Red Dwarf

[Slim]

VIII:1 Back in the Red: Part 1

Broadcast nearly two years after the previous episode, the first of the eighth series picks up where the last of the seventh left off - with Lister, the cat, Kochanski and Kryten about to enter a nanobot-rebuilt version of Red Dwarf. I was amused that Kochanski's hair is longer, and subtly highlighted.

Unfortunately the ship is many times bigger than the original, so that Starbug is something like the size of a fly, to scale. I think that this was done purely as a joke at the end of the last series. Naylor, who wrote the script for this one, gets out of it with the conceit that it's an anomaly of the nanobot rebuilding process, and that it will shrink to the correct size after an initial overlarge period. As is so often the case it makes no sense, but it does allow for a brilliant visual gag when Starbug flies up a rat's bum in one of the air ducts. It's genuinely hilarious.

We find that the nanobots have resurrected not merely the ship, but its entire crew with memories intact. They'd all have to come to life at the precise same moment, wouldn't they? The mechanics of this are not explained. But they, or at least the senior officers, are aware that they're three million years further into deep space than they should be.

Of course there's a problem in that there are now two Listers, and the script hints at this with an enigmatic scene between, presumably, the nanobot-recreated Lister and a non-hologrammatic Rimmer. But this doesn't get resolved in this first episode.

The special effects are noticeably improved in this series. But the production values are back to the old non-cinematic, studio audience method. It works a lot better.

There's an especially funny scene when Kryten is interviewed by the ship's psychiatrist.

So: a reboot of sorts, then. Right back to the beginning with the old sets and JMC uniforms. Unfortunately my recollections of this series are not positive. But I must say, this first episode was pretty good. There are some weak gags for sure, but there are some belters as well. And it's a joy to have Chris Barrie back as Rimmer.

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VIII:2 Back in the Red: Part 2

The story of the return of Kochanski, Lister and the cat to Red Dwarf - or the nanobot recreation of it, accompanied by Kryten - continues.

Lister persuades Rimmer to help him and the others escape, having been put in the brig for taking a Starbug and crashing it. It's not clear why Lister couldn't just ask the Red Dwarf authorities to count the remaining Starbugs, because the one he crashed wasn't one of theirs. But perhaps the nanobots thought of that, and recreated the Dwarf with one Starbug fewer.

Rimmer gets his hands on some of the sexual magnetism virus (presumably lying around Starbug, or its wreckage since the events of Quarantine) and this does lead to some hilarious results when he's invited to a Captain's supper with some of the other officers).

Kryten is classified as a woman android because he doesn't have a penis. Could you get that script detail past the BBC now? And he's restored to factory settings, losing all of the personality and deprogramming he's acquired on his travels with the others. But not for long.

Quite honestly the very idea of droid-self-repair nanobots creating a massive spaceship with live humans really tests my patience. Kryten's nanobots could, at any time, have created human beings, spaceships, weapons, all manner of supplies.

Also - why isn't Dave happy? He's no longer the only human in the universe. Sure, he has to spend a couple of years in the can. But he's surrounded by people. Including women. Why would you want to escape from that, just to avoid going in the brig for a bit?

Anyway - I did mostly enjoy this one. Chris Barrie really elevates it. His scene in the captain's office is brilliant. It gets a vigorous round of applause from the studio audience, and deservedly so. I've always remembered the ridiculous, drawn out salute he does.

Barrie's gift for comedy just underlines how futile it was to try to replace Rimmer with the Kochanski character, and again in this one she does feel very superfluous. There's nothing interesting or funny about her.

I'm still confused about where the nanobot-created Lister is. I think the nanobot-created Kochanski should be somewhere on the ship as well.

I enjoyed it but if I'm remembering correctly, my patience will wear thin with this series quite soon.

[Slim]

VIII:3 Back in the Red: Part 3

A bit trying, this one. The gags are weak. The plot doesn't resolve particularly satisfyingly. And the old Artificial Reality plot device is overused.

Lister, the cat, Kochanski and Kryten attempt to escape the ship in a Blue Midget (the smaller scout ship variant) but it turns out they've been placed in Artificial Reality by Captain Hollister so their behaviour can be observed (and their innocence or guilt determined). Ultimately they get sentenced to two years in the ship's prison.

It feels like a poor idea overindulged. I'd say the events of these first three episodes should probably have been a two-parter.

There's a very irritating scene in which the cat encourages a Blue Midget to dance (it's every bit as stupid as it sounds) although I have to admit, the studio audience liked it.

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VIII:4 Cassandra

I'm tired now of the series being set on a highly-populated Red Dwarf where everyone's still alive. I don't like the dystopian atmosphere that was nothing like the old pre-disaster Red Dwarf.

But that's OK, because this one is something like a Red Dwarf VIII episode that wants to be a Red Dwarf V episode. It's mostly set off the ship, away from rest of the ship's complement.

Lister has volunteered for the Canaries, in the belief that it's a singing troupe and in the hope that it will get him extra privileges on the prison deck. However, it's actually a sort of ragtag convict army used as cannon fodder for dangerous missions. He's volunteered Rimmer and the others as well.

And on their first away mission, if I can adopt a bit of Star Trek dialect there, they encounter a ship's computer called Cassandra on an abandoned spaceship (there are just so many abandoned spaceships in the Red Dwarf universe, aren't there?). Cassandra has a special talent. She can foretell the future.

Don't remember seeing this one before. It's not brilliant but there's some funny dialogue between Rimmer and Lister, it's a clever idea and it does have a highly amusing payoff.

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VIII:5 Krytie TV

Kryten has been placed in the women's wing of the prison deck because, as discussed a few episodes back, he doesn't have a penis. Meanwhile, Lister has been given leave to appeal.

Some of the male prisoners kidnap and reprogram him to over his usual sense of ethics and propriety. Why? Because this allows him to to stream video from the women's showers (hence 'Krytie TV'). Later, he pranks Lister into the being the victim on a prank TV show.

I watched this one back in 1999 and disliked it, but it's actually not that bad. Not great. I maintain that VIII is a poor series and this isn't really an exception to that but it does have its moments. There's some funny dialogue between Lister and Rimmer in the classic mould. And it does have a funny payoff, again a classic Red Dwarf joke.

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VIII:6 Pete: Part 1

Lister and Rimmer have played a prank on one of the prison deck officers, and as punishment they're forced to take part in a basketball game against a team of prison guards. But they spike the guards' half-time drinks with a virility enhancement drug stolen from the medilab. I have to say, I wouldn't have thought playing basketball with an erection would be all that difficult, but in the Red Dwarf universe it seems to be.

It's just an excuse for an overlong knob gag that has little to do with the rest of the plot.

Later, while on one of the Canaries' away missions, Kryten, the cat and Kochanski discover a device that can manipulate time. It can make people perfectly still, frozen in time (although one of the actors attempting to depict this blinks, which made me laugh). They plan to use it to make their sentence on the prison deck pass in seconds.

Lister and Rimmer get thrown in the "hole", a sort of dungeon, after using a programmable virus to help them with their potato peeling duties. There, they meet a fellow prisoner with a pet bird called Pete.

Incautious use of the time manipulation device causes Pete to de-evolve into a dinosaur.

There are some really good jokes in this. Some of the dialogue between Rimmer and Lister, again, is priceless. There's a brilliant gag involving one of the skutters. And I was glad to see that the cultural references are decidedly British - okes about Little Chef waitresses and QPR playing away, for example.

On the whole though it's an ungainly mess of ideas thrown together without a particular focus. Did this really need to be a two-parter? I'd never seen this before, must have given up after the last one.

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 VIII:7 Pete: Part 2

Why on Earth this ridiculous, badly thought out, meandering pile of smeg was considered worthy of a two-part treatment, I can't even imagine. The ideas are just dumb - a dinosaur being enticed to eat a massive curry, for example. The jokes are mostly weak, and overextended. The sci-fi ideas that the plot, if I can even call it that, depends on make little sense, even allowing that this is a half-hour comedy.

There is a good joke about Kryten manufacturing a penis for himself that subsequently escapes. It later attempts to burst out of the cat's clothing like a chest-burster from Alien. Very funny scenes but they have nothing to do with the rest of the "plot".

Actually the scenes with the "Canaries" are based on the Space Marines from Aliens, I think.

There's not much to like about the eighth series. I don't like the basic idea of every episode being set on a Red Dwarf with a complete crew. Apart from the uniforms it looks like a totally different ship anyway. And even ignoring my dislike of the premise / setting, the ideas are really poor and badly assembled.

This particular episode, ie Pete: Part 2 ranked dead last in a poll of Red Dwarf fans conducted by the Ganymede & Titan fan site years ago. Certainly I haven't seen a worse one so far.

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VIII:8 Only the Good...

And so we come to the series's final instalment of the 20th century and the final BBC production.

Again, I'd never seen this one. The story starts with a metal-eating, super-corrosive virus arriving on Red Dwarf. However, the plot involving this doesn't actually start until about 20 minutes in (until the last eight minutes, in other words). Until then, the episode is taken up with subplots involving: firstly, Rimmer cheating a chocolate dispensing machine, secondly Lister pranking Kryten by getting him to behave inappropriately around Kochanski on the occasion of her period, and thirdly, Kryten's revenge on Lister.

Kryten and Kochanski's solution to this is to create a portal to a mirror universe, where the virus will be an antidote to the virus in their own universe, and bring some back. Kryten fires up a device, a light beam shoots out through a prism into a mirror - job done. Easy as that. No explanation of what the device is, or where he's got it. Apparently there's a mirror universe machine aboard Red Dwarf.

Rimmer steps through into the mirror universe and finds that he's Captain of Red Dwarf there.

Despite the idea being very weak and nonsensical, and despite the fact that most of the episode has little or nothing to do with the essential plot - which is pretty typical for Red Dwarf VIII - this one is, against all my expectations, pretty good. The dialogue is consistently funny. The jokes are mostly gold. Especially the chocolate machine's grudge against Rimmer. I loved it.

We end on a cliffhanger, and I'm not sure it ever gets resolved .. because the powers-that-be at the BBC had noticed that the ratings started to tank after the first couple of episodes. In particular, it didn't escape their attention that a large proportion of the folks who'd watched Pete: Part 1 didn't bother with Pete: Part 2. They declined to commission a ninth series.

But Lister, Rimmer, Kryten and the cat would return on Dave, ten years later. Or in my case - tomorrow.

[Slim]

Back to Earth: Part 1

It's April 2009 and here comes a revival of Red Dwarf on a non-terrestrial channel called Dave - in the form of a three-parter called Back to Earth.

I'd thought that I'd seen all three of these but I didn't remember a moment of this. I wonder if I only actually saw parts two and three, which I do remember at least vaguely.

Although Dave showed this in three weekly parts it's presented as a single, 70-minute piece on the iPlayer. However, I watched only the first part today (it's pretty easy to work out where the join was). I don't think I have the attention span for the whole 70 minutes.

Lister, the cat, Rimmer (in hologrammatic form again) and Kryten are once again alone on Red Dwarf. This despite the fact that Red Dwarf was destroyed at the end of the last series. Nor is any explanation provided as to why Rimmer has died again, nor why the rest of the crew are dead, or missing.

We learn that Kochanski is dead. Lister visits a little memorial for her, and takes flowers. And it's here that we find that Craig Charles' acting chops improved quite a bit over the previous ten years.

In this first instalment, the boys discover that there's a massive, dimension-migrating octopus in the water tank on G Deck.

Soon afterwards, another hologram of one of the crew materialises. She announces that she's the science officer, and she's going have Rimmer's hologram deactivated so she can take his place. Holly is offline, so it's not clear how this is possible. As well as being spectacularly clever, she's rather authoritarian, and fabulously hot (played by Sophie Winkleman, no less).

Using the Octopus creature's DNA, she manages to create a dimension-travelling device from a mining laser. It shoots out a beam and a sort of worm-hole appears - very, very similar to the mirror universe device from the last episode of Red Dwarf VIII. An awful lot of ideas get recycled in Red Dwarf, but at least there's a bit of justification for its existence this time. It doesn't just get pulled out of a cupboard.

The production values are very impressive. It was recorded in HD, it's beautifully directed and photographed, the CGI and special effects are superb. It has that cinematic feel that they went for in Red Dwarf VII. But there's no studio audience, no laughter and it's sorely lacking the traditional sitcom sense of fun. It feels low key. I didn't laugh. I enjoyed it to a degree but I was amused at best.

It's a bit jarring to see everyone ten years older but then again it's set nine (why not ten?) years after the last episode. Ironically (given that he's a hologram) Rimmer looks to have aged more than the other three.

Holly does not appear.

This wasn't well-received by fans. I don't think it's bad exactly, but it's definitely what I'd call "lukewarm". After watching the last of the three parts 15 years ago, I took to Twitter to express my point of view - I've just checked my old tweets and apparently I did watch all three - and I described it as Last of the Summer Smeg.

[Slim]

Back to Earth: Part 2

The boys travel through the portal into the dimension created by the stern science officer hologram. On the other side, they find themselves in an early 21st century Earth. They browse an electronics shop and find some Red Dwarf DVDs. One of them, in a display case, is an as-yet unreleased title called Back to Earth. Lister reads out the summary on the back:

"Back to Earth takes place after series ten. Kochanski is dead and the crew are hurled through a portal and discover they are just characters from a TV series"

Very meta, eh?

Lister reads on and discovers that they all die at the end. So they set off in search of their creator (Doug Naylor presumably), to plead for their lives.

Again I didn't remember a minute of this - except for a gag involving Rimmer and the science officer, who turns up briefly in the mirror universe. And yet - to my very pleasant surprise, I liked it. A lot. Clearly it doesn't have the energy of yer typical Red Dwarf episode, but if you accept it as something different - a more slow-paced, reflective, 70 minute special, it's actually quite enjoyable. It's very imaginative and clever and it's very funny as well, in a more low-key, slow paced kinda way.

Obviously it's highly fourth-wall-nudging, but I just went with it and it was a lot of fun. It even pokes fun at Red Dwarf fandom. It's a sort of love letter to the fans. It's all about the rapport between Doug Naylor, the performers and their audience. Really looking forward to watching the last instalment again!

Here's a nice touch - the Back to Earth DVD case Lister finds at Currys or Dixons or wherever looks pretty much exactly the same as the real thing. I checked Amazon.

[Slim]

Back to Earth: Part 2

The boys arrive on the set of Coronation Street in search of the actor Craig Charles, whom they find learning his lines in the Rovers Return. From there, they travel to the home of their creator. He's only surprised they didn't find him sooner. They explain that they want more life.

But nothing lasts forever. Unless they can find a way to cheat their own, scripted destiny. Given that the script of this story is to a large degree its own subject it all gets very recursively self-referential and confusing, a bit like holding a mirror up to another mirror and peering at infinity. But it's very different, pretty clever and ultimately I ended up really liking the whole thing.

The payoff uses a very familiar Red Dwarf trope, in fact it's a deliberate nod to one of the classic Red Dwarf V episodes. So much so that this could almost be considered a sequel.

Again there are some strong laughs, especially when Rimmer, Kryten and the cat attempt a Northern dialect to speak to a girl on the Coronation Street set.

Chloe Annett appears briefly in a cameo as Kochanski. She looks a bit different, but not nine years older. And Craig Charles acts his heart out in a way he never could have twenty years earlier. He does full justice to a really poignant, melancholy scene. Did he take acting lessons, or was it all the practice on Corrie?

After all these years of thinking that all three parts were a bit rubbish, I've come to see Back to Earth in a new light. I've seen it for what it really is – a big, affectionate, one-off novelty. The whole point of it, I think, is to exist outside the usual Red Dwarf universe.

It's almost like an elaborate Comic Relief skit. Rik Mayall would never break character as Alan B'Stard to channel his Young Ones persona in The New Statesman, but in a 1988 Comic Relief sketch, he does. A Dalek would never audition for Eurovision in Doctor Who.. etc.

So although obviously it's a properly produced, 70 minute feature rather than a quick sketch, I think the same principle applies. Breaking the rules for a bit of fun for the fans.

[Slim]

X:1 Trojan

Three and a half years later, here comes a new series on Dave. It's the classic format - the usual four are alone on Red Dwarf and there's a studio audience.

I don't think it was filmed in front of an audience. I think the audience reaction was probably recorded from a screening, like Red Dwarf VII. It doesn't have the vibe of a live performance. But it doesn't have the low-key cinematic feel, either.

The basic plot involves the boys answering a distress call. The sender turns out to be the hologram of one of Rimmer's brothers (and unfortunately the script does violate some of Rimmer's established backstory). Its not a brilliant idea but it's not bad. Some of the jokes don't land, some of them do. There's a ridiculous, surreal subplot about Lister ordering something from a shopping channel and being kept on hold on the phone that totally breaks the basic paradigm of the series. That annoyed me.

The Red Dwarf set is very different. Rimmer and Lister's cabin has a sort of steampunk decor. Interestingly the set where we first see the four is very reminiscent of the cockpit of Starbug. Perhaps Doug Naylor was trying to have the best of both worlds; to have the series set on Red Dwarf but evocative of series VI and VII, whre it's set mostly on Starbug.

There's a Red Dwarf onboard computer that's active, but its not Holly. Holly is not present. Oddly, the computer actually issues a memo, or an official letter, in the form of a letter, in a paper envelope. Yet this was made in 2012 (and of course it's set in the future). I liked Holly. I liked the idea of a laconic ship's mainframe that was a bit senile. If they couldn't get Norman Lovett they should have got someone else to play the part, and written a personality change into the script (like they did when Hattie Hayridge took over).

Well, it's not bad. It doesn't have the energy or the immediacy or the ideas of the classic Red Dwarf but who would expect that, 24 years after the first series was shown? It does at least have a few good jokes.

I was only vaguely aware of Red Dwarf X and I only watched one of them. Or possibly that was one of the Red Dwarf XI episodes.

There's still no explanation as to why the four are back on Red Dwarf, or what happened to the nanobot-generated crew. Perhaps it's supposed to be a reboot.

[Slim]

X:2 Fathers and Suns

The boys pick up and install a new ship's computer, harvested from a derelict. I was pleased that Holly got a mention. "We've so missed Holly", Kryten says, to which Rimmer rejoinders that "we just don't get the same quality of cockup these days". Almost needless to say though, the new computer turns out to be a bit of a psycho. But she's very clever as well - she has a predictive mode (inspired by predictive text on phones I think, the script hints at this) in which she can guess what people are about to say, rendering their conversations redundant. I really liked this; imaginative and funny in classic Red Dwarf style.

Meanwhile it's Father's Day, and as usual Lister is sending himself a card - because he is, as established in Ouroboros, by a quirk of time paradox, his own dad. But when Rimmer points out that he's been an inadequate father to himself, he decides to do something about it. He gets hammered and records some fatherly video messages for himself while he's intoxicated, so he won't remember them the next day.

The conversation between disappointed, authoritarian father and petulant son when he plays them back is pure genius. Clever and hilarious. Inspired.



There's a subplot involving the Red Dwarf's vending machines as well. They are sentient of course, and can talk. I was particularly fond of Taiwan Tony (pictured), voiced in a ridiculous asian caricature. Reading some of the reviews online I see that this annoyed a few people, but I loved it.

Against all expectations, this one is brilliant. Best one since the sixth series, no question.

[Slim]

X:3 Lemons

This is the one episode made after Back to Earth that I'd seen before, and I only saw part of it. The Dwarfers find a "rejuvenation shower" flat pack in deep space. It's intended to restore its users to their youth, but they assemble it incorrectly and instead it sends all four of them back to 23AD on Earth.

There, they happen to meet Jesus (after walking 4,000 miles to India to find some lemons to make a battery out of).

It's a shame the rejuvenation shower doesnt work, because I'm not sure the jokes about Lister's dirty socks work quite so well now that he's in his late 40s.

Nonetheless - once again, this is really good. The jokes are funny, the idea to use Jesus in the plot works really well (though I'm not sure why he has a Geordie accent). It's sharp and clever and has some proper big laughs. What a pleasant surprise Red Dwarf X has been, so far.

Indira Joshi (from The Kumars) is in this one.

[Slim]

X:4 Entangled

Well, after two surprisingly, really good ones, this one is, like the first one, a bit crap. The plot is bizarre but unengaging, involving Lister losing a game of cards with some "biologically engineered garbage gobblers" that are really a rerun of the Kinitawowi from Emohawk in Red Dwarf VI. To ensure he pays his debt (he's gambled away Starbug and Rimmer) they've attached a groin exploder to him.

Because the cat and Kryten have become quantum-entangled somehow, they manage to find the co-ordinates of a science institution where they then find the key to unlocking it - in the form of a scientist called Irene Edgington, who has been held in stasis there. It's nonsensical and not particularly funny. But anyway, due to one of Irene's experiments going wrong, she's de-evolved into a chimp.

Oddly this episode seems to be well reviewed but it fell flat for me. It reuses a lot of old Red Dwarf ideas but I wouldn't mind that if it was interesting or funny. The one idea I liked really was that the science institution space station had been manned by people chosen for their capacity to get things wrong - because some of the most important breakthroughs in the history of science have come from mistakes.