SFX magazine have updated their website with what is apparently the official poster for Series X. It features a tweaked version the image from the vindalunar promotion that Richard Naylor said we could expect to see a lot of in the future, so we can reasonably safely assume that posters of this will be going up around the country soon. If you see one about, let us know.
(Click on the image for a high resolution version)
It’s Friday, and that means a new update from Dave. This week it’s two new behind the scenes pictures of the new Red Dwarf model. The first of these shows the top side being filmed, presumably for the end credits sequence. The second shows model man Steve Howarth in Bill Pearson’s workshop painting the underside before reattaching the asteroid to the hull, as seen in a picture tweeted by Richard Naylor the other day.
Once again, whatever our misgivings about the length of the nose (which is a consequence of using the movie model), these pictures once again to reaffirm why we were so pleased to hear that models were being used again. The ship is eminently more tangible when presented as a physical construct rather than a CGI one, and it should hopefully create some fantastic looking shots in the finished shows. You can view the pictures below:
After the shambles of the #vindalunar promotion earlier, here is some genuinely exciting news for you; Dave have released the official synopsis for Series X. We also now have it confirmed that the series will go out at the perfect time of 9pm, so make a note in your diaries now. There’s not much we can elaborate on without spoiling you, but there’s plenty of things there for you to take in and speculate on. Obvious as an overview it is a little spoilery, so take this as a warning that it may contain things you’d rather avoid:
Red Dwarf X *UK Premiere*
Thursday, 9pm (from Thursday 4th October)
Space battles, quantum entanglement, and love triangles with snack dispensers, are just some of problems facing the boys from the Dwarf as they return in a brand new series. Red Dwarf X, the 10th series of the legendary sci-fi sitcom, airs exclusively on Dave and Dave HD this October.Red Dwarf X returns with 6 x 30 min stand alone episodes, recorded in front of a studio audience and reunites the much loved original cast of Chris Barrie (Rimmer), Craig Charles (Lister), Danny John-Jules (Cat) and Robert Llewellyn (Kryten).
The brand new series, written and directed by Doug Naylor, begins with the Dwarfer’s mining ship still creaking though the wastelands of unchartered deep space, but the posse soon stumble upon the mysteriously abandoned SS Trojan. As they inspect the ship Rimmer receives an SOS distress call from an old foe and is suddenly faced with the dilemma of his life.
Throughout the six part series Lister grapples with the problem of being his own father, gets involved in a love triangle with snack dispensers 23 and 34, while Kryten and Cat become quantum entangled forcing them to do everything in unison. The posse also find themselves marooned in 23 AD where they rescue a famous historical figure with a beard.
The series final episode finds the boys surrounded by a Simulant War Cruiser and its fleet of attack ships. Armed with only two forks and a pencil sharpener, the Dwarfers begin to wonder whether this is the beginning of the end. Only one man can save them. Unfortunately that man is Arnold J Rimmer.
Well we thought this would be the case after Dave’s website seemed to accidently reveal the date on their Series VIII page the other day, but as the #vindalunar campaign comes to an end we can now confirm that Series X will air from Thursday October 4th on Dave. We don’t yet have a time, but we can take a guess at 9PM as that was the time listed on the Dave page that also released the air date early.
With each tweet using the #vindalunar hash tag a small amount of helium was released into a weather balloon that was then this afternoon sent up into space with a curry and a can of Leopard Larger. Well, actually it was sent up prior to this as Ganymede & Titan mention here, but that is when the video was streamed. The whole tweeting element was a bit dull to be honest and if we could have avoided the tweeting element I’m sure people would generally have been a lot happier, but the final result of seeing a Leopard Larger can is space is sort of nice. Obviously, the bench mark is still the Back to Earth promotion, especially as the Berkley square event allowed people to get involved, but at least there has been something a little different about this promotion.
The launch date could be seen printed on the bar at the bottom of the balloon supporting the larger and curry, and can be seen in the pictures below:
Just in case you go to the page the stream was on and notice something odd, the test card that has been put up in place of the stream features the wrong date. The series will air in October not November, so no need to panic. You can see the error here:
It seems that as we get closer to the new series airing our weekly roundup of news about is will get longer and longer. This week is no exception, so brace yourselves for a large one (oo-er Mrs, say no more, say no more etc).
Perhaps the biggest news of the week has been the release of the episode titles following the BBFC passing the new series. We’re sure you’ve all seen them by now, but all the same here is a recap of what they are:
- Episode 1 – Trojan
- Episode 2 – Fathers and Suns
- Episode 3 – Lemons
- Episode 4 – Entangled
- Episode 5 – Dear Dave
- Episode 6 – The Beginning
Pleasingly, this has been widely reported across the internet from more specialist websites like The British Comedy Guide as well as more sites with a greater public image such as the one for the Radio times. One thing that has helped this of course is the title for episode 6 which has led many to speculate Series X will be the last series of the show as the first episode was called the End. Let us take this opportunity to remind everyone that Doug has been quite open about wanting to make more and said as much at the recordings for this series, so you can probably avoid throws of panic at this stage. However, kudos to him for coming up with a title that will receive a lot of press as this one has by suggesting that this could well be the end for the show; a tradition that has been going since Series V.
On the subject of episode 6, an article for Broadcast this week covered the making of the new series and featured some particularly interesting quotes from Doug. The one that grabbed the largest degree of attention was this one about what to expect from the scripts:
“Most of the ideas are fresh but for the last episode I borrow things from the very early drafts of the film and explain what happened after the conclusion of series eight. That final episode also features a spectacular dogfight. Well, spectacular for Red Dwarf.”
Having been at the recording for this episode it’s great to be able to be able to discuss this at last. Obviously, for the sake of not spoiling anyone I won’t go into any details of what has been adapted for the episode, but I will say that on the basis of what we saw that night the film would have astoundingly good. You can however see speculation from James as to what might have migrated from the original film script to this episode here, where he examines the original synopsis and trailer to look for any clues.
In terms of official updates, Dave’s on Friday came in two parts. First of all was this new clip of Kryten and The Cat which features some lovely interplay between Danny and Robert; a partnership that has perhaps previously not been explored to a great degree. We can’t say which episode it is from at this point, but one glance at the episode titles should give it away. It also shows Doug once again taking a real scientific concept as a basis for a plot, something we heartily commend.
Dave also updated with a mini site; ‘Go #Vindalunar‘ where people are encouraged to add ‘tweet fuel to launch a lager and curry into space & reveal the start date of #RedDwarfX on Dave.’ The site originally had a clock counting down to 9PM yesterday leading us to believe that this is when the air date would be revealed. As it turned out, this was then replaced with a live stream of a slowly inflating weather balloon, a sign that flashes up the user names of people that tweet the hashtag #vindalunar and a progress bar. At a guess, we imagine that this will reach 100% on Friday, just in time for Dave’s weekly update. If you haven’t visited the #vindalunar site yet, here is an example of what you see on the live feed:
However, it seems that they may have accidently revealed the air date already as their Red Dwarf section originally listed the show as next airing on October 4th at 9PM. It wouldn’t be the first time Dave have made this kind of cock up; just this week they accidently released the Friday update on Thursday. This date was of course listed on a Series VIII page, and as such could refer to the air date of a repeat, but this tweet from Doug would seem to suggest that October 4th is indeed the air date:
What an afternoon. Smooth with a capital Smoo. May the 4th be with you
As such, perhaps the real point of interest on the #vindalunar site is the promotional image used on the countdown. From what Richard Naylor says, it appears that we will be seeing this image a lot in the next couple of months, so here’s a good opportunity to get familiar with it.
The slogan ‘a brand new smegging series’ appears to be the one that will be used on all of the promotional materials. Aside from this picture, it also appears at the end of the TV trailer which started to be shown in advert breaks from yesterday afternoon on Watch. The Trailer is almost exactly the same as the one that was released online a few weeks ago, but features a new Dave logo at the start and a voiceover with the address of the #vindalunar site at the end. It’s great to see it finally make it to air and it’ll hopefully reach a few of those annoying people who keep writing in comment sections on YouTube that they haven’t heard anything of the new series despite being big fans of the show. If you haven’t seen the TV version yet, you can watch it here:
For those of you waiting impatiently for a new trailer, it seems that there are a few on the way going by this tweet from Richard Naylor:
You’ll definitely see Rimmer in one of the next two trailers.
Richard has also tweeted a couple of new behind the scenes pictures this week. The first features the cast and Doug crowded around a monitor watching a play back, while the second interestingly shows the new Red Dwarf model being put back together. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again; this looks fantastic and goes to prove why models are preferable to CGI.
Finally, SFX magazine are currently running a feature on Series X that has an interview with Doug. Here’s what Doug had to say on why he decided to go with a live audience again.
“I think Red Dwarf was at its funniest with an audience,” Naylor told SFX. “The only reason the audience was dropped on series seven was because we were looking at doing a movie, and Ed Bye who was directing suggested we should do it that way because it was good practice for the film – it would be a different vibe. I totally bought that idea, so we did it like that and then played it to an audience and it was a bit of a mess, because you can’t really gap it for laughs – you can’t expect the cast to accurately guess every gap. Then we went for the slightly different format with the prison on series eight, but I brought the audience back, and that was a bit raucous that audience, it was like having a rock and roll night. Despite that the cast love working with an audience, it brings them alive. It’s show night so they produce this energy that you don’t necessarily get if you’re shooting five days a week with single camera. It’s a different skill.”
If you missed it earlier in the week, we updated our features section with a new article from Andrew all about just how much information can be drawn from a Red Dwarf episode title based on past example. He also takes some time to look at the recently released titles for Series X and speculates as to what they might tell us about the content of the episodes. You can find the article here or in our features section along with various other in depth articles.
Here’s a little curiosity that appeared on Ganymede & Titan’s forums that might be of interest to you. Forum user Jimboid uploaded some photos of some rejected mock up video covers for box sets that were rejected by Doug. It’s not hard to see why; the design isn’t wonderful to start with but more importantly many of the photos used are from the wrong corresponding series. All the same, it’s interesting to see that there was once an idea to release the videos in this manner, even if (thankfully) it never happened. Here’s what Jimboid has to say about them:
Bought them several years ago from eBay. They’re mock-ups of video covers for an unreleased line of “complete series” double video box sets, i.e. combining Bytes 1 and 2 of each series into one big brick of analogue entertainment.
They’re rather nice because they have been rejected by Doug Naylor’s own critical hand, as evidenced by the marker pen scrawl over each.
I seem to remember reading a little piece by Doug (possibly somewhere in the hardback making of series VIII book…maybe someone can confirm??) that he’d spent the morning rejecting a bunch of video covers as they had pictures from the wrong series on them (i.e. Series 1 on Series 2 cover)….so thinking that these may well be them as the cock-ups on the covers are aplenty.
A new episode of The Red Dwarf Introcast featuring an overview of Series I has been released. There was an issue with the recording of the episode covering Me2 going haywire, so that review is recovered and incorporated into this podcast. If you are unfamiliar with the podcast of the concept, it follows in the format of other introcasts by having 4 people watching Red Dwarf and then talking about it; two of whom haven’t seen any of it previously. The episode is available to download and you can find them on the podcast’s website and is also available on iTunes.
On top of today’s new clip, Dave have also launched a mini-site; ‘Go #Vindalunar‘. The site has a clock counting down to 9PM tomorrow (GMT), and encourages people to add ‘tweet fuel to launch a lager and curry into space & reveal the start date of #RedDwarfX on Dave.’ Confused? Well to be honest so are we and it’s hard to know how seriously to take this. It also seems that tweeting makes no difference to the countdown, so it seems that 9PM tomorrow will be the big reveal. Of course, the Dave site does currently list Red Dwarf as being back on air on October 4th, so they could well have continued in the spirit of last night’s cock up and released it early. It is on a page for Series VIII and so could potentially be a listing for a repeat, but it does fall within the 2 weeks we are expecting the show to start so who knows.
The real point of interest however is the promotional image used on the countdown. From what Richard Naylor says, it appears that we will be seeing this image a lot in the next couple of months, so here’s a good opportunity to get familiar with it.
It has also been revealed that the first Series X trailer on TV will air on Watch tomorrow at 2:35PM. It’ll be a slightly extended version of the one that went online a few weeks ago to stretch it to 60 seconds and will air on Dave from 7:10AM on Sunday onwards.
EDIT: After a confusing start it seems that the countdown clock that was present when we wrote this was totally irrelevant. It seems we will have to wait until the percentage reaches 100%, and as of 9pm Saturday it hasn’t even reached 20% yet. However, as we suggested before it seems that the air date will be October 4th anyway and a tweet from Doug seems to back this up. More as we get it.
After being accidently uploaded early yesterday, Dave have updated with this new clip from the new series. Like G&T, it’s against our spoiler policy to say outright which episode it is from, but from looking at the episode titles you should be able to take a pretty good guess to be honest. It features some lovely interplay between Kryten and the Cat; a dynamic that has perhaps previously gone untapped to a large extent. You can view the video below:
It seems that someone at Dave made a bit of an error and released tomorrow’s update a day early, though removed it within minutes. While they will naturally be committing suicide immediately in penance, we have a selection of screen caps from the clip as a little teaser to whet the appetites of those that didn’t get to see it in time.
You can find them below and we’ll be back tomorrow with a proper look at the new clip.
Broadcast Now have published an article about the new series of Red Dwarf but it is this section that is most interesting:
“Most of the ideas are fresh but for the last episode I borrow things from the very early drafts of the film and explain what happened after the conclusion of series eight. That final episode also features a spectacular dogfight. Well, spectacular for Red Dwarf.”
The Movie, proposed to be a reboot of the show in the same style as the novels, would have featured a new form of simulants as the villain as shown by the plot of the film revealed in 2003. Our knowledge of the original draft of the film comes from the movie flyer below, which was sent around distributers and eventually found its way online:
Among other information such as descriptions of the charecters and the show’s history, the flyer also roughly detailed the plot of the film. It was as follows:
RED DWARF THE MOVIE is set in the distant future where Homo Sapienoids – a fearsome combination of flesh and machine – have taken over the solar system and almost wiped out the human race. The only survivors are the crews of long-haul space freighters that left Earth before the conflict began. The Sapienoids send forth fleets of Death Ships to hunt them down.
Will Episode 6, titled ‘The Beginning’, see the gang fighting off hoards of simulants? It would seem there is a strong chance that they will appear. In the recently released trailer, we noticed a character that looked remarkably like a simulant between Rimmer and Lister. You can see him in the shot below:
Speculation on this draft of the film was always that the first half followed a sort of expansion of the Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers opening, followed by a second half that dealt with the Sapienoid plot. Will this TV adaptation cover elements of both halves or deal mainly with the latter half? Doug does mention a ‘spectacular dog fight’ which would seem to suggest the latter half, and the first half has of course already been covered to some extent by the TV series after all. And then there is of course the big question on all hard core fans lips; if we are seeing the movie and simulants are involved, does this mean an appearance from Richard O’Callaghan as ‘Hoagie the Roguey’ is on the cards?
There are certainly a lot of interesting things to take from this, and speculation on what has been adapted from the script will doubtless be rife. Episode 6 received a hugely positive reaction after filming, and if it is heavily lifted from the original screenplay then there is every chance we will find that we really did miss out on something brilliant. Furthermore, when Doug is finally getting to release something of the film in some form, does this have mean that the interesting choice of title marks an endpoint for the show, or instead a return to the backstory as the film would once have done? One thing’s for certain; it’s going to be a lot of fun finding out.
How much can an episode title really give away? Red Dwarf fans up and down the country were wildly hitting refresh on the BBFC website just to get a first glance at the final names for the latest batch of episodes. These people clearly think there’s value in these words, or maybe they just need to get out more and join Rimmer and his mates in the celibacy society.
Looking back over titles from previous series can be quite revealing. In some cases the episode titles state a phenomenon that the crew will encounter. Think ‘Stasis Leak’, ‘Parallel Universe’ or ‘Dimension Jump’. These are all ideas which Holly could down to the constituent parts and explain so Lister could understand.
Others monikers provide a little more mystery. From the name alone one might think ‘Meltdown’ would involve the ship’s engines reaching critical mass rather than a trip to a wax based amusement park. Similarly with ‘Tikka to Ride’ you may believe that the episode would show Lister setting up a vindaloo delivery company that only has one customer as opposed to a tale of time travel involving the Kennedy assassination.
Some titles provide some clues to the content without giving too much away. Anyone who saw ‘Out of Time’ would assume there would be some time travel involved. While not explicitly stating it most science fiction fans would presume an episode entitled ‘Nanarchy’ might involve nano technology in some form.
A title can evoke a mood or a genre and set expectations. ‘Gunmen of the Apocalypse’ instantly suggests a Western. ‘Psirens’ implies that there may be a science fiction take on the ancient Turkish legend where sailors were lured onto the rocks by a femme fatale.
As a series mythology grows then an episode name can imply the return of something familiar. ‘Emohawk: Polymorth II’ is perhaps the strongest example of an episode really putting its cards on the table. In a more subtle way, ‘Back to Earth’ very much echoes ‘Back to Reality’ and any fan who saw ‘Stoke me a Clipper’ would be certain it would feature the return of Ace Rimmer.
There are episodes where the title really doesn’t give much away. Probably no one thought the ‘Pete’ two-parter was going to be a detailed examination of Lister’s relationship with Pete Tranter. ‘Blue’ might be the porn-based episode that had been so anticipated since viewers were first treated to a view of Lister’s Long Johns.
So what of the Series X episodes? What would someone with no knowledge of the production make of them?
Episode one, ‘Trojan’, of course is similar to the Series VI opener ‘Psirens’ implying a mythological link. Having read the comic book version of Virgil’s Aenied during ‘The Inquisitor’ Lister surely knows to “Beware of Trojans, they’re complete smegheads!”
‘Fathers and Suns’ is interesting. From the trailer we know Lister gets a father’s day card and from Series VII we know he is his own father. Rimmer’s relationship with his own father has been explored in ‘Better than Life.’ Could this be revisited? Could the Cat’s parents, the cripple and the idiot, finally be introduced or has the finally got his end away? It’s probably none of the above to be honest. It probably involves at least one sun though.
The first episode title in the public sphere was ‘Lemons’. Perhaps the gang finally play another round of ‘What’s my fruit?” and nobody guesses female aardvark. Lemon can be a fruit or alternatively can be something considered useless which would be an apt description for the Red Dwarf crew.
‘Entangled’ doesn’t really provide many clues although there is hope it may be a riff on Disney’s Rapunzel tale, Tangled and the Cat has to climb Lister’s locks to woo him. Or not.
‘Dear Dave’ might be a play on ‘Dear John’ suggesting the off-off relationship between Lister and Kochanski is finally off. Then again it may be the cast and crew begging the self-styled “home of witty banter” for another series.
The final episode title is the most intriguing. ‘The Beginning’ clearly references the very first episode of Red Dwarf, the fantastically titled ‘The End’. Could this be the last-ever episode? It would be a nice bookend in terms of designations. Or maybe it means something else: perhaps we revisit the early days of the Dwarf; or Doug introduces a new crew including a wisecracking talking space dog.
All this speculation is part of the process of being a fan and it makes the reveal so much sweeter when it comes. The publication of these titles makes it all so real. New Red Dwarf is coming tantalisingly soon. Are any of these idle musing accurate? Probably not but it sure is going to be fun finding out.
