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An attempt to re-edit the entirety of the less-than-stellar eighth series of beloved British sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf into a feature-length special akin to The Promised Land (with the exception of three-part opener Back in the Red, which in itself would be long enough to make a separate feature, and I think somebody's already attempted such a thing).
How did I get here exactly? I suppose it's best to start at the beginning.
A while back I joined a Red Dwarf fan server on Discord that I happened to stumble on the link for whilst browsing the Ganymede and Titan forums.
They call it 'The Tank'. I believe I introduced one or two people to it already.
While I was in there, I met a most remarkable and discerning individual that some ignoble upstarts might refer to as KyoSo. Now here is someone I can have a truly stimulating conversation with, not merely for the pure intellectual challenge of debating someone who is very clearly of greater learning and clarity than I, but also for being able to do so candidly without either party needing any concern for distasteful judgment on part of the other.
Anyway, one of our talks got onto the subject of my two pet peeves about XI and XII (the episodes Can of Worms and Timewave, respectively) I got onto the idea of cutting the two down into one condensed narrative (working title Timeworms) that incorporates the simulant ship as being caught in the titular timewave and sent on a collision course with Rimmerwo- I mean, Planet Rimmer, and cut out everything else I thought didn't work with the episodes.
As I started planning this out mentally, I became concerned about the possibility that my edits would be so severe that there wouldn't be enough material left to make it to 25 minutes, and so I started brainstorming on ideas. Eventually I elected to try and bring in a less popular episode of the 'classic' series and handwave the logic of it (as Doug Naylor did in Tikka to Ride). I asked KyoSo which is considered to be the worst series of classic RD; she told me Pete Part 2.
It didn't take me too long to realise that this wasn't going to work anywhere nearly as easily as I thought; however, it did get me onto the idea of editing a more tolerable version of the aforementioned episode, which is for all intents and purposes complete and awaiting feedback from selected beta viewers.
While I was messing around with reimplementing the deleted scenes into the episodes, I was reminded that the Archie scenes had originally been filmed with Cassandra in mind. This was probably the moment that made me start wondering about a full series edit. After a while, I came around to the idea. Whole sections of various episodes could be reorganised and repurposed. The scenes on the Manny Celeste could just as easily be set on the Silverberg, where Cassandra resides. And it makes sense if they dumped one dangerous temporal artefact beneath the sea, they could easily dump another as well. Cutting out the central narrative of Krytie TV completely, Kryten's new motivation for tricking Lister into threatening his appeal by trashing Ackerman's quarters is revenge for the 'have a fantastic period' prank from Only the Good..., while Pete Part 1 leads directly into this by implying the video Kryten made was somehow or other brought to the attention of Captain Hollister.
The final problem, of course, is figuring out how to implement the chameleonic microbe plot into it. If Pete Part 2 leads directly into the events of Only the Good..., then Rimmer and Lister would still be in hot water over the T-Rex incident, and very likely ineligible for parole. Plus now Kryten doesn't have an incentive to hide Baxter's hooch in their quarters, thus eliminating their main reason to attempt escape and thus discover the microbe is on Red Dwarf, and simple alternative scenarios for escape haven't been forthcoming thus far. And that's before considering the small off-duty Czech traffic warden in the room, the cliffhanger ending that went unaddressed for more than a decade and remains largely unresolved to this day.
I've got a fairly good idea about how to address the latter; as to the former, I'm still working on that and I'm open to any suggestions. However, I do have a somewhat decent alternative scenario for how the microbe came to infect Red Dwarf, and I'm not going to spoil anything at the moment but I'm confident that the result will be a pleasant surprise for a lot of people.
Also, something else that I think will be reasonably well-received that isn't a potential spoiler danger: once the edit is complete, I'm going to start work on a secondary, alternative cut that replaces most of the CGI shots with the nearest available model shots from preceding series. Fan-smegging-tastic.
A cutlist may be forthcoming in the near future depending on how soon I can find certain additional materials, but I'm generally pretty disorganised about this sort of thing so I'm not promising anything.
UPDATE 1: Noticed the first poster wasn't embedding, and since that's the one I'm actually proud of that was an issue for me. Anyhow, I think it's sorted now.
How did I get here exactly? I suppose it's best to start at the beginning.
A while back I joined a Red Dwarf fan server on Discord that I happened to stumble on the link for whilst browsing the Ganymede and Titan forums.
They call it 'The Tank'. I believe I introduced one or two people to it already.
While I was in there, I met a most remarkable and discerning individual that some ignoble upstarts might refer to as KyoSo. Now here is someone I can have a truly stimulating conversation with, not merely for the pure intellectual challenge of debating someone who is very clearly of greater learning and clarity than I, but also for being able to do so candidly without either party needing any concern for distasteful judgment on part of the other.
Anyway, one of our talks got onto the subject of my two pet peeves about XI and XII (the episodes Can of Worms and Timewave, respectively) I got onto the idea of cutting the two down into one condensed narrative (working title Timeworms) that incorporates the simulant ship as being caught in the titular timewave and sent on a collision course with Rimmerwo- I mean, Planet Rimmer, and cut out everything else I thought didn't work with the episodes.
As I started planning this out mentally, I became concerned about the possibility that my edits would be so severe that there wouldn't be enough material left to make it to 25 minutes, and so I started brainstorming on ideas. Eventually I elected to try and bring in a less popular episode of the 'classic' series and handwave the logic of it (as Doug Naylor did in Tikka to Ride). I asked KyoSo which is considered to be the worst series of classic RD; she told me Pete Part 2.
It didn't take me too long to realise that this wasn't going to work anywhere nearly as easily as I thought; however, it did get me onto the idea of editing a more tolerable version of the aforementioned episode, which is for all intents and purposes complete and awaiting feedback from selected beta viewers.
While I was messing around with reimplementing the deleted scenes into the episodes, I was reminded that the Archie scenes had originally been filmed with Cassandra in mind. This was probably the moment that made me start wondering about a full series edit. After a while, I came around to the idea. Whole sections of various episodes could be reorganised and repurposed. The scenes on the Manny Celeste could just as easily be set on the Silverberg, where Cassandra resides. And it makes sense if they dumped one dangerous temporal artefact beneath the sea, they could easily dump another as well. Cutting out the central narrative of Krytie TV completely, Kryten's new motivation for tricking Lister into threatening his appeal by trashing Ackerman's quarters is revenge for the 'have a fantastic period' prank from Only the Good..., while Pete Part 1 leads directly into this by implying the video Kryten made was somehow or other brought to the attention of Captain Hollister.
The final problem, of course, is figuring out how to implement the chameleonic microbe plot into it. If Pete Part 2 leads directly into the events of Only the Good..., then Rimmer and Lister would still be in hot water over the T-Rex incident, and very likely ineligible for parole. Plus now Kryten doesn't have an incentive to hide Baxter's hooch in their quarters, thus eliminating their main reason to attempt escape and thus discover the microbe is on Red Dwarf, and simple alternative scenarios for escape haven't been forthcoming thus far. And that's before considering the small off-duty Czech traffic warden in the room, the cliffhanger ending that went unaddressed for more than a decade and remains largely unresolved to this day.
I've got a fairly good idea about how to address the latter; as to the former, I'm still working on that and I'm open to any suggestions. However, I do have a somewhat decent alternative scenario for how the microbe came to infect Red Dwarf, and I'm not going to spoil anything at the moment but I'm confident that the result will be a pleasant surprise for a lot of people.
Also, something else that I think will be reasonably well-received that isn't a potential spoiler danger: once the edit is complete, I'm going to start work on a secondary, alternative cut that replaces most of the CGI shots with the nearest available model shots from preceding series. Fan-smegging-tastic.
A cutlist may be forthcoming in the near future depending on how soon I can find certain additional materials, but I'm generally pretty disorganised about this sort of thing so I'm not promising anything.
UPDATE 1: Noticed the first poster wasn't embedding, and since that's the one I'm actually proud of that was an issue for me. Anyhow, I think it's sorted now.
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