News Roundup (02/12/12)

• Series X & XI?

In the wake of the DVD release, a treacle of Series X related press has continued to come in, though sadly it is largely all drawn from the exact same story being sold by a news agency. Therefore it would be pointless to list these and instead if you want to hear the full interview with Chris, Danny and Robert that the comments are drawn from you can find them in latest edition of The Garbage Podcast.

There have however been a few articles of interest that have also appeared in the last week. Here is a quick summary of them:

Digital Spy: British Comedy Awards – What should get nominated?

Digital Spy: Danny John Jules interview

Metro: Craig Charles interview

Den Of Geek: Red Dwarf’s 10 best supporting characters

Tellyspotting: Red Dwarf XI? C’mon Dave, you know you want more…

The article that has attracted the most attention however has been a piece on Digital Spy which runs the following comment from Danny:

“I spoke to Doug the other day, and I know he’s already writing outlines. Even though the contracts aren’t signed, he knows because of the last series [that he needs a head start], because he was under real pressure. Directing, writing, producing, and then locations get moved out, actors drop out, and suddenly it’s like, ‘Well, we’ve got ten pages that can be filmed and I’ve got to rewrite four scripts. He doesn’t want to be caught like that again, so he’s already writing outlines. Well, or scripts – Doug doesn’t really do outlines, he just writes a whole script, and then diddles with it.”

Now, this has obviously been met with some degree of excitement among Red Dwarf fans, eager to see another series of the show produced as quickly as possible to capitalise on the success of Series X. However, let’s just take a moment to examine this as the issue is surely far from as cut and dry as Digital Spy have presented it here. As such, we have to take into account the following factors:

1. Series XI has not currently been commissioned
2. UKTV are the joint financiers with BBC Worldwide. It requires both to be onboard to fund the series and Worldwide will doubtless want to wait to see what kind of return they receive from the DVD sales before making any kind of decision.
3. Writing the outlines for a series an writing the shows themselves are tow totally different things. We know that Doug had planned what he wanted the episodes in Series X to deal with long before writing the scripts, but circumstances meant that the actual writing became problematic.
4. Few writers will dedicate a large amount of their time to writing scripts over their other work when they haven’t been commissioned. They may well formulate their ideas, but that is likely to be as far as it goes. It is entirely unreasonable to expect a writer to do this with no guarantee of production going ahead, allowing them to be paid for their work.

So, overall we are no closer than we were this time last week. All we can take from this is that Doug has some ideas and to be honest I imagine that many of us expected this to be the case anyway. It is unlikely that we will see any kind of movement in the immediate future in terms of getting Series XI up and running, especially until BBC Worldwide can review the DVD sales. It is however encouraging that there is clearly a demand for it among both fans and press alike, proving that Series X did the job it needed to. You can be sure though that should any news of the possibility of more Red Dwarf appear that we will bring it to you.

• Red Dwarf X Models Up For Auction

Two of the models from Series X are set to be auctioned by Bonhams later this month. The ERRA space station and the Annihilator models made by Bill Pearson will both be up for grabs on December 12th and are currently listed at an estimated £500-700. You can find more details on both of the lots by clicking on the pictures below:

 

• The Garbage Podcast – Series X Retrospective

Rounding off our Series X podcasts, this edition of The Garbage Podcast sees Alex, James and Andrew taking a look back over the tenth series. The overall merits of the series and the adversity that had to be overcome to make it are discussed at length as we take into account the details of the troubled production that have come to light with the release of the Series X DVD, as well as looking at the deleted scenes and debating the merits of their exclusion from the episodes.

This is an extra long edition of the podcast, as this time we also have Alex chatting with Chris Barrie, Danny John Jules and Robert Llewelyn about the making of the series, the DVD release and their hopes for the future in an exclusive interview, for which we are indebted to Jo from the Fan Club and Reetu from BBC Worldwide for setting this up.

You can download it from The Garbage Podcast site, via iTunes or you can stream it on the player below:

• Dwarfcasts – Kryten Commentary

Ganymede & Titan have uploaded another Dwarfcast episode commentary, this time covering Kryten from Series II. Cappsy, John, Tanya, Danny and Ian look over the episode and afterwards there is also a bonus commentary on the Series II deleted scenes. You can find it here or you can subscribe via iTunes.

 

 

• Scuttercast – Trojan

The Scuttercast have uploaded the first of their shows covering Series X, beginning with their review of Trojan. While the Dwarfcasts provided instant reactions and we are The Garbage Podcast looked back at the episodes after a few days to gauge the reactions and online opinions, the Scuttercast is able to take the information from the recently released DVD into account, providing a different look at the episodes to either of the other podcasts.

We are also delighted to be featured as their podcast of the week with The Garbage Podcast. You can hear a specially recorded bit of messing about from us at around the 1 hour 40 minutes mark. It probably marks the stupidest thing we have ever done. The episode is available to download and you can find it on the podcast’s website and is also available on iTunes.

• The Red Dwarf Introcast – The Last Day

A new episode of The Red Dwarf Introcast. This episode sees Heath, Angela, Shane, and Paul joined by Alan from the Gatecast to review The Last Day. The episode is available to download and you can find it on the podcast’s website and is also available on iTunes.

 

 

• G&T: Series X – Top Ten Talking Points

Ganymede & Titan have updated with an article covering ten hotly debated issues on Series X. This includes both some of the same suggested plot-hole-that-aren’t that we spent ages explaining in The Garbage Podcast and other issues that fans might not have considered before such as ‘what happened to Dungo? You can read it here.

 

 

• Women! Robert Needs You!

Robert Llewellyn is looking to produce a pitch video for the follow up to his novel ‘News From Gardenia’ and needs London based women to help. Here’s Bobby’s explanation of what he needs.

If you are female and can be in London on Friday 14th Dec at midday to help make my new book pitch video. It’s all above board, very professional, venue in central London, will take less than an hour and might even be fun! All that you need to do is stand together looking at the camera, stern face, unmoved, while I waffle on for 2 minutes. Very low stress.

You can find more details and the casting and release form here.