About the time I started planning the first Murkum Show spin-off, Greasy Food with Gonce, I also decided that the parent show's third season would end with Murkum's retirement, and decided it would be followed by a second spin-off series, centred around the Gamma-3s (who would be banished to live at the Nice Charity Station by Murkum's successor) and provisionally titled The Lower Ranks. There were a few minor technicalities, such as the fact that I didn't have a clue yet what would actually happen, but I chalked it in to follow Series 3 anyway.
In parallel to that thought process, I'd also been thinking it would be an interesting exercise to try and do a project, either as a comic strip or a video series, where the plot followed a prop or a piece of information as it got passed between various characters, rather than following the characters themselves. I didn't end up doing this for The Lower Ranks as such, but the concept did help to inform the show's eventual shape, where seven out of the eight episodes are taken up with the Gammas' reaction to the threat of 'New Pains'.
The narrative wasn't quite as thorough as I'd hoped in terms of giving every single Gamma-3 an airing, but it did cover the majority of them, with about a dozen out of the 19-strong contingent getting speaking parts, and all of them at least having a couple of silent cameos. It did, however, achieve what The Murkum Show Series 3 didn't when it came to the state of the set - there was some damage by the end of Series 3, but I'd stopped short of destroying the whole building; the Lower Ranks finale belatedly got round to finishing the job, with the set getting thoroughly trashed mid-way through shooting Episode 8.
