By Daniel Harper and Shana Wolstein
The podcast currently has 121 episodes available.
In this episode, Daniel and Shana are once again joined by Jack Graham in a discussion of the now-five-months-old Christmas Special, "The Return of Doctor Mysterio." If it helps any, they don't discuss the actual story much, and instead mostly laud Superman III. Also, Daniel forgot to include the end credits on this one, and was too lazy to re-edit them back in, so you'll just have to figure out for yourself where to find future episodes of this podcast.
They've taken some time off due to what we might call current events related depression, but Daniel and Shana are back chatting Doctor Who again, and have decided to ease back into the waters by talking about the incredibly noncontroversial "Rose" and "End of the World." Thankfully, they brought back Jack Graham who basically never has any complicated feelings about anything to help them come back with a minimum of fuss.
Main Topic: Rose and The End of the World. With special guest Jack Graham. Freedom fries. Current events and warm blankets. Connections. Not the TV Movie. Jack's callow youth. Cringey former self. Creature effects. Children's TV. Eccleston. Themes that will continue. Perfect Rafallo. 90210 in Space. Two names off limits. Comfy Who. Overinvested. Squaring the circle. Soap Opera Who. The world is turning. Small busy-ness. The cosmic and the mundane. Clive the Sam Seely. Who has heard of the Doctor? Occult Doctor. Hooray for the Bronze Medalists. The here and now. Jackie. Music. Narrative. Earthy McEarth Earth. Direction. Jack and tentacles. The bad guy in "An Unearthly Child." Half measures. Not real fans. Every planet has a southern middle class. Working class. Chav as hate speech. Mickey the idiot. Eccleston's TARDIS. The London Eye. Anti-plastic. Moving on to The End of the World. Raffalo. Rose and authority. Spiderbots. Literally people of color. Jabe, Rose, and Raffalo. Don't remember Back in the Red. "Is this a kissing show?" Political engagement. Witty banter Doctor. Playful Nine. Nine versus Eleven. A moment of Moffat hate. "Hints" of Brazil. Trans as a joke. The vain idle rich? Cassandra and metaphoric drift. RTD and middle-aged women. Anticapitalism in skiffy works. Jiggery-pokery. Gatiss is not RTD. Sun-shield nail-biting. Not normal. Out of fucks. Better than "Hide." Britney Who. False memories. RTD and religion. The Planetary National Trust. The Eccleston dance. Jabe the mongrel. Continuity. Prosthetics budget. Forgotten. Comparisons to Ribos. Serialized television. Never Skip Nine. Sliding Into Moffat-Hate. Wrapping Up.
We're kinda-sorta back from hiatus, back in the sense that we've finally produced a new episode, and kinda-sorta not yet because this was recorded way back in November.
Anyway, Daniel and Shana are joined all the way from Australia by Dom Kelly, a fan of the podcast whom they discovered when he started posting really insightful comments on the posts in the Oi! Spaceman Facebook group. One thing led to another, and here he is chatting about Stasis Leak, an episode that probably doesn't quite live up to the standard of the rest of the series. It's a fun conversation, though, and it was a blast to get to chat Dwarf with Dom. He'll back back.
Main Topic: Stasis Leak. With special guest Dom Kelly. That's your joke? Felicity Kendall. Licorice and lint. Lister's dick. Not a lot of leftist Dwarf fandom. Dom's history with Red Dwarf. Ignoring Daniel. Australia facts! Filler. Daniel's love for Kochanski. Pre-disaster Dwarf. Banana. Black and White. Not fulfilling character promise. Facial hair. The Cat's romantic life. Ending on a joke. Failures of logic. Petersen and Lister. What constitutes living? Honest Rimmer. Rimmer/Lister cameraderie. Roguish heart of gold. Just say No to Freaky Fungus. Ouroborous problem. Lift service infomercial. The racial politics of the Jupiter Mining Corporation. Searching for Rimmer. Why only three weeks? Rimmer knows things? Rimmer's brilliant plans. Trusting of hallucinations. Over-rehearsed. Pervert-stache. Lister's class consciousness. Run For Your Wife. No beer. Off-book. Lister and class consciousness. One step away. Kochanski. Writing for women. Not a justification. Dick jokes and man-ass. Juvenile. Lemmings and helicopter wallpaper. Lister's childhood. Perpetual adolescence. "All my life I wanted to be a colonialist." A room full of dudes. "Old people don't have naked bums." Low-end artificial intelligence. Skutters as house elves.
Find Dom's writing at whom8.blogspot.com.
In this episode of Consider the Ray Gun, Daniel is joined once again by James from Pex Lives to discuss Frank Herbert's Dune. They spend a lot of time on the experience of reading the book, as well as some of the structural issues, and go fairly deep on the way the politics of the world work. Also, the question of what, exactly a moral person in this universe would look like, which has obvious implications for the world in which we all live.
Main Topic: Frank Herbert's Dune. Ambitious. Being Gene Mayes. Overall. Great not good. Not always. Warm blanket. Competence. Glossary. Ecology and philology. "Jihad." Islamophobia. Space white people. Oil and heroin. Time horizon. Democracy. Sympathetic. Callow Paul. Sequels and sex witches. Damn dirty Fremen. Twentieth-century Leto. Sympathetic Jessica. Gender essentialism. No misogyny. Alia. The mind and the world. Self-knowledge. Symbol versus referent. Moisture for the dead. Gay fat people are terrifying. Imperial politics. The Fremen as the win button. The psychology of personal combat. Physicality. The author by text. Barren versus hot. The ruling classes versus ordinary people. Is Herbert endorsing this? Critical of Muad'Dib? Call us HBO. Ruling classes murdering each other. Military tactics. MilSF. Structure. Skimmable. Alien. Extraneous George Washington. Rescuing the book from Herbert. Founding Fathers and moral equivalence. The Weirding Ways. The most moral man. What do we love? Wrapping Up.
Daniel, Jack Graham, and Kit Power discuss the 2016 American presidential election, and what Donald Trump means for the world.
Main Topic: The 2016 Election. Wrists. Fine. Clever. Remembrance. Catastrophe. Climate. Break. Pattern. Discovery. Savage. Memory. Map. Literally. Traits. Electorate. Popular. Godwin. Levity. Nazis. Rules. Material. Brownshirts. Movement. TV. Klan. Irrelevant. Disagree. Wolf. Shoulders. Scared. Shorthand. Toggle. Tipping. Ascension. Unusual. Superficial. Stability. Wind. Atwater. Dogwhistle. Able. Brexit. Chocolate. Establishment. "Intellectual." Mail. Ageist. Vulnerable. Shit. Neoliberalism. Leash. Numbers. Emails. Movement. Clooney. Black. Comprimised. System. Intentions. Bernie. Change. Jew. Lives. Marxist. Privilege. Education. Polls. Lawsuits. Ivanka. Animistic. Statistics. Silver. Yuge. Coverage. Table. Fox. Michigan. Factors. Suppression. Arrival. Notice. Incarceration. Slow-motion. 13th. America. Phenomenon. Hope. Sunshine. Safety-pin. Decency. Parent. Gesture. Virtue-signal. Social. Symbolism. Engage. Sandbox. Daleks. Feminism. Margin-of-error. Anonymous. Passports. Realpolitik. Godfather. Sympathy. Ratings. Conversations. Pence. Standard. Capital. Policy. Seriously. FTN. Deniability. Gas. Liminal. Psychology. Analysis. Seriously. Milo. Tone. Trolls. Positionality. We. Decency. Notice. Banned. Women. Photoshop. Attention. Helping. Apprentice. Entertaining. Thompson. L&O. Eastwood. Benghazi. Equivalence. Brush. Jackson. Hoover. Wall. First. BLM. Arc. Headline. Thatcher. Populist. Incoherence. Moving. Pollyanna. Coalition. 2008. Mess. Job-creators. Dick-Guillotines. Wrap-up.
In this episode, Shana and Daniel are joined by Big Finish's Elliot Chapman in chatting Thanks For the Memory. This is another fairly dark episode of Red Dwarf, with plenty of meat on the bone regarding personal histories, (the lack of) consent in altering Rimmer's mind, how we construct our selves through our memories, and the way that sandwiches can be simultaneously very wrong and very right. Also, sad but friendly parties on desolate planetoids.
Main Topic: Thanks For the Memory. With special guest Elliot Chapman. Fluffing my ego. Hugh Grant. Pretext. Elitist Elliot. British history of comedy. Low-budget entertainment. Discovery. BBC Hitchhiker's. Well-known edgy poet. Series Two versus Series One. Sad. Red Dwarf progenitors. Antagonistic. Death-day. Guitar. A sad party. Forced together. Rimmer the go-go dancer. Social lubricant. Cold, dark, and empty. The Ribos Operation of Red Dwarf. Bowel surgery or babies? Not laughing. Not the engine. Constructed Memory. Metatext. Drunken haze. Consciousness and strange loops. "Many." Changing Rimmer. Allonormativity. "Bomb-ass sex." Rimmer and love. Class in science fiction. Small-c conservative. Small-n representation. Romero reference. Confabulation. Consent in the eighties. Acting in Red Dwarf. The comic timing of Danny John-Jules. Alien speeches. Memory versus experience. Personality or experience? Wrapping Up.
Go pick up the latest Big Finish story featuring Elliot Chapman, The Genesis Chamber, and follow Elliot on Twitter.
Shana and Jane are back chatting Steven Universe yet again, this time with a slew of strawberry references as they discuss the two Steven Universe episodes "Bubble Buddies" and "Serious Steven." Connie is introduced, and Ingmar Bergman, the Beatles, and Red Dwarf all get extraneous mentions.
Main Topic: Bubble Buddies and Serious Steven. Funky Flow. Connie. Wistfully so. Romantic gestures. Pearl and the Beaver. Garnet's positionality. Steven's bubble. Adolescent boy things. Mansplainy Steven. Plans and worms. Hubris. Rollercoaster. Foreshadowing. Mythology and depth. Flashbacks. Rose. Knot. Responsibility. Page-flipping. Moving on the Serious Steven. Strawberries. An extended aside on Bergman. Another extended aside on the Beatles. Butterflies. Adulting. Teacup ride. Temple metaphor. Murals. Organic worldbuilding. Giant strawberries. Buffy reference. Reminder. Serious is unemotional. Bigger on the inside. Earthy gems. Gravity puns. Tie-dye ukelele? Steven Pan. Faces of the pyramid. Prefiguring mythos. Extraneous Red Dwarf reference. Garnet and emotion. Garnet and Steven. Writing on the wall. Steven Universe is spreading. Next time: Tiger Millionaire and Steven's Lion.
In this revamped pilot episode of Big Damn Shiny Heroes, Shana is joined by regular Oi! Spaceman guest Jessica from The Web of Queer in discussing the first episode of Firefly, "Serenity." Lots of discussion of gender norms, "Captain Tightpants," male gaze, and Kaylee are found within. Enjoy!
Main Topic: Serenity. Recasting the Pilot. More affable. Browncoats. Histories. Dragon*Con. Into the episode. Daniel versus Shana. Battle scene opening. PTSD Mal. Masculinity. Male gaze. Interrupted male gaze. Kitchen table. Jayne and the gynecology joke. Asshole actors and asshole characters. Brotherly love. Subject versus object. Interiority through direction. Nostalgia. Snappy Whedon. Performance. Ambassador versus whore. Zoe's rape joke. The Reavers are Chaotic Evil. Simon's disconnect from reality. The use of Chinese. Appropriation. Twitter would tear it apart. Family for the audience. Fanlore and approaching the show. Strawberries. "What the tattoed guy says." Unpopular opinions. Whedon's optimism. Singing the theme song. Character jigsaws. Preacher and whore dynamic. Whores and moral compasses. Grating will-they-won't-they. Sex work and social class. Wrapping Up.
Find Jessica at The Web of Queer or on Twitter.
In this darker-even-than-usual episode, Daniel and Shana discuss the depths of Rimmer's on-screen personality as it's revealed in the Series Two episode "Better Than Life." There's a significant amount of conversation centering around child abuse, and mention of the book Addicted to Hate, which details the physical and emotional abuses heaped on The Westboro Baptist Church's Fred Phelps onto his small children. Skip this one if such conversation will be too much for you.
Main Topic: Better Than Life. Not the book. Arnie, not Ace. Tripartite structure. "Rimmer's Abusive Past." Meanness. Skutter-blame. John Wayne and lambs. Look-and-feel. Hats. Lister and food. The Cat and utensils. "Before we knew he was a fascist." Transitioning to heavy shit. Cameron Crowe can learn some lessons. Abuse, torture, parenting, and authoritarianism. Malnourishment jokes. Withheld affection. "Aristotlian." Right-hand drive. Spores. "Trashy." Amatonormativity and the relationship escalator. Jam, ants, and brothers. Aspiring to be the top of the patriarchy. "I got my stomach pumped and I'm hungry!" Not anti-cunnilingus. Female speaking roles. Groovy Channel 27. MTV. Rimmer's news choices. Trying too hard. Happy wife. Grief. Rimmer ruins everything. Casablanca. Celebrity dictators. Krissie isn't in this. Playing admiral. Gordon and chess. Wrapping Up.
Addicted to Hate can be found in full and for free, here.
In this episode of Consider the Ray Gun, Daniel is joined by Godbomb author and serious Robocop fan Kit Power in discussing a YA trilogy that meant a lot to Kit as a young man: The Tripods Trilogy. It's basically a romp through a faux-medieval Europe in which a century prior human beings were conquered by a race of invading aliens who use mind-control caps installed at puberty to create docility among the population. They have a wide-ranging conversation about the characters in the series, the way it's structured, what young adult fiction is meant to do, and the way slavery and imperialist ambition is portrayed in the series. They're also pretty sure John Christopher is a pretty right-wing asshole.
Get the books here.
Check out Kit Power's Patreon, where you can find links to all his other stuff.
The podcast currently has 121 episodes available.