red dwarf – Page 2

The Teaching Room

Published 10th July 2023

Welcome back to yet another article where I look at Red Dwarf‘s sets in mind-numbing and excoriating detail. And having already recently investigated some thrilling wall sections and the Captain’s Office, we turn to what might initially seem an unpromising avenue for spectacular revelations: the Teaching Room in Series 1.

I think, however, you may be surprised. Because telling the story of this set leads us into some rather interesting areas which I don’t think have been examined before. As ever, we don’t have the paperwork handy to be able to check any of this: we have to do some deduction, some guesswork, and leave some questions unanswered.

With that health warning, let’s take another trip through early Red Dwarf – as ever with these articles, in order of recording rather than broadcast.

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The Captain’s Office

Published 10th July 2023

TV Comedy

Hello everyone. Last time in the crazy world of Red Dwarf set analysis, we took a look at the history of three wall sections used at BBC Manchester in 1988. (You need to have read that to have a hope of following this piece.) How could I possibly top that majestic piece of writing?

Answer: with one of Series 1’s most famous oddities. Yes, it’s the disappearing and reappearing Captain’s Office. This article was intended to be a more general look at the Drive Room set, but believe it or not I have found enough to say about this single topic to make a full standalone piece. I am not dumbing down my material. It’s always been this stupid.

As before, we need to take this one in recording order, rather than broadcast order.

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A Leak, Right, in Stasis

Published 23rd June 2023

TV Comedy

Many, many years ago, on a forum known as NOTBBC, somebody said something which caused me a fair amount of anguish. I can’t remember the exact words. Nor can I find the forum post in question. But I remember well enough the point of it.

It was a rather sharp remark about how fandom, in its various forms, often seemed more interested in making lists of things, instead of actually analysing the show they were a fan of. And that most of these things were done because people enjoyed the list creation itself, and all the mental tics which go along with that, rather than actually talking about a show properly.

It stung. It was unfair. It was insulting. And it maybe had a little more truth to it than I cared to admit.

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Loss.

Published 12th June 2023

Life / TV Comedy / TV Presentation

A couple of years ago, I had a great idea. In the BBC’s centennial year, I wanted to write a diary of the BBC presentation department. Capturing not only what we did, but what it felt like. The nuts and bolts of putting together reactive linear television at the coalface, no holds barred. All the great things about it, and all the awful things too. Oh, not for publication now, you understand. Or even in 10 years. At least 30, probably more. But there would have been no more worthwhile thing I could have done in 2022.

I failed. I never even started it.

It wasn’t laziness. I did loads of writing last year; over 50k words here on Dirty Feed. But I can’t do my fairly stressful job all day, and then go home and write it all up. Nor can I use my days off to do it either. My brain desperately needs to think of something else. I can put on Eurovision, and then go home and write about Fawlty Towers. But I can’t put on Eurovision, and then go home and write about putting on Eurovision. A few vague tweets is the best I can do.

All of which makes me sad. Because I mean it: there really is no better thing I could have done with my time last year. For all the fun stuff I published on here, that pres diary would have been far more useful. In decades to come, capturing what we did in our corner of the BBC to make everything work on air would be an amazing thing to have. But it was impossible to write. For me, at least.

Oh well. Sorry.

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From Supply Pipe 28 to Floor 592

Published 21st May 2023

TV Comedy

Over the last few years, I’ve posted many pieces on Dirty Feed analysing Red Dwarf‘s sets, including obscure wall panels, a piece of set which survived the first eight series, and… doorways. But this article, first published on Ganymede & Titan in September 2018. was the very beginning of my research into this ridiculous topic.

It’s been significantly revised in a number of places, not least the ending, which has some EXCITING REVELATIONS I’ve never written about before. So if you read it all those years ago and enjoyed it, this version might actually be worth another peek. I always feel old G&T stuff never quite fits in correctly here, even after rewrites; my writing style has just changed too much in the intervening years. But this piece was an “important” step in my love of researching all this nonsense, and feels like it deserves a home here.

* * *

When I say to random people “Hey, what do you remember about the sets of the first two series of Red Dwarf?”, they back away from me and look for the nearest exit. Before they manage to escape, however, they usually mention the bunkroom. They might stammer out an anecdote about a yellow banana adding colour to the set in Series 2. Really cool people might mention how the Drive Room changes between series, or how the Observation Dome is a perfect combination of live set elements and special effects.

Still, all those stories have been told. I want to dig a little deeper, and I don’t care how boring things get in order to do so. With that in mind, I proudly present: a history of three wall sections, used at BBC Manchester in 1987-88.

Enjoy.

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More Trouble Aboard the Red Dwarf

Published 27th March 2023

TV Comedy

For obvious reasons, ephemera surrounding the first series of Red Dwarf is like gold dust. Of course material is going to survive once the show had an established fanbase; things from when the show was just a slightly odd new sitcom on BBC2 are a whole other thing.

One of these pieces of ephemera has become widely known about and distributed: an off-air trail for the first episode “The End” made it onto the Series 1 Red Dwarf DVD release in 2002. That trail was uploaded to YouTube in 2015, including the surrounding content which couldn’t be cleared for DVD; this variant was broadcast on the 13th February 1988, just two days before the episode aired.¹

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There’s also this version of the trail, broadcast on the 8th February, the week before the episode aired. That’s the earliest transmission of a variant of this trail I know of. ↩

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First of Six Episodes

Published 9th March 2023

Internet / TV Comedy

Last month saw the 35th anniversary of Red Dwarf. For someone who vaguely left organised fandom a few years back, I seem to still do an awful lot of writing about the show. What can I say? I fell in love with it when I was 13, and I still indulge in an awful lot of nasty habits which started around that age.

I also wrote for Dwarf fan site Ganymede & Titan between 2003 and 2020, which is a quite startlingly long time. One day in the mid-2000s – the exact year escapes me – my co-conspirator Ian Symes and I decided to take a trip to that great concrete block, since demolished, that was Birmingham Central Library. There, they had an almost-complete set of Radio Times issues, which we set to photocopying with aplomb. We had all kinds of plans.

Those plans never really came to fruition, because of course they didn’t, this is me we’re talking about. But in 2012, I came across that stack of photocopies, and thought it was worth posting one of them on its own – the original Radio Times capsule for the very first episode of Red Dwarf, “The End” (TX: 15/2/88).

As well as the capsule itself, I also posted the full Radio Times page for that day:

Full Radio Times page for the 15th February 1988, featuring the first episode of Red Dwarf

And there that scan sat on Ganymede & Titan, quietly causing no bother, until the 35th anniversary. When Rob Grant tweeted the image, followed shortly by the official Red Dwarf site using it, as part of a hopeful message about there being more Red Dwarf in the future. And it’s definitely, 100% the same image – it matches my scan perfectly.

Shot of reddwarf.co.uk with my image

Which I find very strange. Not because of any ludicrous idea that I own copyright to the image or anything. I just find it intensely weird that my love of the show has gone from squinting at it on an old black and white telly in my bedroom in 1994, to rummaging through Radio Times back issues in the mid-2000s, to something that I dug out suddenly being randomly used as part of an official announcement about the show.

The thing I never could have predicted when I was 13, is that you truly can become part of what you love. A tiny, tiny part, maybe. But sitting in my bedroom, that idea didn’t even cross my mind. Millions of people watched Red Dwarf, how would anything I ever did ever be noticed?

But fandom does weird things. It turns millions of people into just a few. And it ends up having bizarre, unpredictable effects. Even after years of this stuff – interviewing Doug Naylor, appearing in fan films which got an official release, Ganymede & Titan being mentioned in DVD commentaries – I’ve never quite got used to it.

Mind you, I’m still not entirely sure how I ended up directing BBC One on a Saturday night, either.

A version of this post was first published in the February issue of my monthly newsletter.

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Obsessively Tracing Chris Barrie’s Movements in Late-1987

Published 5th March 2023

TV Comedy

While watching a 1987 episode of Spitting Image the other day, something rather odd occurred. And something odd occurring during an episode of Spitting Image has rapidly turned into this site’s speciality.

A bit of background first. In 1986, the show took to frequently featuring a Kenneth Williams puppet, for some reason. A typical appearance is in Episode 4, broadcast on the 26th January 1986, where he’s parachuted into the Tory cabinet:

The unmistakable tones of Chris Barrie providing the voice are… well, unmistakable. And utterly delightful.

Which makes it all the more peculiar that the following year, in the second episode of the series on the 8th November 1987, we get the Kenneth Williams puppet with a distinctly un-Chris-Barrie-sounding voice. (People with keener ears than me identify it as Steve Nallon.)

Chris Barrie had been with Spitting Image from the very beginning. If Barrie is working on your show, and had done a brilliant Kenneth Williams impersonation in the past, why would you suddenly not use him here?

Answer: because Chris Barrie didn’t work on that second episode of the series. Or indeed the first episode the previous week, on the 1st November. But he is present for Episode 3 on the 15th November, and for the rest of the series. What gives?

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You Stupid Ugly Goit

Published 28th February 2023

Radio Comedy / TV Comedy

Close-up of a pixellated Holly

The origins of Red Dwarf are oft-told. Radio 4 sketch show, Son of Cliché, Dave Hollins, job done, right?

And true, one of the first sparks of life of something which turned into Red Dwarf appeared on Radio 4 on the 30th August 1983, with the very first sketch of Dave Hollins: Space Cadet.¹

Download “Dave Hollins: Space Cadet – The Strange Planet You Shouldn’t Really Land On” (MP3, 3:41)

Nick Maloney’s corpsing at the end of that sketch is brilliant.

Still, Dave Hollins wasn’t a running sketch in that first series of Son of Cliché. We’d have to wait until the following year for that privilege. And when it did come back, on the 10th November 1984, I would argue that it was as something far more recognisable as Red Dwarf.

Download “Dave Hollins: Space Cadet – Norweb” (MP3, 3:35)

“Jan Vogels” in the first sketch did nearly made it into Red Dwarf – most notably, a far shorter version is present in the US pilot (“You know a guy called Harry Johnson?”).² But that second Dave Hollins sketch is stuffed with ideas which later found a home in actual, broadcast Dwarf.

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The research for Son of Cliché in this article comes almost entirely from material written in 2003 by Ian Symes, on an early incarnation of Red Dwarf fansite Ganymede & Titan. It’s a measure of how well that research was done that it hasn’t yet been surpassed as reference material for the series. ↩
The 2007 Red Dwarf DVD release The Bodysnatcher Collection also includes a never-shot version of the sketch, recreated using storyboards. ↩

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Dwarf on Film

Published 14th February 2023

TV Comedy

I used to have a brilliant little trivia question about Red Dwarf, you know. One that you could ask to really try and trip people up. It’s not perhaps one you’d bring out at polite parties with normal people, but hey, we’re all friends here. And that question is:

“What is the only footage of actual actors shot on film in Red Dwarf?”¹

The answer is perhaps not immediately obvious. Whether studio or location, the live action scenes in the show have always been shot on videotape – or from Back to Earth onwards, digital video, directly to file. There’s no “film outdoors/video indoors” look, like many sitcoms still had, even in 1988.²