The G&T Review of the Year 2023 Features Posted by Ian Symes on 31st December 2023, 15:16 At the start of Red Dwarf's 35th anniversary year, things had never seemed grimmer for the health of the franchise. The protracted legal kerfuffle between the show's creators was dragging on into its third calendar year, with no indication whatsoever that it would end any time soon, and any possibility of new material dwindling with each passing day. But as 2023 comes to an end, despite there still being no solid news in terms of actual production, there has been so, so much to give us hope that Red Dwarf shall live again. Read more →
The G&T Review of the Year 2022 Features Posted by Ian Symes on 31st December 2022, 15:43 Hello everyone... Much of my time at the moment is taken up with travelling all over the internet to promote The Coral Canvass, and quite frankly, I am really enjoying it. It's great to see everyone voting, and it marks our first poll where you rate each episode out of ten instead of listing them all in order. I very much look forward to seeing more votes come in over the coming month. Away from the happy, positive world of anniversary polls, you may have noticed that, as far as the ‘Red Dwarf’ picture is concerned, the legal battle for GNP continues to bore, while our incompetent (by design) production company is as usual hellbent on suing each other instead of making new episodes. This situation looks set to continue as the Grantists now have their man in place, a person utterly and totally suited to pushing on with the new world order’s so called ‘buttski’ programme to enslave humanity under never-ending spin-offs. Look, I know many of you must be thinking ‘Blimey, G&T has lost it big time!’, but believe me, once you can see it, you can’t unsee it! All rather worrying frankly… Read more →
Ganymede & Titan: 20 Years in 20 Articles Features Posted by Ian Symes on 14th September 2022, 09:00 2002. Tony Blair is Prime Minister. The Fellowship of the Ring wins four Oscars. Atomic Kitten's cover of The Tide Is High is Britain's best selling single. And on a free web-hosting provider, a brand new website starts. A website that features Red Dwarf, but is regularly updated. A website full of opinions, but with no justifications. A website that has already been started and abandoned three times by its teenage creator, and then almost scuppered by a part time job, but which finally hits the internet on the 14th September 2002, the date on which pedantry goes beyond the final frontier. The website is Ganymede & Titan, and tonight we salute the inexplicably still active site and its tedious crew. Read more →
Reintroducing Smegle! Quickies Posted by Jonathan Capps on 17th April 2022, 11:33 Well, since we’re all in the mood for rebirths, Smegle’s having a little bit of relaunch today. The original version was all well and good but it was guilty of being a tad on the easy side, and so we’ve had our finest minds working hard to firstly work out how to make guessing harder and secondly steal all the mechanics from Wordle so its daily mode will work. We’ve also changed where’s it’s hosted. Please, contain your excitement… Get your New Smegle here! It should all be self explanatory. The original version is preserved as ‘Casual Continuous’ mode, but be sure to complete your ‘Difficult Daily’ every day to maintain your streak and share it to Twitter so everyone can not give a fuck about your achievements. Have fun!
The G&T Review of the Year 2020 Features Posted by Ian Symes on 31st December 2020, 13:03 What a very strange year. It seems to have lasted for several millennia, but 2020 is finally over, pending any last minute shenanigans, which we can't entirely rule out. By now you'll have already read a dozen depressing round-ups cataloguing what a horrible anus it's been for the world at large, so let's focus instead on our small corner of it. The trials and tribulations of Red Dwarf may seem insignificant in comparison to the fucking atrocious circumstances we find ourselves in, but it feels more important than ever to find distractions and positives wherever we can, and it's actually been a pretty busy year for a show that's rapidly approaching its mid-thirties. Let's go through some of the highlights, and inevitably some massive lowlights, topic-by-topic, starting with The Promised Land, which yes, really was only this year. Read more →
Introducing the DwarfCast Book Club Quickies Posted by Ian Symes on 27th June 2020, 12:12 It’s only taken us fourteen years, but today is the day that we record our final episode commentary from the original BBC run of Red Dwarf. With the bit between our teeth and Broadcunting House having been moved online, we want to carry on this out-of-character run of recording on a weekly-ish basis while we can, so what next for DwarfCasts? Well, we’ve still got thirteen episodes from the Dave era to tick off, plus a whole host of spin-offs, extras and rarities to jabber over if we get stuck. But we’ll be alternating those with something we’ve been wanting to do for a long time. Welcome to The DwarfCast Book Club. Every fortnight or so, we’ll be re-reading one part of one Red Dwarf novel to then discuss in great detail, and we’d love it if you joined us along the way. First up, naturally, it’s Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers Part One: Your Own Death, and How to Cope With It, and if you can squeeze in those 94 pages before we record on the weekend of 4th/5th July, we’d love to hear from you so that we can include your comments, reviews and observations in our discussion. Whether you’re just jogging your memory or experiencing the novels for the first time, please leave your comments in this thread. To help us out, please indicate whether each point you make is a general one about the part as a whole, or relating to a specific sub-chapter, so that we can collate everything more easily. We’re really looking forward to revisiting the novels and finally discussing them with the level of depth that they so clearly deserve, and we hope that as many of you as possible find the time to join our virtual book group.
We’ve done a spot of tidying up Quickies Posted by Jonathan Capps on 8th April 2020, 10:57 So, it’s been about 8 years since we had our last big redesign and, honestly, things were starting to get a bit musty and suspicious smelling around these parts. So, we’ve gone ahead and… well, not really changed that much on the surface of things, but underneath now beats the heart of a website that is actually fully mobile responsive. With the increased activity bound to be occurring over the next few days and weeks we thought it might be a nice idea to give our community the gift of using a website that looks like it might, possibly, have been made with some sort of modern usability standards in mind. This is very much our first draft of the new theme and we’re going to be building on this constantly from now on. A list of layout tweaks, functionality fixes, additions and general improvements are all on our collective radar but, as ever, I reluctantly extend an invitation to our BELOVED COMMUNITY to let us know what you reckon so we can put you in the Trello list called “Things some cunts said”.
Ian’s Newsround – 31/03/20 News Posted by Ian Symes on 31st March 2020, 20:18 The dusting off of the old "Newsround" format from G&T's earliest days is a sure sign that a new broadcast is just around the corner; indeed, there are now only nine days to go until The Promised Land airs on Dave - that's Thursday 9th April at 9pm, as if you didn't already know. I think it's fair to assume that it won't be premiering on UKTV Play a week in advance this time, as that would be the day after tomorrow, and you'd think they'd have mentioned it by now if that was the case. An eminently sensible decision given the one-off nature of this outing, and with linear television audiences being boosted by the current situation, one that could lead to great results. There's certainly no shortage of press and social media coverage, as we'll dive into now... Read more →
# Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee… # Quickies Posted by John Hoare on 25th January 2020, 09:50 Forget Harry and Meghan, this is the real story. After nearly 17 years of writing on Ganymede & Titan – I started when I was a useless 21 year old, and I’m now a useless 38 year old – it’s time for me to hang up my steaming moon boots, mumble something about you all being people I met, and say goodbye. Before we see a digitalised recording of my final moments, there’s going to be a lengthy tribute, interspersed with poetry readings, read by… hang on, “digitalised”? That sounds fairly archaic now, doesn’t it? And if the material is digitalised, why are there analogue tape artefacts when Lister fast-forwards the tape? You really aren’t going to miss this kind of bullshit from me, are you? Continue reading →
DwarfCast 100 – 100th DwarfCast Special DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 1st September 2019, 13:16 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes That’s 100th DwarfCast. Not 100th PodCast like you and Skeletor think. Very nearly thirteen whole years ago, a group of young and self-important Red Dwarf fans decided to tip their toes into the barely-chartered waters of podcasting, unleashing their verrucas into the world with the first edition released on October 1st 2006. The fact that it's taken this long for the hundredth episode to come out should be a source of embarrassment and regret, but instead, brace yourself for the most self-indulgent and smug thing we've ever done: a documentary about ourselves, which runs for nearly an hour and a half. Join Jonathan Capps, John Hoare, Tanya Jones, Daniel Stephenson and Ian Symes for a look back on the history, highlights and lowlights of what is undoubtedly a podcast about Red Dwarf, ably assisted by a former regular making a one-off guest appearance many years later, reddwarf.co.uk editor Seb Patrick. We discuss the origins of DwarfCasts, the evolution of our style from ill-informed dickheads to slightly-better-informed dickheads, how the Back To Earth weekend nearly tore the group apart, and the difficulties faced when one of your hosts is on the verge of death in intensive care when he's supposed to be doing a live podcast. There's also music, testimonies from loyal listeners, and tonnes of clips of our best and worst moments - including snippets from the proto-DwarfCast episode commentaries recorded by a barely-pubescent Ian and John, previously not heard in the last fifteen years. Thankfully. Read more →
