Toxteth O-Grady

[Toxteth O-Grady]

It really is hard to believe that this was only 2004, considering how cheap and dated this whole show looks. This was Saturday evening primetime wasn’t it? Feels like it’s from the mid-80s.

And where was the Starbug from? Doesn’t look like one used on the show.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>I know it’s meant to be a shit joke, but it’s a shit shit joke.

You’ve only just had it explained to you. Allow a little time for rumination.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I think it’s good writing considering it’s a deliberately shit joke.

In fact it was perhaps the greatest deliberately-shit-joke ever broadcast for 35 years, until “spit on her wrist” took the crown.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I think Robert Llewellyn mentioned ‘Lemons’ and I immediately tuned out.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>Makes more sense than Twentica.

I was at one of the pre-screenings of that episode, which was followed by a very brief Q&A. My question was going to be “why the f*** was it called Twentica?”.

I’ve since read that it’s supposed to be a portmanteau of Twenties America, or something. It’s still pretty baffling even with that explanation. Especially as it’s never mentioned in the episode itself.

Sadly, I never got picked. The person who did get picked asked the much more pertinent and interesting question of “What’s your favorite episode of Red Dwarf?”.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>It’s still a shit joke, though.

That’s kinda the whole point, isn’t it.

An old out-of-touch professor telling a cringeworthy joke in an attempt to appear cool and hip on a show for “young adults”. A show which itself fails in its attempts to appear cool and hip to its target audience of “young adults”.

It’s supposed to be a shit joke to exemplify how shit Nozin’ Aroun’ is on several levels.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I never thought it was supposed to be anything to do with observational-style comedy, more that the Cat has a childlike innocence/stupidity in those early shows.
(“I’ve got a note from my mummy”, “He’s your father? No wonder you’re so ugly”, “I’d prefer chicken!”)

I guess he’s more kitten than cat in those early episodes, as a lot of his interests are the things that fascinate real-life kittens rather adult cats (shiny things, his shadow, string).
Sure, he’s always gong to be stupid, but in the early days he’s also quite naive. He’s genuinely trying to be helpful by suggesting a missing memory might be found behind a fridge. Danny’s delivery of the line is also very childlike, rather than observational-comedian-like.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I’d watched every episode of The Young Ones dozens of times before I ever noticed him.
He’s only in the first series though. The second series equivalent is those subliminal-type flash frames.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

> You’d think people would (have) know(n) about it (and then forgot) and there would be numerous backwards people coming out of the hole three million years in deep space.

We don’t know how long the time-hole was open for, though. It may have just been a couple of weeks or months, rather than a permanent fixture.

It’s safe to say that nobody else was flying around the edge of Earth’s atmosphere in that particular region in 1993. And it’s even safer bet that nobody else was flying around that other point in deep space millions of years later.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

In the TV episode, I always assumed they’d passed through a time-hole and reached a point in the (relative) far far future, after the universe had exhausted all energy and began to contract (big crunch). Everything that had happened prior to the end of the universe’s expansion was now happening again but in reverse.
So 2018 went into 2017, which went into 2016 and so on.
They arrived via the time-hole in (backwards) 1993.

Perhaps this mean the same time hole originally existed in the real (forwards) 1993 linking it to a backwards ‘year 3million+’, somewhere nearer the beginning of the of the Big Crunch?

In other words the time hole exists within our universe, and it links 1993 with a point in the year 3million+ but at the opposite side of Big Crunch. Traversing the time-hole takes you to a point in the life of the universe where time runs in the opposite direction from where you entered.

I’m pretty sure this is more thought than Rob and Doug ever put into, mind you.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>i think complaints about the “science” are a bit bollocks, really. red dwarf has had lots of concepts that don’t at all make sense-Backwards World

At the time at least, there were genuine discussions by physicists about the effects of ‘The Big Crunch’ including time itself possibly running backwards as a result of the contraction of the universe. I think this is both what inspired the episode, and might even be the explanation given by Kryten within it? (haven’t seen it for while).
There’s been subsequent arguments that the suggest this is impossible, but for an episode of Red Dwarf the “science” of it is perfectly acceptable.

It only become bollocks when they have stuff written backwards i.e. “Nodnol”. There’s no reason for that, given that it’s supposed to be our own universe with our own languages. Even if for some reason text WAS backwards, the letters should be mirrored, not just written in reverse order.
And the whole newspaper story about a bank robbery that happens “tomorrow”, with guns sucking bullets – none of that makes any sense. The story would be normal, referring to a robbery yesterday, it’s just printed before it happens.

If time really were running backwards nobody would know, except the Dwarf crew (this is the case in the episode, but the newspaper kinda contradicts it).
Heck, time could be running backwards for us right now and we’d be completely unaware of it. I think that’s the most interesting part of the concept, but they don’t really explore it in the episode.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

The BTE bunkroom looked way better than the X/XI/XII bunkroom.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Rimmer looked fattest in VIII
Lister looked fattest in VI
Kryten looked fattest in XI/XII
Holly looked fattest in Skipper
Kochanski looked fattest in VII
Hollister looked fattest in VIII
Red Dwarf looked fattest in V
The GELFs looked fattest in VII
The Skutters looked fattest in II
Einstein looked fattest in XI
Hitler looked fattest in IV
Polymorph looked fattest in XI
Cat has great metabolism

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Why did Craig look so fat in series VI? Did they purposely make him look as round as possible?
I think he probably was at his heaviest in that series (counting only the original run), but he seems to have been made to look obese most of the time.
He looks normal in his long-johns, and the Bret Riverboat outfit, but when in the brown boilersuit he looks massive.
The moment when the GELF bride kisses him, he’s like a huge potato with legs. I’m sure it wasn’t Craig’s actual physique, but it’s odd that they seemingly made him look really rotund in that one series.

Then in series VII he wears virtually the same costume but with a belt tied tight around his waist, as if to say “See? I’m not really that fat at all”.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

@ Ben Saunders – If you mean Peter (not Stewie) dressed as a girl in New York, you’re probably referring to the parody they did of the title sequence from ‘That Girl’; a late ’60s early ’70s American sitcom.

Like much of Family Guy, this sequence not only references something that most of its audience won’t recognise, but the same joke was also done many years earlier on The Simpsons.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Given that God is infinite, and the universe is also infinite, what would Red Dwarf be like if it started in 2016 instead of 1988?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

She’s aged better than most of the cast, but I get her point – she’s supposed to be a computer and therefore shouldn’t physically age at all.
On the other hand; if they lit her a certain way, upped the posterisation of the video and maybe pixelated it a bit, I think she’d get away with it.
Norman’s (visual) appearance in Skipper looked pretty dreadful. Badly lit and way too much makeup. They really should’ve brought back some of the Series I pixelation effect or something. He looks much better IRL than he did there.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

When has Hattie “stated quite clearly that she wouldn’t want to come back”?
She did DVD commentaries, DVD extras, and regularly appears at comic con panels with the rest of the cast. With that in mind it seems odd that she’d categorically say she’d never come back.

I saw her and Chris at an event prior to Series XI, and when asked if Holly was coming back she said “…not in series 11, anyway”.
I’m guessing she knew that Norman had filmed his part for series XII at that point, and was therefore being coy by teasing the possibility that *she* might return. But she certainly never gave any impression that she’d never do the role again. I always got the impression she’s just never been offered.

Besides, I remember just a few years ago everyone saying that Norman would never be coming back, that he’d burned his bridges with Red Dwarf – and look how that turned out.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Is there anyone left who doesn’t already know the twist ending of Planet of the Apes (1968)?
If references in things like The Simpsons hadn’t already spoiled it for you, then simply look at the cover of the home video release. Or watch the recent reboot/prequel trilogy.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I always misheard Spare Head 3’s line as “me circuit boards may have gone bandit..”. I only recently, after 20 odd years, realised he says “bandy”.

What’s more, as a result of that mishearing, I’ve spent the same 20 odd years believing the word “bandit” to have an extra definition: adj. meaning crazy, out of control, or malfunctioning.
I’ve even used the word bandit, with this made-up definition, in conversations over the years; oblivious to the fact that I was talking bollocks.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

This marvelous opus of pedantry must be kept alive, and so I’ll offer this:

>… since, unless anyone wants to correct me, the first time “Series [Numeral]” was officially used to designate the series was on the DVD releases.

Didn’t the BBC’s own adverts for the show use the roman numerals?

I seem to recall a clip advertising the then-upcoming episode ‘Holoship’ using the “Sirs, they’ve taken Mr. Rimmer!” scene with the onscreen caption:
Thursday 9.00 RED DWARF V

[Toxteth O-Grady]

According to the current understanding of physics, time-travel to the past isn’t impossible, just implausible.
Also, forward time-travel is possible according to special relativity and general relativity.
So that’s all the time-travel stuff checked-off.

Faster than light? “Apparent FTL is not excluded by general relativity, however, any apparent FTL physical plausibility is speculative. Examples of apparent FTL proposals are the Alcubierre drive and the traversable wormhole”.
No problems there.

Mind Swap? “Theoretically, a person with advanced organ failure could be given a new and functional body while keeping their own personality, memories, and consciousness through such a procedure”.
All good.

Anything else that isn’t in Series VIII can also be justified by browsing Wikipedia.

EXCEPT thermodynamic-law-defying androids. That’s just dumb.
I can only assume Doug Naylor wrote that line when Rob Grant wasn’t looking.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Live show? I’ve never been to the recording of any episodes, but isn’t Robert Llewellyn notoriously dreadful at knowing his lines?
You can see him reading cue-cards a lot in the finished episodes, and that’s with the benefit of re-takes. Fair enough; he usually has the most difficult, techno-babble lines to remember, but that IS how the character speaks.
How on Titan can he manage a live show?

And while were at it, Danny John-Jules often misses his cue from what I remember of Smeg Ups.

Maybe they could just do the ‘Marooned’ live-show that Craig Charles mentions at any given opportunity?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

The Hu/Lambert version, that’s the one they played on University Challenge recently. Oh how I hate it!

If the BBC can’t even manage to source their own original version of the theme, and use this piece of garbage instead, it’s not surprising that conventions don’t get it right either.

It’s seemingly the most commonly stocked version of the tune, comprising about 99% of the world’s music titled ‘Red Dwarf theme’.

They’ll be using it on the actual show next.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Yeah the BTE mask was remarkably good for what was a cheap production, especially compared to what came in the series after.

For me, the best mask is V’s. It looks the most realistically artificial (i.e.the most like a believable mechanoid, the least like a man wearing a rubber mask).
Best suit is probably VI’s.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I don’t think the Inquistor costume thing can really be counted as an error, unless you consider his colour change between series IV and V an error too.
Sometimes he’s in green and sometimes he’s in red. There doesn’t really need to be any logical reason behind it, so there’s really no error.
Isn’t there both a red and green hologram when the crew are interviewing Rimmer replacements in Holoship? Plus the Hologram-Camille was in red while Rimmer was in Green. I think it’s just a way of differentiating people onscreen (particularly in the Inquistor case).
In the real world, wasn’t the costume designer inspired by the Hologram-Camille to put Rimmer in red for series V?
One of the reasons the Rimmer munchkin scene from Blue is a highlight of the series for me, is the attention they put into the differing Rimmer costumes of the puppets!

[Toxteth O-Grady]

>As it is we get a somewhat clunky line later that serves no actual purpose except to explain that he can switch between the two.
He also does it again much later in the series 10 episode where he switches to soft-light to walk through a wall (Entangled was it?). It’s nice that this ability was established in a bit of clunky dialogue 19 years earlier

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Yeah, I realised immediately after I made that post that I should’ve also added “Mind you, Craig Charles can’t do a convincing scouse accent anymore either”.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Having heard his ‘Lister voice’ both in the shows, on the audiobooks, and on the DVD commentary, I would argue that Chris Barrie *cannot* do a convincing scouse accent. At least not to the ears of people familiar with scouse accents.
Don’t get me wrong; he’s an excellent mimic, and truly talented at doing voices. But while he can sort of ‘echo’ Craig very well (Queeg), the accent doesn’t sound remotely genuine.

He’s still better at it than Robert Carlyle in ‘The 51st State’, though.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I deliberately checked that they’d been referred to as a “she” before I made my post.

Ctrl+F is quite a handy trick in these situations. Just something to consider.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

The joke’s on her. Now she’ll have to buy the Series VIII DVD to find out what happens in Pete: part 2.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

To be fair though, he never says it should stop being made. Some of the reactions on here suggest he wrote “I don’t think it’s as good as it used to be, so nobody else should get any more episodes, even if they still enjoy it”.
To me at least, the last sentence seems to be questioning what the overall legacy of the show will be if you keep producing stuff that isn’t as good as it once was. He’s not saying it SHOULD BE CANCELLED.

But, as Warbodog has said, once the damage is done, and you might as well continue.
I’d further add that once you’ve reached the nadir (VIII/BTE) and you’re now improving (X, XI) then you may as well continue, BUT don’t kid yourself that legacy hasn’t been devalued.

I’m always happy that there’s new Red Dwarf episodes coming up, but at the same time I genuinely wish series VIII never happened. I’m looking forward to XII, but part of me thinks that had the series ended with the margarita scene at the end of Out of Time, Red Dwarf would probably be held in higher regard. Of course hindsight is 20/20, and I would have always wanted a series VII.

Like The Simpsons; I don’t want Red Dwarf to end, but I also think its critical legacy would be better if it had done – long ago. That seems to be the point of this article, not “Red Dwarf has been shit for years, end it now!”

P.S. Barrie became disillusioned during VI and made the decision to not do all of VII. Now the article doesn’t present it quite that accurately, but it also doesn’t say he left halfway the production of VII either.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Considering how brief this article is, it’s pretty much right on the money. Is there really that much here to disagree with?

– He praises the concept, that cast, the writing, and the sheer originality of the show.
– He says that by 1990, it was the best British sitcom on TV.
– He points out that Grant left after VI, and that the Emmy award represents the show’s highest plaudit.
– He notes that VII crept into comedy-drama, and was considered a disappointment.
– That VIII was even worse, undermining the whole concept of the show.
– That BTE was hugely anticipated, but inept.
– Finally he says that X and XI were “much better”, but the chances of the show again reaching its early 90s peak are unlikely.

Overall, that’s 100% correct for me. And judging by the results of G&T’s ‘Silver Survey’, it chimes with the general opinion on here too, no? Why is this article receiving such backlash?

The one point I’d disagree with is that Barrie choosing Brittas over RD is the greatest snub imaginable. So I’ll give you that.
But the rest? Remarkably accurate for a short, opinion-based, mainstream newspaper article about a cult TV show.

If it’d been posted on here and not The Guardian, would the author still be called a cunt and told to fuck off?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Yeah, I think a series should definitely be given time to find its feet, rather than being written off too early in its run.

Look at Seinfeld and The Simpsons as examples of how poor their pilots / first episodes were compared to how great they later became (and then wince at how they later jump the shark).

I just think ‘The End’ is actually a pretty strong episode, all things considered.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I was about to say the same. Isn’t a pilot a show that’s designed to be used as a test, to give the network an impression of what the series will be like?
It’s not necessarily the same thing as ‘Episode 1’.

Also ‘The End’, if that’s what you’re referring to as the pilot, did a great job of setting up the premise; the humour; and the characters; almost immediately IMO. Not the best episode ever, but certainly not the worst in Series 1 (and funnier than anything post-series 6).

What exactly is the interesting premise of The Orville? The trailer makes it appear to simply be like Star Trek but with jokes. (I’m not suggesting there isn’t an interesting premise – I’m genuinely asking)

[Toxteth O-Grady]

No, that’s Cat’s zebra print coat which was originally white (as seen in Camille) but the production crew later re-coloured using yellow felt-tip pens for Terrorform.
So it’s a (surprisingly) correct image for that episode.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

What’s the story behind the ‘Only the Good’ image? Lister with a mustache? I don’t remember that.
Also the ‘Tikka To Ride’ image appears to be some kind of behind-the-scenes rehearsal photo (Rimmer and Kryten aren’t in their proper costumes).

It’s interesting that this site has access to these seemingly rare photographs (and also quite interesting that it appears to be some kind of BBC / ITV joint enterprise).

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I just meant I was pleased that Howard Goodall never wrote *those* synth-version lyrics.
I probably should have put a full stop before mentioning his second verse.

Yes, his second verse lyrics are terrible too, but it seems apparent to me that he wasn’t taking them seriously, and likely knew they would never be recorded.
RD wasn’t his first theme tune, so he probably knew just one verse would be plenty for the end credits of a sitcom. The additional verse may just have place-holder lyrics that he never bothered doing a second draft of.
Then again, if you look at the normal 1st verse lyrics written down, they’re not exactly Wordsworth either. I think the singer’s performance brings a lot of credibility to them.
Maybe if Jenna Russell sang Goodall’s 2nd verse it would have have been half-decent. Who knows?
All I know is I hate the Hu & Lambert version, and the additional lyrics are only part of that hatred. That ending with the repeated chord, alternating between channels, is just atrocious.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I always heard it as “Velocity at time-warp speed” too.

Does anyone know who’s responsible for those God-awful second verse lyrics? Or that horrendous synthesised techno version of the tune they are heard in?
I had it on some album of Sci-Fi themes back in the 90s, and I listened to it so much it’s caused that crappy version to be burned into my memory. I can still hear it in my head if want (or don’t want, as the case will always be).

I was pleased to see in the Howard Goodall DVD feature that he wasn’t responsible for those shit lyrics, and even had a second verse of his own.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

“(It’s too recognisable as the Polymorph location as well. That always annoys me.)”
Isn’t it supposed to the same location though?

[Toxteth O-Grady]

Yup. That’s the one.

[Toxteth O-Grady]

I can’t believe nobody’s mentioned the stupid laugh that’s heard at the end (or should that be the beginning?) of the bar room tidy in Backwards. You know, the one that sounds like telephone ringing underwater?
Remarkably, I’ve even played this laugh backwards and it sounds exactly the same either way; utterly moronic.
I don’t think this is a sweetened laugh though, but a genuine on-set laugh. One that badly needed removing.

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