Nice To Be Here, Mr. Rimmer, You Son of a Gun

This year has ended up being a rather odd one for Dirty Feed. I initially intended to write precisely nothing for the first half of this year at all. So what better time to accidentally publish one of the most popular things I’ve ever written, and end up deeper in the sitcom salt mines than ever before?

Well, today’s little fact isn’t as good as that one. Or as good as this one. It is, however, something brand new about early Red Dwarf, and clears up a little mystery that has dogged fandom for decades. And by “dogged fandom for decades”, I mean “five or so people wondered about it every so often”.

So let’s take a look at the Series 1 episode “Balance of Power”, broadcast on the 29th February 1988. Specifically, the start of the cinema scene with the skutters.

The question is: what exactly are they watching?

There’s one of two possible answers here. Either it’s something specially shot for the programme, or it’s stock footage from elsewhere. And if it’s stock footage from elsewhere, then exactly where did it come from originally?

Oddly enough, this is something that – as far as I can tell – nobody has ever tracked down before. There is a very thorough examination of the stock footage used in the show on reddwarf.co.uk, and if you don’t think it’s brilliant that an official site would publish an article like that, then I don’t know what I can do for you.¹ But even that piece draws a blank on this particular footage.

One thing we did already know is the music, because Red Dwarf is also the only sitcom to have an official site which publishes details of the library tracks used in each show. That music is a KPM piece amusingly called “Green Bluegrass”, first released in 1973:

OK, OK, I’ve dragged this out long enough. Through rooting around various bits of paperwork, I’ve managed to find the source of this clip. Yes, it’s stock footage – but not especially old stock footage, at least at the time “Balance of Power” was made. It comes from an episode of Timewatch, the long-running BBC2 history series which bizarrely sounds like a Red Dwarf episode title. Specifically, it’s from the episode broadcast on the 30th December 1986, titled “Son of a Gun, or How Sam Colt Changed America”, all about America’s gun culture.

It sure would be nice to actually watch this programme, wouldn’t it, and see how the footage “Balance of Power” used looked in situ? Sadly, it’s highly unlikely that an old episode of Timewatch from 1986 is going to be online anywhere.

Highly unlikely… and yet here it is. At 20:36 in:

Uploaded by the writer/narrator/producer of the documentary Alan Ereira, in October 2020. And so this story lasting over three decades would have been virtually impossible to complete until a few months ago, at least without poking around in archives that I shouldn’t be poking around in.

So, for that final dopamine hit:

The peculiar thing about this is how extreme the Red Dwarf treatment of this footage was. Cropped, desaturated, and then cut to a frame rate that Baird would have frowned at in 1928. It works in context, but it’s a little odd to say the least.

As for our real life cowboy himself? We don’t have a name for him, but we do have a place: the Anchor D Ranch in Kansas. And the paperwork I’m consulting here does confirm that the material was specially shot for Timewatch, in “June/July 1986”. We can even see him sitting at a table in the ranch a little later on in the documentary, on the left:

And so there is your tale of exactly what those skutters were watching, as they tried to have an afternoon off. Which just leaves me to ponder our nameless cowboy. Because as he rode across the Kansas landscape, he could have no conception that a couple of years later, he’d end up as part of a slightly odd British sitcom… let alone a piece of television which would still be watched and analysed decades down the line.

Life, as I never tire of commenting, is odd.

1. Disclaimer: I know the author of that piece. But I’d say it anyway. ↩

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