Fun Fact: Hill went around Desilu trying to recruit the minimum number of male Jews needed to hold a Friday evening rooftop prayer service. One of the prospects he approached was William Shatner, who was then filming Star Trek in the adjacent sound stages. At first, Shatner thought he was joking and found the whole thing to be funny.
Speaking of Red Dwarf, it went through a couple major retools in its run.
The first two seasons were an Odd Couple-esque sitcom revolving around the slovenly, working-class Lister and the uptight would-be-aristocrat Rimmer as the last survivors aboard their derelict mining ship, with Cat and the ship’s computer Holly in supporting roles.
Season 3 added the android Kryten and replaced Holly’s actor with a woman and turned it into an ensemble cast with more of a monster-of-the-week format with the gang going on wacky sci-fi adventures. Somewhere around here, Rimmer got a portable hologram emitter so he could go on adventures outside the ship.
Come season 6, the titular starship had been somehow lost and the gang were flying around space on the Starbug having more wacky adventures.
In season 7, Rimmer left the main cast and was replaced by Kochanski, Lister’s unrequited crush who’d only been seen in flashbacks since the series debut.
Season 8 brought back Rimmer, along with the titular ship and its entire crew, who’d been dead since the series premiere, along with the original male Holly.
Then the show went on hiatus for over a decade, as long-running British sci-fi series are wont to do. The post-revival seasons basically returned to the season 3-5 formula and more or less ignored the later seasons of the original run.
I loved watching that as a kid in the late 80s and early to mid 90s. I never knew this, I assume it was after my time? Kind of makes sense as the writer also did Brookside, which was also on Merseyside, and Hollyoaks which was down the road in Chester I believe.
I’d say more than that, I’d say eras too, and there’ are sub-eras too, and reasons.
Season 2 was a big change, it was more to do with knowing what they wanted to do now, and having less of a budget. So I think it was filmed on film in the first series, and less of a comedy. It found its feet in the second. Sure, Kryten was added in Season 3, but appeared in the first episode of Season 2 and acted by someone different (he was doing a stage show so unavailable for Season 3). Season 2 added a small starship allowing offship adventures (called the Blue Midget, and later became Starbug).
Season 3s difference is that Grant and Naylor took over the production, and it became the golden years of the series. Though with weird storylines I can’t remember resolving (Lister pregnant?). Female holly started this Season.
The golden era proceeded but I think it went off the boil in Season VI with a hurried production, and Rob Grant left after this. This is where it went downhill and had all sorts of differences, but Season 6 had no holly at all, set on Starbug.
Season 7 onwards had no Rob Grant and showed. If there was roles of writers, Grants was the comedy side, and Naylor the scifi side. There seemed to less real jokes, and a lot of repeats of old jokes again and again (Dwayne Dibbley, for instance). Grant to most intents didn’t come back (see later). This was the one was also set on Starbug had Kochanski.And Rimmer leaving.
On rewatches I stop at end of Season 6. I’m not even sure if I’ve seen most of the later episodes or films, maybe I should. However, the quality went down a lot. It improved more when more writers were included in Season 8.
Season 8 was back on the original ship with Rimmer back.The BBC cancelled it after this Season.
Really after that it was dead until Dave, a small UK TV channel which showed mostly repeats of 90s shows did a reboot which was in effect Season 9. It did 10-12 and a film (jn effect Season 13) ending in 2020.
So really Red Dwarf was constant reboots, changes and progression with only one stable era of, in effect, 3 to 5.
There are also 4 novels published too, with an upcoming one. Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers and Better than life are written by both of them, and each of them wrote their own after the split, Naylor with Last Human and Grant with Backwards. Upcoming one is called Red Dwarf: Titan, written by Grant.
Rob Grant: Before Rob Grant died this year there was a planned novel written with Andrew Marshall to be published July this year. He also contributed a short episode performed via zoom “at” a scifi con during covid.
There is a precursor/origin story to Red Dwarf, BTW. A BBC Radio 4: Cliche and Son of Cliche, with a recurring sketch called Dave Hollins: Space Cadet on it. Fourble uk has the sketches themselves on there, I’m pretty sure that it used to have the full radio series on there, but may have been removed. It also has masses of old US and UK radio including the Goon Shows and I’d recommend On the hour, the radio precursor to The Day Today.
Does anyone remember the Australian soap operas Chances and A Place to Call Home from the late '90s and early 2000s? The first started out featuring average people living ordinary lives that went up and down. I quit watching after two or three seasons, when it had degenerated into Dallas-style back-stabbing and murder with all of the younger characters cut from the show.
The second started with a Holocaust survivor (a woman) trying to start a new life in the Australian Outback. It was supposed to end after the second season, with her finding peace and happiness. I was surprised when it kept on going, and the whole tenor of the show changed dramatically to focus on the wealthy family with whom she had gotten involved. There were lots of betrayals that included a closeted gay husband cheating on his beautiful bride and a conniving half-sister trying to steal the husband who was head of the family.
I preferred s7 overall, s8 got really silly/bad with the Kryten-as-gangster-boss thing and then a bloody dinosaur showing up.
I didn’t know that - really need to keep an eye out for that as I love the others!
Yes, but Hill worked as the brains behind the mission. Graves was an action hero and far less interesting. (They also stopped picking extra members of the force for a show.)
You are not. There was an episode where Briggs went undercover in a mask/disguise, and the majority of the episode “Briggs” was played by the actor doing the undercover role. There were also a few (? some) where only one or two team members did the caper. One where Cinnamon got the “Good Morning Miss Carter” briefing.
So if there was a tone shift/revamp, it was that from then on it was a team effort. Phelps was deeply involved. They even found something for Willy to do nearly every time.
Funny mentioning Briggs and L&O nearly back to back. I guess they could shoot Schiff’s scenes earlier in the week? But unlike in M:I, I prefer Hill’s Schiff as the DA over everyone else. Especially Baxter!
But they continued (at least for a while) Phelps going through dossiers to pick a crew. It just happened to always be the same people.
Possibly to give the viewer the impression that the IMF had more personnel than just the stars of the show.
Unless there was a need for a specialist, like a doctor, then it would be a normal guest star. Or the Horizon Repertory Players, who had their own page in the dossier and would get called in when a larger crew was required.
Plus if there was a celebrity guest star, they got a page.
I print my favorite recipes on 8.5x11 and put them in a binder. When I’m looking for something to make, my wife says “you looking through your M:I file again?”
eta: one of the unchosen pages in the dossier was series creator Bruce Gellar
I’ll watching every Mission:Impossible show (there’s only 171 of them!), and I’m up to season 5, where Leonard Nimoy replaced Martin Landau. Barbara Bain is replaced by usually either Leslie Ann Warren or Lee Merriweather, plus a few others. There’s also a shot of hiring an acting troupe to fill out the team players, but they’re unnamed in the opening credits.
I’m finding these seasons much more interesting, because they don’t constantly rely on Martin Landau wearing an elaborate mask. There are some set pieces that are lifted from these episodes and used in the Tom Cruise movies, such as the screen with a video projection so the team can work unseen from the guards.
I didn’t like the Stephen Hill episodes as much because he appeared too standoffish, not putting himself in danger with the rest of team, and also I always associated M:I with Jim Phelps, since that’s who I remember from growing up. What a revamp it was when we saw how the first movie dealt with Jim Phelps!
And regarding Mission: Impossible, I liked that the show seemed to be about a whole team while the Tom Cruise movies seem to be about Tom Cruise only.
It’s for this reason that I’ll never watch another M:I movie starring Tom Cruise. 
In the movies, he does have a team, some of them IMF agents (Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell) and some not (Rebecca Ferguson, etc.). But, yeah, while the series was truly an ensemble cast, the movies are Tom Cruise and his supporting cast.
I would rather not have this be a “All things Mission: Impossible” thread, please.
Sliders turned from a “Let’s explore different versions of Earth!” to “Shit! We are being killed by the Cromags!”.
Sliders managed to redeem Rembrandt’s character from a comedic sidekick (with some truly unfortunate aspects) to someone who was very nearly the leader of the group.
Angel (mentioned above for revamping some characters in a literal sense) shifted tone in the last season when the main characters shifted from being an investigation group often opposing the machinations of Wolfram and Hart, Attorneys at Law, to being the owners of W&H, and dealing with the ethical challenges of being in charge of that organization.
Yet in the 11th episode, “Zubrovnik’s Ghost,” Hill was in most scenes and went out in the field. I personally think this was the best episode of the series; the plot twist at the end was one of the best ever for any series.
There was more of a revamp later when the IMF went less after foreign threats and more after domestic organized crime types.
This was by order of head programmer Fred Silverman, the “Man with the Golden Gut,” who had reworked CBS’s broadcast schedule and decreed “No more South American revolutions!” for the IMF.
Silverman fell from grace by the end of the 1970s after he launched a string of flops on NBC, the most notorious of which was Supertrain.