Red Dwarf rewatch

[JamesTC]

Another thing which bothered me about 'Trojan' was the reveal of the ship being towed via an electric tether by Red Dwarf.  It gets a huge laugh from the audience.  Why?!  Stop hysterically laughing at things which are not particularly funny, you easily pleased, sycophantic nimrods!

That laugh was moved.

When the audience watched Trojan, the ship was in Red Dwarf's cargo bay and there was a sequence where Lister, Car and Kryten have to move along the windows on the outside to make it look like the ship is still in space during the scene where Howard is getting a tour of the ship.

[St_Eddie]

That laugh was moved.

When the audience watched Trojan, the ship was in Red Dwarf's cargo bay and there was a sequence where Lister, Car and Kryten have to move along the windows on the outside to make it look like the ship is still in space during the scene where Howard is getting a tour of the ship.

I was aware of that originally planned scene but wasn't aware that the laughter had been moved in the edit.  That being the case; why did they move the laughter to a place where it no longer made sense for the audience to be laughing?

[Marner and Me]

The people who goto the recordings are ultra RD spotters, the kind of people who think Krytie TV is funny.

[JamesTC]

And?

[Excellent_Biscuits]

Pesky Red Dwarf fans going to Red Dwarf recordings!

[Replies From View]

I was aware of that originally planned scene but wasn't aware that the laughter had been moved in the edit.  That being the case; why did they move the laughter to a place where it no longer made sense for the audience to be laughing?

Dunno.  Maybe leaving it silent made the edit more obvious?  And after a while of working on something maybe you stop thinking about whether it is meant to be explicitly funny and start thinking of the laughter track as a kind of generic punctuation?


It's difficult when it comes to sweetening live audience laughter.  Once you start, and it's no longer only the pure audience reaction you're presenting, there must be the temptation to keep fiddling.

[BeardFaceMan]

And?

They will laugh enthusiastically at anything because they're just happy to have new RD? The kind of people who go "RAYYYYYYYY!" when Dwayne Dibley appears, that's who Doug is writing for.

[St_Eddie]

And?

Well, it's a bit of a problem when the audience are rolling in the isles, howling in laughter at weak material, which is often the case in latter day Red Dwarf.

There's an episode in one of the Dave shows which opens with Kryten sat at a table, doing nothing more than smiling and the audience are reacting like it's comedy genius, even though they have absolutely no context for why Kryten is smiling yet.  It goes on for an uncomfortable amount of time because Robert starts milking the laughs and changes his expression to a slightly different smile and then another.  All of which get big laughs.  It's an unearned response from a sycophantic audience.  It's annoying to watch/listen to as a viewer at home and it gives Doug and co a false sense of how funny the material actually is.

Audiences are often used as a barometer for what's working and what's not in a live sitcom recording and performances and edits are adjusted accordingly.  That's not much good if literally every single thing occurring on stage is getting a response of voracious laughter and applause from an audience with no filter for reserving laughter and applause for the jokes which actually warrant it.

[Marner and Me]

They will laugh enthusiastically at anything because they're just happy to have new RD? The kind of people who go "RAYYYYYYYY!" when Dwayne Dibley appears, that's who Doug is writing for.

Exactly.

[JamesTC]

I was in the audience for the first half of The Promised Land. The audience were told that they are there to provide laughter. You cannot blame the audience for laughing after they have been told to laugh and have a comedian (Ian Boldsworth) keeping them laughing throughout.

They have the option in the edit to quieten laughs or move them around. The laughter is recorded with microphones above the audience's heads so I imagine it can be easily manipulated.

It is the choice of the production to have an audience as raucous and then to sound mix them the way they do.

[BeardFaceMan]

Right, because all those things happening are exclusive to Red Dwarf, no other audiences ever get told to laugh before a show, or have a warm-up, or get edited? And if they're laughing at shit jokes, then yes, you can blame them, because that's the reason we get more shit jokes. That's the reason we keep getting cameos and callbacks, just so the audience can lose their shit at the sight of the Captain (I'm guessing production didn't tell them to do that and the audience do in fact posses their own thinking abilities?). It encourages low effort and ultra-mugging from those involved. We're one step away from the main 4 characters getting a cheer when they first enter a room.

[JamesTC]

If an audience of Red Dwarf fans are going to get told to laugh loudly as they are there to laugh then they know what they are going to get by now. It is the choice of the production and it doesn't come across very nice to just blame it on Red Dwarf fans who will apparently laugh at anything (except Timewave which had a pretty poor audience reaction by all accounts).

For what it's worth with regards to audiences being absolute die hard Red Dwarf fans, from what I've heard it wasn't true for much of Series XI/XII. You had people in the audience who didn't know what a polymorph was when one appeared.

[BeardFaceMan]

Sorry, but that type of nonsense started with the fans, they were "RAYYYYY!"ing long before the Dave era. And that is who Doug is writing for now, which is why you get so many callbacks to previous things, to satisfy that audience. Not in any kind of meaningful way, just in a way you can go "RAAYYYYY! I remember that!" And if the audience isn't filled with RD fans who know what these callbacks and references are, where does all that sycophantic braying come from, are production adding that on too?

The fans are the reason the show was able to come back, they're also the reason the show is a shadow of it's former self.

[JamesTC]

Well those fans still like it so there really isn't a problem if it is made for them.

[BeardFaceMan]

Not a problem for those fans, just a problem for everyone else.

[JamesTC]

The general audience seemed to respond quite well to X through The Promised Land. BTE is the only thing that got mixed reviews from what I remember.

They even liked Timewave for some reason.

[Replies From View]

Well, it's a bit of a problem when the audience are rolling in the isles, howling in laughter at weak material, which is often the case in latter day Red Dwarf.

There's an episode in one of the Dave shows which opens with Kryten sat at a table, doing nothing more than smiling and the audience are reacting like it's comedy genius, even though they have absolutely no context for why Kryten is smiling yet.  It goes on for an uncomfortable amount of time because Robert starts milking the laughs and changes his expression to a slightly different smile and then another.  All of which get big laughs.  It's an unearned response from a sycophantic audience.  It's annoying to watch/listen to as a viewer at home and it gives Doug and co a false sense of how funny the material actually is.

Audiences are often used as a barometer for what's working and what's not in a live sitcom recording and performances and edits are adjusted accordingly.  That's not much good if literally every single thing occurring on stage is getting a response of voracious laughter and applause from an audience with no filter for reserving laughter and applause for the jokes which actually warrant it.

This is all very true.  However, using audiences as a barometer is more the case with, say, a stand-up comedian trying out a work-in-progress version of a new show than what is expected during a sitcom recording.

In a sitcom recording, it is literally your job to laugh, not to judge.  They aren't going to do a second performance once the material is honed; this is the time you need to contribute your part of the deal.  You get to see a free load of comedy, but you pay for it by giving your audible laughter in return.


I think I mentioned earlier in this very thread how out of place I felt during a recording of the first series of Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle.  On TV it looks like an audience of a very ordinary gig, done in one take, our genuine responses captured.  But it wasn't that.  It was about three solid hours of material from all six shows, and whenever Stewart Lee took a break there was a warm-up comedian who came on so we never got time alone with our own thoughts or rhythms.  It doesn't help that I realised - on the only occasion I have attended a comedy filming - that I don't really laugh loudly in nature at comedy.  I'm kind of silently studying it, if anything.  Borderline sociopathic coldness.  So sitting there trying to outwardly laugh because that was essentially my unpaid job for those three hours, I felt desperately self-conscious.  Otherwise I would have definitely stood out as the cunt sitting there not making the most of a Stewart Lee gig on television.


So there's a bit of that going on with any comedy audience recording, and with the Red Dwarf example you certainly have a dose of sycophancy mixed in.  That's when you get members of the audience all jostling to be noticed as "getting it" and being on the same wavelength as whatever is being created by their idols.  I've been in audiences for non-comedy things where that's happened, and it's nauseating.  Jérôme Bel is a dancer and choreographer whose style is often described as non-dance, and guess what.  The audience members who "get" the non-dance aspect of his performance loudly make it known with their look-at-me laughter.  Good god.

[Replies From View]

Not a problem for those fans, just a problem for everyone else.

The issue comes when there is a mismatch in energy/appreciation between the live audience and the television audience.

Whoever is directing should take responsibility for making the responses match.  How will the live audience "play" to viewers at home?  I mentioned earlier in the thread how Andy De Emmony, director of series 6, took pains (and several takes) to ensure the audience response to Dwayne Dibbley's response was toned down.

[BeardFaceMan]

It's like a symbiotic thing between Doug and the fans at this point, Doug's there doing RD because he can't do anything else and so wants to please, and the fans are there because they don't want anything else, any RD will do. The problem with Doug writing for them is he's not writing the stuff he wants to write as much any more, he's writing the stuff he thinks those fans will like. So you get a lot of repetitive stuff with the same ideas being reused, characters inexplicably being brought back or appearing etc because Doug knows that will get a good reaction from the fans, and the fans will lap it up because it's stuff they're familiar with. I think that Doug thinks the casual tv audience will just think "oh my god, that show must be amazing for people to be laughing like that" and everyone will be a winner, but sadly it hasn't worked out like that.

[Replies From View]

I dunno, I think series 11, 12 and The Promised Land show Doug doing more than just fan service.  He's not fixed in his notions of what Red Dwarf can be.

[thr0b]

Aye, for all of his faults (and there are many), Doug can't be accused of letting the format go stagnant. Sure, there are callbacks to previous episodes and some fan-service, but he's not afraid to change (or ignore) things that happened in the past that he wants to change (or ignore).

Even as above with Trojan; throughout Red Dwarf, in all of its incarnations, it has been a truth that Rimmer's brothers are far more talented than Arnold will ever be.

With Trojan he turned that on its heels; they weren't all far more talented. So then we can ask - is the reason our Rimmer is such a loser not a lack of talent, or the fact that his parents adored his older brothers and hated him? They're never shown to react badly to his being bullied by their other offspring.

So we have a nice twist in Rimmer's back-story, a quarter of a century on from when it was established. And it doesn't change anything that's gone before, it just changes how we interpret it. Lovely stuff. (And brilliantly cast as well.)

Also, worth remembering that RD10 was a hell mess of a production that was nearly abandoned several times over. (I think the We're Smegged documentary from the DVD is on YouTube, if not it's a quid or so on iTunes and is well worth watching. It was such a mess of a production that they don't need the hindsight of the 10-years on documentaries from the earlier DVDs, they knew it as they were doing it.)

Look forward to the final episode of season 10, in which it is clear they had entirely run out of budget and instead resort to a set which is basically some candles and big black sheets. Thank fuck Baby Cow came on board for the next series.

[JamesTC]

The We're Smegged documentary is incredible. Just how much went wrong and how they managed to dig themselves out the shit and produce the series they did is amazing.

It is basically the Alien 3 documentary of Red Dwarf. Perhaps too honest because the future documentaries have been shorter and more positive.

[Lemming]

It's like a symbiotic thing between Doug and the fans at this point, Doug's there doing RD because he can't do anything else and so wants to please, and the fans are there because they don't want anything else, any RD will do. The problem with Doug writing for them is he's not writing the stuff he wants to write as much any more, he's writing the stuff he thinks those fans will like. So you get a lot of repetitive stuff with the same ideas being reused, characters inexplicably being brought back or appearing etc because Doug knows that will get a good reaction from the fans, and the fans will lap it up because it's stuff they're familiar with. I think that Doug thinks the casual tv audience will just think "oh my god, that show must be amazing for people to be laughing like that" and everyone will be a winner, but sadly it hasn't worked out like that.

Having just watched Fathers & Suns (review soon!!!), I don't think this is fair from what I've seen of Series 10 so far. It feels very fresh and determined to carve out its own territory, creating a new style and tone that's still recognisably Red Dwarf. There's a gentle reliance on established stuff - Howard in Trojan and the Lister-is-his-own-dad sideplot in Fathers & Suns - but it definitely doesn't feel like a tired greatest hits compilation thus far, in the way that something like Emohawk did.

I'm surprised by how much I'm enjoying it on a rewatch, at least the first couple of episodes. It's a great rejuvenation of the series that, as thr0b said, isn't afraid to ignore or change things that don't work, but is also interested in bringing back previous ideas in new ways. There's the spin on Howard where we learn he's just as crap as Rimmer, which I was lukewarm about but definitely appreciate the idea behind, and Lister being his own father - a stupid and useless plot point from a bad Series 7 episode - is brought back in a really creative and fun way. And it's not like there's not a good amount of new ideas being introduced alongside the established ones.

[Replies From View]

I think there's a danger though with chipping away too much at the fabric of these characters.  Lister should never have been his own dad.  He should have been an ordinary bloke with about as far from a sci-fi origin story you can get.  And in series 10 we learn that Howard Rimmer was as much a loser as Arnold is, and something about his dad in the final episode that I won't spoil if you haven't seen it.

What happens with Rimmer, then?  He's been a hard-light hologram since series 6, so no longer has the pent-up passive-aggression of a man who lacks physical presence and has to rely on people he doesn't respect to get anything done his own way.  And in the events of series 10, he learns information about himself that ought to free him from his own neurotic trappings.


So what happens? 

Spoiler alert

Doug ignores these things.  Just like he did when writing the resolution to the series 6 cliffhanger, and Rimmer's own agency in the saving of his crewmates was ignored

[close]

.  It's tricky though, as I don't know how Doug ought to have continued Rimmer's story after series 10.  Obviously a radically altered version of the character should never have transpired, but how about acknowledging that Rimmer's deep-rooted neuroses and experienced upbringing aren't changed by him learning new things about his past?  I think that it would be natural for someone like Lister to make that observation,

Spoiler alert

especially after Rimmer suggests that he is actually working class at the end of series 10

[close]

.

[Lemming]

I think there's a danger though with chipping away too much at the fabric of these characters.  Lister should never have been his own dad.  He should have been an ordinary bloke with about as far from a sci-fi origin story you can get.

Very much agree with this, but the way the plot point was used in Fathers & Suns felt to me like it was Doug owning a past mistake and trying to rework it into something better. I'd even say it helped to restore some of Lister's everyman quality - the father plot was strange and mystical in Ouroboros, totally unfitting for Lister's character and the show's premise, while in Fathers & Suns it's just a way for Lister to try to motivate himself to get relatively basic things done. And the whole concept is treated so mundanely and bluntly, with Lister writing cards for himself and getting blackout drunk and all that, that it repaired quite a bit of the damage done by Ouroboros for me.

What happens with Rimmer, then?  He's been a hard-light hologram since series 6, so no longer has the pent-up passive-aggression of a man who lacks physical presence and has to rely on people he doesn't respect to get anything done his own way.  And in the events of series 10, he learns information about himself that ought to free him from his own neurotic trappings.

The Howard stuff definitely isn't meditated on enough by any of the characters, but we've got a lot of other reasons for Rimmer's neuroses - he was still bullied by Howard and that's why he's failed at life, he wasn't born to the right parents, he didn't know what Gazpacho Soup was, Lister hummed too much, Hollister couldn't recognise talent, Lister ruined his revision timetable, his exam answers were too radical and outside the box, etc. I can see why even something as significant as finding out Howard was also something of a flop wouldn't have any really significant effect on his personality.

I suppose also that the idea at the end of Trojan, with Rimmer having another resentment crash, is that the Howard situation just became yet another source of neuroses - Howard was a mirror image of Rimmer in some ways, and yet still found the courage to tell the truth and proved himself to be a hero when it came down to it, and was honoured by Space Corps accordingly, while Rimmer's still just resoundingly naff.  Agreed that it would have been great to have a few more lines about the whole thing, though, the ending to Trojan felt rushed and really hastily put together with nothing being given the dramatic weight that it should have.

[Replies From View]

I also don't like how the show starts dealing with new characters in order to reset the status quo each week.

It was quite another matter when the cast only ever really met figments of their own imagination or psychotic simulants.  But in series 10 we start feeling an emergent theme of sympathetic characters appearing, who in any previous series the crew would be delighted to have around in the long term, just to have different company.  Not here, though, purely because the established direction of the show needs to keep only the core crew scouting the universe alone.


I wouldn't mind, but

Spoiler alert

they die and the crew are really glib about it

[close]

.

[Lemming]

S10E02 Fathers & Suns

It's Fathers' Day and Lister's making a card, for himself. That's right, despite the fact that Series 10 is otherwise choosing to basically ignore Series 7 and 8, this is a direct callback to Ouroboros. And, having been totally bored by Ouroboros and utterly confused by the pointless subplot of Lister being his own father... I think it's a great decision to bring the plot point back up. It was a totally inexplicable bit of writing in Ouroboros, adding nothing and making no sense, and it was just a bad idea to include at all. But it's there, it exists, it happened, and as much as I'm totally on board with Doug's decision to basically drop a lot of the past canon, this idea really works for me.

There's a ton of stupid shit in Red Dwarf's history at this point. If you think you can dig some of it up and turn it around, get some laughs and decent plots out of it, why not bring it back up? The concept here is fantastic - Lister's going to write himself a card, get drunk to the point where he forgets what he's written, and then enjoy the surprise of reading the card. Rimmer is bemused, and pisses on the bonfire by pointing out that Lister's dad is a shit dad - he abandoned him in a cardboard box under a pool table and has done nothing for him since. As a result, Lister decides to be a better father to himself. He heads off to the medi-bay to talk to the therapy machine for advice, during which he opens a new personnel file for Dave Lister Jr. Wonder if that'll be important, hmm.

Meanwhile, Rimmer can hear a constant whining noise somewhere on the ship and is convinced it's falling to pieces. A new and upgraded JMC AI, salvaged frm a derelict ship, could be the solution. Also, the vending machine AIs are playing Chinese Whispers, and Rimmer complains that the name "Chinese Whispers" is racist. More on that later. Sadly.

KRYTEN: Okay, sir, the computer is ready to launch, the pref menus... male or female?
RIMMER: Female. Not bothered, doesn't really matter, female.
KRYTEN: Age - 25, 50 or 75?
RIMMER: Whatever. Let's not get held back by this, Kryten. 25.
KRYTEN: Blonde or brunette?
RIMMER: Honestly don't care, it doesn't matter, not important, blonde.
KRYTEN: Breast size.
RIMMER: I can't honestly believe they actually still ask that question these days. It's absolutely ludicrous, it really is.
KRYTEN: Totally agree with you, sir. I'll choose the first one, 30A.
RIMMER: Hang on. What's the hurry Kryten? Everyone knows you don't just pick the first thing that comes into your head. What's that one down there at the bottom?
KRYTEN: 36D, sir.
RIMMER: Fine. Go with that one. Whatever.

Love it, very obvious joke but it took me out.

The new AI - Pree - boots up. She's got predictive behaviour technology, which is explained as being like predictive text, but for people - she can estimate with heavy reliability what a person will do in any given situation. I really like this, more cool worldbuilding.

RIMMER: Can you repair the ship's engineering faults?
PREE: I already anticipated you'd ask that question, Arnold, and I've repaired all the faults on B-deck already. There is now a 98% probability you will discuss my potential to change your lives and conclude that you are looking forward to seeing me in action.
(pause)
PREE: You now no longer need to have this conversation and can do something else.
RIMMER: So... now we don't have that conversation and move straight onto the next conversation?
PREE: Your next conversation is a conversation about not having the previous conversation, saying you were looking forward to the previous conversation and now feel a bit lost not having had that conversation.

You could probably argue that this has all been done before - it's essentially a cross between Cassandra and Queeg - but the jokes and performances are great. The next day, Lister awakens hungover and discovers a VHS (wow) featuring a recording of himself. In the recording, Dad-Lister apologises for not being there and tells Lister that it's time for "tough love" - he's to sign up to a JMC engineering course and finally get his filling done, and then advance to the next tape. Of course, the next tape is just Dad-Lister berating Lister for skipping straight ahead to the next tape right away. This whole scene is great and again, this is an ingenious way to salvage something good from the nonsnese Ouroboros plot.

Meanwhile, B-Deck, which Pree repaired, is seriously damaged and on the brink of exploding.

RIMMER: Pree, what's happened! I thought you repaired all this!
PREE: I did. And thanks to my predictive capabilities, I was able to carry out the repairs in the exact manner you would have instructed.
KRYTEN: It's just one botch job after another! With no regard to safety procedures or good workmanship!
PREE: Exactly.

This scene had me properly laughing too, partially just for the absolute indignancy with which Robert Llewelyn delivers the line "just one botch job after another!" Sadly there's a bit of Series 8-esque joke explaining, where the next like six lines are just pointlessly restating the fact that, yes, Pree fucked it up because she predicted how Rimmer would have done it. But hey, at least this time it's a funny joke being over-explained.

Lister goes to get his filling done and meets with Cat (in a really cool set with a smoke machine and moving fan blades!). This is where the Chinese Whispers plot comes back up, and it's so stupid that I'm not sure I can explain it. Basically, the vending machines + Cat are discussing the question "is Chinese Whispers racist", but it's gotten malformed into something about chinese whiskers or something. Lister suggests Cat ask Taiwan Tony. Oh dear. Oh no. At least Lister's frail grasp on geopolitics gets a laugh - "Taiwan's a bit Chinese-y". Anyway, Taiwan Tony is a """hilarious""" accent joke. Not a highlight of the episode.

Lister discovers that Pree's locked him out of everything. Dad-Lister deleted Lister's personnel file as punishment for not following instructions, and now Lister's got 10 minutes until he loses oxygen privileges. Pree's also set a deathtrap for him with a bunch of MANGLER FORKLIFTS. This whole sequence is so ridiculous, with dramatic boss fight music playing as Lister runs in slowmo away from the forklifts. This is the kind of thing that I think will alienate a lot of people from Series 10, but personally, I really don't mind it - the whole tone has become a bit more silly and farcical and I'm prepared to go along with it as long as the episodes remain as entertaining as this. Lister gets shot out of the airlock and Pree informs the crew that they're all to be killed, as due to Lister's death, Red Dwarf is now a useless unmanned derelict. I love this because it's a hint at what was only ever very sketchily implied in Series 1 and 2 - that JMC are your typical evil cyberpunk corporation, and let Lister drift away into deep space because they just didn't give a shit about saving him due to the costs involved.

"How long, you mad goth bastard?"

Red Dwarf The SS Howard Rimmer is locked on a doom-course into the sun, but Lister has survived and manages to re-enter the ship through the front scoop, with a truly legendary CGI sequence. Reunited, the gang plan to use the air ducts to evade Pree's security and retake the ship. The laughing gas scene properly got me. "It's sealed! :) We're screwed! :) We're defenceless! :)"

We get a somewhat weak ending where Lister manages to Kirk the computer to death by confusing it. The new personnel file he opened way back at the start of the episode allows him to be re-registered as a new crewmember, giving him command over the computer system. The only big problem with this is that Pree's whole thing is having predictive capabilities, so you'd assume to outwit her, the crew would need to somehow confuse or outfox her predictions. But no, after Lister gets spaced, Pree pretty much becomes a standard maniac AI. She apparently doesn't predict Lister's heroic re-entry into the ship, and she doesn't predict that he'll be able to use his new personnel file to override her and shut her off. Her main feature basically gets ignored.

Despite an ending that's weaker than it could be, this is a really great episode, another step up in quality from the very enjoyable Trojan. The Pree plot and the Dad-Lister plots dovetail perfectly, even if the method to defeat Pree is a little less satisfying than it might be. The plot is clever and exciting, and has some real tangible peril as the SS Howard Rimmer locks onto its death-course, and the whole episode is consistently funny. I'd rank this one ahead of a lot of the weaker stuff from Series 3 - 6, honestly, and I think the script would fit into that era seamlessly with just a few minor tonal changes. The only glaring bit of shit is the Chinese Whispers plot, mainly because it's not funny and the Taiwan Tony character is obviously very cringey and out of place, but Doug did at least try to tie it into the main plots (one of the vending machines gives Lister the realisation he needs to override Pree).

The Lister father plot is a total success IMO, because a) it's just very funny, both conceptually and in terms of the jokes it ends up delivering, b) it's a great bit of a character study for Lister, and c) as mentioned, I really admire the way Doug took something that was clearly a shit plot point from Series 7 and repurposed it into a worthwhile idea.

Already mentioned in the Trojan review that Lister and Cat are far better characters than they've been in a long time, but so too are Kryten and Rimmer. Kryten feels much more like a third-rate janitor robot now, albeit one who's gained a reasonable amount of knowledge and experience through his adventures, and Rimmer strikes a nice balance between being a twat and being endearing and relatable. In both Trojan and this, though moreso in this, Doug also splits the characters up into pairs. Great idea because it lets us get unusual team-ups we don't normally see (Cat and Rimmer had a short scene together in Trojan, and I can't think of any other solo Cat and Rimmer scenes since Series fucking 1) and, since all the characters are so likeable now, it's always a treat when the scene switches and you get to see which pair-up is coming up next.

On another note, I'm not sure what motivated the decision not to bring Holly back, whether creative choice or the realities of production, but it was the right move. Red Dwarf originally worked brilliantly with four characters, and now we're back to that. Kryten has ably filled the Holly role so far, and keeping it to four core characters - combined with each of them being given roughly equal screentime and roughly equal quality of jokes - has allowed the characters to really excel.

Final thing I'd like to say is that Danny John-Jules is really funny. It's easy to think he's a bit of one-note actor after some of the crap "we're X-er than Y" material he got stuck with in the past, but through Series 10 so far he's been consistently hilarious. It's taken a long time, but Cat's finally becoming the character he should have been right from the start.

[Mobbd]

the gang meet Craig Charles, who initially thinks that they're just the other actors messing with him, but is soon shocked to see Lister walk in. Craig tells the gang they've only got one episode left - Back to Earth Part 3 - so they'll need to find their creator to secure more episodes.

Given that Craig knows about Back to Earth, I wonder why he was surprised to see the gang. Didn't he remember playing Lister in this scene last year? Shouldn't he be like "I've been expecting you."

he decides to wake up to seek out Kochanski in real life, certain that they'll be together again one day (even though she explicitly fucked off because she didn't like him...)

And... dead? I guess? Her VII publicity shot photograph was in the observation dome memorial?

[Mobbd]

Time Drive (from Out of Time) - add-on for Starbug that allows travel to any point in time or space. Repurposed into a handheld version in Tikka to Ride, I think?

Handheld Time Drive (from Tikka to Ride) - lets you travel to any time and any place you want. Used by the entire crew to go back to Earth once, then by Lister to go back to Earth again to place himself under a table. Never mentioned after that, as far as I remember.

My headcanon on this was that the handheld device detaches from the main time drive. They both have that plasma ball thingy, which is eye-catching enough to be plausibly the important operational part of the whole thing.

It would have added a nice ticking clock element to Tikka if the detachable part had limited battery life or some other need for it to return to base.

[Mobbd]

Always found it weird how the show creator character tells the crew "Blade Runner inspired your creation so it will also inspire your end", or something to that effect. Was Blade Runner ever really a particularly major influence on Red Dwarf? Surely stuff like Dark Star, Alien, Silent Running and even 2001 would all rank higher on the list. Not to mention Porridge and whatnot. Suddenly making everything about Blade Runner and going "aaah it's all come full circle" just feels like a bizarre non-sequitor.

Blade Runner was never cited as an influence at any point by Doug Naylor or Rob Grant.  Dark Star and Alien have both been cited.

I'm sure visual elements from all kinds of sci fi films came into the show once Mel Bibby was production designer, and Blade Runner would naturally have been amongst them, but this isn't the same as any of these being an original influence on the concept.

I always felt this. I found it really alienating and odd. Even at the time of broadcast, I was thinking "Bladerunner was never an inspiration for Red Dwarf, what the hell is going on?"

I was/am extremely tuned in to the lore and genesis of Red Dwarf. Even if Bladerunner really had been a key inspiration in some way, it's useless talking about that in BTE since the viewers aren't partial to that fact.

I suspect, however, that there never was a moment when he and Rob were on the sofa watching Bladerunner with lightbulbs above their heads. I just don't think it ever happened. We were saying in the VIII discussion that Doug forgets what happened earlier in Red Dwarf. Seems he forgets what happens in his own fucking life.