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Doug Naylor talks final episode (ever) of Red Dwarf and… there’s hidden lyrics in the theme tune?!

October 26th, 2016 by Irwin Fletcher Comments
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With the Boys from the Dwarf back for their eleventh series, two new bits of news have come out relating to everyone’s favourite British sci-fi adventure sitcom (well, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy comes close but…).

The first relates to the theme. That the opening theme used onwards from season three has lyrics, no not discared lyrics that were written or thrown in the bin, or the beloved end credits theme had alternate lyrics before the ones we all know off by heart (come on – “It’s cold outside; there’s no kind of atmosphere I’m all alone, more or less…”).

No, it turns out the season 3 theme which combine instrumental elements of the end credits theme and the first two series’ epic sci-fi opening has words, in the theme, and just no one noticed them.

The is the Ganymede & Titan forum user Darrell who reported…

“I’ve only just noticed the vocal parts, namely HOWARD GOODALL SINGING THE NAME OF THE SHOW FOUR TIMES THROUGH A VOCODER.”

…only for everyone else to confirm that they hadn’t ever noticed it either! Which is unbelievable, considering how it has been used in almost every episode for the past twenty seven years, and everyone including yours truly probably thought it was just a random keyboard/synthesiser pulse.

And its composer/musical genius/classical revivalist/Classic FM composer in residence Howard Goodall CBE himself confirmed the discovery on Twitter. He said that he was “honoured & delighted my vo-coded message from the past has been cracked!”.

For reference, check 14 seconds in to hear Goodall’s vocoder-ised, slightly Miss Piggy-esque warbling of the words “Red Dwarf”.

(Continues after video)

The other piece of Red Dwarf news is that co-creator/showrunner/writer Doug Naylor has said at a BAFTA launch for the current series in reply to what a final episode would look like, that there would be no true final end to the series.

Naylor added: “I don’t want to write a final episode. Seinfeld did a final episode and Larry David said it was a mistake, that if he had his time all over again, he wouldn’t write the final episode. I think the feeling was it was a slight disappointment. I think when people die you don’t often get any warning and you don’t know when it’s going to be and I’d rather we just go.”

To be honest, the idea of the Red Dwarf crew being about seventy and being old and dying is sad, though to be honest we already have a final episode of sorts – “Out of Time”, except it was the season finale of season 6 and it was made in 1993.

Source: Den of Geek and Mentalfloss

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