Return to Oz (1985): 15 things that have no place in a sequel to 'The Wizard of Oz'

Yesterday I watched the movie Return to Oz for the first time. I'd heard that this was the sequel to the classic, beloved family film - perhaps the quintessential family film - The Wizard of Oz from 1939. I had also heard that the 1985 film was largely unconnected to the first one (taking more of its cues from the original L Frank Baum books) and that it maintained a cult appeal, largely because it was surprisingly scary.

In particular, I had heard that the Wheelers were pretty creepy and had apparently traumatised plenty of viewers.


And yeah, that definitely looks pretty creepy. So, having often been curious about this supposedly unsettling sequel to the most cherished, colourful and heartwarming family fim ever made, I decided to check out these Wheelers for myself.

I mean, the rest of the movie can't be as bad, right? Just look at the cover!


The result is this list:


15 things in 'Return to Oz' which are significantly more frightening than the Wheelers.

Obviously this list will spoil the movie if you haven't seen it. And trust me, seeing it will be far more fun than reading this.

So, in loosely chronological order-


1) Dorothy is taken to a psychiatric clinic.

Within the first ten minutes of the movie (which begins with suspenseful violin and the image of an expressionless, insomniac Dorothy staring hauntingly at the walls at the dead of night) Dorothy is taken to a psychiatric clinic. It's made very clear from the start that the little girl (now actually played by a little girl, just to make it worse) is mentally unstable, and that the events of the first film were probably an hallucination of some sort.

And this doesn't let-up later on. There is no point in the movie where it turns out Oz was real after all. It's left ambiguous.


2) We're off to see the....... electro-shock... therapist...

Before that opening violin has even finished, we're treated to the site of 'Auntie Em' reading a newspaper advertisment that reads, 'Announcement! Electric Healing!'
And, yeah. because of her endless ravings about ruby slippers and tin men and wicked witches (you know, our childhoods) Dorothy is literally carted-off to a turn-of-the-century psyichiatric hospital to be electro-shocked. By Auntie Em. Later in the movie, we see her being strapped into the contraption and then left alone. She escapes before the therapy can begin, thank God, but this is the movie's only mercy.


3) Dorothy, as written by Christopher Walken.

This was probably in the books, but just check out what our heroine, the sweet and kind Dorothy, tells her therapist.

The tin woodsman used to be made of flesh, like everybody else. But then he cut off his leg... he had a tin leg made, but then a witch enchanted his axe. And he kept on... cutting off all the other parts of his body, until he was all made of tin. Even his head was...

And at this point the therapist stops her, possibly in order to avoid soiling himself.


4) The sequence that launched a thousand J-Horror movies.

While we're still in the hospital, we get lots of little clues / parallels as to what will happen in Oz. You know, to set up the inevitable 'And you were there! And you!' scene at the end. There is a pumpkin, a chicken, a machine with a face. It's symmetry within the plot, setting-up the characters who are to come later - and... uh, adding weight to the implication that her adventure really is nothing but delusion. Fun for kids.

But while her doctor is explaining about the modern marvel of electric shocks, Dorothy seems to drift off... and the voice of the doctor fades... and the god-damned violin returns... and she sees the face of another girl in the mirror. Staring. Emptily. And Dorothy looks into its dead eyes... and gives the subtlest of smiles. And the violin swells... and she's interrupted again.

The rest of the scenes in the clinic are just classic horror. The mysterious girl in the mirror appears in Dorothy's room and says, 'It's Halloween soon' and it gets worse from there on. There are some very unsettling desolate, drawn-out suspense shots here, including a great one with a creaking door and a gradual zoom-in on Dorothy's empty, emotionless face.


Oh! And every now and again you hear screaming mental patients in the background.


5) A drowning child.

After the agony of the slowly-strapping-Dorothy-Gale-Into-An-Electric-Chair scene, she and the mysterious girl from the mirror manage to flee the building and escape to the storm outside. Persued as they are by the Gestapo-style matron, they immediately hurl themselves into the swelling lake nearby. After several minutes of the pair frantically trying to grab onto something in the rushing water at the dead of night, the mirror girl drops under the water and doesn't come back up.
Now later she returns, as 'Ozma of Oz'... so if we assume that Oz is real, then don't worry she's okay. But if we assume Oz is not real... and remember, the movie never gives us a straight answer... then we just watched a little girl drown.

No catchy musical numbers, yet. Still hoping.


6) Demonic voices and faces in the wall.

Dorothy wakes up, finally, in the Merry old Land of Oz, and thank God, it's colourful and pleasant. There is even whimsical music. She finds a talking chicken who tells jokes and picks from a 'lunch pail tree' - awww! And then faces start appearing on the rocks, and we cut to the same faces reappearing in a hell-like scene, distorting themselves across flickering, red, stone walls, telling an unseen character with an unhumanly deep voice that 'She has returned'. Oh.


7) Your childhood memories in ruins.

As Dorothy and the chicken sidekick set off to find any sign of life in Oz (no, honestly, that seems to be their quest) they encounter the symbolic wreckage of the yellow brick road. After another scene with Satan and the Posessed Rocks we see the heroes have reached the Emerald City... much quicker than they did last time. The city is now an eerie, ancient ruin, with no emeralds in sight, or indeed people. There are numerous chalky, semi-collapsed statues of people, some of them without heads, some cut in half at the waist, the others bearing frozen expressions of horror. The tin man and the cowardly lion are there too, having suffered the same fate. No word yet on the scarecrow or Glinda the good witch, who we are left to assume were eviscerated by Jason Voorhese. Also it's at this point that the Wheelers appear and try to kill Dorothy. She escapes and finds a new sidekick, 'Tic Toc' the comical robotic soldier who proclaims, 'I am not alive, so I cannot be sorry or happy'. More on this later.


8) Princess Mombi.

Princess Mombi is the personification of my nightmares.

The Wheelers are her private army, and she's some kind of overlord who lives alone in a giant palace playing a bouzouki, surrounded by a gallery of beautiful, female human heads. She has long ago removed her own head, and now wears those of her murder victims, which take on her personality the moment she attaches them to her neck, and otherwise wait in obedient silence with their eyes closed. Usually. After the headless body of the Princess explains the situation, she attaches a new head and announces plans to keep Dorothy a prisoner, until she is an adult and thus able to provide her with a new, pretty head.


9) Jack Pumpkinhead.

Inside Mombi's dungeon, Dorothy and her freakish, unlovable cohorts meet the latest and most horrific of that number - Jack Pumpkinhead. This is a tall, gangly man with a carved pumpkin for a head, a distorted sense of identity and the voice of a serial killer, specifically Norman Bates. Seriously, he sounds just like Norman Bates! And better yet, he believes Dorothy is his mother. For me, this was the height of the movie's horrors - just after seeing Mombi's living decapitation gallery, to suddenly see Jack crouching down toward a small girl and whispering, 'May I call you Mom?' sent me right over the edge. And he keeps calling her that all the way through the movie.


10) The Wizard of Oz 2: Dead By Dawn.

As they flee the Princess (don't get me stated on that - it involves a headless, animatronic woman jutting out of her bed) the heroes enlist the help of the 'gump' - a trophy deer head which they have reanimated against his will in order to help them. They connect the gump to a sofa with improvised wings. Quite rightly, the Frankensteinian monster asks them, 'What am I?' Dorothy replies, 'You're just a thing.' Quite. Tic-Toc then says they should keep flying until dawn. They won't make it 'til dawn.

This scene ends, brilliantly, with the whispered line, 'Good-night, mom...'


11) The Nome King.


The Nome King is not a gnome, and hardly a King since he seems to have no subjects beyond Mombi, her Wheelers and the claymation faces in the rocks. Because everyone else in Oz is dead. He is the one responsible for the current, horrible fate of the land, as he explains when he introduces himself to the heroes. Because the Emerald City was built with emeralds, which he apparently owns, being a spirit of the rocks... he views the city's construction as theft, and he does a fairly good job of convincing us of the cold, just logic of his coup.
Also, his face becomes more and more human-looking with every life he takes. And he has the scarecrow held prisoner in Limbo. And he has stolen the ruby slippers. And he is wearing them.


12) He chose... poorly.

After taking them prisoner and inviting them to drink hot liquid silver, the Nome King forces our heroes into a challenge - they must view his 'trophy room', in which every trophy is the distilled soul of a citizen of Oz, and work out which one holds what remains of the Scarecrow. If they choose incorrectly, they become his latest trophies. And all but Dorothy choose incorrectly. The comical robot Tic-Toc actually cries before the stress of the situation causes his body to break and shut-down. Before he makes his choice he also says, 'I have always valued my lifelessness.'
I have always. Valued. My lifelessness.


13) Honour or Madness?

Before making her choose her ornament, the Nome King offers Dorothy another tough decision:

Nome: You don't have to go down there. I could use the ruby slippers and send you home. And when you get back, you will never think of Oz again.
Dorothy: But what about my friends?
N: Forget about them. You can't help them now. (pause) There's... no place... like home!!

And with this, the last remnant of good feeling about The Wizard of Oz is eradicated forever.


14) The Death of the Nome King.

By confusing means, Dorothy, Jack and the other abominations manage to beat the Nome King at his own game, whereupon he ceases to toy with them and transforms into a massive, red stone monster. The fires of hell surrounding them, they watch helplessly as he laughs hysterically in his demon voice and slowly lowers Jack into his enormous, gaping jaws.


Jack survives and the King dies, horribly. And this is the end of things, here. The rest of the film is relatively non-threatening. Dorothy restores the murdered peoples of Oz to life and in thanks, the shell-shocked Tin Man and Lion wordlessly hug her. She wakes-up to find that the mental clinic has burned down, killing the doctor with the shock therapy machine. Y...ay?

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So there you have it! I hope I've brightened-up the Wheelers' reputation, if only by comparison. Sure, at one point they corner Dorothy in a tunnel whilst cackling and threatening to 'cut her into shreds', but as you've seen - this is nothing compared to the everyday waking nightmares within the wonderful, charming, Technicolor world of Oz.

And also-


15 - This.

This.


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Return to Oz is highy, highly recommended, but not for unaccompanied children.

Odd little things about Return of the Jedi

Well, I have the day off work, and it's an absolutely beautiful day. I've just got back from some leisurely stuff I had to do in the morning, and I have the whle day ahead of me! I could go for a swim to get some exercise, prepare my finances and arrangements for my upcoming University course, or just read one of the many classics I've collected for the summer.

I'm watching 'Return of the Jedi' again. And I've managed to justify it to myself as 'research' for a Star Wars fanfiction I'm writing.

As I watch, I thought I'd point out strange little things that make me laugh every time I watch it. To me (and so many people in my generation) the 'Star Wars' trilogy is like an old lover you've become completely comfortable with. You've stared lovingly at its sleeping face so many times that now, you know every beautiful detail, and cherish each one. And there are some strange little pocks and blemishes, that although you find them enchanting, you like to poke at them in the mornings, knowing that the movie won't mind. It's 'Return of the Jedi', after all! It'll just lazily brush its hair, blink, and smile contentedly at you. It's comfortable with you looking at its innermost soul.

(I'll admit I'm totally stealing this idea from Protoclown on I-Mockery.com, but I'll at least point out different oddities!) Like I said, these are things I've noticed, over and over, and which really tickle me for some reason.


1) C-3P0 clearly doesn't speak Huttese

I always liked the scene right at the beginning (after Darth Vader has done freaking out the Imperial SS Officer) where See Threepio and Artoo Deetoo are outside the massive sandy gate to Jabba the Hutt's crazy palace. Lucas and the director seem to be bringing the trilogy full-circle, mirroring the opening of the original film, and once again using C-3P0 and R2-D2 as the audience's eye to the epic story - again honouring 'The Hidden Fortress'. So once again our lovable, bickering peasants are trying to help out the Princess' rebellion, this time by breaking into a giant slug gangster's underground cave lair. Threepio is being a massive wuss about it of course, coming up with excuses why they should just run away and leave Han Solo to die. And then the little eye-robot guardsman comes out of the wall (not unlike the extended version of Return of the King... got my eye on you, Jackson...) and yells urgent gibberish at them.
'Huttese', when you see aliens speak it in the SW films, has always been nonsense made up on the spot. But sometimes the actors really don't seem to be putting any effort into the making-up process, and Anthony Daniels as Threepio cracks me up here every time I see him!

"Artoo.... Deto-ah..." he says to the eye, "Bo... Say... Three Pay Oo-ah..." And already I'm loving his questionable 'translation' of their names. It sounds more like pig-Latin than a mysterious alien language at this point. But then! Then he starts adding the questioning, raised intonations at the end of phrases - and you just KNOW Threepio is making this up as he goes along! "Uhh... too-ta... mishka...? Jabba Du Hutt?"

After this, the eye retreats back into the wall, no-doubt hugely offended by Threepio's semi-racist attempt to impersonate their language by simply speaking English with a silly accent.
It's like that episode of Family Guy where Peter tries to speak Italian - "Ahhh, bibbidy, bobbity!" I bet he doesn't speak the binary language of moisture vaporators, either!

2) Chortle at Threepio's boner

Just a few minutes after C-3P0 has made a fool of himself as a translator, he does it again surrounded by all of Jabba's wierdo friends. When Jabba subtly reminds the audience that he has Han frozen in a block of ice (by pointing at it), Threepio yells out, "Look, Artoo! It's Captain Solo, and he's still frozen in carbonite!!" At this point all the aliens and crooks in the room start laughing for some reason - I can only assume they're laughing at Threepio's terrible attempt at exposition.

3) Skipping droid

Still in Jabba's Palace... I'm always amused by the creepy droid who runs the foundry/droid torture chamber underneath Jabba's happenin' Night Club Cave. It's the way he talks - every time I hear it I laugh because I'm reminded of schoolgirls skipping a rope. "How. Many. Languages. Do. You. Speak!" One! Two! Three! Four!

4) Luke's diabolical smack-talk

Luke Skywalker is one of those heroes who lets his actions speak for him. He was just a wet-eared, geeky moisture farmer, but he was a good enough pilot to take down the Death Star with no training. He has been a Jedi apprentice for about a week, but he dared to take on Darth Vader in a swordfight just to save his buddies. At the beginning of this film he does all sorts, including redeeming his Sith Lord father, defeating the Emperor and killing a giant monster armed only with a rock and a bone. But... before that, he attempts to frighten Jabba by staring him down and issuing very meek threats. I really love how he apparently thinks he can intimidate a gint slug, surrounded by guards, just by walking into his base in a black hood and muttering quietly about what a badass Jedi knight he is, in his whiny, whiny, high pitched voice. His broken-voiced, "This is the last mistake you'll ever make!!" (as he's being led away in handcuffs) makes him sound a lot like a teenager who's just been dumped at the prom. And I love when he glances diagonally toward the camera with his eyes thin like Clint Eastwood, and tries to reassure Han by breathing, "Just stick close to Chewie and Lando. I'm taking take care of everything..." which makes Han roll his eyes sarcastically, and makes the audience wonder if perhaps Luke has been drinking.

But my favourite moment is easily when he dramatically reveals himself to Jabba. The small, black-hooded man in centre-stage steps forward, accompanied by a swell of suspenseful music, looks up, and removes the hood to reveal..... Mark Hamill, in his early twenties, with a fashionable, floppy brown fringe. Whoooah, Jabba, you and your small army of mercenaries had better think twice! You don't wanna mess with this!
Of course, when push comes to shove, and when he and his posse are in the most exposed, dangerous position imaginable, he does kick everyone's arses and single-handedly save the day with his Jedi powers. But absolutely nobody was expecting it! Maybe he's smarter than I thought...

5) Jedi sexism

When Yoda dies, his last words, his very last effort, are "There is another Skywalker", referring to Luke's twin sister, friend, colleage and occasional make-out buddy, Princess Leia. When the ghost of Ben Kenobi hears Luke's doubts (and by doubts I mean lack of bloodlust), he throws his hands in the air, insisting, "You are our only hope!" and that without his efforts, "The Emperor has already won!" It's only when Luke presses the matter that he admits that Leia is his sister - and thus just as suitable to save the Universe as he is.

But then... why didn't they train Leia too? She's clearly just as powerful, and has already demonstrated psychic clairvoyance in the last film. Not to mention that unlike Luke, she is already an accomplished leader of men, strategist and gunfighter! A few scenes later we learn that she's also an incrediblly-skilled motorcyclist, who shows absolutely no fear (or any kind of acting, really) in the face of danger! So now she's equalled Luke's feat at the Death Star, too. Throughout all three movies, she repeatedly demonstrates that she's more experienced, calmer, and much more emoionally detached than Luke. Plus, she's already a senior figure in the Rebellion - so there's no need to coax her into it!

And yet the all-male Jedi leadership seems very reluctant to hire her...

6) Listen with Threepio

I know I'm mentioning C-3P0 a lot... I suppose I just feel that he has no place on Endor. But the movie specially engineers a place for him, by having him use his brilliant translation skills (see above) stop the lovable cutesy Ewoks from butchering and eating Luke, Han and Chewie, and.... God only knows what they had planned for Leia.
For reasons we can only guess at, the Ewoks assume that Threepio is a God, and carry him home on a chair. One odd line from Threepio here is, "But it's against my programming to impersonate a deity!" Who the hell programmed him with such bizarre, specific instructions?! (No, I don't accept it was young Anakin.)

But it's later, when he starts trying to get the (astoundingly impressionable) Ewoks to lay down their lives for him, when I really get confused. To win them over, Threepio decides to have all the Ewoks gather round his chair, and then tell them the entire Star Wars trilogy up to this point. To bring it to life, he waves his hands around as if he had action figues in them, and plays sound effect clips directly from the films. Which is fine (if a bit odd) except for the fact that the enitre story takes him about thirty seconds to tell. Surely that's not enough for them to understand! If I were lsitening, I'd be constantly raising my hand and asking questions, like, "Yes, okay, but what IS a Death Star?" "Is he a bad guy, or what? I understand that he breathes heavily, but what does he do?" and "Can you please go over this 'Millennium Falcon' bit in more detail? We eat raw meat and hunt with stone spears."
There are frequent reaction shots during the story, often of young Ewoks recoiling in fear and awe. But we also see Luke, Han, Chewie and this one Ewok with a pipe, staring at Threepio like he's gone mad. I love those shots! Luke in particular is frowning quite a bit, as if he's about to call 'bullshit!' on the whole story. But Leia, for some reason, is loving it. At one point we see her, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, cosying up to Han and following Threepio's every move with her eyes. Maybe she wouldn't make such a good Jedi after all.

Also about Threepio on Endor:
I notice that everyone is wearing jungle camauflage, except for Han (who is too damn cool for that crap) and Threepio, who is painted bright gold.

7) Watch that officer, he's going places

When Luke hands himself over to the Empire, he's picked up by some stormtroopers and an SS guy with four medals. They decide to put Luke in handcuffs and transport him to Darth Vader, who has just landed. So they take a massive, armoured walking tank through the dense forest and deliver him. And then the SS guy says, "This is a rebel that surrendered to us. Although he denies it, I believe there may be more of them!" Well, gosh darn, that's a smart officer. He's sticking with his gut feeling that the rebels would send more than one guy, EVEN THOUGH the enemy soldier denies it. He's a goddamn visionary.

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And after that, there really is nothing to make fun of, except the silliness of the Ewok battle. Which surely has been done to death on the internet!

The bits on Endor that don't involve Ewoks as much are truly thrilling. The full-on space battle (featuring Lando and Wedge, both personal favourites) absolutely astounds me. And as for Luke's dramatic confrontation with Darth Vader, the Emperor, and the darkness within himself and his dad... I have nothing negative to say about it. The music in that scene, in particular, really is amazing.

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One last one:

8) Lando's sad dancing

Video here.

This is something I never noticed until an old friend at University pointed it out to me, years ago. Right at the end, in the very last seconds of the film, all the main cast strike a pose, Street Fighter style, for the camera. Everyone tries to look cool, and sum-up their characters and how they're feeling at the end of this long, incredible, intergalactic civil war.

Except for Lando 'Hey buddy, relax, try this: Colt Malt Liquor' Calrissian, who stands at the back, grinning, and clapping to himself. And throughout the whole ending / celebration scene, he's still doing it. During the famous moment when Luke smiles at the ghosts of the dead Jedi, you can even see Lando there! Clapping and swaying by himself, in the background, completely oblivious to the apparition of Darth Vader a few feet to his left, because he's too busy dancing and trying to get random strangers to shake his hand.

This wouldn't be so funny were it not for the fact that Lando (as played by super smooth Billy Dee Williams in a cape) is easily the coolest character in the movie. It's so strange to see him, right in the second before the credits roll, looking like a big nerd, at the back, dancing like your dad while everyone else is mingling, geting close with their significant others and chatting with ghosts.

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And if that's not a very funny note to end on, check out this video clip, by someone far, far funnier than me:

Please, Mister Lucas, please incorporate this edit into your next revised version of Return of the Jedi!

Only the Master of Facebook, Darth.

Knightfall and I have just created Darth Malak's personal Facebook fan-page!

Here, the Man Who Would Be Ruler of the Galaxxxeeeeee will keep his many fans, admirers and colour-co-ordinated Sith Apprentices informed on his doings, comings and goings, and his breathy whinings.

It's not exactly a secret that Knightfall and I are big, big fans of masterpiece RPG Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Malak is a big part of that. He's bald, he's got a big, metal jaw, he's evil, he has a red cape. He thinks he can destroy a planet by bombing it from one position. He's awesome.

Hero. Villain. Saviour. Lover of brightly-coloured jumpsuits. He is all things to all men. But, in the end... he is nothinnnnnnnnnng without your support.

If you love old Malak too, why not 'become a fan' (if not an evil disciple of the Sith) and see what he's up to these days. Has he recovered from his humiliating defeat? Does he still have an army of ninjas? Does he still keep long-haired guys in glass tubes? Now's your chance to find out!

We've just now started the page, but be assured:

This is but a taste of the daaaaaaark siiiiiiiiiiide!

(Still) remembering Red Dwarf

I felt like writing something personal, so I thought I would talk about the huge impact Red Dwarf had on me, as a writer and in general.

If you're not familiar with the franchise, it's a British sitcom (and four comedy novels) set in space. It's a simple sitcom set-up about 'four or five people who don't get on having to live together' but which also satirises and/or pays loving tribute to all manner of space operas and science-fiction classics. The premise is simple - an amiable slob awakes after three million years of suspended animation in the middle of black, empty space. There are no aliens and no advanced civilisation. For company he has a hologram resurrection of the crewman he hated most, a creature who has evolved from cats, a senile old computer and a fussy, subservient robot.

From 1989 to 2000 they had a series of sitcom-style misadventures, and Star Trek-style adventures, all with perfect characterisation, a wonderfully dark and witty sense of humour, and fascinating storylines. I always think of it as 'Blackadder in space'. And I could spend the day writing an introduction to it!

I'm a big fan, and I'm amazed it's never come up on this blog until now. As a teenager, I watched my carefully-collected videos of this show religiously, believing every line to be flawless and the actors to be the finest comic talents on Earth. When I got older I started to see the flaws and grow tired of the well-worn tapes, but I can still remember most of the lines in the first seven series!

But one part of the franchise that remains at the highest in my estimation is the books. Beginning quite early on in the show's run, the two writers, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor (this was back in the day when British TV shows ran for six episodes a year and were written by only two people) began working on a series of Red Dwarf novels. Rather than write a spin-off or simply novelise the shows, Grant and Naylor (using the pen-name Grant Naylor) decided to begin anew, so that they were writing two seperate versions of the story at once - the TV version focused on jokes and brief adventures, and the novels' version was more dramatic and epic.

The novels Red Dwarf (AKA Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers) and Better Than Life are genuinely brilliant sci-fi comedy. Much like Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams, but... maybe this is me... so much better! So much deeper, funnier and more engaging.

Then came the great divide, where my heroes Grant and Naylor had a personal argument of some sort, and split for good. It was like watching my parents divorce. Grant went on to write excellent comedy novels and Naylor continued Red Dwarf, but not very well. Despite bold new ideas and characters, the show never quite recovered. It teetered away and ended on a whimper and a false 'to be continued' (well there was the recent 'Back to Earth' special, but that's another story.)

And it killed me that the show never had an ending. Now I would never know - does Lister find his way home? Do Lister and Kochanski finally fall in love? What becomes of Rimmer after his brave departure? It sounds very silly, but it took years for me to accept that I'd never know.

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But, I distinctly remember a wonderful moment, when I was reading the last chapter of Last Human by Doug Naylor.

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See, after the split, both authors wrote one more Red Dwarf book - each of them contradicting and disregarding the other, and each a direct sequel to Better Than Life. Now my divorced parents were asking me to choose which one I loved most. At high school I wrote a novel-length fanfiction which feebly attempted to bring the storylines into one.

Grant wrote Backwards, which took a very dark turn, but evolved to become extremely witty and with deeper characters than ever before. As well, it was a thrilling, scary adventure with brilliant science fiction in the first half (on 'Backwards Earth'). Best of all it included a massive, dramatic expansion of my favourite side-character, 'Ace Rimmer' - the dashing alter-ego of Rimmer with his legendary catchphrase, 'Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast!'

And Naylor wrote Last Human - much more the traditional style, but with a tight, excellent space opera plot, great gags and...

... an ending.

In the final chapters of the book, Lister and Kochanski are in love, together and perfectly happy. They never made it to Earth (well they kinda did) but that's all part of the climax. All of the transformations and journeys that began in Red Dwarf and the first episode of the series come to an action-packed and fantastic conclusion, and there is nary a joke in sight. The third act of Last Human is what dreams are made of.
And though there is no Ace Rimmer, the real Rimmer brings his story arc to a close, by fathering a son and becoming the hero we'd wanted him to be since we grew to love him in episode 6.
And as he sacrifices himself to save his son and his crewmates, Rimmer sends a message in Morse code - S.M.A.K.I.B.B.F.B. Get it? It's an allusion to a character who never even appeared in this book's time-line, but that's what makes it so powerful.

I cried! I cried tears of joy that the dearest fictional character I'd ever read had finally become what I wanted him to be. I'm not saying that I prefer the Naylor book to the Grant book (don't make me choose, mum and dad!), but it left a powerful emotional effect on me.

And I re-read that book over, and over, and over again. I remember the third or fourth time I reached that ending, that perfect last chapter, and thinking, "This is what I want to do. I want to write stories with jokes and rich characters, and I want people to feel like I do now, just because of printed words. And I want to keep trying to write a book as good as this, but never make it! That'll keep me trying"

I've been through various odd phases in my life since then, but I'm never happier than when I write fiction, hear great comedy or find myself unexpectedly moved by something. Red Dwarf taught me 75% of what I know about writing, and completely shaped my sense of humour. Rimmer gave me an attitude, The Cat gave me a sense of childlike wonder, Kryten gave me too much self-deprication, and all of them have effected my strange accent. Lister gave me a laugh, some ideals, some beliefs and a hopelessly romantic soul.

Now I even like to imagine parallels between 'Buch and Knight' and Grant and Naylor!
Last year I got a tattoo of the Morse code for 'SMAKIBBFB' on my left arm. I'm not a tattoo kind of guy, but it's to remind me of my goal as I write. I can see it in the corner of my eye when I type. Like those books and some of the classic episodes, it never fails to inspire me.

The final line of Last Human never left my head. I keep wondering about featuring the line at the very beginning of one of my own stories. It would have to be a special one!

Slowly, gently, almost impercebtibly, the grass began to sway.