two minutes? two minutes?! i need to make myself look sensational!: rebellious

rebellious_toes

two minutes? two minutes?! i need to make myself look sensational!

Jul 18, 2011 01:08

I'm here! And despite what it may look like, I haven't abandoned the place. I've just been a bit busy. That and I've had a cold. But I'm here now!

One of the things I've been doing is re-watching Back to Earth. Then watching it again with the cast commentary, and again with Doug Naylor's commentary. I think I'm on the verge of knowing it off by heart and I have lots of thoughts. Not very insightful thoughts, but thoughts nonetheless.

First, the episodes themselves. I think I love them. I really do. Sure, they're not perfect but there's a lot of good stuff there. The Coronation Street scenes crack me up (honestly, Simon Gregson's face when he first sees them is hysterical), I love all the metafictional craziness and I kind of want my own Starbug Smart Car. It even made me cry a couple of times (damn it, Craig, when did you learn to act?). I really don't care what anyone else thinks of them, I think they're great.
As always, the cast commentary was ridiculous and brilliant. I just want to sit here quoting all my favourite bits. Bobby's odd obsession with that shot of them walking away from Carbug ("What a bunch of really sexy men." / "I just think they look like four huge heroes." / "This is my favourite shot, I have to say."), Danny asking why there's no Rimmer/Katerina action and Chris explaining to him why that's not going to happen ("See, detonated by nuclear fusion, that's not a nice thing to do to someone, is it really? ... If someone wants to do that to you, a shag is out of the question, really."), Craig and Bobby taking the piss after Chris's "legendary" fall during the shooting scene ("Oh, d'you know what? It's just a pleasure to be next to him, isn't it?" "It is, yeah. I was proud to have the bits of snow from Chris's fall land on me.") and of course, Danny telling Bobby off for describing Sophie Winkleman flicking a switch as "slightly erotic" ("Bobby, you're not allowed to say things like that. She could be queen!"). I love it when they put them all in a room and just let them talk. They could speak complete nonsense (and they frequently do!) and I would happily listen to them all day. And while I'm on that subject, I really hope that we get the Red Dwarf Carpool that we've been promised. It'll probably turn into total chaos.
"I did explain that you would all hate me after show 2, and a lot of you still hate me after show 3, but you particularly hated me after show 2." I listened to Doug's commentary for the first time. It was a lot more interesting than I would have expected (I now know more about Red cameras than I will ever need to) and I sort of love him a bit after hearing it. It was kind of cute hearing him talk about how they couldn't afford shelves and how he had a small tantrum when he was told they might not be able to make a revision timetable for Rimmer's bunk in time, and it was really funny how he immediately yelled out "That's not significant! Don't think that's significant!" when 'The End' was typed out. He came across as a really nice person and his love for the show really shone through.
Doug's commentary also explained a few things. 1 - He does intend to resolve the Series 8 cliffhanger someday, they just didn't want to waste twenty minutes of this story on tying up loose ends. 2 - He did want Holly in it (and had planned a way to write him in) but things didn't work out with Norman. 3 - He all but confirmed that it is the original Rimmer ("cos I think it can only be one of one person, if, um, the Cat's explanation is right. So there, that's something to think about, I guess. That's a story to be told later."). I'll be interested to see if any of this gets picked up on in the new series.
And finally, Sophie Winkleman is the most adorable person ever. In the smeg ups, she kept apologising whenever she got something wrong and it was so sweet. I love her.

red dwarf, pixar