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Tonight’s Special Guest Star: Adolf Hitler as Himself

TV Comedy

It is perhaps a mark of the kind of show Red Dwarf is that an episode can start with having Lister climb into a living photo featuring Adolf Hitler, beat him up, nick his briefcase, and accidentally foil an assassination attempt.

Nevertheless, ten minutes into “Timeslides” (12/12/89) that is exactly what has happened, leading to Rimmer’s memorable line: “You can’t just stick one on the leader of the Third Reich.” But we’re not here to talk about the actual comedy in the episode. That would be ludicrous.

No, we’re here to talk about this prop newspaper:

News Chronicle newspaper: headline Hitler Escapes Bomb Attack at Nuremberg

In grand time travel story tradition, this is the shot that tells us that what Lister did is real. His leap into the living photograph had actual, lasting repercussions for the universe; it didn’t exist in its own little bubble. It’s the revelation that powers the whole rest of the episode.

It’s also the kind of shot which makes me think: hang on, did they make that newspaper front page from scratch, or is it based around a real one? Of course it made me think that. I have form.

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Jump The Shark 2

Meta / TV Comedy

I write about Red Dwarf a lot on here. Far more than I ever actually intended to. I thought, after 17-odd years1 of talking about the show on Ganymede & Titan, that I might be kinda done with it. Turns out that there’s a particular strain of production nonsense that I still find interesting, and it can’t be kicked out of me.

But there is one aspect of the show that I don’t really talk about these days. One which probably deserves a bit of explanation. Let me quote a tweet I received yesterday; name stripped because this is about me, not them. In reply to my recent piece about the sets in “Back to Reality”:

“The last ever episode of Red Dwarf.

(Any episodes you may remember being made after this one are merely a product of your fevered imagination.)”

Now, did I find this tweet annoying? Yes, I did. But partly for a reason that this poor unfortunate person could never have known.

Because: after all those years in Red Dwarf fandom, I cannot over-emphasise how bored I am talking about when Red Dwarf stopped being good.

I mean, I have my opinions. God, I have my opinions. I could spray them all out to you right now, like so much fetid diarrhoea. But I talked about that shit for 17 years. It’s a topic which creeps in when you least expect it to. You could be having a lovely little chat about the mechanics of time travel in “Timeslides”, and suddenly somebody’s dislike of Series VII pops up in the conversation and ruins the whole thread.

I’m not exaggerating. It’d happen literally all the time. Sometimes, it would be me throwing the VII-bomb in, because I couldn’t fucking help myself.

Not that this is a purely VII thing. I also took part in podcasts about quite a few series that I didn’t really like very much. Don’t get me wrong; some of those podcasts were very good indeed, albeit not because of me. But I sometimes found making them a stressful experience; I wrote this in 2017 which captures some of my frustration. It’s not always much fun to be part of something like that, only to end up whining like hell. You get sick of the sound of your own voice.

To be clear, this isn’t a jab at fandom per se, Red Dwarf or otherwise. There is a nasty habit some people have of focusing on all the bad things about fandom, and ignoring the good. I have zero time for that point of view. Fandom of all kinds has been responsible for so many amazing things. I’ve especially warmed to fanfic and fanart for certain TV shows over the last few years, which I incorrectly turned up my nose at for ages.

But when I write about Red Dwarf now, it’s with a very specific aim. It’s about taking the bits of the show I love, and seeing what makes them tick. I really want to try and avoid all the old boring conversations about which episodes of the show are any good; I’ve done them to death. Nor am I interested in having any kind of opinion about the episodes I’m not that keen on. I’m reclaiming my love for the show by avoiding the stuff I’m bored with, and forging ahead with brand new actual facts. There’s always something new to discover.

So if anybody wonders why I don’t get into those discussions… there you are. Fandom can be great, but it can also leave scars. Consider the articles I write on here my laser removal treatment.


  1. Very odd. 

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Leisure World International

TV Comedy

Red Dwarf‘s “Back to Reality” (RX: 5-6/12/91), befitting its story, has something of a dual nature. In many ways, it’s a bold, unusual episode, pushing Red Dwarf to places it had never been before. In other ways, it’s just the natural conclusion to themes which had been present in the show from the very beginning. It’s not like one of the best sitcom episodes of the 90s sprung out of the television without warning.

Nevertheless, perhaps more than any other episode of Red Dwarf, it absolutely commits to its central idea. Seven minutes in, our crew are dead, and thrown into their nightmare. And one thing which makes it feel unlike any other episode is how few of the usual standing sets it uses. Just Starbug. The rest of our familiar, friendly haunts are nowhere to be seen.

Which presents the show with an interesting production problem. At the end of the series1, Production Designer Mel Bibby suddenly has to pull out a brand new bunch of sets, just for a single episode. From scratch.

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  1. Yes, “Back to Reality” was not only transmitted last, but recorded last too. 

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I Want Names, I Want Places, I Want Dates

TV Comedy

Sometimes, when you hear what has become a well-worn anecdote about a TV show, you wonder whether it’s actually true or not. Other times, you have absolutely no doubt that it’s true. You just want to know more.

Red Dwarf has a great many of these tales. And something I’ve wondered for many years concerns the electricians’ strike which meant that the original recordings for Series 1 had to be abandoned. This has been told in many forms for years; for example, in the “Launching Red Dwarf” documentary on the Series 1 DVD in 2002, commissioner Peter Ridsdale-Scott had this to say:

“The worries were legion. First of all, we had the strike, which meant that every single episode of Red Dwarf of that first series went into production, into rehearsal, and never went into the studio. All six of them. So we’d spent all the money, and the BBC said ‘Well, sorry about this, it’s been very good and we’re sure it would have been a success, but that’s it’. And Paul [Jackson] and I said ‘Oh no. We may have spent the money, but we must remount this production, we must get it on.’ And we persuaded them, and it was put on.”

The same story is told on the official Red Dwarf site1:

“On the second day of rehearsals, an electrician’s strike began at the BBC which effectively put a stop to any production. Unperturbed, the crew completed rehearsals for the first episode and moved on to the second, optimistic that they could fit the The End shoot onto the end of the other existing episode slots.

Except one by one, the episode recordings were called off as the strike persisted. The entire season, rehearsed and ready, was left for six months – past the originally intended dates for broadcast – before being remounted.”

All of which is great, and frankly a damn sight more than we get to hear about most sitcoms. But I’m greedy, and I want more. There’s one particular aspect about all this which has never quite been nailed down over the years. And that is: what were the exact dates of the abandoned Red Dwarf recordings for Series 1?

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  1. Select the ‘Production’ section. 

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“Tell Me More About These Buttons: Are Some Illuminated?”

TV Comedy

HOLLY: Emergency. Emergency. There’s an emergency going on.
LISTER: What is it, Hol?
HOLLY: There’s an emergency, Dave. The navicomp’s overheating, and I need your help in the drive room.
RIMMER: Oooh-ooh-ooh!
LISTER: Come in number 169, your time is up. OK, what was I wearing?
RIMMER: Ahhh… that jacket, and that red T-shirt.

Lister pulls out his hat and places it back on his head, then yanks a hefty length of piping off the wall.

LISTER: You said yourself, I can’t stop it. Let’s get it over with.
RIMMER: (Pointing at the pipe) Ah, Lister, what’s that for?
LISTER: I’m going out like I came in – screaming and kicking.
RIMMER: You can’t whack Death on the head!
LISTER: If he comes near me I’m gonna rip his nipples off.

Poor old David Lister. “Future Echoes” (RX: 17-18/10/87) is a particularly unpleasant business for him. But as he plugs in the drive computer into the navicomp and faces down Death – with or without nipples – he can at least be sure that he’s starting off a chain of events which makes a sad old Red Dwarf fan very happy.

Let’s back up a bit. Last time we looked at the wonderful word of Red Dwarf props and sets, we managed to trace a couple of EXCITING PANELS from Series 1 in 1987, right through to Series VII in 1996. Frankly, this was a bit too exciting, and I had to have a lie down for a bit.

But when I recovered, I was left sweaty and dissatisfied. To trace part of a set through nearly the entirety of the BBC years, but missing out Series VIII, was absolutely infuriating. Surely there must be something which made the trip through the whole eight series?

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“What about Other Optical Effects like Split-Screen, Slow Motion, Quantel?”

TV Comedy

The other day, I was browsing some paperwork for the Red Dwarf episode “White Hole” (TX: 7/3/91) , as you do. And something interesting caught my eye.

“This programme was recorded on Composite Betacam SP videotape.
Original tape numbers: 83 – 101 (with tape no: 90 being the master insert audience tape). Tape No: 124 + 126 additional graphics tapes.
Tape no: CV37898 (Mirage FX tape).”

Mirage FX tape? What’s that?

I know that some of you are already screaming at me. I have to admit, I am far from an expert on this kind of thing. I do, however, know enough to throw a few search terms into Google. I think we can trust Wikipedia with the basics, at least.

“The Quantel Mirage, or DVM8000/1 “Digital Video Manipulator”, was a digital real-time video effects processor introduced by Quantel in 1982. It was capable of warping a live video stream by texture mapping it onto an arbitrary three-dimensional shape, around which the viewer could freely rotate or zoom in real-time. It could also interpolate, or morph, between two different shapes. It was considered the first real-time 3D video effects processor.”

I also know that sometimes, the best way to get a grip on the capabilities of things like this is to search for demonstration videos on YouTube. In 2021, we’re in a far better situation than we were even a decade ago with this stuff: so much reference material has been uploaded by some extremely helpful people.

I was not disappointed.

And at 1:38 into that video… oh, that’s the bit they used in “White Hole”. Does that explosion effect remind you of anything?

Yes, when Holly is going through the intelligence compression procedure:

Or to be more specific:

Explosion effect in Mirage demonstration video
Same explosion effect in Red Dwarf, White Hole, for Holly's IQ transformation


At this point, my mind was blown in much the same way as Holly’s. But there’s more. How about this segment from Tomorrow’s World (TX: 30/12/82)1, for instance?

What happens at 2:49? Well, see if you can guess. Clearly, exploding the image was a signature effect of the Mirage.

And that’s what I really love about this. In 1990, when “White Hole” was made, the Quantel Mirage was already eight years old. The year before, when Series III was made, Red Dwarf had already made use of Harry, a later, more advanced bit of kit from Quantel. If it’s overstating things to say that the Mirage was old by this point, it most definitely wasn’t new, groundbreaking kit.

Red Dwarf makes the effect look great, though. Far better than either the example in the demonstration video, or in Tomorrow’s World. And it’s better because the effect works perfectly to tell the story. Holly is being dismantled to her very essence in order to increase her IQ; her visage being blown to smithereens and then put back together is a brilliant way to portray this.

A standard Quantel effect, turned into story. That’s some of yer actual, real television magic.

UPDATE (14/12/21): Some days, silly things I write lead to the most wonderful revelations. Here’s a remarkable piece of information on this effect, from the creator themselves:

I think I just need Dirty Feed to be a big list of bullet points stating topics I’m interested in, and then people who are actually clever can fill in the rest.


  1. The YouTube upload itself only said “1982”, so I thought I’d research the full date for you. Don’t ask me why the video is cropped to widescreen either, despite being uploaded by the BBC. I haven’t a clue. 

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Sorry, I Was Looking at the Wrong Panel

TV Comedy

It’s odd, the stuff you just make up in your head about a TV programme, without any actual evidence. Even a programme you’re supposed to know plenty about.

Take Series III of Red Dwarf. Out goes Paul Montague as Production Designer, and in comes Mel Bibby. The look of the show changes almost completely, the grey submarine aesthetic replaced by cream, Alien-inspired sets. At first glance, the show could barely look much different.

Series 2 bunkroom

Series 2 bunkroom

Series III bunkroom

Series III bunkroom

And so, over the years, your mind runs away with itself. You imagine Mel Bibby getting a massive skip, chucking every single last shred of the old sets into it, and starting from scratch. After all, not only do the sets look entirely different, but it’s on record that the show’s new producers – a certain Rob Grant and Doug Naylor – hated the old sets.

Nobody’s ever actually said that no part of the old sets remained in the new look. But clearly they didn’t, right? The new regime would want nothing to do with them.

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Fish!

TV Comedy

Series IV of Red Dwarf in 1991 saw many interesting developments. For a start, the show moved down south from BBC Manchester to Shepperton. For another, Grant Naylor Productions took control of the show. There’s a whole wealth of important things to write about.

So I want to talk about some fish.

You know the ones I mean. These ones, brand new for Series IV, on monitors around the ship:

Kryten and Lister with the fish in the background
Lister with the fish in the background


Our question today: where did this footage come from? Surely it wasn’t shot specifically for Red Dwarf?

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By the Book

TV Comedy

Reshoots. The problem is always damn reshoots.

Let me explain. Over the last few years, I’ve been doing various bits of research into some of the nitty gritty about Red Dwarf‘s production. (Stuff like this article on the BBC Manchester studios is the result of that.) And once you get into the really complex stuff, knowing exactly when a scene was shot starts to become important.

But no problem, right? By this point, the production dates of Red Dwarf – at least for most of the studio material – are widely known. When telling the story of Series III, for instance, we can easily thread our way through the production order of the episodes, rather than the transmission order.

The issue: reshoots. Just because the majority of an episode was shot on a particular date, it doesn’t mean all of it was. Because productions have this nasty tendency to reshoot things they think they can do a better job of, weeks down the line. Damn them.

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