Raja's Blog

For the first time, I Netflix'd the Bonus Disc as well. It's quite entertaining; the main feature is "Built to Last", a 70+ minute "documentary" (basically, a lot of talking-heads comments from the cast and crew). Again, the cast really liked "Meltdown" and most were annoyed that it was held for the end of season; the original plan was to open the season with it, but when the first Gulf War happened, it was decided to wait until season's end. Craig Charles (who plays Lister) says, reasonably, that it's just a TV show, and that it was done long before the War, in all good faith, so he thinks delaying the broadcast is silly. But he does have other reasons for being annoyed; he has a BBC radio show, and when his good friend musician Edwin Starr died during the war, Craig was not allowed to do a proper tribute, since Starr's best-known (and best) song is the famous "War". Chris Barrie (who plays Rimmer) is the only one who sympathizes with the delay; he says, reasonably, that if a genuine war intervenes, and people are upset about their loved ones being injured or killed, it doesn't seem unreasonable to delay, or even cancel, the broadcast.

There's also a large other set of bonuses, reachable either via an animated menu or a text menu. After failing miserably to navigate the animated menu (it looks like it really needs a mouse), I quickly switched to the text menu.

The bonuses include a pair of longish excerpts (more than 30 minutes, IIRC) of Red Dwarf audiobooks; these seem to have been read by Chris Barrie, who does a truly amazing job of mimicking his co-cast-members. (Surely they'd have credited them if they read their own parts?) The excerpts correspond to two scenes from "White Hole"[minor spoilers]—the "pool room" sequence, and the conversation between "Talkie Toaster" and the optimized Holly. The relationship between the TV show and the books (and audiobooks) seems complicated; for instance, Holly is still a male, and the "pool room" scene of "White Hole" goes into greater detail. What I mean to say is, the books seem to be more interesting than a simple rehash of the TV scripts.

The other major bonus is a 30-minute (minus obligatory commercial time OC) TV show called "Can't Smeg Won't Smeg". Apparently this was an episode of a light-hearted British TV cooking show (called "Can't Cook Won't Cook", I presume). The host of this TV show appeared (in heavy makeup and costume) in a Red Dwarf episode (presumably from a later season), so five Red Dwarf actors (playing six parts ;-) return the favor and appear (in character) on his show. It's light-hearted, at-least-partly-unscripted fun.

Other, shorter, bonuses include a couple of cut-together-with-music bits of video ("Lurve" and "Ace Rimmer 'A Life in Lamé'"); those were amusing, but I cut them off to avoid spoilage (they include bits from future episodes); "Smeg Ups" (bloopers); "Deleted Scenes" (some of which are interesting, none of which are crucial); vintage trailers for the series (which look to be taken from fan VHS tapes, but are quite amusing); some nice silent footage of the spacecraft models; a gallery of stills, including three sets of behind-the scenes production stills, a set of special effects preproduction sketches, costume tests, and VHS sleeves, and Polaroid snapshots; a (seemingly) complete set of music cues for Series Four (e.g., "Main Theme", "Elvis Theme", "Extended Hammond Theme", "Farewell", four "Action" themes, three "Romantic" themes, 12 "Dramatic" themes....), which are almost as good as having a Series Four soundtrack.

Whew! While it may seem silly that I've spent more time detailing the bonuses than discussing Season Four, my goal was to get across the fact that the bonus disc is truly excellent; if I were a bigger fan of Red Dwarf, the bonus disc would be everything I wanted, and (perhaps) reason enough to buy the DVD.