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Holy sh*t!! Red Dwarf is back!!!!

Hirogen Alpha said:
I prefer the extended episodes, if only because they are without laugh tracks (if I'm thinking of the right thing). Red Dwarf didn't need a laugh track once it moved past the sitcom format and became a space comedy.
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I disagree. Really dry satire and other subtle comedy like Arrested Development & Made in Canada work very well without laugh tracks. However, Red Dwarf, even when they stopped shooting with a studio audience, was always a broad sitcom in the tradition of all great studio sitcoms. Hearing it without a laugh track it just kinda feels dead. It's like watching Star Wars without the John Williams music.
 
Jim Steele said:
What's with all the down on I and II?
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Hey, I'm not down on I & II at all. Just that by IV, V & VI they had ironed out all the kinks and had the show down to a fine art. Production values doesn't even come into it for me. That aside, I think I'm one of the few that prefer Hattie to Norman. Other than not being a miserable old git, she was much more fun in a "happy to be bonkers" kind of way. I've often thought if the yanks ever have another go at Dwarf USA then, at the risk of typecasting, the ideal choice for Holly would for me, be Lisa Kudrow.
 
I'm not generally bothered by the the lesser production values in Series I & II. There were a few instances where the effect of someone walking through Rimmer looked so unconvincing that it's even kinda hard to tell what's going on.

Although, Series I does have, IMO, the show's worst gaffe of all time in "Future Echoes." In the scene were Lister sees a future echo of a conversation that Rimmer is having and then has that exact same conversation with Rimmer, Rimmer's delivery is decidedly different in places. In particular, when Rimmer says, "Shut up!" in the future echo, he points at Lister while he says it. When he says it for real a few minutes later, both his arms stay at his sides. The rest of the scene his performances are acceptably similar but that one moment always bugs me.
 
I honestly never noticed any differences. Still, I think we can forgive Chris Barrie for not possessing inhuman abilities of recall.
 
Kinda reminds me of another arm gaffe from B5, "Babylon Squared".

That one is FRIGGIN GLARING it bugs me to no end every damned time.
 
The Borgified Corpse said:
^Normally, I'd agree. But the pointing is such a strong acting choice that you really feel its absence when he doesn't do it the 2nd time.
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I must have seen future echoes hundreds, maybe thousands of times in my life, and I've never noticed any huge glaring differences.

I actually think it's one of the most well done scenes in the entire show.
 
Jim Steele said:
The Borgified Corpse said:
^Normally, I'd agree. But the pointing is such a strong acting choice that you really feel its absence when he doesn't do it the 2nd time.
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I must have seen future echoes hundreds, maybe thousands of times in my life, and I've never noticed any huge glaring differences.

I actually think it's one of the most well done scenes in the entire show.
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Yep, I agree. I watched series 1 and 2 so much I nearly wore out the tapes, when they were the only ones I had, and I never noticed it either.
 
I'm gonna need to watch it again when I get home because I have also seen it hundreds of times paying a lot of attention to how well Chris Barrie did that scene and have never noticed a glaring difference either.
 
There's bound to be little differences - he's only human after all.

But pulling off that performance on a tight multicamera shoot, on a strict studio schedule (etc)? Chris Barrie is the man.
 
I agree Chris did a great job with that one; which brought the "See you in 5 minutes" scene from "Pete" in series 8 rushing into my head, you can spot the differences but Mac did have to repeat it about ten times!
 
The Borgified Corpse said:
Hirogen Alpha said:
I prefer the extended episodes, if only because they are without laugh tracks (if I'm thinking of the right thing). Red Dwarf didn't need a laugh track once it moved past the sitcom format and became a space comedy.
Click to expand...

I disagree. Really dry satire and other subtle comedy like Arrested Development & Made in Canada work very well without laugh tracks. However, Red Dwarf, even when they stopped shooting with a studio audience, was always a broad sitcom in the tradition of all great studio sitcoms. Hearing it without a laugh track it just kinda feels dead. It's like watching Star Wars without the John Williams music.
Click to expand...

Yep. That was where series seven went wrong. It went from being a sit-com set in space to a sci-fi show with gags. It started to believe it's own hype and played to the fans too much, losing sight of the fact that it was supposed to be funny foremost. And it didn't help that the best writer left!
 
votd said:
I agree Chris did a great job with that one; which brought the "See you in 5 minutes" scene from "Pete" in series 8 rushing into my head, you can spot the differences but Mac did have to repeat it about ten times!
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Yeah. Although, I think part of the gag there was the subtle differences. I mean, if they wanted, they could have just looped the actual clip over & over. But in an odd, metafictional way, I think part of the humor comes from Mac's visible exasperation at having to repeat that line over & over.
 
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