Remastered Editions of Red Dwarf

jaykhunter

Has anyone seen these? They're were done for S1-3 and all available on the Bodysnatcher Collection DVD. They're not improvements overall but it's interesting to see what they've done to it. Here's some changes I've noticed :

First off S1 remastered, they've been able to add more of the 4:3 shot and also cropped the picture so it's closer to 16:9. They cropped less of the top & bottom for S2 & 3. have a look at a comparison :



- Better colour grading.
- Replaced the slow, ominous intro video to the standard S3+ rock intro music.
- Replaced some model shots with CGI (seen below)
- Replaced some background music (like when Lister's in the disco room)
- Edited out some lines (maybe due to the extra time from the CGI being added - e.g. cutting when Rimmer's in Kochanski's Hologramatic body and says "I've seen something you haven't, squire"

karnie

Yeah, It's been out for years. I haven't gone through mine yet, I'm currently writing a comprehensive A-Z encyclopedia on Red Dwarf, and am now only finishing up the series proper. I did pop it in to watch the first episode however, they cut out around 80% of George McIntyre's speech to tighten it up, but what I found disturbing was the poorly rendered CGI skutters they occasionally had running past the screen, they were just God-aweful! I really hope that's not indicative of the whole set.

komodosp

Never liked the CGI Red Dwarf - part of the charm of it was the clunky '80s looking models. And looking at your comparison above, are you really going to tell me the one on the right looks better?

In fairness (or maybe not) it was done at the time because they were trying to sell RD to the American market. That's probably why they cut lines too, before HBO came along American channels were very specific about fitting everything into slots of either half an hour or an hour, including time for (lots of) ad breaks. The reason the RD guys prefered the BBC was for the extra time the BBC allowed by not having ad breaks.

It's also why series 7 & 8 had 8 episodes each. In America they like more episodes, whereas in the UK they seem to like making a series of very few episodes.

karnie

komodosp wrote: »

Never liked the CGI Red Dwarf - part of the charm of it was the clunky '80s looking models. And looking at your comparison above, are you really going to tell me the one on the right looks better?

In fairness (or maybe not) it was done at the time because they were trying to sell RD to the American market. That's probably why they cut lines too, before HBO came along American channels were very specific about fitting everything into slots of either half an hour or an hour, including time for (lots of) ad breaks. The reason the RD guys prefered the BBC was for the extra time the BBC allowed by not having ad breaks.

It's also why series 7 & 8 had 8 episodes each. In America they like more episodes, whereas in the UK they seem to like making a series of very few episodes.

I'm not sure about that, since The Bodysnatcher Collection isn't even available in Region 1 format. And Red Dwarf had already been running here back in the 90s on PBS, and after the debacle that was the US pilot, I doubt they cared much about catering to Americans.

jaykhunter

I think the remasters were definitely for a foreign market - Japan maybe? Put me down for Japan. Remastering and adding new graphics were an attempt to make it seem less dated and flimsy. It can't easily be done. Poor-CGI'd scutters in front of grey-painted wooden sets is just wrong! I bet the new fans who were exposed to the remasters first were grand with it. Doug's definitely got a bit of Lucas in him; his vision of RD differs from ours!

The problem with attention to CG and big expensive set-pieces inevitably means more drama and less funny