Series XI News: Roundup. Then round down, and hopefully, roundup again!

September 10, 2016 Alex, James & Andrew News 0

Merchandise! Guest stars! Magazine coverage! Production tidbits!

NEWS!

DEAR GOD. SO MUCH NEWS.

Not that every time we seem to get on top of all the latest Series XI developments we then find out that some extra details has leaked meaning we start again, but, yeah, that’s exactly what’s been happening. With various small bits of news having built up over the last week, it seems we’re well over due a roundup.

And don’t forget for a roundup of all the previous news as well as a look forward to what we can expect in Series XI, you can download the latest episode of The Garbage Podcast with our Series XI preview.

You can download it from the link below or via iTunes and if you enjoy it then please do leave us a rating/review to let other people know; we’d greatly appreciate it. You can also stream the podcast on the player below:

iTunes / RSS / Android /  Direct Download / Stream:

YOU’RE TOFFED UP TO THE NINES LADDY

Firstly, the update from The Official Site last Friday, showing the cast looking very dapper on a rather good looking set.

We’ve seen footage and photos with them in the same costumes and on the same set, but this is a particularly good looking shot that in another life back in the 90s you could very much imagine would be the front cover image for a VHS.

THIS IS TOTALLY SHADY

Meanwhile, on the subjects of shots we’ve seen before, you may recall that in our trailer breakdown we pointed out that one of the costumes featured in it had previously appeared in Doctor Who. It transpires that the costume has an origin that stretches back further, and with a confirmation from Stuart Goldsmith, we now know them to have started life in the CBBC show Mission 2110 as a group of villains known as The Shades:


TWO EPISODES IN ONE DAY? THAT’S MORE THAN SOME PEOPLE MANAGE IN A LIFETIME!

Also announced last week is that when Twentica airs on TV, there will be a simultaneous live fan screening of the episode aat the Price Charles Cinema in London, followed by a screening of Samsara. A great venue and host to the premiere of Trojan in 2012, tickets were snapped up within minutes of being announced.

Before then though, the cast have continued on the promotional trail for the series, with Doug attending the Starburst Film Festival, where he was presented with a lifetime achievement award and inducted into their hall of fame. A write up of the event can be found on The Official Site.

The next major stop on the promotional tour was yesterday at UKTV Live, where all of the channels under the UKTV banner preview their upcoming content. Red Dwarf XI of course played a large part in this years event, with a screening of Twentica followed by a Q&A with Doug, Craig, Chris and Robert.


‘RED DWARF? BEEN IN IT MATE’

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Also being previewed was a new show from BabyCow for UKTV, Zapped. As well as the intentional promotion of Red Dwarf, there also seemed to be some unintentionally from Zapped’s star James Buckley, with Digital Spy yesterday publishing an article stating that he was set to appear in one of the next two series of Red Dwarf. This was then confirmed by Richard Naylor Robert Llewellyn in the following tweets:

There’s no detail on which series James will appear in or who he is playing beyond this quote from the Digital Spy interview:

But that’s massive news about Red Dwarf as well, because we’ve got two series to look forward to – they filmed two series back to back. I’m actually in an episode. It was, yeah. It was like Make A Wish. I felt like a little sick child.

I was on set and to be in an episode… I can’t say too much but I don’t think you’ll recognise me. You’ll hear my voice but you won’t be able to recognise me.

In Red Dwarf terms, appearing in an unrecognisable form gives myriad possibilities, considering characters that fit that description from the past include The Inquisitor, vending machines, intelligent viruses and household appliances. He has a distinctive enough voice however that he should be easy to spot.

It’s a surprising piece of casting perhaps, but there’s no question that having a guest actor known to a wider audience as James is will be a good draw for a bigger audience and will hopefully also garner a bit of extra coverage of the episode.

IDENT-ITY WITHIN

Meanwhile, over on Dave it seems that we still aren’t done for trailers to add to the ever expanding list. Firstly we have a new ident trailer that’s stared to pop up,

https://youtu.be/cME6Px1nZVE

Then there’s also this further tiny snippet that has appeared in a further Dave trailer, and which was captured by Ganymede and Titan with the tweet below:


THERE’S SOME OFFICIAL MERCHANDISE CURRENTLY ON SALE IN THE BACK OF DOBBIN’S CAR

But the big news from UKTV was in a press release on Thursday morning, confirming that along with Series XI, there will be a brand new line of official merchandise. Further elaborated on the next day by The Official Site, we’ve now been given a look at some of the items that will go on sale on September 15th on shop.reddwarf.co.uk.

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These items apparently mark only a section of what will be available, with even more to be added as Series XI progresses.

All of us on this site have for a long time bemoaned the lack of merchandise in recent years, with the few items that have been released somewhat failing to set fandom alight. We’re looking at you ‘Red Dwarf In Your Pocket’.

It’s been very noticeable in recent years that at any Red Dwarf event a very large share of t-shirts worn by attendees have been unofficial ones, and we’re very happy to see the official options being expanded again.

We’ll be very interested to see prices for the items as well as how far the range expands over the course of the series, but there are already see interesting items in the batch. The Kryten t-shirt alone is the sort of item you’d easily be forgiven for expecting we wouldn’t ever have seen the likes of, even after the success of similar lines such as the Doctor Who costume t-shirts, and the Starbug manual t-shirt feels like such an obvious seller that it’s remarkable it’s taken this long.

On thing that is particularly pleasing is that what we are seeing here isn’t exclusively made up of the sort of photo/caption affairs that dominated the t-shirt line in the 90s. Having a t-shirt themed around the JMC logo for example feels like a real gift to fans, and is a far more subtle reference as well as being nicely designed. We’re slightly less keen about having the slogan ‘Totally Smegged’ down our arms, but if this is the biggest issue we have then it’s hard to complain.


NEXT TIME I PLAY THE AR MACHINE I’M GOING TO GIVE YOU SOME MONEY AND SEND YOU TO THE PICTURES

But it wasn’t only merchandise that was confirmed, with the annoucnement of Red Dwarf XI: The Game also coming as a very pleasant suprise. At first glance, the talk of a mobile game is normally something that wouldn’t fill us with great hope. After all, the previous two Red Dwarf apps are still available to buy despite neither having worked with any current model of phone for at least 5 years, and prior to that, this is what a Red Dwarf mobile game looked like:

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That was Simulant’s Revenge from 2003, where players would ‘pilot Starbug through hazardous situations and deadly environments, wiping out simulants, obliterating GELFs and occasionally getting not-so-helpful advice from Rimmer, Holly, Cat and the rest.‘

In the last 13 years however, things have fortunately moved on a little bit.

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Well. That all looks rather marvellous doesn’t it? Genuinely pleasing graphics that immediately make us want to start playing. When we first heard of this news we had hoped for something that might provide a slight distraction between episodes. The description from The Official Site however makes it sound like a far more exciting prospect:

Red Dwarf XI is a brand new game for Android and iOS devices, again launching to coincide with the new series (but this time, on the TV broadcast date of 22nd September). The game, developed by GameDigits Ltd, will see players take control of Red Dwarf and Starbug, on a quest to explore as far into deep space as possible – with a wide range of minigames helping to boost your progress. Best of all, after the game’s launch it will update on a regular basis with content relating to each new Red Dwarf XI episode!

With proper high-res graphics (you can actually fly Starbug! In 3D!) and exclusive written material from Doug himself, Red Dwarf XI promises to be the game we’ve been waiting for all these years. You’ll be able to get it from iTunes and Google Play for a wide range of phones and tablets upon its launch, and we’ll bring you further news on pricing and availability when we have it.

The chance to take control of Red Dwarf and Starbug is certainly an appetising prospect, and while we can’t gleam too much more on what form the gameplay will take, it’s already more than grabbed our interest; as did the passing mention that Doug has written material for it.

Again, we can only speculate as to what degree this he has been involved in the scripting, but considering the description says that the game will update after each episode of Series XI, might we potentially be seeing the game expanding on the events of the episodes or even filling gaps between them? Frankly whatever form it takes it’s something we never thought we’d get, so we’re already made up at the prospect, and it also seems to have received attention from various game websites.


S-F-X, I THINK I FOUND IT!

Of course with the series so close now, Red Dwarf related stories are starting to pop up on a lot of media outlets such as with pieces on the Radio Times website and on Chortle for example. Various newspapers have also been reporting on stories and coverage has also started appearing in magazine as well.

Most interesting on this front is the new issue of SFX out on Wednesday this week, featuring 5 different Red Dwarf covers and a further fifth available only to subscribers, and a 36 page supplement dedicated to the show as seen in these tweets:


THE END… THE SMEG IT IS

And finally, one thing that we didn’t expect to be reporting on was Doug and Richard back in the editing suite, yet that precisely what has been happening this week as seen in the below tweet:

Considering we are very close to the airing and the episode has already been screened twice with a further screening on Monday, we sort of expected that it was locked at this point. However, clearly these screenings have shown Doug and Richard that there is something they believe can be tightened and are using the opportunity to do so.

And that’s all the news for now!

Unless of course someone has said something they shouldn’t have while we’ve been writing this. If so, then let’s be honest, it was probably Bobby.

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