#From the smegazine

[table-top-horror]

Omg literally my wives

[funnywormz]

looking at old smegazines and making a compilation of stuff i like that im finding. may add to this post as i find more

1) this art style. it fucking rules i love it so much

2) a polymorph just transforming into the ENTIRE SHIP

3) based rimmer moments

4) this quote from craig charles (very relatable)

5) this fucking image. thats an autism creature

6) their rendition of this scene with lister actively smirking at rimmer when he's wondering where he got kids from. also the image of lister grinning from ear to ear holding 2 screaming babies (who somehow already have full dreadlocks) and smoking a fat cigar

[spotforme]

now i'm thinking like do i want to add inflation for the pre-accident fic set in 2100s' or do i want to just put a desclamer on that like 20£ is 20£ in 2024 money or do i just try to get over this thought because literally no-one is going to notice, if anything it's going to make it more confusing if i have one character borrowing a 120£ for a snack like how much unnecessary reasearch do i want to make for this or do i try to calculate how much sending a batallion of manned rockets into space to advertice a cocacola ad compared to today and try to figure out the value of money in-universe that way?? it was some billions in the books they said. there must be other mentions of money somewhere and oh my god what about currency change rates between moons i would at least assume Red Dwarf uses the same currency as it's maker company's headquarters or what if they have issued a star system wide currency comparative to euros in europe or something and is it too as flaved a system. have the creators of this plothole of a show at least made some money chart in some smegazine or something. lol what if i just don't stress about it and get to writing lol like that's gonna happen. no wait what if i just look at wchich county is more likely to populate each moon and go from there or or what if i rewatch the whole series again or what if i look at Fiji's offical records and see how the country has progressed to current day and try to predict where it would go in the grimy corporate universe of red dwarf. in general, after a certan point when inflation has gotten ridicilous, would the highest up's of some councel or bank just order a reset, like they withdraw all money for a day and give it back one cent at a time, i wouldn't put it past the universe. then i could msybe have them using 2024 20£ and have them getting something with it. oh my god i don't care how stupid that theory is i'm using it for my own sanity, no-one will ever know the mental gymnastics i did to literally not change anything about the story.

[janamelie]

I think some people might be interested in this link. A kind person (not me) uploaded all the Smegazines from the early 90s.

The what, you might ask? Red Dwarf briefly had an official magazine, with content not written by Rob and Doug but authorised by them. Original cartoon strips, interviews with the cast, set reports from filming etc. Enjoy. :)

[strange-and-off-putting]

Living for Cat's outfit

(Digging Rimmer's get up, too)

(From Red Dwarf Smegazine, May 1993)

[janamelie]

It's from the Smegazines. Not written by Rob and Doug but authorised by them.

WHY DIDN'T I KNOW ABOUT THIS?!?!

[suck-my-thermos]

Some things that have come back to me about DJXX

 - After Hattie signed my Smegazine with the Justice cover, she asked me to tell Chris that the boots were like the boots from earlier(?) which made him laugh. That honestly set my mood for the whole weekend :)

 - The audble gasps from the room when Ed Bye and Paul Jackson were announced was amazing, and then the sheer wall of noise when Rob Grant was announced...

   - Colin Howard was incredible interesting to listen to. My brother is in love with his poster.

 - I was witness to the first glass breakage that led to the ban on glasses in the autograph room. He said I looked like Clare Grogan.

 - I STILL CANNOT GET OVER MEETING DAVE BENSON PHILLIPS. 

- Seriously, that is not something that I expected to happen at Dimension Jump of all places. I wish I’d worked up the courage/soberness to tell him how much he meant for my childhood. We’ll always have The Buggles. 

 - I’ve learned lesson number 1 for next DJ - don’t get drunk on the Friday.

 - I was honestly too starstruck to say much more than ��Hi” and “Thank you” to everyone there. I still cannot think of what else I would’ve said to anyone.

 - Chloe Annett literally signed everything that I was carrying and was on the verge of signing my face. She nudged my shoulder in an attempt to warm me up. I love her so much please come back next time.

 - My boyfriends first introduction to the Red Dwarf tumblr community was through @janamelie and I laughing at the tags #HotGranddad and #gdilf. My poor sweet summer child...

 - Paul Jackson was determined to not smile in my photo. I was trying to join him for a serious photo but @cazflibs telling him to keep eyes on the camera honestly set me off for the rest of the day.

 - I’m still in awe that we got to listen to a live commentary of The End. All of the people involved in making the show are so naturally funny it’s unreal. 

 - Looking back on 15 to 1, I believe I was at a slight advantage being stuck in the middle between 2 men who were much taller than me. The man on my right was almost twice my height. It also helped hide the size of the room.You know that scene in Faher Ted where Ted gets on the wheel of the plane and only freaks out when he’s fixed it? Yeah.

 - I may have imagined it but I believe I saw Paul Jackson watching the game. Which made me determined to not fuck up too badly.

[weedle-testaburger]

Me again. Just curious. How many old magazines do you have lying around? I have a few old issues of Dr Who magazine and some Star Wars magazines. My dad has LOADS of old issues of 2000AD comics in the attic. I’ve been trying to find an issue of DW magazine I lost in 2013. It’s got this fantastic interview with Marc Platt and I can’t find it anywhere. What about you? I’m just curious.

Yeah I've got some Doctor Who magazines too, I don't read em that much but they're nice to have around. Possibly my favourites I have are the In Their Own Words specials they produced telling the story of Doctor Who in interviews collated from old issues which they did from about 2005-10. Iirc I've also got the complete run of the Red Dwarf Smegazine and of both Robot Wars Magazines (except the last issue of the second RW magazine, which is insanely rare). I used to buy magazines a lot more but nowadays I don't really have the interest.

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday to the multi-talented Kev F Sutherland

Sutherland is a comic writer and artist whose work appears in, amongst others, The Beano, 2000 AD, Oink!, Viz, and the Red Dwarf Smegazine. He has also worked for Marvel Comics in the US.

On stage, online and on TV he is the man behind the world-famous Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre.

He presents Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries and art centres and is the creator and executive producer of The Sitcom Trials.

Kev also works as a caricaturist, author for TV and radio, Comic Festival producer, comics historian and pundit, stand-up comedian and public speaker.

If you want a guid laugh take a look at his sketch from the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre

[janamelie]

It’s from one of the old official Smegazines which are all online now.  Don’t know which issue though.

https://archive.org/details/red_dwarf_smegazine-1992-02

i wonder how rimmer would react to the dimension in which its ace rimmer became a bionic mega evil murderous planet destroyer named "blackheart" who establishes his own rimmercorps

[table-top-horror]

I love when they draw characters from a distance in these comic segments

[red-dwarf-zone]

Red Dwarf Trivia: Novels Origin

You would think publishers would be over joyed to release a novel based on a successful tv show but that wasn’t so much the case back in 1988-1989 before the show had reached any heights of Fandom.

Infact the writers had been talking about writing a novel while rehearsing for the first series but deliberately held off until after series 2.

Doug Naylor: Actually they were talking about a novel while we were rehearsing the first series. I remember at the time Paul had shown some Americans the script and they were really excited about it and there was talk of books almost immediately. 

Rob Grant: BBC Books were going to do it, but we wanted actually not to do a novelisation of the script but to make it a proper novel - we didn't feel that going under a BBC cover would be very clear to anyone. 

Doug Naylor: We went to lunch with a guy called Tim Binding who works for Penguin. 

Rob Grant: We lied to him about how successful the series was. 

Doug Naylor: Oh yeah, it's a major cult and you can't move without people talking about it, it's watched all over the world'. I think he believed about a tenth of it, but took the gamble anyway.

Rob Grant: He was great. 

Doug Naylor: A terrific bloke.

Although the idea early on was to transcript the shows into novels the writers didn’t care much for that idea.

Rob Grant: We started off writing the books, and we were just going to transcribe the shows from the series. We started off saying "Well, let's do before the series started", because there's all that back story that we worked out that we hadn't used anywhere, and we enjoyed that bit so much, but we didn't enjoy at all transcribing the TV plots

Doug Naylor: Again, it was that we didn't want to rip people off, where it's basically the TV series with "He said" and then the script, and then "it looks like this", and it's all the scripts. it seems like a rip off to me

Rob Grant: And we were so used to the constrictions of TV: writing to budget, writing to what the performers can actually do. what technically is possible with our budget, that we got very excited by doing things that were impossible. I think Better Than Life as a movie would cost about 60 million (early 90s prediction)

Interview extract from Smegazine (july 92) and Better than life - Issue #1 (Fanclub magazine)

[desperatelyseekingcannibals]

11 😀

Hmm. for the send me an age and i’ll tell you what i would have been blogging about when i was that old

11... well, that would be the year I went from primary school to high school, so it might depend on whether it was before or after the new school year XD

My blog would most likely have been full of badgers (I used to collect items with badgers on and I’m still not sure why - everyone needs a hobby I suppose), and Red Dwarf. Which, thinking back was sort of my first fandom really XD (I used to by the smegazine and everything!) 

[table-top-horror]

Chris Barrie in the recording booth for the Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers Audiobook

[janamelie]

Some nice RD art from professional DC comics artist Rachael Stott.   You can find more on her Twitter account.  Please DO NOT REPOST unless you credit her and link as I have.

TOS included this artwork in their weekly news round-up and commented that she seemed particularly taken by Rimmer, to which she tweeted "OMG, they picked up on the thirst!"  So did I, tbh. :)

It set me thinking about how usually the crew are portrayed as less attractive than the actors actually are in cartoon form, especially in the Smegazines.  I know part of that is because the main aim is comedy but still.  It's nice to have another perspective to redress the balance a bit.

[janamelie]

LGBT+ Characters

What This Isn’t

A claim of “proof” of the sexuality and / or gender identity of any of these characters.  We don’t need that or anything else to “justify” shipping.

What This Is

A reference post to collate instances in canon which could indicate LGBT+ characters.  In the case of regulars, I won’t include every instance as it would simply take too long.

Rimmer

As I was saying… :p

Honestly, Rimmer is so obviously LGBT+ to me that I don’t know where to start.  How about his reaction to Ace in “Dimension Jump”?

RIMMER: "Commander Rimmer!" I ask you.  "Ace!" Barf city.  I bet you anything he wears women's underwear.  They're all the same, this type, you know, Hurly-burly, rough-n-tumble macho marines in public, and behind closed doors he'll be parading up and down in taffeta ballgowns, drinking mint juleps, whipping the houseboy.

KRYTEN: Sir, he's you!  It's just that your lives diverged at a certain point in time.

RIMMER: Yes, I went into the gents and he went the other way.

KRYTEN: I assume, sir, you are making fatuous references to his sexuality.  If I may point out, if --

Or how about Low Rimmer?  Surely Rob and Doug could have got their point across a little less graphically?

Or if you prefer something less rapey, this passage from “IWCD”.  Unlike the show, Rob and Doug had more time and leeway to explore the characters and this is what they chose to include for Rimmer:

“Rimmer began to regret his outburst. He didn’t like to see his other self upset, and he even contemplated briefly going up to him and giving him a manly embrace. But in a brief moment of homosexual panic, he thought his double might get the wrong idea. Not that he would, of course, because he was him and he knew for a fact he wasn’t that way sexually tilted; so obviously his double wasn’t and obviously his double would know that he wasn’t either, and it was simply a manly embrace meant in a sort of mano a mano kind of way…Perhaps he was tired…Two or three days in bed and he’d be his old self again…Who cared if his copy saw it as a sign of weakness? He’d suggest it anyway.” Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, Grant/Naylor, pg 233.

And this from the end of the “Better Than Life” novel, when Holly - whose IQ has been restored - comes up with a way to bring Lister back from the dead (no, not as a hologram):

“Rimmer stood in the hatchway and his face yielded to a grin, which in turn gave way to laughter.  Not his normal hollow braying empty laughter, this was an altogether different noise.  This was a noise his vocal cords had never been called on to make before.

It was the laughter of joy.”

Better Than Life, Grant/Naylor, pg 218.

I know some fans read Rimmer as asexual and you can certainly make an argument for that, most obviously in “Marooned” where he describes his younger self as not “particularly highly sexed”.  Of course, that wouldn’t preclude him also being homoromantic or biromantic.

Lister

No-one’s denying Lister’s obvious attraction to and affection for women, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t be bisexual or pansexual.  In fact, his “I’m not gay!” protestations in “Duct Soup” is a fairly common way for people attracted to more than one gender to describe themselves if they don’t feel comfortable using labels.  Given that he was talking to Chloe!Kochanski to whom he’s attracted, it makes sense that he’d prevaricate like this.

And then of course, in the very next episode “Blue”, he dreams about kissing Rimmer.  It’s not only the fact of this, it’s the subsequent scene drawing a direct comparison between him missing Rimmer and Kochanski missing her Dave - her boyfriend.  And despite the ending of this episode, when Lister actually meets Rimmer again, he’s delighted.  Until he realises it’s not HIS Rimmer and even so, he gets used to nano-Rimmer and they eventually become quite chummy.

Not forgetting the chemistry between him and Ace, of course.

Kryten

I know he's a mechanoid, but no-one has any problem reading his relationship with Mechanoid - and later Blob - Camille as romantic and Camille literally says herself that both she and her husband Hector are actually androgynous, which makes Kryten - at the very least - panromantic.

And that’s before we get to his very obvious love for Lister which he states himself in “Back In The Red”.

Holly

Holly was actually conceived as a female character and became male due to Norman Lovett’s original casting.  Sources: “Stasis Leaked” by Smegazine writer Jane Killick and “The Unofficial Red Dwarf Programme Guide” by Smegazine writers Chris Howarth and Steve Lyons.

With Hattie’s replacement casting and later Norman’s return, Rob and Doug may not have intended to create a trans or genderfluid character, but that’s what they ended up doing.

Holly is also bisexual - male Holly was attracted to Hilly and female Holly to Ace.

George McIntyre

It was actually Rob and Doug’s audio commentary on the pilot version of “The End” on “The Bodysnatcher Collection” which alerted me to this possibility.  I know it’s a stretch but I’m including it precisely because I’m indifferent to George as a character and it makes no difference to me whether someone believes this one or not.

During George’s speech at his “Welcome back” party, he says “I don’t want you to think of me as someone who’s dead, more as someone who’s no longer a threat to your marriages - I think Joe knows what I’m talking about!”

We see a man and a woman laughing and the woman playfully pokes the man in the arm.  He stops laughing and looks a bit sheepish.

Rob and Doug comment confusedly to the effect of “Shouldn’t it be the other way round?  This is one of the things we had no control over at this stage.”

Come on, Rob and Doug.  Not only does this scene appear intact in the final televised version of “The End”, you also included extra background on George in “Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers”, showing the events leading up to his death.  Unlike the hologram he replaces, Frank Saunders, there is no mention of George having a wife or indeed any partner, so as far I’m concerned, we shippers can read whatever we choose into this scene.  We would regardless, but the way canon leaves it is particularly open-ended.

Deb Lister and Arlene Rimmer (“Parallel Universe”)

See previous entries.  If their male counterparts are LGBT+ then so are they, plus I always got that vibe from the performances anyway.

Camille

Yes, everyone uses female pronouns for her as that’s how she presents to the crew, but she says herself: “We’re androgynous, but I suppose you could call [Hector] my husband.”

Noel Coward Waxdroid (“Meltdown”)

Mr Coward was gay in real life and his fictional incarnation here greets Rimmer with “Delighted to meet you, dear boy!”  I rest my case.

Nirvanah Crane

And arguably the entire crew of the Holoship according to her speech: “It's a ship regulation that we all have sexual congress at least twice a day.  It's a health rule … Here it is considered the height of bad manners to refuse an offer of sexual coupling … We are holograms.  There is no risk of disease or pregnancy.  That is why in our society we only believe in sex -- constant, guilt-free sex.”

Does that sound as though they’re fussy about the genders of their partners?  It certainly doesn’t to me.  So:

Captain Hercule Platini

Commander Randy Navarro

Commander Natalina Pushkin

Commander Binks

Sam Murray

From the Series V DVD booklet:

“Briefly revived in “Holoship”, it came as a surprise that Sam was male.  In the original pilot script - and Series 1′s deleted funeral scene - deceased crew member “Sam Murray” is said to be dating “Rick Thesen”.  Possibly Red Dwarf’s first gay couple?”

Cop (“Back To Reality”)

I’m sure it wasn’t written as such and maybe he didn’t intend to, but the way Lenny Von Dohlen plays his character’s reaction to the Voter Colonel just pings my gaydar.

Frank Todhunter (“The End”)

I know the conversation in “Duct Soup” (which also includes a reference to a gay crew member nicknamed “Bent Bob” *cringe*) where Kochanski tells Lister that the Todhunter in her dimension was gay is played off as something she made up to take Lister’s mind off his claustrophobia, but she never actually says as much.  There’s nothing to say that at least part of what she was saying wasn’t true.

Ackerman (Series VIII)

In the Series VIII DVD documentary, actor Graham McTavish says he was playing Ackerman as someone who enjoys sex with women “or at a pinch, men dressed as women”.  So onto this list he goes.

Big Meat (“Only The Good”)

I don’t blame you if you’ve blocked this one out as I find the scene almost unwatchable, but he’s the big prisoner who takes to the idea of being Cat’s “bitch” unexpectedly quickly.

Katerina Bartikovsky (“Back To Earth”)

Credit to @clueingforbeggs for noticing that in “Pete Part 1” Ackerman claims to have been “having jiggy-jiggy with the Science Officer’s wife” and connecting that with Katerina being a Science Officer.  There’s nothing to say that the Joy Squid didn’t conjure up the image of an actual crew member.

But maybe the ship has more than one Science Officer?  Well, the way it’s said makes it sound as though there is only one but in “Holoship” Kryten gives Rimmer a mind patch from two officers, one of whom is Science Officer Buchan.  There is no mention of Buchan’s gender so who’s to say they aren’t also female?

Begg Chief (“Entangled”)

“We prefer the ship of green.  And the sexy light man with the lady legs so long and luscious!”

Chancellor Wednesday (“The Beginning”)

Actor Alex Hardy says in Series X DVD doc “We’re Smegged” that he was playing the relationship between his character and Dominator Zlurth with a homoerotic undercurrent and you can see it subtly in his performance.

Dolphy (“Cured”)

All I’ll say about this one is that if Messalina had behaved towards Lister as Dolphy does in this episode, nobody would have doubted that she was into him.

Ziggy (“Timewave”)

Proof that LGBT+ characters in this show work a lot better when Doug isn’t intentionally writing them as such.  Sorry.

Feel free to add any examples I may have missed.

@lord-valery-mimes  @aziraphale-lesbian   @notalwaysweak  @feline-ranger  @downonthepharm-red-dwarf  @hologrammette  @rosecathy  @cazflibs​