DwarfCast 104 – Ouroboros Xtended Commentary DwarfCasts Posted by Ian Symes on 24th November 2019, 16:23 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes Fire up your podcast feed, abandon a baby in a pub and shoot an alternate version of your ex-girlfriend with a harpoon gun, because the latest victim of the DwarfCast commentary treatment is Ouroboros, the Xtended version no less. And as it tradition for the less good episodes of Red Dwarf, it falls to the double act of Danny Stephenson and Ian Symes to do the honours, because nobody else could face it. So join them as they continuously fail to remember which bits are Xtended and which aren't, and complain about the awkward pauses added by the process, while also leaving their own awkward pauses. Nevertheless, there's plenty to discuss, including JMC's fickle uniform policy, comparisons between what's on screen and what was in an early draft of the script, how to make a disintegrator, the incestuous implications of the episode's big twist and exactly what "hospital corners" means. Oh, and the "you're lying" thing comes up every now and then. Read more →
Script Extracts: A Glimpse of a Shadow Features Posted by Ian Symes on 20th November 2018, 12:01 Well, in the absence of any Series XIII news, and with no Bluray until the new year, we're scrabbling for crumbs. We'll take whatever morsels of intrigue are thrown our way, but when our friend and loyal G&Ter Jonathan "Jonsmad" Young recently got in touch to draw our attention to The Prop Gallery, we didn't realise how intriguing these particular morsels would turn out to be. It's one of those places that sells props, costumes and other film and TV memorabilia, often at somewhat eye-watering prices. In the past, such items have included Red Dwarf scripts, and a quick search reveals that twelve have been sold in total. They're all long gone now, but the listings remain online. As well as providing details of their condition and provenance - many have come from the personal collection of the late, great Peter Wragg - what we're really interested in are those tantalising images of sample pages. Read more →
Red Dwarf VII: The Early Drafts Features Posted by Ian Symes on 17th January 2017, 12:54 Twenty years ago today, Red Dwarf VII debuted on BBC Two. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Red Dwarf had been away for over three years, having previously managed to average out as an annual event for six series. The delay was mainly caused by three monumental behind-the-scenes events: Chris Barrie deciding to leave the show; Craig Charles being held on remand on a charge from which he was ultimately cleared; and Grant Naylor splitting as a gestalt writing entity, leaving Doug in sole command of the show. Big changes were also afoot on-screen, with the change to single-camera, audience-free shooting, the addition of a film effect, a move to a comedy-drama format, and Rimmer's place on Starbug being taken by Chloe Annett as a version of Kochanski from an alternate universe. In many ways, it was twenty years ago today that Red Dwarf changed from what it was then to what it is now. The reason those first six series still exist in a bubble is that they were all made in broadly the same circumstances. The cast and crew may have altered over the years, and the production may have moved from Manchester to Shepperton, but these changes took place slowly and naturally; to paraphrase another comedy that debuted in 1997, it was evolution, not revolution. With Series VII, that changed - a conscious effort was made to make things different from the previous series, and it was against a backdrop of production problems and uneasy compromises. Red Dwarf lost its momentum, and it's been fighting to get it back ever since. It's only now that it's starting to feel more smooth and assured; Series XII will be the first time in years that there hasn't been a raft of changes since the previous series, and that's only because they were shot back-to-back. Opinion remains mixed on the merits of Series VII. The G&T staff are pretty unanimous in our disapproval, but elsewhere there are plenty of fans who enjoy it for what it is, regardless of how different it is from what came before, and even some who hold it in the same regard as the first six series. Regardless of your position, what's interesting is how it came together, and the developments that took place prior to the episodes reaching the screen. To help with the extra workload caused by Rob's departure, and the series containing two more episodes than usual, Doug brought additional writers on board for six of the eight initially-planned episodes. How this process worked has always been a great source of speculation, and to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the show's first big comeback, that's what we're investigating today. Read more →
Xtended Revisited: Ouroboros Features Posted by John Hoare on 24th March 2015, 20:09 In Red Dwarf VII, three episodes are represented by two separate yet equally important versions: the original broadcast episodes, and extended versions released on VHS in 1997. These are their stories. This must be some kind of record for G&T. Eight years ago, I wrote an essay detailing the differences between the broadcast and Xtended versions of Tikka to Ride, with the promise the rest of the episodes would follow. I thought it was about time to follow through on that promise. I may not be fast, but I get there in the end. I THINK HOLLY SAID THAT IN AN EPISODE OF RED DWARF. So, we turn to Ouroboros Xtended. As before, each relevant section is transcribed, with Xtended material presented like this. There then follows any technical notes on the sequence, and finally my opinion as to how well the additional material works. If you've hung around on this site for longer than five seconds, you can probably guess what my opinions are likely to be, so please feel free to skip those bits if reading me rant on about VII makes you want to come round to my house and smash my head in with a golf club. Read more →
