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Previously on G&T: Regular reader Flap Jack put us all to shame with his incredibly detailed examination of the changes between hardback, paperback, Omnibus and unabridged audiobook versions of the four Red Dwarf novels. Now he's back to finish the job, with an examination of the abridged audiobooks.

Imagine: it’s 1993, and you’re excitedly rushing home after picking up a copy of the newly released Red Dwarf Series 1 VHS. You heat yourself up a bowl of alphabetti spaghetti, grab a Leopard Lager from the fridge, and start up the tape to watch The End. But part way through, you start to realise something’s wrong. What happened to the subplot about Rimmer’s exam? Wasn’t there a scene where you see Lister with Frankenstein before he gets in trouble with the Captain? What’s going on? You double check the VHS sleeve, and realise to your horror that it doesn’t say “Series I Byte One” but “Series I Abridged”! You try to scream, but discover your mouth is sealed shut. You run to the door, but behind it is just a brick wall. You look back at the alphabetti spaghetti: all ampersands.

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In the latest example of our readers being better than us at writing articles these days, we're proud to present an extremely niche but very important missive from Flap Jack. Ever since recording the Book Club, we've wanted to catalogue all the changes made within the various releases of the Red Dwarf novels. In a beautiful piece of synchronicity, old Flappo Jacko got in touch a few weeks ago having done exactly that. This is the first of two articles investigating the amendments to those sacred texts.

Red Dwarf is no stranger to having its episodes tweaked with over time. From smaller changes like the word “week’s” being omitted from the opening of Polymorph on VHS, to the huge reworks made for the controversial Red Dwarf Remastered project, you can never be absolutely sure that your favourite moments will be unaltered whenever the show is released onto a new format.

But there’s one corner of the Dwarf canon where this phenomenon has so far only experienced surface-level scrutiny: the novels. If you’ve ever read Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers on paperback and then later re-experienced it on audiobook -  or in the Omnibus edition with its sequel, Better Than Life - you’ll probably have noticed that a few things here and there aren’t quite the same. How many details were changed from version to version, exactly, and what were they? Today, let’s find the answers, piece by piece.

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We did it, everyone. Almost an entire year of consistent podcasting and all it took was a global pandemic and stay at home orders to make it happen. I even bought a proper microphone. So, in a very nice accident of timing, we are rounding out the year with our final book club for Better Than Life, Part 4: The End and After. Danny, Ian and Cappsy gather round the virtual yule log to discuss the shit out of 12 whole pages, before fully embracing the Christmas cheer with some truly awful parsnip waffles.

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DwarfCast 123 - Book Club #6: Better Than Life (Part Three) featured image
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I know we said we'd be back soon but just count yourself lucky we only made you wait an extra week and not almost 40 years. As we get very close to finishing Better Than Life, join the pale, waxy figures of Cappsy, Danny and Ian as they enter The Book Club Time and are after feasting on Part Three: Garbage World. What are the long term narrative implications of Garbage World? Is Polymorph a show to book conversion too far? What could possibly be next for the poor giraffe? For those of you not of a nervous disposition, listen on and find out.

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Sit down, get comfy, put on your favourite Paul Robeson track and blow the dust off your, er, dust covers because we're back with another Book Club! Join the emaciated husks of Danny, Ian and Cappsy as they tackle Better Than Life Part Two: She Rides and discuss the first ever instance of the show stealing from the books as well as the very meaning of relative time dilation in an amazingly compressed space. And giraffes.

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In what will surely test the very limits of the phrase "worth the wait" we're back with our DwarfCast Book Club (patent applied for)! After a short break, Ian, Danny and Cappsy are ready and willing to dive into Better Than Life; starting, uncontroversially, with Part 1: Game Over as our time in the deadly TIV comes to an end.

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"I alter people's perception of reality." - Dr. Hypnosis

One recurring theme of Red Dwarf has always been the rather tenuous grip on reality our crew have. Whether it's the Total Immersion Videogame of Better Than Life, the hallucinations suffered in Back to Reality, those damn reality pockets in Out of Time - to name three of many - perception of reality is something which Grant Naylor return to time and time again.

What's interesting, however, is that Red Dwarf is far from the first time Grant Naylor have explored this idea. In fact, we can trace their fascination with it right back to their very first solo writing credit: the first episode of Radio 4 sketch show Cliché, broadcast on the 16th March 1981.

I present to you the strange adventure of Dr. Hypnosis: his real name... Dr. Hypnosis.

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When people talk about antecedents to Red Dwarf, it's often science fiction which is endlessly referenced. Films like Dark Star, in terms of the situation and portraying working class people in space, or Alien, which amongst other things directly influenced many sets in the show, to Blade Runner, which... erm... I got nothing.

When it comes to sitcoms, there's the classic "Steptoe and Son in space", which is often thrown around as an early concept for the show. Porridge is also mentioned, in terms of the claustrophobic trapped situation between characters which the show was trying to evoke. All of this is certainly true, but typically there's very little analysis beyond mentioning a TV show or film, along with a one line description.

Recently, I've had the utter delight of watching Hancock's Half Hour for the first time. And the episode The Tycoon (TX: 13/11/59) has a number of remarkable similarities to the Dwarf episode Better Than Life, broadcast nearly thirty years later. Moreover, I don't just mean in terms of character work - the main plot beats of the episode are broadly identical, despite Better Than Life seemingly hanging off a science fiction idea which Hancock would find impossible to replicate.

Rather than vague hand-waving or simplistic single line reductions, let's take a look at the episode in detail, shall we?

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In an article that could well win awards for featuring the biggest leap in logic ever, PrisonPlanet.com has been theorising on the similarities between Sony's new online community software Home with the fictional virtual reality concepts seen in The Matrix, Red Dwarf and Phil Dick’s Time Out of Joint along with their less than desirable situations and concequences.

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