High & Low: Special Effects featured image

Of all the difficult tasks I have faced whilst writing Ganymede & Titan, this has to be one of the most difficultistestist. Even more difficult than writing an article which doesn’t manage to be spectacularly rude about somebody for very little reason. How the bloody hell do you manage to boil down the quite staggering amount of amazing special effects work for Red Dwarf into one easy-to-digest Top 10 list?

Answer: with a lot of kicking, screaming, self-doubt as to the worth of my entire life, and general dissatisfaction. Hopefully that’s sold this article as something well worth reading. Let’s get on with it, shall we?

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High & Low: Guest Characters featured image

Previously on High & Low, we've comprehensively and indisputably determined the ten best and five worst cast members' other shows and DVD extras. With those contentious issues now settled once and for all, we turn to the topic of guest characters. Red Dwarf has always had such a strong core ensemble that it's a rare occasion when an outsider takes centre stage. But memorable guest performers have often been used to enhance storylines, either for extra comedy value, a threat to the crew's safety, or to build touching and emotional relationships. The best ones are usually a combination of at least two of the three, and it's those that we celebrate here, along with some of those that failed to do any of them effectively.

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So, starting on the 4th August, YouTube will be launching Geek Week, spotlighting all manner of geeky things including, most notably, a one-off new episode of Knightmare which is sure to be good.

More pertinently for us, however, is that Kryten is to be unceremoniously ripped from the Red Dwarf universe and “will act as a daily host pointing viewers to new videos”.  As far as I can tell there’s no word on who will be writing Kryten’s dialogue, but I imagine it will cover topics such as cleaning, cleaning and cleaning.

The whole thing is being produced by ChannelFlip, who have also been responsible Our Bobby’s web series Carpool and The MoWer.

EDIT: So this has all started now, and Kryten’s daily introduction videos have actually turned out to be quite good, as has Geek Week itself.  As revealed in Seb’s big TOS on Friday these videos are written by Robert Llewellyn (The Joeys, The Corner House, Beyond a Joke) and directed (and presumably also co-written) by Doug Naylor (Pushing Up Daisies, Over to Bill, Beyond a Joke).

Here, have some handy fucking links why not:

  1. Kryten’s Picks for Blockbuster Sunday
  2. Kryten’s Picks for Global Geekery Monday
  3. Kryten’s Picks for Brainiac Tuesday
  4. Kryten’s Picks for Super Wednesday
  5. Kryten’s Picks for Gaming Thursday
  6. Kryten’s Picks for Fan Friday
  7. Kryten’s Picks for Best of Saturday

A thread about the Re-Mastered episodes over on the unlinkable forum has brought up an interesting debate. Which version of Series 2's Kryten contains the edited out "Mc" from Chicken McNugget? Until today, this is how I always assumed it stood:

Original Broadcast: Edited
Video Release: Edited
Repeats: Edited
Re-Mastered: Un-edited
DVD: Edited (in line with their 'as broadcast' policy)

But there's opinion on BTLpay that the repeated episodes did NOT have the line edited, which brings into question whether the original broadcast was edited, too! What does this do the DVDs' 'as broadcast' status?

I'm sticking to my above opinion, but it would be interesting to find out THE TRUTH. Ok, so may not 'interesting', as such. I'm bored, ok? And quite possibly suffering from mild autism.

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