Menu Map

Series VI Screens - by Andrew Ellard

17 December, 2004

It feels like a very long time indeed since we last went through the complicated process of designing and building DVD menu graphics from scratch. The last to be built from the ground up was Series III, which has been used as the basis for IV and V due to the similar look and locations those shows had.

However, it's time for a change. The Starbug-bound Red Dwarf VI requires that we ditch the confines of the mothership and shift our virtual location to a little green shuttlecraft with a propensity for crashing into... well, just about anything. Which is just how we encounter Starbug at the beginning of its journey.

As the Red Dwarf theme kicks off, the ship blasts out from beneath a planet surface of molten lava, crosses deep space and enters an asteroid belt... only to be stuck by a giant flaming meteorite and left to crash into a hunk of lunar rock.

No doubt you all recognise the footage described above, culled as it is from the model FX rushes of Gunmen of the Apocalypse and Psirens. Working from my storyboards, Deluxe Digital - the geniuses who have made every Dwarf DVD menu spring alive to, frankly, Hollywood standards - then transition through the settling dust to their CGI Starbug. One moment in the airlock later, and we're inside.

Oh, and what an interior. Starbug circa Series VIhas been lovingly and slavishly recreated in immense detail. The main menu for both discs sits on the Mid-Section's wall monitors, as a Starbug graphic spins on one screen and a rogue paper aeroplane drifts back and forth. (Geddit?)

The episode and scene selection menu is housed in the cockpit (watch for the funky lens flair as the camera wanders in - the view through the windscreen is jolly atmospheric), while the bonus material can all be found upstairs in the crew's sleeping quarters. As with Series V, rather than crush the bonus gubbins onto one screen Deluxe have split the menu in two - the first half showing the whole room, the camera turning round to Lister's kitchette/sink area for the latter section.

Finally - and we don't usually do this, but it is the festive season - a link to a bonus menu shot, housing one of our hidden Easter Eggs, is secreted somewhere within this article (an Easter Egg Easter Egg if you will; how post-modern)! Of course, it won't help you find the hidden area come February 21st... but it might give a clue about where to start looking.

More DVD Details will follow soon...

The upcoming Red Dwarf DVD releases are as follows:

Region	Location	Series	Date
2	Europe	Just the Shows 1	OUT NOW
2	Europe	V	OUT NOW
2	Europe	VI	Feb 21, 2005
4	Australasia	Just the Shows 1	OUT NOW
4	Australasia	V	OUT NOW
4	Australasia	VI	OUT NOW
1	USA & Canada	V & VI	Mar 15, 2005