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Red Dwarf rewatch

Started by Lemming, September 12, 2020, 07:09:51 PM

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JamesTC

Quote from: Replies From View on September 28, 2020, 02:36:11 PM
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?

You could say that the Future Echoes\Stasis Leak future was overwritten by Timeslides which was then overwritten by The Inquisitor\Out of Time.

Or a wizard did it.

Replies From View

It's quite bizarre to imagine Timeslides overwriting the established history of the show.

Reason for Rimmer's death:  exploded in a storage room of cardboard boxes when he punched some TNT or something

H-O-W-L

Quote from: Replies From View on September 28, 2020, 11:31:56 PM
It's quite bizarre to imagine Timeslides overwriting the established history of the show.

Reason for Rimmer's death:  exploded in a storage room of cardboard boxes when he punched some TNT or something

I fucking hate that ending. Total shite. Absolute shite. They wouldn't have done that in S1 or S2. As soft as I am for S3 that was just absolute shit. The fact that the other crewmembers just go "What did he say?" and then shrug is absolutely fucking senseless.

Replies From View

Yes, it's interesting what we'll tend to forgive or completely overlook from the first 36 episodes that we wouldn't let later series get away with.  DNA was mentioned earlier; I actually like that episode for the most part but the ending when Lister becomes a miniature robocop and defeats the monster using comedy logic rather than anything grounded in our physical universe ("lager beats a vindaloo lol") is pure series 8 cartoon rubbish.

See also the pink skutters in Parallel Universe.


The senseless reaction to Rimmer dying in Timeslides is an especially good shout, though.  The comedy called for that kind of punctuation, but on a character level it jars to fuck. 

Replies From View

I meant to say the baby skutters.  The pink skutters are what they are but the baby ones are just... suddenly the reality of the show cracks a bit.

BeardFaceMan

Quote from: Replies From View on September 29, 2020, 07:42:38 AM
The comedy called for that kind of punctuation, but on a character level it jars to fuck.

Which sums up the Grant/Naylor attitude to continuity perfectly. Don't let characterization get in the way of a good gag. Or even a crap one.

H-O-W-L

That ending genuinely had me swearing at the screen when I rewatched Timeslides. I like that episode in full up to that point and then they completely fuck it up for a sub-Bottom gag. I half expected to hear the horn sting.

I'm not saying I don't like Bottom, I love it, but it's very fair to say Bottom exists in a far less character-driven, far-more-cartoonish if equally bleak and grimy world than Red Dwarf, which always had a modicum of sincerity about its WORLD itself, it just starred a group of people who were, as characters, twats. That ending would have fit in Bottom where everything is clearly anthological and just recurs with the same characters, but in the case of Red Dwarf that should've been a whole fucking deal with the characters later down the line. Even tiny little shit like the Marilyn Monroe photos on the walls (a person whom had been dead for over two hundred years by the time the first episode takes place) become basically an integral plot point of two (2!!!) later episodes, and yet Rimmer, the consistently-dead character whom had several whole episodes dedicated to him trying to become embodied again, COMES BACK TO FUCKING LIFE and it's a three minute "haha live bang oh no" gag.

There was a whole episode (Marooned) dedicated to Rimmer and Lister talking about their lives, their failings, their hopes and dreams, and Rimmer's fixation on material goods of his which he no longer had possession, control, or real investment in keeping; it's only a few lines but Lister and Rimmer arguing about the nature of material items -- especially after Rimmer's death and his existence as just a facsimile of himself with (what we can assume is) a backed up simulated consciousness --  is, for me, one of the series strongest moments, and definitely one of Rimmer's most interesting episode at that point.

It's not even done as a sort of "Rimmer fucked up and is a dumb bastard" deal, it's literally just senseless tape-rewinding.  It's not done to enforce the bleakness of the setting, because it's immediately made into a wack-a-day gag. It's in service of nothing but degredation to the series' overall continuity and quality. IMO.

What the fuck?

Lemming

It never even occurred to me that Timeslides's shitty ending rewrites the whole show. And it makes no sense, of course, because Holly is the one who points out that Rimmer is now alive, so she's... unaffected by the changes to the timeline, I guess? So, all the episodes that rely on Rimmer being holographic - Confidence and Paranoia, Me2, Thanks for the Memory, Stasis Leak - never happened. All for the sake of, as H-O-W-L said, a joke that Rik and Ade would probably pass over as being too broad.

Timeslides truly is shit but another ending that drives me up the wall is Meltdown. Far less damage to the continuity/setting than Timeslides, but holy fuck it's annoying. The entire reason Rimmer goes apeshit in that episode is, as explicitly stated in dialogue, because Lister chewed on his light bee like a fucking idiot. Everything that happens in the episode is indirectly (or arguably directly) Lister's fault. Then at the end, he puts all the blame on Rimmer, who is clearly stated to be malfunctioning due to the damage Lister caused, then has a whiny moralising speech about war, and then CHEWS ON THE FUCKING LIGHT BEE AGAIN.

Speaking of which, my memory of the show is that Lister becomes a complete arsehole by the mid-seasons. Wonder if that impression will hold up. Just thinking about Meltdown assures me that it probably will.

Phil_A

It does seem to happen quite a lot that even during the "good" seasons, Grant & Naylor struggled to come up with endings that weren't unsatisfying in some regard, but as fans we've tended to be more forgiving as the overall quality of the writing was good enough that a slightly crappy ending wouldn't bother you so much. It's only when you go back and look at these episodes with a more analytical eye that you kind of start to think, "actually, that was a bit weak, that."

e.g White Hole, Quarantine and Legion all end on really poor "will this do" gags, Justice has the baffling final scene where Lister falls down a hole and everyone is happy about this for some reason. Terrorform undermines the point of the whole episode to get another jab at Rimmer in, etc.

However, I think the worst of these happened in the post Grant episodes when, after a nonsensical subplot where the Cat suddenly for no at reason at all becomes self-conscious about the amount of sex he has/hasn't had, we get a reveal that
Spoiler alert
he had two girlfriends on board the whole time, who will never be seen or mentioned again because Doug doesn't give a shit.
[close]

frajer

Quote from: Phil_A on September 29, 2020, 09:53:05 AM
However, I think the worst of these happened in the post Grant episodes when, after a nonsensical subplot where the Cat suddenly for no at reason at all becomes self-conscious about the amount of sex he has/hasn't had, we get a reveal that
Spoiler alert
he had two girlfriends on board the whole time, who will never be seen or mentioned again because Doug doesn't give a shit.
[close]

I'm no fan of the Doug Naylor Dave-era endings (the abrupt cut to credits in "Officer Rimmer" is an absolute shocker) but I think they had dialogue in which Cat acknowledges he's dreaming this scene. But it is still quite shit though.

H-O-W-L

I think Barrie and Charles both went on record as saying that they fucking hated Meltdown, both filming it and seeing the finished product.

Replies From View

Charles is on record saying he thinks Meltdown is great with its anti-war message.  Everyone's free, everyone's dead.

I don't remember Rimmer's actions being a consequence of Lister chewing his light bee.  I thought he just had an opportunity to act on his megalomania and took it.

Lemming

Quote from: Replies From View on September 29, 2020, 01:09:05 PM
I don't remember Rimmer's actions being a consequence of Lister chewing his light bee.  I thought he just had an opportunity to act on his megalomania and took it.

It's a small line, but it's never subsequently contradicted:
QuoteKRYTEN: Oh.  He's been acting strangely ever since we landed here, sir. I think it might have affected his mind when you chewed his light bee.
LISTER: I'll do more than chew his light bee when we get out of here.

I always took it as fact, especially since Rimmer goes so deeply batshit that it's really the only explanation that works.

Replies From View

I suppose Kryten could be wrong, though.  All the clues show that Rimmer had the potential to be like this, and as a hologram without any power to do things his own way for so long, he just snapped when a group of entirely subservient droids came into his grasp.

I always felt that he wouldn't do it to humans, but he found himself treating waxdroids as sub-human in this particular context.  In the Kryten episode in series 2 he had no difficulty treating Kryten like shit, so it's just a step up from that in my view.

markburgle

Quote from: H-O-W-L on September 29, 2020, 09:03:35 AM
That ending genuinely had me swearing at the screen when I rewatched Timeslides. I like that episode in full up to that point and then they completely fuck it up for a sub-Bottom gag. I half expected to hear the horn sting.

I think the episode goes tits up before that, at the moment Cat and Kryten disappear but Rimmer doesn't. Why the hell is Rimmer still there when the only reason he was ever revived was to keep Lister company? If you're going to argue a version of time-travel logic where only the meddler gets transplanted into another timeline while everyone else is abandoned in the original one... well you can't, because Cat and Kryten disappear.

Really the episode should've cut to black at that point, and thrown you into a whole new reality, then had fun getting back out of it. Lister never boarded Red Dwarf. Rimmer had a different bunkmate...maybe someone competent who helped him fix the drive plate properly... the disaster never happened.... over to you, Doug n Rob


BeardFaceMan

Quote from: markburgle on September 29, 2020, 09:12:21 PM
I think the episode goes tits up before that, at the moment Cat and Kryten disappear but Rimmer doesn't.

Ah come on, I think you're being a bit harsh, that was explained perfectly by Holly with the line "Don't ask me why, but somehow you're no longer a hologram, you're alive", even though she'd spent the rest of the episode explaining everything to him in detail. Seems pretty clear cut. Honestly, it makes you wonder how 2 nerdy guys who are deeply into sci-fi and comedy can make so many simple mistakes with their stories and characters, it just smacks of lack of effort, you'd think they'd be the type of people to be obsessed with those kind of details. It's especially grating when you know how good they can be when they're on form.

SavageHedgehog

Quote from: H-O-W-L on September 29, 2020, 09:57:36 AM
I think Barrie and Charles both went on record as saying that they fucking hated Meltdown, both filming it and seeing the finished product.

I seem to recall it was also a comfortable winner of a fan poll for "worst episode" in the days before Series 7 and beyond. I quite liked it though, especially when I was about 7 and didn't understand any of it.

Harpo Speaks

It does have the 'Winnie The Pooh' moment in it, which makes me laugh every time. Great stuff from Craig Charles in that scene.

Quote from: Harpo Speaks on September 29, 2020, 10:39:12 PM
It does have the 'Winnie The Pooh' moment in it, which makes me laugh every time. Great stuff from Craig Charles in that scene.

That's one of my favourite scenes from S1-6. Everything in it is great, from the perfectly chosen language and Charles' performance selling the Winnie the Pooh bit, to Tony Hawks hamming it up as Caligula and smacking Lister whenever the Cat gives him backchat.

Lemming

S02E05 Queeg

"Wheeze of the week, mate."

Queeg is the equivalent of Bottom's "Gas". By which I mean, not only is "Gas" one of the funniest (arguably the funniest) episode of Bottom, but it also singlehandedly includes just about everything that makes the show great. The characters are on top form and perfectly written, there's plenty of hilarious desolation (the poker game at the start especially), and of course plenty of slapstick in the form of Richie and Eddie beating the shit out of the gasman, beating the shit out of each other, and then blowing a fucking kitchen up.

Queeg does a similar thing for Red Dwarf - not only is it just a quality episode on its own, but it also embodies all the show's strengths: a real sci-fi plot that works just as well dramatically as it does comedically, the characters are all written and acted absolutely on point, and there's some real dramatic tension as the gang are forced to live by the rules of the long-gone Space Corps, and face the prospect of drifting along for the rest of their lives under an absolute bastard of a ship's computer.

Needless to say, Charles Augins gives one of the all-time greatest guest performances as Queeg. The episodes lives or dies on the central performance, and he absolutely knocks it out of the fucking park. He manages to be more than intimidating enough to make Queeg a threat, while also making sure every joke he gets lands perfectly through deadpan delivery.

What's really great about the episode is that it's essentially the punchline to a joke that's been building since the very first episode. We already know Holly enjoys fucking with the crew - "trolling" if you're feeling generous, "tormenting" if you're not - and the question of exactly how far his sanity has degraded has always been front-and-centre in his scenes. You could never quite tell before now if he still had his IQ of 6000 intact or not, whether his antics were him intentionally antagonising the crew or just him going genuinely insane, but Queeg pretty much puts the issue to rest. He's still a genius supercomputer, but 3 million years alone have sent him a bit anti-social. It's a great concept.

The episode also gets its big emotional goodbye moment, which works on a proper character level, and then pulls the rug out from under you for the big punchline. It's a wonderful way for the episode to have its cake and eat it in a way that feels well-earned.

It also continues a theme that I think comes up quite a bit in the first two series, which is that Lister, Rimmer and Cat have all kind of settled down into the situation they're in, and even started enjoying it. We saw it when Rimmer decided to move back in with Lister in Me2 (despite having the entire ship to choose from), we've seen it in the friendlier relationship between the three lead characters over the course of series two, and now we see it more than ever, as Queeg's authoritarian rule makes it clear just how good Lister and pals have really had things up til now. Series 2 has a weirdly cozy feel at times, which is odd for a show about the last survivors of a calamitous event that killed all their friends and has left them drifting moribund and alone in uncharted space.

Replies From View

Quote from: Phil_A on September 29, 2020, 09:53:05 AM
Terrorform undermines the point of the whole episode to get another jab at Rimmer in, etc.

I'm quite happy with this ending.  The crew have realised they need to convince Rimmer they like him even though they find him an unpleasant, officious git.  He's vocalised quite recently that he doesn't care much about them either - he's quite happy to jump ship in Holoship and he can't think of anything nice to say to them when he believes he's saying goodbye for the last ever time.

In Terrorform nothing is undermined by the ending - they haven't realised they actually like him - they know they lied to save their collective skins.  He is elated that they might actually like him, and they probably would have left it alone but his insecurities drive him to check whether his doubts are true:  "You didn't mean it, did you?  You were lying to save us."  And of course they then say yeah.  No need to pretend anymore, and they'd hated the charade of pretending they liked him and doing the dance with him and everything.

Yeah they were being twatty, but it's a cathartic moment for them to tell him the truth at the end.  If he hadn't been so neurotic they'd have left it alone.  Plus we didn't need a cliffhanger into the next episode of whether Rimmer felt liked and valued by the crew on a deeper level.  It wasn't a character development episode in that sense.  It was an episode of deception and building up the self-esteem of someone on a false premise.

Replies From View

Going back to Queeg, I really like the suggestion that over three million years Holly didn't lose his IQ but just became anti-social.  I always thought that in series 1-2 he was winding Lister, Rimmer and the Cat up rather than genuinely dimwitted, and I also felt that series 3-5 Holly didn't seem to be written with the same objectives in mind.  I never knew whether this was because the writers just struggled to give Holly a role once Kryten was a full-time member, or they forgot what Holly had been before.

In series 8 though, the regrown crew have a restored, intelligent version of Holly with a cone-head, while Lister wanders around with "a senile version of Holly" on his wrist.  The feeling is that Doug forgot Holly's series 1-2 nature, and only remembered the line of him having a low IQ after millions of years alone.  Oh except apparently Holly engineered the whole resurrected crew situation with nanobots to keep Lister sane.  It's just a mess.

idunnosomename

as I've said, I love Queeg, but have never really appreciated how much Charles Augins had to do with how successful it was. he is great. it does work quite well when you think he's just Holy the whole time. "SIX!"


also never understand why there's no laugh after "oh ye of little faith". It's a great joke where a supercomputer is challenged by an idiot with a really easy question, he sneaks a look in a children's book, and delivers the mundane payoff. love it so much

H-O-W-L

I did have a thought on the shitter the other day, and the answer is "because there wouldn't be a telly show otherwise" but my thought is that -- Red Dwarf was not really at the fringes of known space when the accident happened, right? So why didn't Holly just completely stop the ship's acceleration and keep it relatively static? Or take it to a shipyard and contact the authorities from afar, telling them that there'd been a mass-casualty event, the ship was internally irradiated, and that they had a survivor in stasis? Again the answer is "Because there wouldn't be a program" but there are a few cases where this exact question should've come up and there could've been an interesting, explorable reason.

Replies From View

The explanation given in the show always worked for me:  that Holly decided to take the ship as far away from other life as possible until the radiation had died down to a safe level.  Presumably it used less energy to continue moving until the radiation levels were safe than to stop the ship's movement at a more convenient distance away.  Maybe JMC considered Red Dwarf to be a ship with only scrap value, and Holly wasn't explicitly told to make it retrievable in the event of such a disaster.

The issue of the characters consequently being stuck alone in deep space three million light years away wasn't given a moment's thought by Holly.  I was happy with that.

Lemming

Don't know if it's supported by any episodes or books, but I assumed that something like this happened:

- Right after the explosion, Holly contacts JMC (or activates the Hollister hologram, since everyone else is dead - is this ever stated as being protocol, or did I just imagine it?). Holly/Hollister explains the situation to JMC, and mentions that one of the crew is still alive in stasis.
- JMC, for whatever reason, decide the cost of salvaging the ship would be too great, or want rid of Red Dwarf for some other reason (Cadmium-2 deaths have huge insurance payouts for the families or something?).
- JMC decide that Lister's life isn't worth saving, and give Holly the order to just take the ship as far away from the solar system as possible. Presumably they then publicly announce that the ship and all hands have been lost, and everyone just eventually forgets about it, nobody on Earth (except JMC higher-ups) ever knowing that one of the crew is still alive and stuck in stasis.

This is what makes the most sense to me because the only reason for Holly to fly Red Dwarf so far away from Earth is if JMC wanted to make sure it would never be found, even as humanity colonised further into space.

greenman

Quote from: Replies From View on September 29, 2020, 07:42:38 AM
Yes, it's interesting what we'll tend to forgive or completely overlook from the first 36 episodes that we wouldn't let later series get away with.  DNA was mentioned earlier; I actually like that episode for the most part but the ending when Lister becomes a miniature robocop and defeats the monster using comedy logic rather than anything grounded in our physical universe ("lager beats a vindaloo lol") is pure series 8 cartoon rubbish.

See also the pink skutters in Parallel Universe.

The senseless reaction to Rimmer dying in Timeslides is an especially good shout, though.  The comedy called for that kind of punctuation, but on a character level it jars to fuck.

It felt like the difference between a including these moments in a somewhat tongue in cheek way though and making that the base style of the show.

Replies From View

Quote from: greenman on October 01, 2020, 02:26:10 PM
It felt like the difference between a including these moments in a somewhat tongue in cheek way though and making that the base style of the show.

Rob and Doug wrote the scene like Lister, Kryten and Cat were the ones from the previous history, who were used to Rimmer being a hologram.  It kind of makes sense that they'd shrug if they'd known him as a hologram, he randomly ended up being alive and then he suddenly died but they knew he'd be instantly brought back as a hologram, restoring the status quo they had previously known.

It's been a while since I saw the episode, but my recollection is that that's not the case.

H-O-W-L

Quote from: Lemming on October 01, 2020, 11:59:04 AM
Don't know if it's supported by any episodes or books, but I assumed that something like this happened:

- Right after the explosion, Holly contacts JMC (or activates the Hollister hologram, since everyone else is dead - is this ever stated as being protocol, or did I just imagine it?). Holly/Hollister explains the situation to JMC, and mentions that one of the crew is still alive in stasis.
- JMC, for whatever reason, decide the cost of salvaging the ship would be too great, or want rid of Red Dwarf for some other reason (Cadmium-2 deaths have huge insurance payouts for the families or something?).
- JMC decide that Lister's life isn't worth saving, and give Holly the order to just take the ship as far away from the solar system as possible. Presumably they then publicly announce that the ship and all hands have been lost, and everyone just eventually forgets about it, nobody on Earth (except JMC higher-ups) ever knowing that one of the crew is still alive and stuck in stasis.

This is what makes the most sense to me because the only reason for Holly to fly Red Dwarf so far away from Earth is if JMC wanted to make sure it would never be found, even as humanity colonised further into space.

This was my assumption and my answer to the question too, and I feel like they should've explored that and had it as a dramatic tension point between Lister, Rimmer, and Holly. I know it might not seem like Rimmer would give a shit at the initial side of the series, but by the latter half of S2 or the dawn of S3 he would probably be rightly fucked off at Holly and JMC, both on Lister's behalf and that of his own fate. To know that his ashes were intentionally allowed to drift off into the fucking aether by the corporation he'd dedicated his entire life to would probably cause a huge and interesting shift in his character if it was done at the right point.

I also like the quasi-cyberpunky corporate overtones of that answer, it makes it clear that the world Red Dwarf inhabits was not a very nice one even before all sapient life (presumably) went extinct.

MojoJojo

There's an interesting fan theory that the 3 million years thing is bollocks made up by Holly, who's gone bonkers, and it's actually only been a few hundred/thousand years. He either killed the crew or the crew dying is what sent him mad. The cat people are actually the result of him messing around doing weird experiments, and he woke up Lister for entertainment when all the cat people buggered off. He brought back Rimmer as the rest of the crew is competent enough to notice something is wrong.