DVD documentaries wrap

There are few people better qualified to talk about British comedy of the 1980s than Paul Jackson. He also always seems to come off pretty well in talking head interviews, and for someone who’s had so much power and influence in the industry down the years, he’s got a refreshingly self-deprecating sense of humour. So I’m really looking forward to his contribution on this.

And as for this :

Most importantly, it allows an on-the-record response to years of debate regarding Red Dwarf: Remastered, the very episodes that will be appearing on these DVDs. What does he think of them now, what worked and what didn’t? Expect some full and frank answers.

Can’t wait, frankly.

> I would really like to there to be a commentary from Doug and/or Ed too and I can’t imagine it would take up that much room. I wouldn’t be surprised if it doesn’t happen though.

Good point about the room (I was just thinking maybe they’d want to squeeze the doccos on the relevant series disc and would want to save all the space possible, but that seems unlikely after I’ve thought about it for more than a second) but I can imagine commentaries being quite expensive and probbaly the first thing up for the chop if money was tight. After all, they’ve already got a full set…

Commentaries are about the only thing that’ll get me to watch the episodes, that’s for sure.

(don’t get me wrong, I’m buying the boxset. Day of release, if I’ve got the cash. But I’m treating this as “Red Dwarf : The Lost Extras” or whatever you want to call it. The eps are incidental.)

Well, you can squeeze something like seven [video] half-hours and a few odds & ends on a DVD-9 - more than that, and the quality’ll start to visibly suffer. I expect that, on that basis, you could put Bodysnatcher OR The End: TOA and commentary/ies on the RMRDI DVD, with one out of BS & ETOA having to be bumped to the RMRDII disc; and the Dad & such excerpts on the RMRDIII DVD along with commentary/ies.

After that, for disc four, if the RDI & RDII documentaries are up to scratch with the later series docs, they’ll be three hours between them. Might be a bit of a stretch, given that, for the Remastered documentary to be much more than half-an-hour… certainly not more than 40 mins.

*will wait until he can get a heavy discount before getting it, given that he’d be doing so for the extras as well*

I want to see the box art!

> WHAT ABOUT THE MOVIE

I think it’s fair to say I feel comfortable describing this - the last TV series DVD project with 2 entertain - as the end of an era.

As with the series continuity, a movie DVD would be the start of something new.

Commentaries are difficult to fund/organise - but they ARE easy to fit on a disc. Audio is, relatively small to fit on. (Hence the 18-odd language tracks movie DVDs happily contain.)

> Will the DVD Box set ever be heavily discounted though?

Well, you could always get the series DVDs for £13.99 online, despite an RRP of £19.99; so no matter how you look at the new boxset price, it’s likely to be cheaper than the RRP by a decent percentage.

I got one of the series (VI, I think), in a shop, for £7.99 at one point. You can’t get them at that price now, but timing’s everything.

> Doug’s made some… let’s say ‘interesting’ decisions with Dwarf in the years since series VI

To be fair, the change from Series V to VI was quite “interesting” as well - dropping a character, changing the setting, adopting a more formulaic story format…

Anyway, on topic: If this doesn’t come out in Region 4, somebody is going to get hurt.

Look, everyone knows that remastered episodes COULD be fantastic and I don’t think it was a bad decision by Doug to try it; and while I look upon VII and VIII with disdain, I don’t think Doug was in the wrong to go for it, particularly with VII. Six series’ of a show is more than what most British sitcoms get. Coming back after four years for a seventh and not shaking things up a bit would have been lazy anyway. And the movie was being planned then, eleven years ago.

I don’t mean the remastered episodes that we have could be fantastic, I mean the idea itself is good and with a lot of money it could work. The remastered Star Trek episodes have worked well.