Series X is well and truly underway with Trojan having aired on Thursday. As such there is a huge amount of news on the new series to cover and so we are turning this week’s news roundup almost entirely over to Series X.
- Trojan: Premiere
Wednesday night saw a special premiere of Trojan taking place in the Prince Charles Cinema, just of Leicester Square in London. The screening was preceded by Chris, Craig and Robert walking around Leicester Square in costume and posing for photographs for the press. The premiere itself saw the cast (minus Danny who is filming in Guadalope) and crew gather with over 100 lucky fans for a special screening of Trojan, followed by a Q&A with Doug and the cast and trailers for episodes 3 and 6. A full transcript of the Q&A is available from Wired, although they take credit for asking all of the questions asked by the audience. It was a fantastic night and it was great seeing some of you there. Hopefully you all enjoyed it just as much!
Various sources both online and in print covered the event. First up, we have interviews with the cast and some of the guests by Red Carpet News TV and Digital Spy:
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The event was also saw some coverage in the press, a smattering of which can be found in the following links:
- Trojan: Where To Watch It
While most of you will now have seen Trojan, there will doubtless be some that missed it and even more that want to see it again. So what are your options? Well they are limited to UK residents at the moment. Firstly, the shows are repeated through the week after there initial 9PM airings. You can view repeats at on Thursday at 11:35PM, Saturdays at 10:00PM and Wednesdays at 8:20PM. All of these can of course also be viewed one hour later on Dave Ja-Vu.
Dave have also now launched their seven-day catch-up service. As soon as each new episode has finished it is then available to view online for another 7 days, although the demand for the show did cause the service to crash very quickly. You can access the service (where Trojan is currently available) here. For those of you that would look a copy of the show to keep however there are two options. The whole series will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray on November 19th, but in the meantime the series is being made available one episode at a time on iTunes. Individual episodes are released shortly after their TV airings at a cost of £2.49 and a series pass is also available for £12.99. You can find Series X on iTunes here.
- Trojan: Reviews
There are a lot of reviews around and there are likely to be more when the press release their end of week TV reviews. Here is a selection of some of the reviews coming in for Trojan.
If you missed it, Andrew made a quick update to the site covering a smattering of the reaction to the show on Twitter. You can find his post here. Production executive Roopesh Parekh has also compiled a variety of different write ups for the new series from various magazines and papers. You can view his various pictures and scans at the following links: 1/ 2/ 3/ 4/ 5/ 6/ 7/ 8/ 9/ 10/ 11/ 12
- Trojan: Viewing Figures
One thing that will doubtless prove instrumental in the chances of there being further Red Dwarf after Series X are the ratings that this series achieves. ‘Trojan’ was viewed by 1.46m people at the 9pm hour and 0.069m people on Dave Ja Vu at 10pm. While not as high as the ratings for part one of Back to Earth, the show faced much tougher competition at the 9pm hour than usual and ‘Back to Earth’ Part 1 had a much higher Dave Ja Vu figure, owing to Dave Ja Vu being available on Freeview back in 2009 but being taken off Freeview in 2011. For a full breakdown of figures and an explanation of why Dave will be very happy with these numbers, James has a detailed write up which you can read here.
- Other Series X Press & Media
As well as the reviews and previews of Trojan, there have also been a few other bits of Red Dwarf press relating to the series in a more general sense. Firstly, there is a very in depth and highly interesting interview with Doug for Starburst magazine. As well as Doug detailing why the Series has taken 3 years to hit our screens, he also goes on to explain that Series X was originally to conclude with 2 episodes featuring the return of Kochanski, which had to be ditched when the budget for location shooting was totally absorbed by the cost of the studio audience. You can also read Ganymede & Titan’s in depth thoughts about the interview here. On the subject of interviews with Doug, SciFi Now have published one about the creation of the show which you can read here.
Other small pieces of interest include the Empire Podcast featuring Chris, Craig and Doug, Robert on The Today Programme and a piece by ONSIGHT on the part they played in Series X’s post production. Finally, Dave have also released a selection of behind the scenes pictures from the filming of Trojan. There are some overlaps with previously released ones, including a picture of a character cut from the final show, but there are some interesting new ones that are worth a look. They can be viewed here.
- Next Time – Fathers & Suns
As you will doubtless have seen, Dave aired a trailer for ‘Fathers and Suns’ straight after Trojan had aired. This trailer has made it’s way onto YouTube and can be viewed below along with the episode synopsis:
Every year Lister sends himself a Father’s Day card to celebrate the fact that he is his own father; but when Rimmer points out he’s been a lousy father to himself, Lister decides to do something about it. Meanwhile, Rimmer and Kryten install a new computer: the beautiful – but lethally logical – Pree.
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- Dwarfcast: Trojan – Instant Reactions
Ganymede & Titan have released their latest Dwarfcast covering Trojan. For each episode of Series X, they will be broadcasting a live instant reactions show which will then be available to download shortly afterwards. You can find this latest episode featuring interviews with Bill Pearson, Craig Charles and Doug Naylor here or you can subscribe via iTunes.
(Some people have been asking what the plans are for the release of our release of our own podcast. With G&T covering instant reactions, we’ll be recording The Garbage Podcast several days after each of these episodes to gauge press and online reaction.)
- Ganymede & Titan On Dave Edits
Ganymede & Titan have updated with the last part in a series of articles by John Hoare detailing the various edits made to Red Dwarf when it airs on Dave. This article covers I/II and, and you can also view the first two articles covering VI/V, IV/III, VII and VIII. Its well worth a read if for no other reason than to ponder the dichotomy that John raises early on: “how can a channel care so much about Red Dwarf to commission a new series, and yet give its repeats so little respect?”
- The Red Dwarf Introcast
A new episode of The Red Dwarf Introcast. This episode sees Heath, Paul and Shane joined by returning special guest star Nutty Nuchtchas to take a look at Parallel Universe. The episode is available to download and you can find them on the podcast’s website and is also available on iTunes.
You left out this one: http://hassleinbooks.blogspot.com/2012/10/hasslein-review-trojan.html 😉