Get down Shepperton

It’s 16.47 on a cold January night and I’m stood in America’s deep west in 1855 excitedly tweeting that I’m about to board a spaceship.

I’ve been waiting a long time for this. Since 1998 in fact, when I last set foot onto Shepperton Studios backlot. It’s not the wild west - it’s an unknown film set on the edge of a carpark that marks the queue line for ticket-holders to the filming of Red Dwarf.

That night in 1998 is a very happy, hazy memory now. Visiting the set of the TV series you’ve grown up loving was such a barrage to the senses that I didn’t take it in. I just gazed open-mouthed at Lister, Kryten, The Cat and Rimmer, idols all there, right infront of me. If it wasn’t for the fact the DVD of Red Dwarf VIII is on my shelf I possibly wouldn’t be able to recall much of what I saw back when I was an excited 18-year-old in a geeky Red Dwarf baseball jacket.

Flash forward to 2012 and once again I’m wearing that jacket. Unfortunately it hasn’t developed a cider & Pringles belly like I have, so it’s slightly tighter but I don’t care. I’ve promised my self I’d savour every moment this time and not just gape. But walking onto Stage K at Shepperton my mouth plunges. The sets are stunning. They are brand new of course, a completely new take on the classic Red Dwarf bunk room. No longer stark-white or ocean grey but complemented with deep earthy tones, blimey they’re gorgeous. Perfect. I catch myself, pinch myself and start breathing again as our guide for the evening, Ray Peacock, introduces himself and the crew.

The cast step out in their new costumes. Again all new. Again so, so right. I love Red Dwarf, I’ll lap anything up if it claims to be new Red Dwarf but I’ll admit the recent Back To Earth special on Dave wasn’t quite right. Within minutes of ‘action’ being called I knew this WAS Red Dwarf. This was funny. Humour derived from the characters - the characters we’ve loved since 1988. It felt like early Red Dwarf with a long scene of dialogue between Lister & Rimmer. It could have come straight from Marooned. This is why I adore this show.

Despite being on a space ship 3 million years into the future you can connect with these characters. To me the crew of Red Dwarf have always felt much more real and raw than any incarnation of Star Trek has ever managed, and that’s a show that prides its self on exploring the human condition. The situations the Red Dwarf crew are put through might be bat-shit crazy but the characters have always remained grounded. It’s when the characters go 2-D, which happened occasionally in later series, that Red Dwarf loses its edge and goes a bit pantomime. (Lister, Kochanski & Cat Dibblying it up in Back In The Red and the whole Blue Midget/Cat dance were my personal lows....and I saw that being filmed!)

Through a stroke of luck I ended up seeing two episodes of Red Dwarf X that night. Episode One is very series V in feel and focuses on one character in a way we haven’t seen for a long time. It’s good, very good and the gag rate is brilliant. Meanwhile episode five feels closer to series II. Quite talky, some new character development and a revelation that made the whole audience gasp.
The night was wonderful and the cast all on top-form. Robert Llewellyn in particular plunged himself into Kryten’s character maintaining it even when cameras weren’t rolling. Peacock was a fantastic warm up. Some great interaction with the audience - stealing guests food and teasing the floor manager. I’d happily pay to see him again, let alone see more Red Dwarf.

All too soon the shoot ended, and we were abruptly ushered out into the real world and the glamour of a film studios left behind for the excitement of Sunbury Premier Inn.

So yeah, that’s it. I’d love to go into detail about what I saw but Doug Naylor swore us to secrecy and as co-creator of my favourite telly the least I can do is respect that.

If you’re a fan of Red Dwarf you are in for a treat when X airs on Dave in September.

Listen, do you smell something?

'I want to believe' proclaimed the poster that adorned Fox Mulder's office wall, and later my student bedroom. You see I'd love to believe but I'm a man of science. I need data, statistics & evidence. That's why I was a tad disappointed when I tagged along on a local ghost hunt to mark Halloween last weekend.

There were no PKE metres, no Ecto-goggles. Just a pair of duff movement sensors and a pair of mediums.

Yes, mediums.

There are people out there that fully believe in psychics/mediums but it's not for me. I follow the Derren Brown view that it's all trickery & performance. Ouija boards are less likely to be a form of communication with the spirit world - more an indicator of the ideomotor effect I didn't see anything that night that convinced me otherwise. The mediums put on a good show but that's all I ever felt it was.

So with such a sceptical outlook why did I even bother to go? Well, skeptics aren't nessecarily non-believers. For so many reports of hauntings and spectres throughout the history of humankind there must be something in it. But what? I don't actually believe that ghosts are restless souls. Instead perhaps they're some kind of recording? Some fluke of atmospheric condition or geo-magnetics. Perhaps they're not even physical but all in the mind, triggered by something unique to the locale in which they're sighted.

Anyway my ghosthunt last weekend proved fruitless, but it was great fun and it was amazing to gain access to historic buildings in Hereford that are usually out-of-bounds. The strange, pale, glowing monk in The Black Lion even agreed.

Out Of Date?

Yes, I kid you not - less than one month left but 2009 calendars are still available in town!

Star Trek Traning

So I now have a 3 month old son.

Most dad's would be starting to wonder how to share their passions with their child. For a lot fo dads this would be football. How best to ensure their son follows the 'right' team etc. Of course I'm not into football instead Science Fiction is my passion. I'd love mini-me to share that interest but how do I go about it? How do I introduce him to Star Trek. Which series do you start with and if you're starting with the original series do you show him the new film first or the old 60s stuff?

Thankfully wired.com has this guide to making sure your child is a Trekkie:

10: Talk like William Shatner: “Hey… kids. Time… to… take out the trash.”
They’ll soon wonder who holds the patent on this eloquent way of speaking.
9:
Build a phaser for the school science fair: Chances are, you’ll at least be able
to build a phaser that works on stun. If you throw it at someone.
8: Play
“What Would Spock Do?” All kids are faced with times they have to make logical
decisions, make it interesting by channeling the values of everyone’s favorite
Vulcan.
7: Refer to your car as “The Enterprise NCC-1701-A” and going to
visit the in-laws as “going through the worm-hole to fight the Jem’Hadar.”
Nothing says how much you enjoy a visit to the in-laws when you liken them to a
violent warrior race jacked up on drugs.
6: Pay out allowances in
gold-pressed Latinum. - Considering the price of gold, this may be hard to come
by, but completely worth it if you can pull it off.
5: Call your eldest child
“Number 1.” On second thought, this might sound like favoritism, but follow it
up with “Make it so,” and to their siblings it’ll just seem like they are
receiving the brunt of the chores.
4: Make the kids drink Earl Grey tea.
“Because that’s what Jean-Luc drinks.”
3: Dress up like a Klingon and take
them to a Star Trek convention. Nothing tests the bonds of love more than
hanging out with a family member dressed like a Klingon.
2: After dinner
every night have a family discussion concerning the positives and negatives of
the Prime Directive. Most specifically, identify which neighbors would qualify
as “Pre-Warp” civilizations.
1: Teach them that instead of cursing when
frustrated or angry, yell “KHAAAAAAAN!!” Their friends may give them strange
looks, so teach them to clench their fists and furrow their brow to sell
it.

It's Official

Summer 2009 has now begun!

The Edgar Street Grind

18 months ago I was a huge supporter of the Edgar Street Grid project. A huge scheme to redevelop half of Hereford including a desperately needed link road, new retail centre, multi-screen cinema, affordable homes and transport hub.

It would bring Hereford kicking and screaming into the 20^th century, create jobs and aid the retention of 20-somethings that disappear off to uni and never come back.

Now though, things are different and the people behind ESG need to realise this.

Hereford is dying. Over 55 retail units in the centre of the city lie empty while those that remain are struggling. We’ve lost Chadds – our local department store – which has been replaced by a scruffy pound shop. Zavvi & Woolworths are gone. Charlotte’s Bar has locked its doors. Babyland has been aborted. Pubs are closing down, those that remain open are struggling and what was once one of the jewels of Hereford, the Leftbank Village, is lying empty and deserted.

What is the point in redeveloping half of Hereford if the half that’s already there is already struggling? It’s the city centre that needs the TLC not the Edgar Street Grid.

Ironically it is the area that the ESG plan is hoping to rip apart that is thriving. Along Widemarsh Street not one retail unit lies empty – all are small scale local businesses and they’re all doing well. Along Canal Road a new window fitters has opened and converted what was once a rundown garage into a tidy showroom. On Blackfriars Street work continues an old Plumb Centre has been transformed into a bright purple Freedom Cult, sorry, Church. While the cattle market, an ugly blot on one of Hereford’s main roads, is home to a string of successful small businesses.

Yet this is the area of Hereford planners want to tear apart. It makes no sense. Why needlessly uproot successful local businesses?

Hereford council, for the sake of this beautiful and historic city’s future please take a step back and reconsider where this is heading.

Right now it is the city centre that desperately needs the attention and rethinking.

Why not employ the talents of ESG to concentrate on High Town, Broad Street and the Commercial Road/Street area. While a new transport hub, affordable housing and multi-screen would be a great boon to the city what we don’t need right now is a big John Lewis led retail park taking attention away from the city centre. Why not bulldoze the old Chadd’s buildings and put it there instead?  

 

Bring the focus back to the centre, the heart of Hereford.

Consider My Kipper Smoked

As you can probably tell I'm a huge Dwarf fan. I've met the cast & crew a number of times and was on set for RD VIII and, as you can imagine I was counting down the days until Back To Earth on Dave.

Lets face facts, Red Dwarf had to evolve - it has done in the past and simply returning the show to the screens as it was in 1999 would be a mistake. (And while I'll happily defend VIII to its detractors it definitely wasn't Dwarf at its best)

TV has changed hugely since RD was last around. It was once the only science fiction being produced for UK TV but thanks to Dr Who's return Sci-Fi is now king again. Also shows are now expected to have involving characters with engrossing arcs - think Lost, Heroes, Life On Mars & Who

A new Dwarf needed to entice a whole new generation of fans just as Who has done and I think that's why we saw the Dwarf we got this weekend.

The characters & plot had more emotion, there was more of an element of drama than in the old gag-a-minute Red Dwarf. Look at the superb scene of Lister visiting Kochanski's grave. Very, very touching and an great echo of the more emotional character based moments of Series I & II of Dwarf. (Think of the old scenes in the Observation Dome) In fact I think what we saw last weekend was what RD would have become if series I & II had evolved naturally rather than the shake up of series III that we did get.

I loved it.

Yes it was lacking in gags but the sheer joy of seeing these characters live again was brilliant. Yes there were some cringy moments; Kryten's entry and Rimmer humping the table but there were also moments of gold - the put downs of the TV sales man, the Blade Runner style photo investigation and the comic book shop scene. Also how amazing did the show look considering its budget was less than 3 episodes of Series II back in 1988!

The big mistake was airing it in three parts rather than as one glorious whole - it needed a tighter edit however, this was Red Dwarf for the post 'New Who' generation and I'd welcome more of it.