Toxteth O-Grady

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I started a thread about this over 4 years ago, and not a single fucker responded to it.

https://www.ganymede.tv/forums/topic/final-space-on-netflix/

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Androids not producing heat seems like a violation of the laws of thermodynamics, no?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Craig to me looks markedly different in every series, particularly 1-8.
I could confidently identify any series just from a cropped image of his head. It’s mostly his hair changes, but sometimes his face and weight too.
It’s actually quite interesting how much his appearance can subtly, but noticeably, change within a year – especially in the years of his life when people don’t really age much.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

That awkward moment when someone confuses Chris Tucker for Chris Rock.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Who’s to say it wasn’t a conversation Rob and Doug had together and then told to Richard who turned it into a stand up routine?

Going by the video Rob doesn’t seem to have ever met him, or even be familiar with who he was.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

It’s nothing to do with my browsing history, thank you. They appear under “People who viewed this item also viewed..”

My browsing history is far more depraved than what would warrant these suggestions.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Is nobody else seeing the creepy fetish items listed below as “sponsored items”? Read the description of what “Spreader Pants” are ????

[Toxteth O-Grady]

@RenegadeRob I agree with you about Rimmer. He’s easily my favourite character, but in the Dave era Chris Barrie’s performance is just way too pantomime for the most part.
It’s the same with the Cat. EVERY SINGLE LINE he screeches it out in a high-pitch. He never used to do this. Remember how he says “good point, well made” after Kryten shoots down one of his implausible suggestions in series 5? It’s humble and pensive. These days he’d just screech something out while grimacing.
Doug is obviously responsible too, in not wrangling these performances. I think Doug and the cast need to go back and watch the first two series and re-familiarise themselves with how they used to play the characters. As fairly realistic people, as opposed to over-the-top caricatures.
Strangely, Craig Charles has gone the opposite route, and is way more laid back in his performance. I can see that being a development of the character, though. He’s mellowing with age. But Cat and Rimmer have gotten unrealistic and a little grating.
Kryten’s doing okay.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

They never said that Hoover assumed the position of president as a result of Kennedy’s impeachment.
In fact, they state that he was elected – and that he been forced to run for president by the Mafia.

So presumably Johnson served the remainder of Kennedy’s term, but then lost the subsequent 1964 election to Hoover, who by this point had left the FBI in favour of running for the presidency.
Simples.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

So it WAS Joel McHale on stage with them after all!

Next question is: why the hell is he there?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Jon Gries was in Get Shorty with Gene Hackman,
Gene Hackman was in Superman with Christopher Reeve,
Christopher Reeve was in Superman III with Pamela Stephenson,
Pamela Stephenson was in History of the World: Part I with Bella Emberg.

Nick Frost > Buster Keaton

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I always thought it meant ‘people who are predisposed to eating yoghurt’ right up until I just saw this thread.
It’s kind of ruined it for me now, though. I think that the ‘people who eat natural yoghurt’ meaning is much less funnier.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Back in the mid 90s I once saw a small red hatchback with a bumper sticker which simply said ‘Red Dwarf’.
It obviously wasn’t official merch, and the typeface wasn’t remotely like anything the show has ever used, but I still liked the thought that a fan of the show had somehow procured it in order to dub their own car as “Red Dwarf”.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Also Amazon Alexa’s response to “Do you believe in Silicon Heaven?”

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I played an American computer game called ‘Gone Home’ a couple of years ago, where you’re exploring round an empty house in 1995.
In one room there’s a TV Guide listing a small selection of shows, including Red Dwarf.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Noel Gallagher’s taste in TV…

Loves: Seinfeld
Hates: The Inbetweeners
His opinion on Red Dwarf: TBC

[Toxteth O-Grady]

912 for me.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Best film has to be II, although I do really like VI as well. The Motion Picture has some great visuals, but has to be the slowest film in history.

The Picard series sounds interesting, but not exciting, and has the potential to sour the TNG legacy even more than their poor films.

Lower Decks sounds terrible. Any adult animated sitcom based on Star Trek should be a parody of it, rather than under the actual Star Trek banner. But then we’ve already had Red Dwarf, Futurama, Rick & Morty, The Orville, Final Space; so isn’t this a bit of a dead horse by now?
Sounds like the cringe-fest that was ‘Star Wars Detours’ – which at least somebody had the sense to cancel before it even started.

Haven’t seen Discovery, but I’m glad it has a second season.

Reboot Trek 4 – this is the only thing here I’d want to see. 1 and 3 were in the better half of Trek movies, and I enjoy a nice 2-hour story with the TOS characters.(although Quinto still hasn’t got Spock right IMHO). The possibility of Tarantino being involved is too interesting to not do.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Of the two styles I prefer the montage/guitar one, but I agree that each one suits that series’ tone well.

The first two series are are much more subdued, and less dynamic than what would follow.
From series 3 onwards the show has a greater penchant for explosions, creature effects, visual effects, Starbug crashes, and physical comedy; so the more upbeat theme tune suits those elements better.

Anyone unfamiliar with the show who is channel hopping might see the original title sequence and think “This looks like a sci-fi thing, probably like Star Trek or 2001.”
Whereas the series 3 titles make it much more clear its a sci-fi comedy. What I particularly like about the use of the montages is they really sell the show’s uniqueness, and the over-driven rock guitar theme really compliments that.

The best montage sequence for me is easily the Series V titles, in particular because it demonstrates how there’s not really any other show like it on TV.
You’ve got spaceships, hooded beings with glowing eyes, bazooka firing, a guy with an H on his head, a glove puppet, some kind of reptilian hands, strangulation, a person being turned into a skeleton, a robot headbutting a wall, a half naked man chained up, a guy with pointed teeth, and lots and lots of explosions.
If that didn’t pique your interest in a show, I don’t know what would.

Having the cast names included I really dislike though. Makes it feel like ‘Friends’ in space.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>WHAT?! Where?

This is very poor quality, but you can see him here:

I tweeted him about to check it was him, and replied immediately confirming it with embarrassment.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

There’s also the argument that in their 3rd film, each actor gives their best performance (as they’ve become comfortable in the role, and the script has been specifically written for them). It’s tough to argue with.

– Goldfinger
– The Spy Who Loved Me
– The World Is Not Enough
– Skyfall

Obviously Dalton and Lazenby never made it that far (although Dalton in Licence to Kill is great)

On the flip side, each of those actors’ final Bond films was easily their worst:

– Diamonds Are Forever
– A View To A Kill (look out for Tony Hawks!)
– Die Another Day

Here’s hoping Craig’s next (and probably last) outing will buck this trend.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

The stupid “clang” sound effect when the X appears is much worse.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Aaah. I don’t remember that version. On Sky it just immediately faded out after the first “ow”, which worked a lot better.

I’m trying to remember at what time of day they broadcast the episode where Skinner says “Stand back, it’s wanking time!”. It may have been when Channel 4 showed episodes post-watershed.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

‘Bloody’ must be the least offensive “offensive” word of all, right? I mean, it’s the exact same word as the completely innocuous adjective meaning ‘covered in blood’.

“Police have discovered a bloody knife at the scene.”
“Shut your bloody gob!”

Would anyone *really* be offended to hear the latter but not the former?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>I always remember being baffled by the UK broadcaster’s cackhanded overdub of that Simpsons episode with ‘wankers’ in it (the U2 one).

I don’t think they ever overdubbed it, did they? They just cut the word out entirely. Otherwise what did they overdub it with?

I remember being utterly surprised when Channel 4 accidentally broadcast it uncut, as I never even knew it had been censored in the countless times I’d seen it on BBC 2 and Sky 1.

These days Channel 4 make excessive cuts to The Simpsons, even for relatively harmless stuff. So much so I can’t be bothered with it.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Exactly. The blowjob *joke* (I’d say “blowjob gag” has a very different meaning), is only rude and risqué if you know what is being suggested in that scene; and any children watching won’t, therefore it shouldn’t effect the rating certificate.
I watched Ghostbusters countless times as kid, and never thought to myself “here’s the bit where Dan Aykroyd gets sucked off by a sexy ghost”.
It’s part of a dream sequence anyway, so I probably just thought it was him having a weird dream where his trousers unzipped by themself.

Not that BTTF is necessarily a kid’s film, but I’m sure there’s a few specific movies made for kids that have the word “shit” in them. Home Alone is one.

Circling back to RD, it always seems odd to me when Cat says “does mouse shit roll?”.
Not only because they’d always used smeg as replacement swear word, but they use it in a line that makes barely any sense.
Does mouse shit roll? I’ve never checked.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Wasn’t the entire plot of ‘Krysis’ based around Kryten having a mid-life… crisis?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I don’t watch Doctor Who, but I do love the theme tune (the later Tom Baker version is my favourite, when they put it in a lower key).

Whenever there’s a new Doctor, I always watch the beginning of one of their episodes to hear what the theme tune’s like, and I’ve hated pretty much all of the versions since they brought the show back (Matt Smith’s theme was particularly unpleasant for me).

I’m glad to read they’ve gone more electronic for the latest series. Looking forward to hearing it. Orchestral sounded wrong, and they over-complicated it with daft little extra flairs throughout.
Minimal and electronic should be the sound of Doctor Who’s theme, as Delia Derbyshire arranged it.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>Yes, presumably every 12 became a 15 on home video until the 12 certificate was brought in for home video in ’94.
That’s right. Batman Returns was a 12 at the cinema (as was the ’89 film) but a 15 when released on video, as they didn’t do 12-Certificates on videos back then.
Presumably Warner Bros. hasn’t bothered with the Doug’s route of re-submission for re-classification, as they are still both a 15 on DVD and Blu-Ray to this day.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

The original bunkroom feels the most real and least “tv studio set”. I can actually believe in them sleeping and living in there.
The BtE one is severely underrated.
The X one I’m not particularly fond of at all.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

A few missing ones that remind me of the 90s are the firecraker one, the falling metal shard one, and the one that falls into a huge pile of cocaine.

It’s surprising they never made a more sci-fi related ident, considering the amount of stuff they could have used it with:

Red Dwarf
TNG
Voyager
DS9
Space Precinct
Captain Scarlet
Buck Rodgers
Battlestar Galactica
Space 1999
Quantum Leap
The X-Files
Third Rock from the Sun
Hyperdrive

Even BBC One had a surface-of the-moon ident and a crop-circle ident recently. A missed opportunity for the 2s!

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>I think I laughed at the opening of Tikka, when it first aired (yes, the bit where the camcorder explodes). But that was probably because I was just glad that Red Dwarf was finally back on the telly, and assumed there was more hilarity of that calibre coming my way. Hmm.

The moment when Lister’s distress call comes back on and he says “Oh by the way, we’re in space”, is one of the funniest moments the show’s ever done for me.
The follow-up of him describing a moon/planet with his thumb and finger sort of ruins it though (as does the rest of that episode, series, and well, I could on..)

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Thank you for posting this!

Red Dwarf in its heyday was preceded by most of these idents, so I think it’s very apt you posted this. What a nostalgia trip!

The new idents are nice and all (if a little abstract), but I’ll miss seeing the old ones (several of which weren’t in the that goodbye sequence). Then again I don’t watch broadcast TV anymore, so it probably makes no difference to me.

I think the [original] paint ident is the most iconic of them all. Special mention to the particle and yapping dog ones too. Reminds me of when BBC 2 was my favourite channel.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Robert is consistently hilarious throughout V and VI, but Rimmer has do be the source of my most LOLs over the years:

– ‘Out of Time’ when looking through the CCTV monitor at Lister’s brain in a jar. “Ohhhhhh dear!”
– ‘Demons & Angels’ after conspiring with (or rather, at) Kryten about how they don’t need oxygen. The look he gives when he turns back round and smiles at Lister and Cat.
– ‘Back to Reality’ “Well how were we supposed to know that, you brummy git?”
– ‘Parallel Universe’ “A further thought occurs.. that we haven’t budged a smegging inch.”

Basically, smug or sarcastic Rimmer is my favourite type of Rimmer.

I really wish Doug would still write the character like this, and that Chris could still play him that way.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Howard Burden’s talking rubbish then, as I distinctly remember Kryten having very pointy boots in earlier series, whereas in later ones he’s essentially wearing DMs.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Series III-V is a soft-reboot of the show of series 1 and 2

Series VII-VIII is a full reboot

Back to Earth is a stand-alone remake of Back to Reality

Series X-XII is a de-boot of series VII and VIII, and a sequel to series V.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>Ghostbusters 2016 is actually an interesting case now I think about it, because the thing about “reboot” in the context of movies is: you don’t reboot films, you reboot series. So by calling a film remake (or different and long-awaited enough sequel) a “reboot” you create the inference that the film exists to spawn further sequels. GB 2016 isn’t getting any sequels for the time being, so is it still a reboot?

Well the original GB continuity was a series (the two films and the 2009 video game [and maybe the cartoon?]).
GB 2016 was planned as the start of series wasn’t it? (everything is these days). But it was a flop, losing the studio tens of millions of dollars. Had it been a success a sequel would’ve been inevitable.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Ah yes, at the end they mention Zuul; one who was a trans-dimentional antagonists of the original film. I guess that arguably puts the 2016 film in a parallel dimension to the the 1984 one.

Regarding the new Halloween and the next Termintaor films which disregard previous sequels, The Simpsons coined a term which sums it up perfectly:

Homer: “You guys saw the new Radioactive Man sequel?”
Carl: “Uh, it’s not a sequel, it’s a reboot.”
Lenny: “Actually this one undoes the stuff from the last one, so it’s a de-boot.”

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>Ghostbusters 2016 […] exist in a universe where the events of their namesakes took place […] acknowledging that the events of the other films did also take place and are connected to these ones in some way.

Did it? I only saw it once, but from what I remember the existence of ghosts is widely considered to be fanciful in the 2016 universe (although, bizarrely, this is the case at the beginning of Ghostbusters 2 as well). Was there ever acknowledgement that they weren’t the first Ghostbusting business?

That’s why GB 2016 feels more like a remake to me (though it is also a reboot, considering the cartoon series and video game). It essentially tells the exact same story:
– Ghostly mayhem begins in NYC
– University scientists set up a ghost-busting service
– They create specialised equipment, hire an extra ghostbuster, and respond to various callouts
– They discover a world-threatening event is coming, and get ignored by the government
– They eventually battle the big bad, and save the world.

Mind you, Ghostbusters 2 also follows this same template almost exactly.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

What’s it a remake of?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

“Reboot” does seemed to be used a lot these days when “remake” would be more appropriate.

I’d use “reboot” specifically for things that span multiple entries and media. “Remake” for anything which tells the same story as the previous version, and “re-adaptation” for any new version of something which originally exsited in a different media/format.

But there’s a lot of overlaps.

Ghostbusters (2016) is a reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise, and perhaps could be argued to be a remake of the 1984 film.

King Kong (1977), and King Kong (2005) are remakes of the 1933 film.

True Grit (2010) is a re-adaptaion of the 1968 novel, and not a remake of the 1969 film.

Batman Begins is a reboot of the Batman movie series and a re-adaptation of (some of) the comic books, but not a remake of any previous film.

Total Recall (2012) seems to be a remake of the 1990 film, and not a re-adaptation of the Philip K. Dick source material. It’s not a reboot of anything.

Overboard (2018) is a remake of the 1987 film, with genders reversed. It’s not a reboot either.

Casino Royale (2006) is a reboot of the 007 film series, a re-adaptaion of the novel, and not a remake of the 1967 film.

The Red Dwarf movie seemed to have been planned as a reboot AND remake of the TV series, but with the same cast.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Another oddity of the sketch is that I’d estimate 90% of people don’t know Craig Charles is/was a poet.

Most people know him as an actor from Red Dwarf, and a TV Presenter/Personality. He wasn’t even in Coronation Street at the time this sketch was made.

So I’d guess the poetry angle is lost on many (if not most) viewers of Armstrong & Miller, and therefore the sketch makes even less sense overall.
Obviously to Armstrong & Miller themselves it made sense, but again I get the impression they’re fans of Red Dwarf, and therefore know Charles’s background better than most.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>Another double act doing material about Craig and Red Dwarf in this very odd Armstrong and Miller sketch I just found: https://youtu.be/lUEWsYns0yQ

They make a brief reference to Red Dwarf in another one of their sketches. I think they might be fans.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

What if the Jim Reaper DivaDroid message was filmed on video, rather than using 16 mm?

Bearing in mind that most Red Dwarf scenes in the 1980s filmed using videotape, rather than 16 mm film, the Jim Reaper DivaDroid message was unusual in that regard for shooting on 16 mm indoors instead before all other scenes would follow suit (and indeed proceed it). How would have filming using videotape affected the quality of that one message?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

@GlenTokyo Ah, you’re right. They’re slightly different, but clearly taken within moments of each other.

Having not seen that postcard in 15 years I’m surprised how well I’ve remembered it!

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I used to have a postcard that featured the first image in full, although I think the background had been cut out and replaced with a grey texture.
It was free at my local cinema, so (given that this was in 2002) I initially assumed it was to promote the then-upcoming Red Dwarf movie.

In fact, it was to promote the upcoming release of the first series on DVD.
To the right of Rimmer was the circular JMC logo with the mountains, and underneath read the MiB-inspired slogan “Protecting the Universe from the Scum of the Earth”.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

*Sigh*
For clarity, I was trying to quote Flap Jack’s comment “There aren’t even really any other sub-genres of TV comedy you could fit it into”.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Maybe not *TV* per se, but Mr Bean is very much in the same vein as the film comedy shorts of Chaplin, Lloyd, Laurel & Hardy, Three Stooges, etc.

You wouldn’t call Laurel & Hardy’s short films a “sitcom” (but then they weren’t made for television), they’re defined as ‘short films’. Mr Bean is the same thing, just made specifically for television and not cinema (excluding the two movies, of course).

I’d therefore class Mr Bean as “a series of comedy shorts made for television”. Not a catchy term, I’ll admit, but much more accurate than calling it a sitcom.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Think I’ve mentioned it on here before, but there’s a woman’s laugh at the end (or beginning?) of the bar room tidy sequence in Backwards that’s really loud and weird. It sounds like a phone ringing underwater.
Stranger still, it sounds the same backwards as forwards.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

A notably excellent Dave-era special effect is the moment Lister steps on an invisible beer can in M-Corp, which then spews its contents. It’s utterly flawless and convincing, and arguably the most perfectly executed visual effect the show has ever done.
It’s nowhere near my favourite Red Dwarf special effect, but in terms of being visually realistic and authentic I can’t think of a better one.

[Author]

Replies