Series XII News: Trailer Breakdown

September 21, 2017 Alex, James & Andrew News, Series XII News 0

We have finally reached the big milestone before broadcast. Red Dwarf XII’s official trailer aired on Dave last evening. And unlike with Series XI’s trailer, this time we didn’t have to sit through the entirety of Series 2 of Red Dwarf to see it.

The trailer comes in two forms. The broadcast version has Led Zepplin’s Immigrant Song. For the online version this has understandably (but sadly) been replaced by library music.

To see the trailer in lovely HD you can find it on YouTube here.

We start with the now classic fly-by of the bigature set to the same music from the teaser trailer. This time though this time we get a slightly longer shot, and as such a bit more of the music cue.Nothing too new here, but it’s always nice to hear new Red Dwarf music.

Our first look at the modern Red Dwarf landing bay as built by the Models Unit. It’s not quite like any landing bay we’ve seen previously, but it gives enough of the flavour of what we expect that we can get on board with it. We’re particularly pleased that the set is a mix of practical and CGI, which helps with the believability somewhat.

Lister, in a joke reminiscent of Doctor Who, turns on Starbug with a slam of the fist, and gives us a nice close up of the console controls, which we’ve previously had a glance at in the XI mobile game.

It’s also at this point that the music shifts into Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin. It’s a piece of music that often gets used in trailers due to a good exciting, driving rhythm, with recent proponents including the latest Thor film. However as it gets going across the next few shots, it becomes apparent that Robert Plant’s cries are not the only voice present in the track, as we can hear The Cat’s familiar oww’s lined up perfectly. It’s a really great little touch that might not even be picked up by a lot of people casually catching the trailer, but we hugely applaud it’s use here.

Unfortunately, as previously stated, the online version of the trailer replaces this with library music, doubtless due to copyright concerns. And while that version is basically fine, it certainly doesn’t work as well when you compare the trailers side by side. Sadly, that will almost certainly be the version that appears on the DVD, but provided they don’t getting taken down due to copyright claims of their own, there are at least ripped copies of this on Youtube for now.

 

We next get a side on view of Starbug taking off that is very similar to the one in Give & Take. Isn’t it nice to see Starbug have a bit of smoke while taking off again?

Now we have another look at the Starbug outer landing bay built into the Series XI Red Dwarf bigature as seen several times in Series XI. We’ll ignore the issues of size differences for now due to the practical need of using part of the existing model. Like the interior, it’s different to what we are used to, but it’s nice to have it back again, rather than skipping past it as in Series X and XI.

Starbug heading for a planet with an engine not working. This reminds us of something…

Yes, this was posted after the third episode was recorded so we have a pretty good idea which episode this appears in. Set reports mentioned the use of storyboards to the audience, and what we have here appears to be the practical realisation of one of those.

With the Bug heading towards what appears to be a small moon, we have to ponder on why one of the engines is out. Battle damage? general disrepair? Crash landing?

 

We then cut to a location shot, and there seems to be little doubt that this is filmed at Sunbury Pump House, which has of course previously appeared in the show as Justice World. For those unfamiliar, this photo of the pump house as it is day to day should jog the memory, but it should also go a long way to suggesting that this is indeed the location the crew were filming at back in January last year as this tweet from Craig shows:

While it’s the same location that appeared in Justice, we’d be somewhat surprised if it was a return to the location seen in the show, and the way the set appears to be lit also seems to confirm that we are looking at something different here.

Zooming in on the action from the previous shot, we have a look at what appears to be a clean-off as two mechanoids, one of which appears to be the Lister-droid, go toe-to-toe with mops.

As with the Series XI trailer, we next cut to another scene with Rimmer’s light bee shutting down. Could this be linked to one of Starbug’s engines shutting down? Or could this be an attack by the Mechanoid Intergalactic Liberation Front?

 

We now jump to the “Crew Check”. This section features some nice episode specific references to keep long time fans happy, whilst re-introducing the characters for casual viewers or those who aren’t entirely familiar with the show. It’s a different way of doing things, and the thing it brings to our minds is the original trailer for The End, but one commendable upshot of it is that we get a sense of what the show is without having to spoil too much footage.

That’s not to say there aren’t some bizarre things in the written bios that appear though. They flash by too quickly to take in great details unless you’re the kind of sad wretch that screen caps the trailer to be mean about some throwaway detailing. Luckily, we happily fall into this camp, so let’s critique away!

Dave Lister ‘Cinzano Bianco’? We understand why it’s been written out like this, but it’s a bit odd. Clearly it should be written out as Dave ‘Cinzano Bianco’ Lister as is in the show, but we’d suspect the thought was that the characters name should appear in full so it isn’t confusing. But you wouldn’t ever write it out this way, and taking similar nicknames in the manner sounds weird too. You wouldn’t, for example, say Ron Harris Chopper unless you were describing the footballer’s choice of aviation device or giving a police report on what he flashed at you in a park.

For once they managed to refrain from doing a Lister likes curry joke. If you think that is surprising, just remember that they sent a curry to space to launch Series X.

Shot wise, we have him aboard Starbug with a bizarre guitar that seems to be cobbled together from junk hat includes a bowl painted with the design from Eddie Van Halen’s guitar. Given that Lister has changed the guitar he plays several times through the course of the show, it’s not surprising to see him with a new one, but the bashed together nature of this makes us wonder if this is a replaced because something has happened to his?

Next up we have Kryten, whose full name is apparently ‘Additional’. It’s such a specific mistake though that we suspect it must be taken from the cut line in the Inquisitor where Kryten states his log on name is Kryten and that his registration code is ‘Additional: 001’. It’s especially glaring given that Kryten does have a full name, and as the kind of people reading these captions will know only too well it is Kryten 2X4B-523P and is referenced directly in the show. Sigh.

As you can see, Like Kryten, we also like correcting people. Not that he has ever seemed to take great pleasure in it. Oh well…

Caption wise, The Cat’s entry is largely error free, though we’re not sure that we’d say he actively ‘likes’ mice. Yes, traditionally cats enjoy, catching, torturing, killing and eating mice before dragging the remains through your house (the little bastards), but noticing the characteristic of a cat does mean it’s a characteristic of The Cat.

What is interesting here isn’t so much the accompanying text but rather the video of Cat which features him holding some sort of gun whilst wearing a towel around his neck. He might need a towel if he got rather wet. Which brings us neatly to the previously tweeted picture of a drowning Cat.

So there you have it. It seems The Cat will get wet, and then he will get dry. Who says we don’t bring you huge plot spoilers now and then?

Finally we reach Rimmer. The trinket he is playing with could possibly be the device he appears to be holding in the teaser trailer when he appears in his Series 1 uniform. Text wise, this is the closest to being bang on, and the resurrection of trans-am wheel arch nostrils is particularly enjoyable. Again though, it’s all so very nearly correct, and then his rank is listed as Z Watch not Z shift. We realise it’s a small detail on a trailer and that ultimately it doesn’t matter, but nevertheless it’s annoying when something so well done is let down by a small detail that shouldn’t be hard to check.

Our applications for the crit-cops are duly in the post.

Coming out of the crew check, we have a wide shot of the previously revealed CGI spaceship. A shot which screams scale. One thing Series XI proved is that the current team were better at doing CGI effects than they were physical based effects so I would be happy with a move more to CGI based shots in Series XII. Could this be the Mechanoid Intergalactic Liberation Front kidnapping the crew? The one difference we have from what we saw previously is that this appears to be taking place over a planet.

Our first look at the Rimmer-droid in action. We’ve stated before, but this shot goes further to prove that the makeup here looks fantastic and really Chris’ appearance and mannerisms really shine through it.  The look for absolute horror at his mechanisation (or the startling revelation that he has hands) really is superb and exactly what we would have hoped for. It certainly does whet the appetite to see the whole gang react to their mechanised predicament.

Give Rimmer’s reaction, we can probably deduce that this is just after the crew have been mechanised, and given the apparatus around them, it wouldn’t be an unreasonable guess to assume that it might be done via some kind of mind swap. Either that or they are in fact retro hairdryers and the crew are lining up for a lovely perm.

Now we see Cat, Kryten and Rimmer arrive in a white room reminiscent of the Future Zone in the resurrected Crystal Maze, and seemingly linked to the previously released pictures from the past few weeks:

Given what appear to M-Corp logos on the walls and transporter, there seems little doubt which episode this comes from. All of which could imply the crew get separated from Lister, during which he ages greatly. So far, so the novels, then. Given how highly we rate those, we could easily get on board with this idea.

Whilst some people aren’t as big fans of call backs as others, you would have to be pretty cold-hearted not to fill with joy at the sight of the gang doing the “boys from the Dwarf” hands as previously seen in Demons and Angels. Considering the computer panels in front of them and the green background, this could be in Starbug’s midsection, though the table is different from the one shown in the photos last week. The wall behind them looks like it could also serve as a mortuary. Perhaps this is a redress of the Starbug midsection to serve as another set.

Note Cat also appears wearing the towel to the far-right.

Another shot of the menacing scarred Rimmer. On first glance it might seem like this would fit with the synopsis released for Cured however one of the clues revealed by Doug Naylor for the episode Timewave was Scar.

 

The final scene shown in the trailer starts here with Cat and Lister on a gas moon with Rimmer, donning new but quite retro looking space suits adorned with JMC insignia. Yes the green screen work here is very apparent, but you know what? We really don’t care here.

And as is the format on the previous Dave trailers we have had, we close on a small joke, as Rimmer names a gas moon after himself and Lister proclaims that Rimmer is so full of gas. Wrapping things up on a nice laugh that while perhaps an expected line should really just be considered in the context of a small element of a scene.

Closing things out we have the same shot from the teaser, but with multiple clouded versions of the logo flying into make the familiar one, in what we’d guess may end up being how the title appears on the actual episodes. Which screen you see at the end here though will depend on which version you are watching. The online version mentioned earlier with it’s different music has the logo without the strange cutting off of the W and the A we complained about previously, and has added the actual date the series airs on Dave.

 

Currently, these are the only two versions of the trailer we have seen, but given there were a lot of variations in the lead up to Series XI, we certainly wouldn’t be surprised to see a few crop up over the coming days and weeks. If you aren’t already, it’s probably  good time to start switching over to Dave.

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