Red Dwarf rewatch

[frajer]

Yes I must admit I always thought he was talking about his adoptive dad dying. I'm not sure if this fits exactly (presumably it doesn't) but I assumed that's what he meant.

[Evian Mousemat]

One of my favourite things about this episode is that they went to the beach to get a sort of paradise island-esque setting for the scene at the start of the game, but it turned out to be a miserably overcast day. It looks so shit, I love it.

[JamesTC]

One of my favourite things about this episode is that they went to the beach to get a sort of paradise island-esque setting for the scene at the start of the game, but it turned out to be a miserably overcast day. It looks so shit, I love it.

Even better is the deleted scene with them sunbathing on the paradise island of Rhyl.

[Evian Mousemat]

Even better is the deleted scene with them sunbathing on the paradise island of Rhyl.

Amazing!

The Bodyswap deleted scene that follows it is interesting as well, I've never seen Llewellyn doing Kryten with that accent before. It's a bit all over the place in series three, he's practically Swedish in Marooned.

[Poirots BigGarlickyCorpse]

I suppose that when Lister mentions his parents he could be talking about his adoptive parents?  When was it established that he was found as a baby in a box under a pool table?

He tells the other Dwarfers this in The Last Day. In Ouroboros we see him being found by his adoptive parents under the pool table. He had a dad and a gran lads. He never said they were his biological dad and gran.

[Lemming]

S02E03 Thanks for the Memory

"That's why I had my appendix out... twice."

Strong contender for the best episode of Red Dwarf ever written IMO.

The scene in which Rimmer is trying to sort through his new memories and relaying them to Lister is simply genius writing, because every line tells you something about both characters, with Rimmer puzzled by "his" out-of-character behaviour in the Lise memories, and Lister forced to defend himself against this new unwitting third party observer of the breakdown of his relationship. "I suddenly started treating her really badly." "NO YOU DIDN'T!"

Another reason this is one of the best episodes is that it uses the show's core concept so well. The probable death of humanity and the reality that they might never make it back to Earth are what propel Lister to undertake the unusual memory-transfer procedure, and then what transpires uses a unique plot that could only happen in a science fiction series to tell us about the psychology of Lister and Rimmer. Plus, as with some of the other best episodes of the first two series, you can really feel the vein of bleakness that runs through the whole show - the episode revolves around memories of a person who died around three million years ago. Rimmer doesn't just have to deal with the fact that Lise loved Lister, he doesn't just have to deal with the fact that he never even met Lise, he has to deal with the fact he never even could meet Lise because he's in love with the memory of a ghost of a person who's been dead for longer than all of recorded human history.

As Utter Shit pointed out earlier, this is probably the closest Rimmer and Lister ever get in the entire show. Another reason series 2 is so great, the relationship has developed to the point where you get to enjoy the best of both worlds in terms of the Rimmer/Lister dynamic. They're still at each other's throats and giving each other plenty of shit, but when it comes down to it and one of them really needs help, they've got each other's backs. The deathday party is great and a rare example of Cat, Lister, Rimmer and Holly just deciding to all have fun together without any tension or fighting, and I love the Observation Dome scene in this even more than the one in Better Than Life. As in BTL, it's played with the perfect balance of drama and comedy, with jokes inserted at just the right moments, to make the scene genuinely emotionally impactful. The jokes only work to heighten that.

The science fiction is used to ask an interesting question as well - should Rimmer keep the memories, since they've made him happier and more secure in himself? Lister thinks so, Rimmer thinks not. Of course, there's the ethical issue of nobody being able to ask Lise if she agrees to the memory-transfer, but the gang's track record for respecting the rights and wishes of people who died millions of years ago is really poor so far (reading Hollister's personal logs, reading Kochanski's diary, EATING HALF THE CREW, Rimmer taking the Kochanski hologram's graphics, taking the piss out of the Nova 5 corpses, etc) so let's brush that one aside. You can forgive it pretty easily because, even aside from the whole three-million-years-in-deep-space thing, Lister's character is still shown to be kind of stupid at this point in the show. Speaking of which, one of the funniest things about the episode is what an absolute botch job Lister does of trying to dispose of evidence of the last two days. In addition to the BROKEN FUCKING LEGS, Lister just half-arsedly rips pages out of his diary... and then completes the fucking jigsaw, just to make absolutely certain that they'll realise they've lost two days.

On that note, the "we've lost two days" aspect of the plot is more or less identical to the TNG episode "Clues", right down to the crew's accidental incompetence at covering their tracks causing them to realise what's happened. Thanks For The Memory came out like two years earlier. I wonder if the TNG writers saw it.

I really like the Holo-Projection Cage that's necessary to bring Rimmer down to the surface during the party. I was never a fan of the light bee, because it lets him do basically whatever he wants (from series 3 onwards, not counting Bodyswap, he's able to touch basically everything anyway, and be touched by others like the Polymorph). The cage looks so clunky and ball-achey to transport around, and it reminds you just how limited Rimmer is. Speaking of which, how did he get onto the Nova 5 in the last episode? I guess you could reason that holograms are relatively common, so it was trivial for Holly to switch Rimmer's projection source to the Nova 5's projector. And Blue Midget must have its own projector too.

Finally: It's only a brief moment, but the two second scene of Rimmer dreaming of Lise is fucking amazing. You can tell Chris Barrie really didn't like Craig Charles back then. Had to rewind and watch it a few times just to take it all in, I love how Rimmer-in-Lister's-place inhales on the cig and immediatley blows smoke directly into Lise's fucking face at point-blank range, then turns to do what can only be described as a neanderthal expression off into space. Perfection. It's so good I even made a crappy little GIF of it:


Yeah, it might be the best episode of the show.

[Replies From View]

The hologram cage was never used again, but I thought it was brilliant.


I mean I suppose it doesn't make sense that he didn't need something similar to visit the Nova 5 earlier in the same series, but it's such a great visual detail.  Maybe they could have given it longevity by writing it so he could touch other holographic items within the cage - actual drinks glasses and food for example.  An extra little treat for him on his death day that they couldn't use very often because it was such a power drain.

But I guess the writers just thought it was too much of an extra faff.  In the end they ditched Rimmer's inability to touch things permanently, so they obviously didn't like needing to come up with these kinds of explanations and opportunities.  Which is a shame, as I like them.  They expand the world I think.

[Replies From View]

Thanks For The Memory came out like two years earlier. I wonder if the TNG writers saw it.

On the Red Dwarf A-Z on Red Dwarf Night back whenever-it-was, Patrick Stewart appears and reveals some obviously bollocks story about watching this random space show where the story seemed to match up with a TNG episode.  He claims he was going to phone his lawyers when low and behold this show started to make him laugh and haha he became a Red Dwarf fan within moments.

You can find it online probably but it's pretty rubbish.  He was presumably talking about Thanks for the Memory and obviously never found out it came first.



Edit:  oh, you said the writers

[H-O-W-L]

I've always thought the cage (which I like, fair warning) was just a Dwarf-esque spin on a visual joke about dancing girls in cages.

[Replies From View]

I've always thought the cage (which I like, fair warning) was just a Dwarf-esque spin on a visual joke about dancing girls in cages.

That's only because Rimmer is fit as fuck though and it is standard to objectify the arse off him

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

That's only because Rimmer is fit as fuck though and it is standard to objectify the arse off him

True, Him Who Plays Rimmer was a very good looking lad, back in the day. Look how cute he looks with his green hat on in that clip they show in the opening titles montage from se03.

[Replies From View]

True, but I am like that for anyone who uses a hat-aerial to conceal a cable that will shortly be yoinking them through a ceiling.  Masterful foresight.

[Lemming]

On the Red Dwarf A-Z on Red Dwarf Night back whenever-it-was, Patrick Stewart appears and reveals some obviously bollocks story about watching this random space show where the story seemed to match up with a TNG episode.  He claims he was going to phone his lawyers when low and behold this show started to make him laugh and haha he became a Red Dwarf fan within moments.

You can find it online probably but it's pretty rubbish.  He was presumably talking about Thanks for the Memory and obviously never found out it came first.



Edit:  oh, you said the writers

I faintly remember this from the DVD extras! I never even made the now-obvious Thanks for the Memory connection, I just assumed he saw four people sat around on a spaceship and immediately thought "TNG RIPOFF", which appealed to me because I like the idea that in Patrick Stewart's mind, TNG invented spaceships.

[Chriddof]

True, but I am like that for anyone who uses a hat-aerial to conceal a cable that will shortly be yoinking them through a ceiling.  Masterful foresight.

I love the crap effects shot after that[nb]...Which is unusually poor for a series that had such brilliant model work, and managed to be as Un-Wholike as possible in set design, effects, etc for the most part. (We'll forget the Cat dancing with Starbug, and the rough CG in latter 90s episodes.)[/nb] where Train Set Model Rimmer is shown flying out of Starbug. Normally such a rubbish effect would ruin things, but it weirdly enhances the joke in this instance through its sheer absurdity. (Although, again, how could a hologram get shot out of there? Maybe some sort of environment tracking thing's been implemented. Yeah, let's go with that.)

[idunnosomename]

Space actually looks (unusually for entertainment) like space in early dwarf. Fucking boring. Then they remastered it to have swirly black holes and nebulae everywhere. Total guff

[Replies From View]

Space actually looks (unusually for entertainment) like space in early dwarf. Fucking boring. Then they remastered it to have swirly black holes and nebulae everywhere. Total guff

And remarkably identical nebulae at that.

[Lemming]

S02E04 Stasis Leak

I remember liking this episode a lot but the writing is really sloppy regarding Lister and Rimmer's primary motivations - Lister wants to persuade Kochanski to go into stasis, because he's found a weird photo of them getting married. He initially decides to stay with Kochanski and die in the disaster, then changes his mind when he suddenly remembers there's a spare stasis booth which Kochanski could go in. This sets up the conflict with Rimmer, who also wants the booth, but there's some very obvious unanswered questions:

- Biggest question - why the fuck don't they just stop the radiation leak from happening??? The only reason I can think of is that doing so would potentially erase Cat from existence by making it so that he never evolved in the first place, which is a good reason but I don't think it's ever brought up (and it also leads to the moral question of whether or not we can trade Cat's life - and the life of all Cat Sapiens who ever lived - for the lives of the Red Dwarf crew).

- Assuming, for whatever reason, the radiation leak can't be stopped: Why doesn't Lister just meet with Kochanski and persuade her to leave the ship with him? The disaster still happens and Cat Sapiens still evolve, but Lister and Kochanski are saved (sucks for the rest of the crew). This wouldn't create an unstable time loop, or any issues with there being two Listers, because past-Lister would still go into stasis, while present-Lister lives the rest of his life out on Earth and dies of old age millions of years before past-Lister emerges from stasis, and eventually the cycle repeats.

- Assuming the disaster can't be prevented - and again, the script never seems to imply that there's any good reason why they can't prevent the disaster - can't they just explain it to Hollister somehow? As it stands, the episode is kind of annoying because they don't even try to save the lives of the crew, or really do anything of use with the once-in-a-lifetime time travel opportunity at all. The entire concept of this show is that they're stranded alone in deep space in the unimaginably distant future, and this episode presents them with a chance to fix everything, and they... go to a hotel and get in a fight with a woman's fur scarf, then apparently just decide to give up and happily fuck off back to the stuck-3-million-years-into-the-future nightmare scenario.

Rimmer's motivation, on the other hand, makes literally no sense at all. He wants to use the spare stasis booth to save himself. It's nonsensical and exists just to set up an arbitrary conflict with Lister. If Rimmer survives the disaster, holo-Rimmer won't exist. His consciousness will just end, because there'll be no reason to bring him online. He's trying to kill himself, I guess? Also, Rimmer makes the same mistake as Lister in not realising that he could just, you know, persuade his past self to leave the ship.

The encounter at the hotel is also really odd and retrospectively makes no sense, but I'm willing to forgive that because there's clearly some kind of plot being built over these first two seasons (Jim and Bexley, Lister and Kochanski on Earth in the past, multiple timelines converging) which gets completely jettisoned at the start of series three.

Luckily, half-assed writing on the science fiction side is largely made up for by good writing on the comedy side. "IT'S NEVER BEER, IS IT? IT'S ALWAYS WIIIIINE", "You might as well marry a box of Daz," the flashback sequence at the start... There's enough laughs to make the episode mostly fun to watch, but yeah, the writing on the plot/sci-fi side is really weak on this one. Easily the sloppiest of the whole first two series.

One thing I really like is how elated Lister is to see Petersen. It's been, what, a year and a half since the disaster (from Lister's perspective, obviously, skipping the 3 million year stasis interlude). You can really feel how excited he is to see not just his friend, but just other people in general after all this time.

[DrGreggles]

The fur coat woman's dreadful acting in the hotel lobby is the worst thing that has ever happened.

[Ornlu]

Thanks for these ep-by-ep write-ups Lemming - having rewatched the first two-and-a-half seasons about a month ago they're proving really incisive, and I hope you carry on with them.

[H-O-W-L]

I got to DNA in S4 and packed in my rewatch honestly. I know the consensus is that RD stays watchably good up to S6 but I felt like that episode was such pantomime... It felt like the new Dave episodes. It's all downhill by that point anyway, so I can't be bothered watching the rest.

[markburgle]

S02E04 Stasis Leak
Rimmer's motivation, on the other hand, makes literally no sense at all. He wants to use the spare stasis booth to save himself. It's nonsensical and exists just to set up an arbitrary conflict with Lister. If Rimmer survives the disaster, holo-Rimmer won't exist. His consciousness will just end, because there'll be no reason to bring him online. He's trying to kill himself, I guess?

Sure his motivation makes sense - why would he care about preserving his hologram form? Being a hologram sucks. And if he was successful in his plan his holo self would never be aware of being zilched - it's win win for him (also there's repeated hints throughout the series that the characters (and maybe the writers) don't fully comprehend that pulling a stunt like that won't just mean holo-Rimmer's mind being magically transplanted back into a living body. So him not getting it adds to his motivation- it's misguided maybe, but he doesn't know that).

Couldn't agree more with the rest of what you wrote. It's annoying not just because it makes no sense but also because all the stuff they fail to address could've been such rich material, story wise.

It also annoys me how there's no explanation for why Lister marries Kochanski 5 years from now - his only reason to wait is that older him tells him to, and why would older him want him to have to wait? Presumably the intervening 5 years weren't exactly fun.

[Zetetic]

Or Rimmer just doesn't value his hologramatic experiences as essential to his personal identity compared to a) all his experiences prior to the disaster and b) his body. He's happy to identify himself as the same person as the pre-disaster Rimmer, and saving that individual is saving himself.

[Replies From View]

His notion of having two versions of himself living in perfect harmony together should ring a few bells in his mind, surely?  Maybe he just has a poor memory.

Great episode though.

[Replies From View]

The fur coat woman's dreadful acting in the hotel lobby is the worst thing that has ever happened.

She didn't want to be sprayed by Danny in that scene and insisted on the much shorter floor manager doing it instead.

There's a behind the scenes fragment on the series 2 documentary.  Doug in disbelief whispering to Danny "but it's a comedy spray!  You need to do it!"  Rob and Doug didn't have much influence yet on how what they wrote was put on the screen, so Doug had to get Danny to argue that he needed to be in his own scene.

[Lemming]

I got to DNA in S4 and packed in my rewatch honestly. I know the consensus is that RD stays watchably good up to S6 but I felt like that episode was such pantomime... It felt like the new Dave episodes. It's all downhill by that point anyway, so I can't be bothered watching the rest.

Yeah, my impression from my memories of the show is that the quality starts to really noticeably drop off after series three, albeit still with plenty of great individual episodes, jokes and ideas all the way up to and including series six. White Hole is the one that really sticks in my mind as simultaneously being a showcase for everything good and everything bad in that era of Red Dwarf. If things become too shit to handle around the series seven/eight mark I might just jump my rewatch ahead to the Dave series, since I've only seen most of 10/11/12 once.

Sure his motivation makes sense - why would he care about preserving his hologram form? Being a hologram sucks. And if he was successful in his plan his holo self would never be aware of being zilched - it's win win for him (also there's repeated hints throughout the series that the characters (and maybe the writers) don't fully comprehend that pulling a stunt like that won't just mean holo-Rimmer's mind being magically transplanted back into a living body. So him not getting it adds to his motivation- it's misguided maybe, but he doesn't know that).

Or Rimmer just doesn't value his hologramatic experiences as essential to his personal identity compared to a) all his experiences prior to the disaster and b) his body. He's happy to identify himself as the same person as the pre-disaster Rimmer, and saving that individual is saving himself.

Agree with both of these posts but the script doesn't really make the ramifications clear - either the real ones, or the ones Rimmer expects. There's also the line Replies From View mentioned about how holoRimmer is excited at the prospect of having "two of me". I can maybe see him deciding that his holographic life is worth sacrificing to save his human life, but the episode really doesn't clarify what he expects to happen outside of the joke line about how there'll be "one for the week and one for Sunday best". Plus even if he saves his human self, he'll still end up trapped in the distant future alone with Lister and Cat, so we're still left to wonder why he doesn't attempt to prevent the disaster, or just leave the ship.

I like the idea of Rimmer being selfish enough to doom Kochanski (or anyone else who could have used the stasis booth) to save his past self, but the big holes in the plot made me feel like it was kind of a forced set-up just to put him in conflict with Lister's plans for the stasis booth - a conflict which doesn't even really matter when they finally use the stasis leak because they split up anyway.

[Phil_A]

- Biggest question - why the fuck don't they just stop the radiation leak from happening??? The only reason I can think of is that doing so would potentially erase Cat from existence by making it so that he never evolved in the first place, which is a good reason but I don't think it's ever brought up (and it also leads to the moral question of whether or not we can trade Cat's life - and the life of all Cat Sapiens who ever lived - for the lives of the Red Dwarf crew).

- Assuming, for whatever reason, the radiation leak can't be stopped: Why doesn't Lister just meet with Kochanski and persuade her to leave the ship with him? The disaster still happens and Cat Sapiens still evolve, but Lister and Kochanski are saved (sucks for the rest of the crew). This wouldn't create an unstable time loop, or any issues with there being two Listers, because past-Lister would still go into stasis, while present-Lister lives the rest of his life out on Earth and dies of old age millions of years before past-Lister emerges from stasis, and eventually the cycle repeats.

- Assuming the disaster can't be prevented - and again, the script never seems to imply that there's any good reason why they can't prevent the disaster - can't they just explain it to Hollister somehow? As it stands, the episode is kind of annoying because they don't even try to save the lives of the crew, or really do anything of use with the once-in-a-lifetime time travel opportunity at all. The entire concept of this show is that they're stranded alone in deep space in the unimaginably distant future, and this episode presents them with a chance to fix everything, and they... go to a hotel and get in a fight with a woman's fur scarf, then apparently just decide to give up and happily fuck off back to the stuck-3-million-years-into-the-future nightmare scenario.

Thinking about the way time is shown to work in the first two series, they establish that whatever happens in the future is fixed and can't be changed, and the same must be true for the past as well - they can't go back and prevent the accident from happening because it will always have happened regardless. In that context Rimmer and Lister's plan to convince either Alive Rimmer or Kochanski to go into stasis would always have failed because neither are present in the Red Dwarf of the future already. I suppose you could put that down to the characters lack of awareness that any action they take to change the past is futile, but even knowing that it's still a pretty silly plan.

I suspect Grant & Naylor wrote themselves into a corner with the whole pre-destined future storyline (presumably at the time they had no idea the show would even run five years), hence it being dropped altogether once we get to the soft-rebooted third series.

[JamesTC]

I always imagined that the fascist version of the crew is the one who go back in time to reconcile with Kochanski but then she leaves because being mates with Hitler makes you a bit of a wrongun (or dies in the accident which leaves Lister in a jar). This timeline is changed with the events of Out of Time.

[Replies From View]

It also annoys me how there's no explanation for why Lister marries Kochanski 5 years from now - his only reason to wait is that older him tells him to, and why would older him want him to have to wait? Presumably the intervening 5 years weren't exactly fun.

He would have been told the same thing by an older Lister, and had to wait his turn; why would he let the younger Lister muscle in on the action he's been patiently holding out for?

Presumably he feels he has grown older and maturer and reached a point where he deserves Kochanski in a way that he thinks the younger one doesn't yet.

Plus it's predestination.  To a certain extent the younger Lister and Rimmer are fighting it, but 5 years later it seems Lister is accepting and embracing it since he now has what he wants.  Which probably isn't a threesome with the woman of his dreams and a younger version of himself.


Why would younger Lister wait when he has his own urges?  Simply because he's been told he'll eventually find another way back in time and marry Kochanski.  It's all he's ever wanted and he wouldn't want to risk that timeline by doing anything especially stupid.  He realises he just has to be patient and let time unfold.

[Replies From View]

I always imagined that the fascist version of the crew is the one who go back in time to reconcile with Kochanski but then she leaves because being mates with Hitler makes you a bit of a wrongun (or dies in the accident which leaves Lister in a jar). This timeline is changed with the events of Out of Time.

How do you reconcile the head in a jar future with the one-armed Lister that tells his younger self to get a camera and run to the medical room?  Or do you consider the series 1-2 future part of an abandoned timeline once you get to series 3?

[Replies From View]

I suspect Grant & Naylor wrote themselves into a corner with the whole pre-destined future storyline (presumably at the time they had no idea the show would even run five years), hence it being dropped altogether once we get to the soft-rebooted third series.

Seriously though, marrying Kochanski, getting a false arm and then lying on a bed to speak to his past self is how the show should have ended at the end of series 6.