Red Dwarf rewatch

[rue the polywhirl]

Top 10 All-time Red Dwarf episodes! -

10. Future Echoes S1 - The End was a good start but here the series now fully starts with aplomb. Intriguing plot, full of laughs and extensively great dialogue between Lister and Rimmer.
9. Polymorph S3 - Frivolous but really good fun Alien-styled survival episode. Somehow the one episode I have rewatched the most. Theoretically should be but not yet completely tired of it.
8. The Inquisitor S5 - Great plot. Unique serious, filmic feel compared to a lot of the rest of the series. Nicely daunting tone and threatening villain. Best scenes are when each character gets trialled obvs.
7. Thanks For The Memory S2 - Great opening scene with caged Rimmer on some kind of moon and good storyline and mystery throughout the episode. Happy Deathday to you!
6. Parallel Universe S2 - Tongue Tied! Love it foremostly for the cold open music video but the gender reversal theme throughout the episode is tonnes of good fun.
5. Balance Of Power S1 - Pushes the momentum built from Future Echoes even further. Also amazing pathos during Lister's flashback in the ship's empty disco.
4. Better Than Life S2 - Best exploration of Rimmer's character. Love the long build-up of episode towards the actual video game spectacle, which devolves into neuroses-induced farce in the best way. Also, the observation deck is such a great, underused locale.
3. Marooned S3 - Immaculate bottle episode. If other S3 episodes are a bit too silly or naff, this gets it just right. Poor Rimmer and his nineteenth century replicas of Napoleon's L'Armée du Nord
2. Queeg S2 - Evil Holly! All-round funniest episodes with almost no let-up. Obviously amazing performance from Charles Augins and great twist at the end.
1. Back To Reality S5 - Speed Bumps! This clinches the title off Queeg because of the higher concept and because it has a bit more of everything - mystery, action, adventure, life and death, video-games etc. The most memorable, quotable and enactable episode from the show's run.

[Lemming]

Really top notch work in this thread, Lemming! Made me go and watch a few episodes. I think series 2 and 5 are a lot better than the rest, and Thank for the Memory is a great pick as the best episode.
A fun obscure guest star spot: see if you can recognise, without cheating, the policeman who stops the team and gets shot by Kryten in "Back to Reality". You'll know him as a really, really minor character from another TV series.

Thanks!

The cop actor does look somehow familiar, but I'm coming up blank on where else I've seen him.

Top 10 All-time Red Dwarf episodes!

Great list! There's a lot of overlap between our Top 10s, and I'm glad to see the often-underrated Balance of Power score so highly. Easily a Top 5 episode.

[Lemming]

Here's mine:

10. S03E04 - Bodyswap - very Series 2 sort of vibe. Consistently hilarious, strongly character-based, and has the line "I've lost your watch too". The bomb countdown is also easily one of my favourite scenes in all of Red Dwarf. Only complaint is that I wish they'd just let Chris and Craig do un-dubbed impressions of each other - I don't care if Craig's is shit, that'd just add to the fun.

9. S03E02 - Marooned - It's tight, it focuses entirely on Lister and Rimmer, it's very funny, and it's absolutely agonising to watch in the final act. My one and only problem with the episode is that Rimmer's played as a bit too soft and nice, which I suppose is to make Lister's betrayal all the more breathtaking. Rimmer and Lister very slowly became friends over the first two series, but here it feels like we've skipped a few steps ahead from how their relationship was in Parallel Universe. Even with that complaint, though, putting this one in the top ten was a foregone conclusion.

8. S02E06 - Parallel Universe - However much shit people give this one, I'll defend it to the hilt. We've had a few great discussions about it in the thread, but I'm going to give Rob and Doug the benefit of the doubt and assume they did indeed intend to write the message that I see in this episode - one which is still uncommonly progressive and controversial by today's standards. Message aside, the episode is pure enjoyment, Tongue Tied being a wonderfully absurd hit of nonsense to start off on. and it just moves from top joke to top joke from that point on.

7. S01E04 - Waiting for God - a very typical Series 1 episode, in a good way - an entirely ship-based science fiction plot, with the antagonism between Rimmer and Lister being the driving force behind it all. Everything involving the QUAGAARS is ace, the "TOT???!!!" scene is so perfectly performed by both actors, and the Cat Priest is a strangely striking, haunting character.

6. S02E02 - Better Than Life - everything before they enter the game is perfect - the excitement over the mail pod, the revelation about Rimmer's dad, the genuinely touching Observation Dome scene. The way it all ends up is equal parts hilarious and tragic. "...and this afternoon we had seven kids."

5. S01E06 - Me2 - Everything involving the two Rimmers is gold. Lister's shockingly cruel near the end, but it feels earned after a six-episode buildup, and ultimately knocks Rimmer down a peg in a satisfying and fair way that leads believably into the (generally) more friendly relationship they have in Series 2. "MISTER GAAAZ-PAAA-CHO! SHUT UP YOU DEAD GIT!"

4. S01E03 - Balance of Power - no science fiction plot at all, just a straightforward Rimmer vs Lister power play. I love Series 1, I think it's easily as funny as Series 2, it's just that the laughs come less from obvious jokes and punchlines and more from the way the characters act and interact. This is perhaps the episode where you can most keenly feel the emptiness of the ship and the sense of loss, driven home by that fantastic "leave it alone" scene in the bar. Also has this exchange that nearly fucking kills me every time:

RIMMER, after striding into the room to berate Lister: Is that painting yours? It's rubbish.
LISTER: That's a mirror.
RIMMER: ...I need some sleep.

My favourite thing about the first series is that it really sticks to the show's original mission statement - the universe is empty, the ship is empty, everyone's dead, nothing's happening, and all Lister and Rimmer really have now is each other, with all that entails. Balance of Power is one of the episodes that really brings out the potential of that formula for me.

3. S01E02 - Future Echoes - a neat science fiction story that wouldn't be out of place in Star Trek, and it's wrung for every bit of comedy it's possible to get out of it. It does something I wish Red Dwarf had done a lot more often, in that the sci fi anomaly is played completely straight and allowed to generate genuine drama - the comedy comes from Lister and Rimmer's reactions to it, and their general inept unreadiness. "Go on then, shake your head and walk out." Rimmer and Lister's squabbling gets just as much focus as the sci fi, neither distracting from the other, and the result is one of the best episodes the show ever made. "I get blown up then?!" "...bits of you do." It suffers in retrospect because none of the mysterious predictions it laid out ever actually came true, other than Jim and Bexley being handwaved away in the (admittedly funny) "fuck you, fans" Star Wars text crawl at the start of Backwards, but that's not Future Echoes' fault.

2. S02E05 - Queeg - arguably the best guest performance the show ever had. Not a dud scene or wasted moment, just a thoroughly funny and perfectly-crafted episode. The reveal at the end is sublime even when you know it's coming, and the episode really underlines something that was in the background during the first two series: Holly's fucking dodgy. Malevolent is far too strong a word, and of course he does have the crew's best interests at heart overall, but after 3 million years alone, he's more than a little bit fucked - enough to physically torture Rimmer and starve Lister for the "wheeze of the week, mate". Great character, and his loss is one of the many things that really hurts the show after Series 2. Hattie Hayridge is a strong enough performer who probably had what it took to fill the same role, but Doug and Rob chose to a) make her version of Holly an idiot for some reason and b) completely sideline the character anyway. Shame.

1. S02E03 - Thanks for the Memory - it's hard to talk about this one without sounding like a proper dickhead, because I start throwing out "masterful" and other nebulous words that sound pretentious and mean jack shit. But I'm going to do it anyway - this episode is one of my favourite pieces of science fiction and there was never any question about it taking first place on this MEGARANKING. Everything about it is perfect - a legitimately intriguing setup (one which Star Trek TNG would try for itself in the episode "Clues"), not to mention spooky - imagine finding a grave to your ex-girlfriend on a fucking unknown moon in uncharted deep space, three million years into the future! No scene is wasted, and all are packed with character-driven excellence. The scene where Rimmer's trying to sort through his newly-implanted memories with Lister is astonishingly good - "I suddenly started treating her really badly." "No you didn't!" Every line is not only funny, but also tells you a lot about both characters. It's, uh, "masterful", to deploy the dreaded word, and without wanting to sound like a prat or bash the later episodes too hard, I honestly don't know how the people who wrote this are the same people who would go on to write stuff like Emohawk and, in Doug's case, all of Series 8. Without wanting to mythologise it or anything, Thanks for the Memory really does stand a step above the rest for me, even above the rest of the first two series. Achingly sad and haunting, but in a way that's frequently uproariously funny and, in a strange way, optimistic - at least in the sense that it's the most caring and genuine Rimmer and Lister ever become with each other. It's like a glimpse into what Red Dwarf could have been.

There we have it.

[St_Eddie]

A fun obscure guest star spot: see if you can recognise, without cheating, the policeman who stops the team and wears pink 'cause gay is bad. You'll know him as a really, really minor character from another TV series.

[St_Eddie]

Here's mine:

10. S03E04 - Bodyswap - very Series 2 sort of vibe.

I'm glad you said this.  I've always considered it to be an episode which could have easily slotted into series I/II (Starbug SFX model shot aside).

[Astronaut Omens]

Thanks!

The cop actor does look somehow familiar, but I'm coming up blank on where else I've seen him.

Spoiler alert

It's the bloke who plays Laura Palmer's agoraphobic friend Harold Smith in Twin Peaks.

[close]

[purlieu]

Interesting. Waiting for God is usually the one that comes bottom of the top 36. I certainly wouldn't have put it and Balance of Power anywhere near my top 10. But my three favourite series are 2, 4 and 5, so I'm less focused on the early stuff. Thanks for the Memory is certainly a classic though and a worthy top episode.

[Replies From View]

Spoiler alert

It's the bloke who plays Laura Palmer's agoraphobic friend Harold Smith in Twin Peaks.

[close]

I knew this but didn't get to the thread in time to see your question before the answer!


(I managed to watch Twin Peaks season 2 in its entirety last summer and recognised him at that point.)

[BeardFaceMan]

RIMMER, after striding into the room to berate Lister: Is that painting yours? It's rubbish.
LISTER: That's a mirror.
RIMMER: ...I need some sleep.

I'm not sure I have a favourite episode but that is my favourite gag from the entire show, it just floors me every time. If I was pushed I'd say Future Echoes for a favourite episode, mainly for that drive room scene with Lister and future Rimmer. Series rating would be something like 1, 2, 5, 4, 3, 6, everything else. I just class everything from series 7 onwards as unrewatchable and group it into one lump. Series 1 and 2 will always be my favourite series, in that order, the next 4 can change depending on what mood I'm in when I watch them, that order is based on a recent rewatch.

[Replies From View]

9. S03E02 - Marooned - It's tight, it focuses entirely on Lister and Rimmer, it's very funny, and it's absolutely agonising to watch in the final act. My one and only problem with the episode is that Rimmer's played as a bit too soft and nice, which I suppose is to make Lister's betrayal all the more breathtaking. Rimmer and Lister very slowly became friends over the first two series, but here it feels like we've skipped a few steps ahead from how their relationship was in Parallel Universe. Even with that complaint, though, putting this one in the top ten was a foregone conclusion.

Y'know, I've always put this down to Rimmer somehow fulfilling some kind of inner programming to keep Lister sane.  I know he's never been revealed to have "programming" as such, but he does have an official role beyond his own personal will, and in my mind it made sense that something might kick in when Lister faced most extreme peril and nobody else was there to share the load.

[purlieu]

Series-wise, I probably go 5, 2, 4, 3, 1, 6, 11, 10, 12, 7, 9, 8.

[St_Eddie]

I, II >>> V >>> III, VI >>> IV, VII >>>>>>>>>>> Dave era >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
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>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> VIII

[markburgle]

Y'know, I've always put this down to Rimmer somehow fulfilling some kind of inner programming to keep Lister sane.  I know he's never been revealed to have "programming" as such, but he does have an official role beyond his own personal will, and in my mind it made sense that something might kick in when Lister faced most extreme peril and nobody else was there to share the load.

I saw it more like his sense if duty. Not liking and therefore being rude to your annoying bunkmate = totally fine. Letting a fellow crewmate die = dereliction of duty, whoever it is. Same thing when he finds Lister unconscious in the corridor

[Replies From View]

I saw it more like his sense if duty. Not liking and therefore being rude to your annoying bunkmate = totally fine. Letting a fellow crewmate die = dereliction of duty, whoever it is. Same thing when he finds Lister unconscious in the corridor

Good comparison.

[DrGreggles]

For what it's worth:
2>1>3-6(order changes)>>>>>>>>Dave>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>7&8

[JamesTC]

Spoiler alert

It's the bloke who plays Laura Palmer's agoraphobic friend Harold Smith in Twin Peaks.

[close]

It is clearly the bloke who played an alien who wanted his favourite TV show to return so got all the cast back together in a great episode of Tales from the Darkside that Futurama definitely didn't copy.

[Lemming]

2 = 1 > > > 5 > 3 > 4 > 6 > 10 > 7 = 12 > 11 > > > being set on fire, killed, etc > > > 8

3, 4 and 6 are the really tough ones to place, you can make convincing arguments as to why any one of them should be placed above the other two. Series 4 felt a bit crap and occasionally tedious when I was reviewing it, and yet in retrospect, White Hole, DNA and Justice are all clearly better than just about anything in Series 6, so hmm.

[rue the polywhirl]

Series II is such a strong streak of episodes and together with Series I is the higher form of Red Dwarf. Series III has a handful of great episodes but is one step backwards. Series IV doesn't get majorly worse and is all round a solid season. Series V is only a little shakier - one really weak episode near the end to spoil it yet an absolute all-time episode afterwards to make up for it. Series VI warning signs are there. I enjoy Series VII and then it really tails off. (The tail starts from episode 3). Series VIII is.... Chucklevision in space without the chuckles. Back To Earth feels like a fan-made project... by someone who wasn't much of a fan. Series X has some green shoots - at its best I'd put on par with Series VII. The worst of it is still a bit better than the worst of Series VII. Really disappointed by much Series XI and XII didn't improve - those greens shoots very quickly turn into blood red and diarrhoea brown. XII easily had some of the worst episodes in the shows run. The Promised Land now does not seem so promising.

II - I - V - VI - III - VI - X - VII - XI - BTE - XII - - - - - - - - - Red Dwarf Kelvin - - - - - - VIII

[purlieu]

XII is such a difficult series to judge, because the first half ranges from subpar to abominable, while the second half is my favourite Doug Dwarf.

It's interesting that Doug doesn't really consider Back to Earth proper Red Dwarf these days. It definitely feels like he grabbed an opportunity to just make some new Red Dwarf in order to help get it back on screen. There aren't many good jokes in it at all, but I'll always place it above VIII because there's some character stuff in there, and it feels like Doug was at least trying to make Red Dwarf rather than just a space pantomime with the Red Dwarf actors. Given the really low budget, though, I can't fathom why he didn't choose to do a bottle episode. A character story with the main four trapped in a bunk room or on Starbug would have been a much more fitting tale to bring it back than what it ended up as.

Still not buying this 1 & 2 are vastly better than the middle era thing, though.

[JamesTC]

I don't know if it has been mentioned on here but Cliche & Son Of Cliche are worth a listen. They are Grant Naylor's radio sketch show from the 80s. It can be hit and miss like lots of sketch shows but there is some really great stuff in there plus some jokes that would go on to be recycled in Series I. You can download them all on Fourble.

[Lemming]

Finally got around to it!

The Promised Land

Bit of a recap to start off with, and then... the Felis Sapien fleet arranges into the shape of a cat head, to rapturous reaction by the audience. Aboard the flagship, the villainous Rodon tortures a rebel for spreading the teachings of Cloister. Three Cloister devotees are sentenced to execution, but escape by, uh, distracting the guards with a laser pointer, stealing a shuttle, and fleeing.

Meanwhile on Red Dwarf, Rimmer has picked up an approaching object on the radar. It's the fleeing Felis Sapiens! For the purposes of a joke, Rimmer decides he can't be bothered saving them, so we get a long sequence that's basically the "holmem agatha christie" joke from Series 1 drawn out to agonising length.

Lister and Cat have discovered a backup Holly disk, which is a big floppy disk brought in to uproarious laughter from the audience. They boot it up, and Norman Lovett appears on the screen, but it's the original, pre-senility Holly with no memory of the gang. Following JMC guidelines, he decommissions Red Dwarf, which will involve dumping the engine core and, inexplicably, shooting Rimmer into a black hole.

Cue mandatory 2001 A Space Oddysey joke where everyone gets in the airlock to talk without Holly hearing. It's all been a bit shit so far, but luckily the first proper laugh of the episode arrives in the form of the plan going fully bollocksed because Lister thinks "12 AM" means noon, and it's generally all uphill in quality from here.

The gang flee in Starbug, with Lister heroically reassuring everyone that they can catch up with the Felis Sapien ship in a couple of days. Three months later, adrift, they find a different ship, the Iron Star, built centuries after Red Dwarf.

Aboard, the crew find advanced tech, most interestingly including Diamond Light, an upgrade to Rimmer's Hard Light projector which can give Rimmer superhuman abilities, including the power to manipulate light itself. Kryten urges caution, but Rimmer demands to be immediately upgraded. Weird fanservice sequence where Rimmer changes into every outfit and hairstyle he's had throughout the series, before finally arriving at Diamond Light. He can now touch things, but also turn any physical object into soft light and pass through it, as well as turn into an orb of light and move at immense speed. Right after this demonstration, he glitches out and goes offline. Diamond Light fried the light bee's battery, and now Rimmer has to be physically plugged into a wall socket, able to move only by using extension leads.

While exploring the ship, the crew encounter the Felis Sapiens, who immediately bow down to Lister, recognising him as the god Cloister. They give him the Anubis Stone. Kryten tells us that Anubis was "a creature with the head of a cat who embalmed the dead". Anubis was a jackal-head, right? I've never heard of Anubis being a cat? COME ON DOUG YOU COULD HAVE LOOKED IT UP IN TWO MINUTES. I'll gladly eat shit on this if I'm wrong, but I have never once heard of Anubis being represented as a cat.

Anyway, the Anubis Stone is useless, and Kryten recognises it as varnished beetle shit. Lister wants to explain to the cats that he's not a god, while Kryten insists that they must not be told the truth because it'd shatter their beliefs. No time for the potentially interesting discussion to be had here, because Rodon's forces have arrived! Lister vows to protect the rebels, and a confrontation occurs in the science room. Rodon demands the Anubis stone, and rejects Lister, as Cloister has "created only division and war and death". Rodon recovers the stone and beams out, leaving soldiers with orders to execute the crew. The "Meow Missiles" are launched to destroy the Iron Star, for some reason. Conveniently, the two soldiers die as the station disintegrates, leaving the Dwarfers and the cat rebels to escape in Starbug.

Being a piece of shit, Starbug catches fire, and so Lister is forced to perform a MODULE SEPARATION, detaching the two frontal spheres of Starbug, a la the Enterprise's saucer separation.

What's left of Starbug crashes into a desert planet. Minor thing that really wound me up: Rodon receives a report about this, in which he's told that Starbug is piloted by "the humans". THERE'S ONLY ONE SINGULAR HUMAN, NOT HUMANS. THIS IS WHY EVERYONE HATES YOUR WRITING, DOUG

The rebels are elated, and see the escape from the Iron Star as proof of Lister's divinity, and expect further miracles to help them escape the desert world. Lister stresses out and insists on telling them the truth, because they need to start "thinking for themselves". Lister points out that Kryten's life was massively improved when he was taught independent thinking, and thus sends him in to tell the truth to the cats. He fucks it up, and so Cat makes an attempt, but immediately gets converted to Cloisterism.

Starbug's hovercraft mode (well, it's still not as stupid as the cloaking device from Backwards) is engaged to chase after debris from the Iron Star, as Rimmer believes there may be working teleporters aboard. Rimmer has to shift into low power mode, and out of nowhere, Cat starts yelling at him for not being real and just being an AI, while Lister comes to Rimmer's defence. Also out of nowhere comes Rodon's ship, which shoots Meow Missiles at Starbug. Lister does some insane evasive flying and heads straight into a sandstorm to hide.

Later, Rimmer considers committing suicide based on what Cat said earlier, and unplugs himself. Lister insists that he needs Rimmer because moonlight, and Rimmer eventually plugs himself back in. I really like this scene but I'm still not totally clear on what Lister's moonlight analogy is. Is humanRimmer the sun, and holoRimmer the moon that reflects the light? Is Lister the sun, and Rimmer the moon that reflects the light?

Anyway, the next day, the sandstorm has buried everyone alive. They manage to contact Holly back on the ship, and tell him to download Holly's most recent save file (why the fuck didnt anyone think of this earlier?!?!). The backup files fuck Holly up completely, giving him the memories and senility of circa-season-2 Holly, who agrees to help them. His plan is to launch a nuclear missile at the planet to blast Starbug free. It works and Starbug returns to Red Dwarf, but Rodon's forces have overwhelmed the ship. Lister finally manages to explain the truth, and all the gathered Felis Sapiens lose their faith in Cloister. Rodon throws the useless Anubis Stone back to Lister, and we also learn that Cat is Rodon's brother. Rodon invites him to join, but he refuses, and Rodon orders Red Dwarf to be destroyed in the hopes that Lister's death will end Cloisterism and finally stop the Felis Sapiens from believing in the Promised Land.

With under two minutes until Red Dwarf is destroyed by a nuke, Lister does some absolutely insane adventure game logic and determines that the Anubis Stone must hold a power source in its interior. Smashing it open, he recovers the real Anubis Stone, which gives Rimmer the power necessary to move into Diamond Light. Rimmer flies to the bomb and turns it into soft light, carrying it off into space, where it explodes. Cat briefly realises how sad he is that Rimmer is dead, only for Rimmer to emerge unharmed, his heroics having allowed him to completely overcome his earlier suicidal-ness.

Lister decides it's time to "hit the Ferals before they hit us", and flies out to meet them in Starbug. They fly towards the flagship and Rimmer points a laser pointer at Rodon through the viewscreen, which causes his goons to come and rip him apart, resulting in the ship plowing into an asteroid and exploding. Yep.

Kryten is dead, having used his entire battery. The only way to save him is to use the Anubis Stone, which will disable Rimmer's Diamong Light mode. Rimmer agrees to sacrifice his powers to resurrect Kryten. The rebels return to the other ships, where they're greeted as heroes by the other Felis Sapiens, who have now all formed a new religion based around Rimmer.

Overall, it's alright for what it is. The opening (up to Starbug) and closing (after Holly launches the nuke at the desert moon) scenes are weak both plot-wise and laughs-wise, but the middle sections with the desert are pretty good. It mostly treats all the characters with a lot of respect and affection.

At the same time, it feels like a massive missed opportunity to bring the Felis Sapien arks back after all this time and just have it be... this. Additionally, what I find really suprising is that Rodon is such a cardboard cutout villain, when he basically agrees with Lister (and, based off other episodes dealing with religion, Doug). Rodon's whole thing is subjugating Cloisterists because belief in Cloister led to so many holy wars and so much death and destruction. It's a shame that he's such a one-dimensional tyrant, because underneath all the "muahahaha" torture and casual executions, his hatred of Cloisterism is something you could potentially draw a lot of pathos and sympathy from. Instead, he plays with a scratching post, orders about half the people he meets to be killed for no reason, and then gets torn apart while his ship explodes. There's never any exploration at all of why he's like this - did he inherit a fascistic religious regime when he became leader, and now runs a fascistic anti-theist regime? Did his hatred of Cloisterism gradually erode his morals? Did he feel the threat posed by Cloisterism was so intense that violent, tyrannical measures were the only way to deal with it? We will never know, probably because no such backstory/motivation was considered.

Similarly, the episode flirts with the ethics of Lister revealing the truth to his devotees (made me think of Who Watches The Watchers from TNG, an episode I really like), but doesn't really treat the situation with any depth.

Basically, like a lot of Dave stuff, it feels like a first draft of something good. But there is the skeleton of a really nice movie-length episode here, and there's enough good in it to make it worth the watch. As a proof of concept kind of thing for more movies every couple years, which Rob and Doug both seem to have hinted at being a possibility, it serves its purpose and I hope they make more.

[purlieu]

The opening stuff doesn't do much for me (the giant floppy disk is really painful to watch), but agreed that it gets a lot stronger as it goes along. The final few scenes I quite like, they're not massively funny, but there's some decent plot stuff going on there. The scene with Holly and the missile is one of the best Doug Dwarf bits, and it's really nice to see an emotional Lister and Rimmer scene, especially after XI and XII were so light on the subtle pathos that gave the first five series their depth.

Agreed that it still feels a draft or two away from completion, and honestly I think it could probably have been an hour rather than 90 minutes, although I wouldn't trust Doug to condense the best bits - the same way XI and XII could have been a great single series with a mix of the best six episodes, the best gags from the others, and the same amount of time spent honing those six to perfection, but you know he'd still have included the Gladiator parody and the ending of Officer Rimmer.

[neveragain]

Isn't Rimmer the moon and Lister the sun reflecting... No, that's wrong. I'll never get it. But it sounds beautiful.

[Shaky]

I really like Holly's reappearance towards the end. The jokes and quick banter feel pretty effortless and Lovett is on really good form.

The talk between Rimmer and Lister is great too, although I can never quite decide whether or not it's ludricous that Rimmer has only now, after 30 years, questioned his existence in more depth. In some ways it's arguably in keeping with the character, but on the other hand it's very likely something he's always been (self) obsessed with. "I've never actually thought about that before." rings a bit hollow, not least because it did get occasionally touched on in earlier series. Of course, Doug doesn't care and it's just in there to hark back to the first couple of series and add some dramatic weight, but it's one of the best scenes of the modern era anyway and a well acted bit.

I don't really understand what the moonlight analogy means either, though, beyond the fact they both need each other.

[BeardFaceMan]

I thought the first 30 minutes of this was right up there with the worst of the Dave era, awful, hacky shite with an audience of hyenas watching. If Red Dwarf continues as a Doug-written TV show then I won't even bother watching it now, the quality has dipped that low, solo Doug Dwarf is just not for me. I take it there's been no more talk about the lawsuit or what's happening with future RD yet?

[idunnosomename]

The Ancient Egyptian goddess classically with the cat head is Bastet. There are Sekhmet and others with lioness heads. He should've used the latter if he wanted something that sounds "right". I think he used Anubis because it is familar, but the inaccuracy is just going to distract and annoy a lot of viewers

[JamesTC]

The Promised Land

Lister and Cat have discovered a backup Holly disk, which is a big floppy disk brought in to uproarious laughter from the audience.

Sorry.

[Avril Lavigne]

I imagine seeing a giant floppy disk IRL in any context would result in uproarious laughter.

[Replies From View]

We've talked about the logic of it on a previous page.  It should have been a small file requiring a standard sized disk, with the joke basically being a rehash of Lister's mind being on a tiny tape in Bodyswap. 

Giant floppy disk should make a person laugh only if they always compulsively react like that to oversized Borrowers style props.  There is no other palpable reason why they should.

[petril]

We've talked about the logic of it on a previous page.  It should have been a small file requiring a standard sized disk, with the joke basically being a rehash of Lister's mind being on a tiny tape in Bodyswap. 

Giant floppy disk should make a person laugh only if they always compulsively react like that to oversized Borrowers style props.  There is no other palpable reason why they should.

an actual 5.25" floppy would've been a much better gag, because you get the second laugh from centuries of techie development but there's still cases where 1980s shite is still the best option

could even extend that with one look into a meta-gag about nostalgia, aging, and becoming very bitter at the modern world. great line for Holly in there