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Red Dwarf rewatch

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

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Avril Lavigne

Quote from: willbo on February 27, 2021, 11:16:17 AM
I couldn't make it through Cured, Samsara, Timewave or Twentica. I skipped them all a few minutes in due to my lack of interest.

You really should watch Timewave in its entirety just to see how awful it is.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Avril Lavigne on February 27, 2021, 12:42:23 PM
You really should watch Timewave in its entirety just to see how awful it is.

Only one more episode to go before Lemming covers it.  I cannae hardly wait!  It's just such a gloriously ill-judged and tone deaf episode.

Avril Lavigne

Quote from: St_Eddie on February 27, 2021, 04:06:42 PM
Only one more episode to go before Lemming covers it.  I cannae hardly wait!  It's just such a gloriously ill-judged and tone deaf episode.

It really is, and completely muddled in its messages to boot. I'm looking forward to Lemming's review too, reliving and sharing the experience of bad Red Dwarf episodes with other likeminded fans is like some form of group therapy for me.

willbo

I think I did watch a youtube watch-along of Timewave at one point. Wasn't the ending yet another "embodiment of Rimmer's low esteem"? That annoyed me more than anything.

Avril Lavigne

Quote from: willbo on February 27, 2021, 06:10:25 PM
I think I did watch a youtube watch-along of Timewave at one point. Wasn't the ending yet another "embodiment of Rimmer's low esteem"? That annoyed me more than anything.

Yeah, an alternate Rimmer persona as a parody of Blofeld, who sticks around for about a minute. Like with several other Dave era episodes it seemed like that was just Doug sticking in a random unrelated idea from the notes on his phone as a way of writing himself out of a corner (unsuccessfully).

St_Eddie

I did enjoy seeing Chris Barrie give a menacing performance though.  It had been a while since he last did that and in an episode as poor as 'Timewave', you'll take whatever slim pickings you can get.

JamesTC

I thought the resentment Rimmer was the only good bit of the episode. Timewave is a real nadir.

Replies From View

Quote from: St_Eddie on February 27, 2021, 04:06:42 PM
Only one more episode to go before Lemming covers it.  I cannae hardly wait!  It's just such a gloriously ill-judged and tone deaf episode.

Glorious doesn't factor into it.  It's unwatchable shite.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Replies From View on February 28, 2021, 12:54:49 AM
Glorious doesn't factor into it.  It's unwatchable shite.

I disagree.  I find it to be a fascinating failure.  I'm able to enjoy it ironically, as a monument to piss poor writing and colossally misjudged point making.  I think that it's the bizarre and contradictory political stance which the episode takes, which allows me to engage with it in a way that I can't with anything from say, series VIII (which is really just a collection of lout culture knob gags and sub-CBeebies slapstick).

It's fascinating to pick apart in the same way that something like Derek is; that anyone ever thought that it was a good idea and that it made it all the way through writing, filming, editing and to final broadcast without a single person at any stage of that process saying "hang on a moment, this is utter horseshit and the point we're making here is veering into a really dodgy area. Perhaps we ought to rethink this".

Lemming

Devastated to hear that we missed out on Hitler and Lister playing Africa. I suppose any attempts to clarify to the record company that "ah, but it's just an android that looks like Hitler!!!" fell on deaf ears.

S12E02 Siliconia

Again, we start with the ship flying by with the Series 1/2 incidental music. It's welcome and weird in equal measure. Is Doug trying to present the Dave-era stuff as the synergy of 1/2 and 3 - 6? It sort of feels like it is as times, mostly in parts of Series 10, albeit with consistently sloppier writing than almost anything in the first six series.

Great joke at the start with Lister calling Kryten from across the room. Plus "sorry to disturb your Rimmering, sir". Anyway, Lister's guitar was flushed out into space some time ago (when? in Fathers & Suns? but didn't he play it with Hitlerbot in Cured?). Kryten's cool new tracker has picked it up, so everyone heads out in Starbug to get it. In the process, Starbug is grabbed by a claw and pulled up into a big ship.

On board, the crew are taken captive by mechs belonging to the Mechanoid Intergalactic Liberation Front. The acronym is MILF!!!! This is pointed out to you immediately, in case you couldn't pick it up on your own.

The gang are taken away, bar Kryten, who is separated from the others and brought to a room full of mechs. The MILF leader suggests that Kryten is oppressed by humanoids. Kryten insists otherwise, but the leader asks some pretty incisive questions - "do they make fun of the shape of your head?" "how do you address them?" etc. Kryten is hesitant, but MILF Leader insists that he'll convince Kryten of his own oppression soon enough.

Meanwhile, Lister, Rimmer and Cat are placed inside a machine which transfers their minds into mech bodies. "I feel most strange!" Rimmer remarks in one of the most awkwardly written and delivered pieces of dialogue in Red Dwarf so far. "What on Earth is going to happen to us?" The MILFs intend to force the gang to perform all the manual labour they forced Kryten to do over the years.

Kryten, meanwhile, is sitting in a support group. "I am a robot slave survivor," one mech says. Everyone then repeats the mantra "it's not my fault." Uhhh. Let's get into this after the synopsis... The mechs, describing themselves as "survivors", detail their abuse at the hands of humans. Which humans? Where? These mechs must all be recent arrivals, right? Where have they been taken from? Anyway, Kryten is called on to talk to the group, but he's still not feeling it, but the support group manages to encourage him to go on a rant about how much of a knob Lister is.

Elsewhere, the others are forced to carry out their sentences. Got a good laugh out of Lister frantically making hundreds of sandwiches. They realise their personalities are being erased by the mech software, rendering them Kryten-like. Rimmer's being affected worse than anyone, so it falls to Lister to lead the escape attempt by dismantling himself, then reassembling himself outside the prison bars. But Rimmer, enjoying his newfound freedom from permanent neurotic hell, raises the alarm.

Music from Thanks for the Memory playing!!!

Lister and Cat flee and run into James Buckley. He and a bunch of other mechs work in servitude down in the bowels of the ship, the logic being that Buckley et al are Mark 2 mechs, while Kryten and the MILFs are Mark 3s. SOCIAL COMMENTARY???

Kryten is inducted into the MILFs, having bought into the ideology completely. But Lister arrives and convinces him that he's their friend, and also alerts him to the presence of the enslaved Mark 2 mechs. Kryten resents that he's "allowed other people to do my thinking for me", and both he and Lister are condemned to fight in gladiatorial combat to the death.

They are taken to the, uh, Cleaniseum. Where they're armed with mops and squeejees. Yep. Worse, Lister's mind is finally destroyed by the mech software, rendering him a servile loser like Rimmer has become, compelling him to fight Kryten. Lister wins, and Kryten is sentenced to be shot out of an airlock. But then Balok's ship from Star Trek shows up and the MILFs are like "it's Siliconia!" and heavenly music plays as all the mechs get free upgrades or something. If this synopsis doesn't make sense at this point, it's because the episode doesn't.

Kryten restores the gang to their physical bodies and they flee back to Red Dwarf over the course of about 3 seconds. Back on board, James Buckley and the MILF leader, now equals, inform Kryten that they're going to leave to explore deep space together as one.

Well, there's a lot to say there. Let's start with the good - the episode has some solid jokes, and the first half is generally alright. I really like the concept of Rimmer losing the battle against the mech software almost instantly because becoming an unthinking slave represents an escape from being himself, but as usual, it's not explored in any kind of satisfying depth - the most we get is Lister very briefly trying to convince Rimmer to join him in escaping.

So the big question here is - what was any of this actually about? There's no way around it - the "robot slavery survivors" group where everyone chants "it's not my fault" seems to me to be very clearly a pisstake of rape/domestic violence crisis centres (or at least, what Doug imagines them to be like). I'm possibly being totally unfair with this assumption, but what else is this scene meant to be a parody or allegory for? I'll happily retract this bit if there's an obvious parallel to something less offensive that I'm completely missing. Anyway, whatever the fuck this scene is meant to be, it's not funny, just awkward and strange. And needless to say, if the scene is what I'm accusing it of being, then Fuck Off Doug.

The main plot revolves around Kryten meeting a resistance group who make a persuasive case that he's oppressed, and he ends up abandoning his values and friends as a result, becoming fully indoctrinated, before finally remembering who he is, realising that he's "allowed others to do my thinking for me", and rescuing his companions. Plus, the resistance group are dangerously hypocritical - they've recreated the exact same axis of oppression they claimed to fight against, albeit against humanoids and the Mark 2 mechs.

Alright, that's potentially interesting. I'm sure there's a story in that. But does Siliconia use the concept in an interesting way? Not really. If there's meant to be any kind of real-world allegory here, it's not clear to me what it is. If there's no intended real-world allegory and it's simply a fantastical sci-fi scenario, it's still a letdown because it doesn't really go anywhere or do anything. In the end, the episode just feels odd and hollow - it presents itself as if its got something to say, but either a) it genuinely doesn't have anything concrete to say and it's all just a strained way to get Chris Barrie to do his Kryten impression and for Lister to swing a mop around, or b) Doug fumbled whatever his message was so badly that it's indecipherable. It's a shame, because there really was a story to be told here. As usual, we didn't get it. It's even more frustrating because some of this really feels like it was written from some kind of personal experience - I've quoted it a couple times now, but Kryten's line about letting other people do his thinking for him in particular strikes me, from the way it's positioned in the script and the way it's the turning point in Kryten's story, as an epiphany which Doug has experienced himself in some form. But even with that, the episode is flat.

Putting all that aside and just reviewing it as a Red Dwarf episode, it's still got problems. As mentioned, the existence of the mech ship is total bullshit. Where the fuck did they come from? It was only a few episodes ago we had to go into extended stasis to reach one other mech (Butler), but now there's a ship flying around with tons of the bastards? And they routinely find more, so much so that Kryten meets a whole room full of other new recruits? And the big one that RUINED the episode for me - why does Rimmer still have the H on his head while he's in a physical mech body? Did they think he looked too similar to Craig Charles while mech'd up because they've both got the same coloured masks?

Also, has to be said again in case it wasn't clear from the synopsis - the ending is absolutely abysmal, one of the worst in Red Dwarf history (which is really saying something). The Cleaniseum is the worst idea ever and serves to erase any amount of sincerity or earnestness the viewer was putting into the episode, and then Kryten's about to die and out of absolutely fucking nowhere, something which looks like an Alienware version of Balok's ship shows up and just fixes everything - Kryten is saved, the gang are saved, the resistance group disbands and the Mark 2s ascend to equality. All in about 15 seconds.

St_Eddie

#2200
Points of interest...

* James Buckley is terrible as an android.  He's not playing it as an android.  He's just Jay from The Inbetweeners with a rubber mask on.  As an aside; it's kinda odd that the audience laughs when Buckley says "Siliconia!" at the end of the episode.  It's supposed to be a genuinely emotional and triumphant moment but the audience laughs at his line delivery.  Not sure why the laugh wasn't removed in the edit.  Quite frankly, I'm starting to suspect that Doug Naylor may just be a laugh whore.

* Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules and Chris Barrie are not on the same page at all in how they go about portraying their robot selves.  Barrie does a full-on Kryten impression.  Whereas John-Jules just remains as Cat and Charles does this really weird halfway thing that just comes across as bizarre.

* Doug Naylor and the recycling of material rears its ugly head once again.  Contrast and compare...

Quote from: Series IV - 'DNA'LISTER: This is going back years, years, before the accident.  Kochanski had just finished with me, and I was feeling really pony.  So I went for a walk in the botanical gardens, and I saw this squirrel, climbing up and down the tree collecting nuts.  And it stopped, and it looked at me, and I thought; "You lucky little sod -- you like your job, you're your own boss, and you've got no woman trouble, so you'll never feel as bad as I feel now" and at that moment, I mean for a split second, I would have given anything, anything to swap places with him.

Quote from: Series XII - SiliconiaRIMMER: "I don't want to be me.  I want to be a mechanoid; programmed to serve.  Sometimes when I was young, I'd sit for hours staring at our fish tank, feeling envious.  I wanted to be a fish.  They had food, a small rock to swim in and out of.  They didn't have a care in the world.  Those little fish; they'd never know what it was like to fail and disappoint.  They'd just swim around in circles, not a thought in their heads and it's the thinking which causes all the pain, but being a mechanoid means never having to think.

Quote from: Lemming on February 28, 2021, 02:00:07 AM
Anyway, Lister's guitar was flushed out into space some time ago (when? in Fathers & Suns? but didn't he play it with Hitlerbot in Cured?)

This continuity error was created when they reordered the broadcast order from the studio recording dates.  They felt that 'Cured' was the strongest episode to kick the series off with.

Quote from: Lemming on February 28, 2021, 02:00:07 AM
Lister and Cat flee and run into James Buckley. He and a bunch of other mechs work in servitude down in the bowels of the ship, the logic being that Buckley et al are Mark 2 mechs, while Kryten and the MILFs are Mark 3s. SOCIAL COMMENTARY???

Something, something... George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Quote from: Lemming on February 28, 2021, 02:00:07 AM
Lister's mind is finally destroyed by the mech software, rendering him a servile loser like Rimmer has become, compelling him to fight Kryten. Lister wins, and Kryten is sentenced to be shot out of an airlock. But then Balok's ship from Star Trek shows up and the MILFs are like "it's Siliconia!" and heavenly music plays as all the mechs get free upgrades or something.

Lister and Kryten saved by the Starship Deus ex Machina.

Quote from: Lemming on February 28, 2021, 02:00:07 AM
So the big question here is - what was any of this actually about? There's no way around it - the "robot slavery survivors" group where everyone chants "it's not my fault" seems to me to be very clearly a pisstake of rape/domestic violence crisis centres (or at least, what Doug imagines them to be like). I'm possibly being totally unfair with this assumption, but what else is this scene meant to be a parody or allegory for? I'll happily retract this bit if there's an obvious parallel to something less offensive that I'm completely missing. Anyway, whatever the fuck this scene is meant to be, it's not funny, just awkward and strange. And needless to say, if the scene is what I'm accusing it of being, then Fuck Off Doug.

I think it's just a humorous take on group therapy sessions in general.  I've attended several such sessions (for depression and anxiety) and to be fair, they are quite similar to how they're portrayed in the show.  Obviously, Doug takes it to an extreme for comedic effect but the hallmarks of group therapy are there; the slightly naff and hallow condescending platitudes of the therapist and the attendees being told to repeat mantras designed to empower, but which ultimately just feel a little bit cheeseball and ineffectual.  Obviously your mileage may vary but I found the scene amusing and on point.  I will grant you that the particular phrase "it's not our fault" does suggest a rape/domestic abusive parallel though, so yeah, that is a bit rum.

Quote from: Lemming on February 28, 2021, 02:00:07 AMAnd the big one that RUINED the episode for me - why does Rimmer still have the H on his head while he's in a physical mech body? Did they think he looked too similar to Craig Charles while mech'd up because they've both got the same coloured masks?

Good point.  For that matter, why do the mechanoid bodies the crew's minds get uploaded into have the same facial features as their hosts?  Also, considering their minds are downloaded via a glorified hairdryer which engulfs their heads and reads their brains, how is Rimmer's mind downloaded?  He doesn't have a literal brain.  He's a lightbee located in his midsection, projecting an image of Arnold Rimmer.


mjwilson

Kryten:
QuoteIt's almost to the day it got flushed into space.

That's just not a meaningful collection of words is it? ("Almost a year to the day" maybe?) I know it's a small detail but it surprises me that they went with such a bad take.

purlieu

As with Cured, another really good idea on paper - the way it heads with Rimmer finding solace suggests there could be some really good character plotting here - that doesn't live up to its potential. Doug gives up on the whole Rimmer plot just as it gets interesting, as I love him setting off the alarm. How will they manage to reverse the effects of being turned into mechanoids? Oh who cares, let's do a Gladiator parody and then just have them run away after a software update.

Once again, if Doug had only had six episodes to write, he could have spent twice as much time on refining the ones he had and making cohesive plots. Instead, as with all the weaker Dave-era episodes, it ends up feeling closer to a sketch show than a proper sitcom.

Ah yes, Timewave next. Have fun with that one everyone. I have no plans to watch it again any time soon.

Replies From View

Quote from: St_Eddie on February 28, 2021, 02:31:07 AM
* Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules and Chris Barrie are not on the same page at all in how they go about portraying their robot selves.  Barrie does a full-on Kryten impression.  Whereas John-Jules just remains as Cat and Charles does this really weird halfway thing that just comes across as bizarre.

This always bugged me too.  Chris Barrie is plainly ecstatic that he's having his chance to do his Kryten impression but it's never been especially good, and it's failings are put under the spotlight here.  Kryten doesn't sound or move like that except in your head, Chris - well done.

Someone should have told him, "Actually Chris, this isn't really the point of the episode.  You're not supposed to sound like Kryten just because you are now a mechanoid, as you can tell from the fact that nobody else is doing a Kryten impression."

But obviously nobody had this conversation with him, and he wasn't bright enough to pick up on it himself.  So the episode is what it is.

RetroRobot

Not sure if this is the right thread but rather post here than necro...

Just finished reading Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers for the first time. What I wouldn't give for the modern Dwarf to be more like that. Though I think I'd like it more if it went with that tone with an all new cast. Just reboot it at this point.

purlieu

If they did a reboot I'd love it to be based on the novels, done in more of a comedy-drama style. You could do them as eight 45 minute episodes per book. Do a few changes to make the ending of Backwards lead into Last Human.

JamesTC

You could probably mix and match Backwards and Last Human. Have the opening backwards earth section from Backwards lead into the incorrect universe at the start of Last Human and then change the ending to have them return to their correct universe at the end which can lead into the Agonoids plot.

Replies From View

Quote from: JamesTC on February 28, 2021, 09:44:43 PM
You could probably mix and match Backwards and Last Human. Have the opening backwards earth section from Backwards lead into the incorrect universe at the start of Last Human and then change the ending to have them return to their correct universe at the end which can lead into the Agonoids plot.

Sounds like trying to make one of those post break-up Beatles albums.


Not that there's anything wrong with that, but including Ringo tracks is always going to be a bit of a chore.  I hope nobody insists on shoving in material by Paul Alexander.

JamesTC

Quote from: Replies From View on February 28, 2021, 10:11:36 PM
Sounds like trying to make one of those post break-up Beatles albums.


Not that there's anything wrong with that, but including Ringo tracks is always going to be a bit of a chore.  I hope nobody insists on shoving in material by Paul Alexander.

I dunno, Last Human specifically begins after the return from the omni-verse in order to avoid repeating ground from Backwards (as Doug knew Rob was continuing where they had left off with the third novel) so it is then just a matter of finding a way to fit in the Agonoid storyline.

I'd like to see them try to a comedy-drama adaptation of the Red Dwarf Survival Guide.

Lemming

Quote from: Replies From View on February 28, 2021, 03:08:33 PM
This always bugged me too.  Chris Barrie is plainly ecstatic that he's having his chance to do his Kryten impression but it's never been especially good, and it's failings are put under the spotlight here.  Kryten doesn't sound or move like that except in your head, Chris - well done.

Someone should have told him, "Actually Chris, this isn't really the point of the episode.  You're not supposed to sound like Kryten just because you are now a mechanoid, as you can tell from the fact that nobody else is doing a Kryten impression."

But obviously nobody had this conversation with him, and he wasn't bright enough to pick up on it himself.  So the episode is what it is.

To offer a very lukewarm defence of the Kryten impression, because I basically agree with your post:

Craig and Danny do (terrible) Kryten impressions too, sporadically. Lister does it in the cell and then snaps himself out of it, and Cat does it right before he loses his mind to the mech software. So the idea is presumably that doing an awful Kryten impression is what the endgame of having your personality rewritten looks like, and it happens to Rimmer so quickly because they wanted Chris to do a Kryten impression he willingly gives in to the personality rewrite.

Replies From View

Chris Barrie's impressions aren't very good.  He gets sycophantic feedback from fans at conventions whenever he does Kryten impressions, and so his ego tells him he's brilliant.  He looks so smug whenever he does his voices in interviews and things.  YOU AREN'T VERY GOOD STOP FEELING HAPPY ABOUT YOURSELF.  FEEL CRUSHED BY TRUTHFUL FEEDBACK AND MISERABLE ABOUT LIFE LIKE I DO.  UNFAIR.

purlieu

Quote from: JamesTC on February 28, 2021, 09:44:43 PM
You could probably mix and match Backwards and Last Human. Have the opening backwards earth section from Backwards lead into the incorrect universe at the start of Last Human and then change the ending to have them return to their correct universe at the end which can lead into the Agonoids plot.
I'm not sure how well that would work - Last Human is the only book to have Kochanski as a main character, and also it has a very definite ending. Say what you want about the quality of the book (and it really is badly written and lacking in humour), but the final section does act as a very nice conclusion to the story.

JamesTC

Quote from: purlieu on March 01, 2021, 12:15:35 AM
I'm not sure how well that would work - Last Human is the only book to have Kochanski as a main character, and also it has a very definite ending. Say what you want about the quality of the book (and it really is badly written and lacking in humour), but the final section does act as a very nice conclusion to the story.

It really depends on whether you even want to have Kochanski in it. You can just discard the elements of Lister and Kochanski's relationship and concentrate on Lister and his evil alternative universe counterpart.

You would have to change the ending to allow
Spoiler alert
Rimmer
[close]
to survive after they encounter The Rage. It ends with the planet they are on passing through the omnizone so it could just be that the planet ends up in their own universe ready for them to encounter the destroyed Holly who is discarded by the Agonoids.

Old Nehamkin

Quote from: Replies From View on February 28, 2021, 10:28:37 PM
Chris Barrie's impressions aren't very good.  He gets sycophantic feedback from fans at conventions whenever he does Kryten impressions, and so his ego tells him he's brilliant.  He looks so smug whenever he does his voices in interviews and things.  YOU AREN'T VERY GOOD STOP FEELING HAPPY ABOUT YOURSELF.  FEEL CRUSHED BY TRUTHFUL FEEDBACK AND MISERABLE ABOUT LIFE LIKE I DO.  UNFAIR.

Barrie did sort of make his bones as an impressionist though, didn't he? I can't remember what his Kryten is like (though from my memory of the Red Dwarf audiobooks he does a good Norman Lovett and a decent enough Craig Charles) but I don't think it's particularly vain or dilettantish for him to reckon he's got a bit of an aptitude for voices when he was a regular on Spitting Image, did the Reagan parts on the Two Tribes single and so on.

St_Eddie

I think that Chris Barrie is a decent impressionist.  He's not amazing or anything, given that you can always hear his natural voice underneath any impression he does, but he's still got a definite talent for it.  He has milked that Kenneth Williams impression to the point of leaving dear old Bessie as a dried out hollow husk of a cow, mind.

Replies From View

Whether looking back at Spitting Image or his Gruesome Greenies Smarties adverts, you can always tell it's him doing the voice.  He never loses his own voice in the impression which I always found a bit strange for someone who is self-confessed "doing impressions".


Anyway I want him to be punished and you can't stop me.

Mobbd

Has this got anything to do with being stuck opposite Brigitte Nielsen in a packed lift?

neveragain

Hard to think of impressionists who you can't hear behind their voices. Coogan is the only one I can think of. Oh, and Serafinowicz but his talent is beyond the human.

(I think Barrie is pretty damn good, and Jon Culshaw is pants)

thr0b

Quote from: neveragain on March 02, 2021, 12:06:06 AM
Hard to think of impressionists who you can't hear behind their voices. Coogan is the only one I can think of. Oh, and Serafinowicz but his talent is beyond the human.

(I think Barrie is pretty damn good, and Jon Culshaw is pants)

Every Culshaw impression sounds like Culshaw doing Tom Baker, which sounds like Culshaw.

Replies From View

Can we just ditch impressionists as a species?  Their egos, their awful Culshaw-esque faces while they do their voices.  Pursed lips and obnoxious theatrical gestures, sounds forming in their ghastly throats.  There's no call for it.


Absolute grave