, she didn’t even learn what offside was properly.

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I had an idea for Timeslides. Holly didn’t actually bring Rimmer back to keep Lister sane, that was a lie he told to save face. He actually bought Rimmer because he needed help with the nitty gritty of the ship after turning around and Rimmer, despite his low esteem and mistakes, is the only crew member who knows where every plate goes etc. That’s why Rimmer remains in the “Lister got rich” timeline.

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GELFBUSTERS 2 – EMOHAWK – one of the new sassy female Dwarfers gets forced into marriage with a male gelf. He dies and then she leads the Gelfs in a long subplot exactly the same as Game of Throne’s Khalessi.

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Well, we know Lister is fated in at least some time-lines to have sons who return to his Red Dwarf, so it’s not a complete departure. I’ve always wanted to see what is going on in RD during that future, and which characters are around.

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I’LL RIP HIS TIPPLES OFF – In a Discworld crossover, Lister sneaks into the house of Death to steal his drinks cabinet.

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The Ghostbusters cartoon had a “next gen” show in 1997, where they had a new young cast but kept the old ones around as mentors. That could be a model for a new Dwarf

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O-RIMMERROUS – Rimmer goes back to Earth in his childhood to face his parents and tell them he doesn’t need their approval anymore, gets a bump on the head crash landing, and they take him in as Dungo the gardener.

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what if it was like some “passing the torch” Force Awakens thing where they find one of Lister’s sons who is in our dimension now, and he’s a funny slob with a fussy hologram and some kind of funny animal person, (all age 25 ish), and they hand over to them for a new “next generation” show.

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I liked BTE mostly, I liked it’s ambition and the jokes were fun, I liked the silly stuff like the Starbug car and the big ideas it had. I really think it needed some kind of audience laughter on its TV broadcast though. To be honest, I feel the same way about any sitcom-style banter being put in a movie context, like the Rising Damp film from the 70s – that kind of banter just doesn’t work without an audience to bounce off.

And silly stuff like the car and going to Corrie is the kind of stuff that needs camaraderie and other fans with you to enjoy because it’s only really funny because it’s silly fun, it’s not like the most witty conversations from series 1-5 that I would enjoy in any format.

Speaking of the Rising Damp film – it would have been similar to the RD film in that it was a reboot that started again and re-made the origin story.

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Ganymede and Whiten – intrigued by the Michael Jackson jokes of Kryten, the crew find his ancient secret bleaching clinic overrun by simulants on the moon of Ganymede.

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to me knowing “retard” as an insult didn’t come about until I heard US culture in the late 90s like South Park, Eminem etc. At the time, I just thought it was the kind of old fashioned, over-formal medical term Kryten would use to insult people, like “anal retentive” which I’d never heard of either before seeing it in an RD novel.

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“yes sir I’ve been around” – Rimmer reveals his neurosis come from the ritual of his father the Lecturer making Rimmer and his brothers run around the college field every morning, from the 2 opposite blocks, Ganymede and Titan. His brothers would make it, but Arnie would drop with exhaustion. Rimmer starts training so he can go back in time, make the run, and finally say to his father, “From Ganymede to Titan, yes Sir I’ve been around”.

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yes sir they’ve been around – Lister monologues about the time he went on tour as a roadie for his favourite Rastabilly Skank singer and all the crazy stuff he saw.

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NEW ADVENTURES IN WIFI 2 – E-BOW THE SMEGGER

The boys get marooned and listen to Peter Buck’s new solo album

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In the Jesus stories of our universe, Judas Iscariot the traitor and Thomas the rumoured twin are 2 different disciples.

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THE END

Lister finds out that every sci fi show set in space ever made gets cancelled early because Patrick Stewart sues them all.

Farscape? Dead. Andromeda? Dead. Not Nu-Battlestar Galactica? Babylon 5? Dead. Firefly? Holly, did he spare Firefly? Dead. Dave, every show is dead.

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LAUGHTER ECHOES

Lister and Rimmer are marooned together with an old dvd tape of Back to Earth, they spend the whole episode arguing about whether the original broadcast should have had audience laughter. Lister points out that the cast keep doing sitcom pauses after every line, which causes Rimmer to smirk and roll his eyes.

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I read the first 2 when I was 11-12. I loved them, they’re still some of my fave books of all time. By great luck, the Last Human was released new just as I was finishing BTL (I hadn’t planned it that way) so my Mum got it for me in hardback

I hadn’t seen the first series when I read IWCD, only 2 onward, and I’m glad about that because I’m glad I got to experience the story for the first time with the bigger descriptions, inner thoughts, etc.

I think I probably prefer Last Human to Backward, for all it’s faults LH seemed more interesting and ambitious where BW seemed more like a novelisation. I hated Kochanski perfectly fitting in and being loved by all the crew though, so glad DN made her more interesting for the show. I liked reading about Lister’s reverse better than life which is his worst nightmare.

“there’s also random chunks of character facts and exposition shoved into sentences for no real reason. the only one i can remember off the top of my head is Lister in the prison craft “lying in the same fetal position as his long dead sister” because i remember reading that and thinking wait, what? so out of nowhere lister now has a sister i guess?”

LH opens with a little aside about the birth of the first human who is just an unnamed prehistoric girl. She curls up and sleeps and then the action skips forward to Lister, the Last Human, sleeping similar to her. Just a little opening flair I guess.

I guess the one thing with me and the novels, I really want to see where the story goes and what situation old Lister is in, from the future echo. I guess the ending of LH is the only real possible happy end for Lister that exists.

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is it because like, he’s played a guy stranded alone in space a few times

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I’ve only just gotton into the Dave era and I just finished X. I loved Rimmer being revealed as “working class” and winning a new respect from Lister. I’ve ordered XI and I’m hoping there’s some kind of different dynamic now.

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“We’ve already discussed this bit of spam more than the second episode of Quanderhorn”

thats a scurrilous lie

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