Web Dwarf VII

Back for another round-up of online Dwarfy happenings.

24 July, 2020

It should perhaps be no surprise that over the long lockdown summer, the Red Dwarf fan community have thrown themselves into creative endeavour with even more gusto than usual. We've seen some quite startling projects take shape over the last couple of months, so let's begin our latest regular roundup of Red Dwarf on the web with a look at some of them...

First up, you might know Greig Johnson best for his appearances on BBC's The Mash Report. But if he hadn't gone into comedy, Greig might have had a budding career as a prop maker, if this astonishing bazookoid replica is anything to go by:

We're particularly fond of the twist of the really quite excellent first model being the one he made aged 11, before the new one gets revealed.

Not to be outdone, here's Leigh Piggott with a lovely 3D-printed replica of the Dwarf itself:

While Galactic Womble Props have taken things macro-small with an incredibly detailed Series I-style sleeping quarter - assembled from scrap pieces costing less than a tenner!

King of the Brick Builders, Bob's Vintage Bricks, is on his second attempt to get a Red Dwarf model through the rigorous Lego Ideas approval process. We've reported on his Starbug model before, but as he updates, it's getting closer and closer to the required 10,000 signatures:

And if you want to know what it might be like if Lego do make the set and you get to build one yourself, you can see a test build going on here:

Let's go from the physical to the digital, and with its premise of open-space isolation, No Man's Sky is a game that feels like it's been crying out to be Red Dwarf-ised since day one. So YouTube user ballisticola has obliged with an elaborate Starbug-styled base build:

And over to the artists, we find a nice Promised Land-inspired Rimmer piece:

And at the opposite end of the timeline, a cartoony take on early Lister and Rimmer:

Kicking off a run of Kryten-inspired pieces, this stunning piece bringing together the man and the mechanoid:

A quick but detailed pencil sketch (and we'll forgive the typo!):

And a terrific cartoony take that calls to our mind the style of some of the Smegazine strips:

Finally, we can't leave out the Cat, so here's an extremely fun piece:

We're sure you won't have missed the fact that The Promised Land came out on Blu-ray and DVD last month:

And with the 90-minute special launching in the US on Britbox this Sunday (26th July), don't forget the special livestreamed Comic-Con panel with Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Robert Llewellyn and Doug Naylor. If you're reading this ahead of the show you'll be able to watch it live at the below link; if afterwards, it should be embedded here for you to watch:

This meant a fresh bit of retrospective on the special was in the air, including this great technical piece about the rotoscoping effects employed by the team at Outpost:

And a really nice interview with Chris Barrie in the Radio Times, reflecting on the role of Rimmer:

In a pleasing bit of synchronicity, here's a dug-up old interview with Craig Charles, also in the RT, but back in 1999 ahead of the broadcast of Series VIII:

Another old magazine find was this advert from an issue of Starburst, which... well, we think it's an advert for Red Dwarf, but it could just as easily be for Rad Dworf:

The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club sparked a wave of fan activity by launching their "Red Dwarf 30 Day Challenge" - encouraging fans to tweet about 30 episodes all based on specific topics:

There were a huge number of participating tweeters over the course of the 30 days, and you can browse through some of the best by clicking the hashtag.

The Fan Club also took the opportunity, over what would have been the weekend of the latest Dimension Jump convention, to reminisce about events past - with one fan finding a pile of ephemera from only the sixth ever DJ, 23 years ago!

A couple of question marks over Red Dwarf lore (don't call ?em plot holes!) were answered recently, first as Doug Naylor confirmed a long-standing theory about just why Rimmer ages throughout the show's run:

And if you've ever wondered how Lister can have been found under a pool table in the Aigburth Arms, when the Liverpool pub was renamed "The Victoria" back in the 2000s, we've got news for you: it changed back in 2020:

Hopping on to popular memes is always a fun pastime for Dwarf fans on Twitter, and so it is that we've seen inevitable but clever takes on the "everything's cake" one:

And on the British government's less-than-inspiring Covid crisis messaging:

If you've been keen to see Richard Naylor's multiple film festival award-winning film The Beach House, we're pleased to report it's now available to watch online:

We just can't escape situations where a knowledge of Red Dwarf comes in handy in a seemingly innocuous quiz question:

And finally, to go out with a song, Matt Kessel has run himself through the triplicator machine with some extremely clever costuming and backgrounding to give a multi-part take on the Dwarf theme:

Keep your Dwarf creativity, observations and memes coming - let us know on @RedDwarfHQ and you might see them in a future roundup!

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