h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I for one am with you Grey Area. The new computer effects don't hold a candle to the handmade stuff of old. But then I thought that Star Wars Special Edition was a waste of time as well.

Im glad to see that I am not the only one who thinks that the new digitally re-mastered (ha ha) version is not a patch on the old versions. Its also good to see that other people think that series seven was a bit naff, but then at tleast they got the thread back with series eight.
Im off to smoke a Kipper now and I mught wash it down with a bottle of urine recyc

Okay, the established fact is that we all like the tiny rouge one. Favourite episode, anyone?

I loved "Back to Reality" from Series 5.
That's the one where the crew find out they were playing some kind of total immersion video game called 'Red Dwarf' for the last four years and they only managed a score of 4 percent.

Here's a snippet...(ANDY is the brummy attendant in charge of the arcade game)

ANDY: Really? You found the Captain's message right away?!
RIMMER: (Taken back) _What_ Captain's message?
ANDY: The one that's hidden in the microdot in the 'i' in Rimmer's
swimming certificate. Well, that's the clue, isn't it? Rimmer having
a swimming certificate and not being able to swim!
KRYTEN: That's a clue?!
ANDY: It's a blatant clue, isn't it?

This exchange reminds me of a lot of the puzzles in Starship Titanic!

And Cat finds out he is really Dwane Dibbley, a nerd who wears anoraks and suffers a pudding-bowl haircut and an enormous overbite.

And don't go to http://www.mushroom.demon.co.uk/red-dwarf/soup.html either if you know what's good for you.
Where's my motorbike? I'm sure I can jump the barbed-wire.

Okay, I won't go there. I know what's good for me.

Polymorph has to be my favourite in terms of split-your-sides funny. Those shrinking boxer shorts ...

How about "Justice" with those security boots?

There was an American version of Red Dwarf "almost" made, although I'd have to look up the dates...which any of you can do perfectly well if you have a copy of Robert Llewellyn's `behind the scenes' book "The Man in the Rubber Mask" (he's Kryten, after all). There should be plenty of copies of this book about, although my beloved hard-covers of "Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers" is damned hard to find (and usually costs the earth when I do find it).

Anyway: I've forgotten how the Americans got hold of it, but Robert was the only English cast member to decide to go over and be Kryten on American television.
Naturally, nothing went as planned: just like the lame attempts to transplant "Fawlty Towers" to America, they had to change everything to make the characters more "likeable" - Lister, the ultimate slob, was spiffed up a bit, and scripts weren't funny and very little of the context made sense. Even Rob and Doug were on hand to do the `script doctor' thing, rescuing the cast at the last moment.

Curiously, Robert's strangely `mechanical' walk was explained in this story: this wobbly-walk allows him to duck when he must pass under the door-frames on the BBC sets: they're very small. In America he was still walking this way and an American cast member pointed out that it looked odd. That was when Robert discovered one of the blessings of American commercial television: where they save money on the scripts, they spend it on the sets: there was lots of room for him and he didn't need to wobble like that.

While I'm not in the States, I too must wait for PBS to do another pledge marathon before I can see the episodes; I missed the entirety of series 8 because I was working that night and wasn't on cable. (Cable, for those that don't know, is wired into most (if not all) Canadian homes, replacing those ancient antennae years ago). Cable is in the same kind of state as telephone: everyone's got a connection; do we pay for the service?

While this isn't specific to Red Dwarf, it is specific to putting commercial-free shows on commercial television, something often threatened by the studio brass usually responsible for copying "Brit-coms".
About fifteen years ago I came across KVOS-TV out of Bellingham, Washington, carrying "Fawlty Towers". I sat and watched it, noting where they put commercials and what happened as a result: the show ran almost 45 minutes. That left them another 15 minutes to fill until the next hour started.
I can only imagine what must've been going through the minds of the programmers when they realised that a 28.45 minute (or whatever a UK 1/2 hour show, with credits, is) show would be that length. There were no places to cut it, they had to show it full length.
I don't think they did that again. This was especially funny because this was during the "Fawlty Towers" rage when anyone who wasn't someone else was watching it (on PBS) and knew most of the gags.

Back To Reality was a great episode and a great excuse to introduce Dwayne Dibly (while I loved the character all the other Dibley episodes were a bit too forced - should have moved onto something new).

Personally I have a soft spot for "Backwards" or "Rimmerworld", the one where Rimmer's sent back in time and his offspring start a new civilization, that are such smegheads that they hate the original Rimmer and lock him in a cell. Brilliant!

Unlike Zarquon, I really liked the early stuff, especially Series 2 where so many of the plot lines really got going, from "Kryten" (where the new character arrived to add to the comic possibilities) to "Better Than Life" and "Stasis Leak". And much as I like Hattie Hayridge, Norman Lovett IS Holly. Imagine if they'd continued HHGG with Felicity Kendal as The Book >.

Favourite of all? Maybe BTL, but I'll plump for Queeg. We are talking Jape of the Decade, after all.

I loved Backwards and I also love Future Echoes. basically if it's got a lot of norman lovett in it I love it.
By the way what do y'all think of series 8?
Cos i didn't think it was as good.

Anything's better than VII, but yeah VIII is good. Nice to see they can think of new ideas after this long. Though Kryten's 'penis' problem was (pardon the pun) flogged to death. Kat's dance with the ships was fun.

I loved the bit where Kryten didn't want to go from Yellow to to Red Alert 'cause it meant changing the bulb !

While Back to Reality and Backwards are definitely front-runners, my absolute favorite would have to be Quarantine, because I am obsessed with Mr. Flibble!

Rimmer: They've been naughty boys, haven't they Mr. Flibble?

Mr. Flibble: Yes!

Rimmer: What do we do to naughty boys who've been naughty, Mr. Flibble?

Mr. Flibble: Uncle Arnie fries them alive with his hex-vision!

Rimmer: That's right, Mr. Flibble!

"Mr. Flibble's very cross."

Well, I've put my theory to my fellow Aussie RD lovers and they didn't find a problem with it, but that was a couple of months ago and it's mostly forgotten, but it was something along these lines...
Obviously this Sister Talia woman is the source of the corosion (so long ago I've forgotten what it was) because it's physically impossible for her to be over 3,000,000 y.o and still look that good - I don't care how good plastic surgery has become. And if you remember, Rimmer kissed, nay, snogged her when he was in the mirror world. Therefore he has the antidote to this corosion thingy in him. He'll either go to the lab and duplicate it or, when you consider how inept he is, snogg the machine that opened the mirror world.
Of course once he's there, that would mean there would definately be two Rimmers, Kochanskis and Listers, and maybe 2 Cats. Also, because Lister holds a lower rank than Rimmer, in the mirrorworld shouldn't Lister be captain? Of course this totally ruins the plot....
Is that vaguely satisfactory?

A leap of faith perhaps; trusting friends that say the show's brilliant (assuming you trust their judgement); finding episodes at the video-shop or library and viewing them (in order); contacting the production offices (which might irritate them more than doing the above) to find out how good the show is....

Sometimes actor's phonics are difficult to hear; the Cat's alter-ego is DWAYNE Dibbly....

Which reminds me: how many knew that one of the possible titles for "Monty Python" might've been "Gwen Dibley's Flying Circus" if Michael had had his way?

The rest of his horde might be Americans; I'm a Brit living in Vancouver, Canada. I have to wait for the local PBS station to pick up Red Dwarf like everyone else.
Also, since I fancy myself a writer, I've noticed a strong different between American sit-coms and the exportable Brit-coms: this has mostly to do with 1)the network airing them; 2)the "form and pressure" of the time.
eg: Anything produced by the BBC will likely have stronger scripts and be better connected to audience response because they're not tied to the advertising pound/dollar as other networks are; the only exception to this was Spitting Image, and sadly that's gone. It was just savage enough to make me laugh. (most of the time I smile benignly at sit-coms, or shake my head, wonder why they bothered, and ignore them).

eg 2: Britain has a far greater heritage of being clever in literature, and many of the writers there are trained, or at least familiar with that. The audience is assumed to be moderately intelligent, which isn't the case with commercial television in America. (This is a self-fulfilling cycle, too: after forty years of appeal-to-everyone television which, after a shaky start, is financed by content-controlling advertisers, the American public's been conditioned to accepting lowest-common-denominator material. The strong shows stand out everywhere, some of them even last a while in syndication. Innovative fare is discouraged for fear of losing a) sponsorship and b)confusing the audience.