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Red Dwarf rewatch

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

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Lemming

S06E02 Legion

Great plot this time around. Legion's a fascinating character, and a great source of both comedy and pathos in the role he (it?) plays in the episode. The science fiction is sharp in this one - it's a nice mystery setup in trying to figure out who the fuck Legion actually is and why he's here alone, then in trying to find out why he can't allow the crew to leave, and finally the solution of having to all be rendered unconscious to weaken Legion is quite clever, even if it's a little underwhelming that Legion just stands there in the corner and watches as Kryten gradually dismantles him.

Lister's character has undergone another huge overnight change since Series 5. He's got a lot of the original Lister's gormlessness and chirpiness back, which is nice. One of my problems with the middle series, which I think I complained about a lot, was that the character of Lister was becoming increasingly unlikeable. I like him much better in Psirens and Legion than I have at pretty much any point over the two series prior.

The one-liner model is still in overdrive, but works a lot better here than in Psirens. There are still a lot of weak or eye-rolling jokes that don't land, but there's plenty that do - Blue Alert bulb, "all known languages including Welsh", "I was with you all the way up to simply", "I need it to turn the lights on and off", "thirty two", etc. There's still the problem (if you consider it a problem, anyway) of lines being assigned to characters interchangeably, with the only characterisation being very thin - Rimmer theatrically announcing his cowardice to the entire cockpit, Cat doing his "deader than" jokes, all that - but at least most of the lines are funny.

Carrying over another complaint from Psirens, the crew are still hyper-competent, expert pilots and scientists. It feels weird, but maybe it's better than Kryten doing absolutely everything. I do like the new crew dynamic to some extent, though - they feel like a cohesive (albeit bickering) unit who are brought together as quasi-friends by the problems they face, which feels very slightly similar to the dynamic of Series 2.

So yeah, very quip-filled and very broad, often to the point of slapstick (especially the extended scene where food keeps getting thrown at Rimmer) but it's funny and the dramatic plot works alongside the comedy nicely.

Miscellanious shit: Lister mentions that "the old Captain" "got shot". What? Hollister?

Legion was created in the 23rd Century, which (since Series 4) was the century Lister and Rimmer were from, and apparently Kryten too. How was this place built so far away from Earth at a time when, from everything we know about the world before Lister went into stasis, humanity had only really colonised the solar system? Also, are we to take it that humanity was wiped out (on a galactic scale, somehow) very shortly after the Red Dwarf radiation leak? I think the furthest chronological thing we've ever encountered was the Holoship which was implied to have been from the 24th Century.

Rimmer is "Hard Light" now, which I'm putting here in the misc section because it really doesn't matter, given he's been able to go anywhere and touch anything since Series 3, more or less. This is fair enough because it gives a reason for him to be able to do things he's been doing for several series anyway, and it does set up the reasonably funny scene where Rimmer proves un-knockoutable.

Rimmer says, "in all our travels, we've met precisely 31 indviduals". Am I obsessive enough to test his claim? Yes. Discounting groups of people like the Holoship crew, and not counting duplicates or apparitions, but including artificial intelligences like the Justice AI, and also counting non-sentients like the Polymorph and the Despair Squid... I count 13, as a rough estimate. If we include Confidence and Paranoia, who are weird dream-disease things, then it's 15.

If we go on to include duplicates of the crew (Parallel Universe, Old Lister from Future Echoes, the Demons & Angels crews, Me2 Rimmer, etc) then it's 34. This is really, really rough, and I'll show my working if anyone's actually interested, which I hope to god none of you are. Anyway, I skipped over all episodes where they meet tens of people at once - Backwards, Meltdown, Holoship, Stasis Leak, Timeslides - so in actuality they've met far over 31 people. I wonder how Rob and Doug calculated 31. Most likely they just pulled any random number out of the air for the sake of the joke, which is fair enough because the actual number is just about impossible to get, especially if you start counting extremely minor characters like, for example, the woman with the fur scarf in the hotel lobby in Stasis Leak.


Quote from: Lemming on November 30, 2020, 11:55:04 PM
Carrying over another complaint from Psirens, the crew are still hyper-competent, expert pilots and scientists. It feels weird, but maybe it's better than Kryten doing absolutely everything. I do like the new crew dynamic to some extent, though - they feel like a cohesive (albeit bickering) unit who are brought together as quasi-friends by the problems they face, which feels very slightly similar to the dynamic of Series 2.

It's reasonably believable that they would, through necessity, become quite competent over the years they spend alone in deep space. Their situation frees Lister from the complacency that he was afforded in his earlier life, and Rimmer from the need for approval from the officer class & his family, meaning they actually employ their capabilities to learn. Cat becoming a good pilot thanks to faster reflexes makes a modicum of sense, although his ability to smell tractor beams and asteroids is a bit of a stretch!

Quote from: Lemming on November 30, 2020, 11:55:04 PM
Miscellanious shit: Lister mentions that "the old Captain" "got shot". What? Hollister?

That actually confused me in exactly the same way when it first aired. He's talking about the Captain of a derelict they encountered, which he mentions at the start of that dialogue with Cat.

I'd not realised, until my rewatch prompted by this thread, quite how much the gag rate ramps up in season 6. I think the characters and situations retain a similar tone to S4 and S5 which is probably why it wasn't quite so jarring at the time. Loss of that tone is why everything post-S6 is so shite.

Quote from: Lemming on November 30, 2020, 11:55:04 PM
S06E02 LegionRimmer says, "in all our travels, we've met precisely 31 indviduals". Am I obsessive enough to test his claim? Yes. Discounting groups of people like the Holoship crew, and not counting duplicates or apparitions, but including artificial intelligences like the Justice AI, and also counting non-sentients like the Polymorph and the Despair Squid... I count 13, as a rough estimate. If we include Confidence and Paranoia, who are weird dream-disease things, then it's 15.

If we go on to include duplicates of the crew (Parallel Universe, Old Lister from Future Echoes, the Demons & Angels crews, Me2 Rimmer, etc) then it's 34. This is really, really rough, and I'll show my working if anyone's actually interested, which I hope to god none of you are. Anyway, I skipped over all episodes where they meet tens of people at once - Backwards, Meltdown, Holoship, Stasis Leak, Timeslides - so in actuality they've met far over 31 people. I wonder how Rob and Doug calculated 31. Most likely they just pulled any random number out of the air for the sake of the joke, which is fair enough because the actual number is just about impossible to get, especially if you start counting extremely minor characters like, for example, the woman with the fur scarf in the hotel lobby in Stasis Leak.

I had always assumed that it was based upon it being the 32nd episode, so they went for one per episode, ignoring the fact that some had more or fewer.

Lemming

Quote from: Evian Mousemat on December 01, 2020, 04:41:57 AM
It's reasonably believable that they would, through necessity, become quite competent over the years they spend alone in deep space. Their situation frees Lister from the complacency that he was afforded in his earlier life, and Rimmer from the need for approval from the officer class & his family, meaning they actually employ their capabilities to learn. Cat becoming a good pilot thanks to faster reflexes makes a modicum of sense, although his ability to smell tractor beams and asteroids is a bit of a stretch!

I agree and I like the idea that, when forced into action, Lister, Rimmer and even Cat are capable of becoming gradually competent. I suppose it just feels sudden - like a lot of things in Red Dwarf, it seems to have happened off-screen and almost overnight, during the transition between two series.

petril

Quote from: Slingback Synapse on December 01, 2020, 09:58:07 AM
I had always assumed that it was based upon it being the 32nd episode, so they went for one per episode, ignoring the fact that some had more or fewer.

my vision of them writing it is just sat there shouting numbers at a line until they both agreed 31/32 was most amusing

which sounds a lot like how I imagine Numberwang was invented

Replies From View

Quote from: Slingback Synapse on December 01, 2020, 09:58:07 AM
I had always assumed that it was based upon it being the 32nd episode, so they went for one per episode, ignoring the fact that some had more or fewer.

I always thought it was really daft.  I suppose Rimmer is the kind of person to keep notes on such things though, and while it would make more sense to overestimate the figure (to account for offscreen stories) Rob and Doug probably wanted to retain the sense that space was largely a depressingly empty void.

But yeah, it always stuck with me as being bizarrely pedantic and wrong at the same time.

JamesTC

This really reminds me of "The Ten Most Asked Questions About Red Dwarf" from the Smeg Ups.

Lemming

S06E03 Gunmen of the Apocalypse

"There's been a bit of a cock-up in the bravado department."

This is a bit of a stock sci-fi plot (we've got to go into a videogame with REAL LIFE STAKES!!!) but that's no problem because it's a unique spin on it* and it's presented and paced very well, and so ends up being a lot of fun.

*A Fistful of Datas, I know, but the plots aren't entirely similar...

So, space is pretty heavily populated now, right? Not a criticism necessarily, it sort of makes sense if they're now firmly in territory formerly populated by humanity. But simulants are apparently a relatively well-known threat, and they have a procedure of asking ships to identify their species and purpose, so they must meet quite a few people. They're also carrying the technology and parts to upgrade Starbug.

The joke about car parking rules is the only time I've properly laughed at a Space Corps Directive joke variant so far, so credit for that one.

Can't actually come up with too much to say about the episode, it's just a really enjoyable half hour. Favourite scene has to be the shitty anticlimactic showdown where the virus deletes the special skills and traps the crew in the game. Really good blend of genuine dramatic tension and comedy there. YOU'RE PULLING ME NOSE OFF MAN

Exposition-bot: "It's rogue simulants, alright!" ... "Bio-mechanical killers created for a war that never took place. Some of them escaped the dismantling program and now they prowl around deep space, searching for a quarry worthy of their mettle." Alright then! He also instantly knows what the Armageddon Virus is and how to combat it. Kryten's exposition lines have to be ramped up due to the loss of Holly, I suppose.

Extremely small note, but Lister refers to Rimmer as "Rimsy". Aww :) Again, Lister's much less of a moody PRICK in Series 6, returning closer to his original characterisation, and it makes him more enjoyable to watch even in moments where the writing for the character isn't quite as strong.

Overall, really likeable episode. I didn't notice the one-liner model too much in this one. In fact, the opposite - it felt about as joke-heavy as an average Series 5 episode, which is fine because the plot is engaging on its own terms, and most of the jokes worked.

JamesTC

Gunmen was recorded four months after A Fistful of Datas went out in America. Rob Grant was a huge Star Trek fan and would apparently get tapes sent over from America so it is very possible that he saw it before Gunmen was written. At least they didn't use the Borg-a-like simulants. But as you say, it is different enough. I think Grant Naylor had wanted to do a sci-fi western for a while.

Who knew Cassandra's Dad could be such a menacing figure.

Mobbd

Quote from: Lemming on December 04, 2020, 03:14:53 PM
Favourite scene has to be the shitty anticlimactic showdown where the virus deletes the special skills and traps the crew in the game.

You just made me remember Rimmer's clapping dance in the utterly-unmoved face of that badass horseman!

Replies From View

There's something dramatic about taking Kryten out of service, leaving the others to work out what is happening and sort it out.  It makes you realise how much Kryten really brings in terms of knowledge-overview and problem solving.

My only complaint with this episode really is that we don't spend very long with Kryten rejecting reality and sinking deeper into his dream world.  A longer version of this episode could have really explored this.

ProvanFan

Just havin a little fun, Mister swanky pants

Phil_A

Quote from: Replies From View on December 04, 2020, 04:47:00 PM
There's something dramatic about taking Kryten out of service, leaving the others to work out what is happening and sort it out.  It makes you realise how much Kryten really brings in terms of knowledge-overview and problem solving.

My only complaint with this episode really is that we don't spend very long with Kryten rejecting reality and sinking deeper into his dream world.  A longer version of this episode could have really explored this.

Rob Grant did a good job expanding on the premise in his solo novel Backwards, the concept is a lot more fleshed out and the ending is much darker
Spoiler alert
(e.g. Rimmer and Kryten are both killed)
[close]

petril

Psirens was always the weakest of 6 for me. felt the most like a chore to love Red Dwarf, after the new series excitement. Simple plot, but it felt really kind of empty after the intro with the slight rejig in the premise. Claire Grogan was a good surprise, and the bit where the Psiren!Kryten calls Lister "Dave" and gets sussed immediately was great. Love tiny detail points like that.

Legion is one of my favourite episodes. I remember a time when I took a break from rewatches, and genuinely thought Red Alert Bulb was one small gag in a short scene before the plot begins. Yeah, that's the first third of the episode and I love that scene of them sat there just throwing out gags for a bit. Still get a laugh at the Good Psycho Guide, Bunty Hoven sculpture. I wish there'd been more time to show them hanging out and exploring the station before they find out what Legion is.

Gunmen is great, I love it. I remember there was a poll where it nearly beat Back To Reality, but BTR is my favourite episode. the Honky Tonk piano theme just gets me the whole time, I like it more than the end theme. and basically, what RFV said about a plot where Kryten's gone and it's down to the others. Oh and Kryten's spiv tache at the start is grand.

Quote from: JamesTC on December 04, 2020, 03:55:32 PM
Gunmen was recorded four months after A Fistful of Datas went out in America. Rob Grant was a huge Star Trek fan and would apparently get tapes sent over from America so it is very possible that he saw it before Gunmen was written. At least they didn't use the Borg-a-like simulants. But as you say, it is different enough. I think Grant Naylor had wanted to do a sci-fi western for a while.

aha! so that's why Pat thought it was a knockoff


JamesTC

Quote from: petrilTanaka on December 04, 2020, 07:19:01 PM

aha! so that's why Pat thought it was a knockoff

Nobody lets him near the phone when The Orville is on.

Replies From View

I thought he was referring to Thanks For The Memory.

JamesTC

I love the idea that it genuinely happened and wasn't just a made up fluff story for Red Dwarf Night. Picard just sitting there flicking through the TV to find possible Star Trek rip-offs to inform his lawyer about.

Replies From View

Quote from: JamesTC on December 04, 2020, 09:30:42 PM
I love the idea that it genuinely happened and wasn't just a made up fluff story for Red Dwarf Night. Picard just sitting there flicking through the TV to find possible Star Trek rip-offs to inform his lawyer about.

It was obvious bullshit, yeah.  He actually looked like he was making it up as he was saying it.  I feel like someone approached him with a camera while he was backstage for something, and told him to remember Red Dwarf (which he had never heard of).

I just mean that unless I'm misremembering, the 'accepted knowledge' is that Picard was probably referring to Thanks For The Memory, rather than Gunmen.  Why that would be the case, I can't say.

Lemming

I like the idea that he just saw a nondescript shot of a ship moving through space and immediately thought it was close enough to Star Trek to start legal action.

Thanks For The Memory's premise is very close to TNG's "Clues"... but Thanks For The Memory came out three years earlier.

Replies From View

Quote from: Lemming on December 04, 2020, 10:39:25 PM
Thanks For The Memory's premise is very close to TNG's "Clues"... but Thanks For The Memory came out three years earlier.

This is the point that people make (and mock Pat for).



thr0b

But where would all the Holiday Inns in Peterborough go?

greenman

Quote from: Replies From View on November 01, 2020, 11:25:57 AM
It's not just losing series 6, 7 and 8 though.  It's gaining an unknown number of seasons of US Dwarf.  For all you know there could be five seasons of Prime Simpsons tier brilliance waiting for you in that alternative dimension.  This is the potential trade-off, and you won't know unless you commit to it, and then you'll lose all awareness of series 6-8 altogether so the cock will be on the other foot as it were

It's a toughie; admit it will you

Very hard to predict really as so much would depend on who was involved with it beyond Grant/Naylor and I think the time period in the US it would have been being made makes that even harder to guess as you were arguably just starting to see the shifts towards the kind of writing that allowed something like Futurama to use a lot of the same concepts successfully latter in the decade.

I'd agree with season 5 as the peak of the show post season 2 but beyond more of a horror focus(something that was still there either side of it) I'm not sure theres any formula at work here beyond everyone close to their best. Less dependence on more formulaic jokes and more fully formed plots. In season 4 I think you have plenty of good ideas but only really Justice and White Hole feel like there exploited as well as the season 5 ones to me.


Lemming

#684
S06E04 Emohawk: Polymorph 2

The episode starts off well - the scramble/haircut scene is great and has some good character comedy. After that, though, we get a bit of nonsense where a "Space Corps Enforcement Probe" or some shit comes and "warps" (???) up next to Starbug, and charges the crew with looting derelicts, the penalty apparently being death. Makes no sense (though I do like Lister's line about how "we don't loot derelicts, we just hack our way in and swipe what we need"). Luckily, we're near the "GELF zone" (???), an area well-known to contain GELFs, which Rimmer is knowledgeable about for some reason.

Also has probably the worst joke in the series so far - "you don't have to tell me twice! ...I guess you do have to tell me twice." Terrible. What's worse is that I laughed at it.

Anyway, we're deader than platform shoes and we're being thrown around like sweat in an aerobics teacher's buttock crevice and the ship has been burned like one of Lister's fry-ups and Rimmer quotes a Space Corps directive and such. Oh god no. All these unfunny jokes are mixed in with some really good ones, though - "sorry, I was looking at the wrong panel" is brilliant, exactly the kind of mundane fuckup you could imagine yourself making if you were on a starship. Cat gets a couple great jokes too - "looks like Starbug's been hit," "the damage report machine exploded", etc.

It's weird to watch because the whole sequence combines the best and worst of Red Dwarf. The events of the plot make very little sense, and there's a series of really shit jokes that are either recurring catchphrases or just otherwise unfunny, but there's also a ton of laugh-out-loud moments and great little character beats, plus jokes that fully take advantage of the sci-fi setting.

So, we've crash-landed on a planet and we have no oxygen. Miraculously, the locals have an oxygeneration unit compatible with Starbug, and luckily Kryten knows everything, so communicating with the GELFs is no issue. The crew also see an Emohawk, which Kryten knows everything about - it's a polymorph kept as a pet, and used to steal emotions which are a valuable trade commodity. Uhhh alright. The Lister marriage sequence is good, at least. "She's obviously an Aries." Love how shit Lister's escape plan is, too.

Alright, then we're back at the ship. It's pure fanservice (fan disservice?) from here on - Dwayne Dibley and Ace Rimmer in one episode. I wasn't a massive fan of either of these characters the first time around - Ace was well-used in Dimension Jump, but very nearly wore out his welcome before the episode was over, and Dwayne Dibley was only funny in the context of Back To Reality. Dwayne is shit here. Ace has some fun lines - "certain death for both of us, but a small price to pay to save our chummies" - but I really didn't need to see the character again.

Let's not even get into how little sense this makes. Cat turns into a version of himself from a hallucination, and Rimmer turns into himself from an alternate universe. Because of the Polymorph. Which doesn't have the ability to do either of those things. It also changes their physical appearances. It's not even meant to make sense, DON'T THINK ABOUT IT.

All criticisms aside, though, the episode isn't a total write-off or anything. The dynamic between the crew continues to be enjoyable. Lister's still a better character than he's been at any point since Series 2, Cat gets given some good lines for a change, and the crew feel like a group of reluctant friends, rather than bitter enemies as they did in the worst moments of the last few series.

What I also like is that the writers are letting the crew be absolutely useless again, which they haven't been in ages. Lister putting the emohawk on his head - "100% CONCENTRATION AT ALL TIMES" - properly got me. Rimmer flushing the ship's only gun away and then putting his entire head directly up to the emohawk is great too. I love when the characters' incompetence drives the plot. This episode really drives home that these people are not professional officers. Not even mediocre officers. They are the two lowest-ranking and least competent people aboard Red Dwarf, a Cat who was labelled "the idiot" and deemed to be not even worthy of taking aboard the Cat Ark ships, and a shit janitor robot. That's what the show's all about, and for everything wrong with this episode, it is still fun just for that. "IT'S THE WALL!!!!"

I'm finding that even though the writing is going to shit - and, to be frank, it really is at times - Series 6 is a welcome change of pace after Series 5. It feels a lot warmer, the characters more likeable, the crew more friendly, the situations far less dark and far more absurd, and there are still enough good lines per episode to keep you laughing through a good chunk of the runtime. All trace of the show's original tone and ethos have totally gone out the window, characters are broad stereotypes who could be summarised neatly in one sentence each, the setting doesn't make any sense any more, but it's endearing and pleasant to watch in a way that it really has no right to be.

My favourite thing in this entire episode is right near the start, Lister talking about having a "fourth round of toast" during the SCRAMBLE exercise. Just love the implied off-screen action of him and Cat taking an absolute eon to eat, making a fourth round of toast they don't even really want just so they can piss off Rimmer, who is waiting for them in the cockpit and eagerly timing the whole thing.

greenman

Quote from: Lemming on December 04, 2020, 03:14:53 PM
Kryten's exposition lines have to be ramped up due to the loss of Holly, I suppose.

That was I think one advantage of having two exposition characters in series 3-5, Holly alone delivering it wasn't such an issues in series 1-2 because there wasn't nearly as much of it but sharing the load with Kyrten made it a bit less obvious and gave more room for different reactions to the exposition.

Mobbd

Quote from: Lemming on December 07, 2020, 11:31:54 PM
S06E04 Emohawk: Polymorph 2

This was just a really good review, Lemming. Great stuff.

I'd somehow never noticed how the enforcement vehicle chapter makes no sense whatsoever. What even is that? How can there be space filth out here in deep space? I think I just didn't notice the strangeness of it because I was ultimately still having a good time. I'm happy to let mad things pass when when things are fun. (I didn't usually feel this way in Series VII.)

I did used to wonder about the Emohawk changing Cat and Rimmer's appearance so physically though. I guess Duane is what you get when you remove the Cat's grace/elan and Ace is what you get when you remove Rimmer's cowardice or whatever it was. But buck teeth and a haircut?? That's not what happened in the original Polymorph! Well, not quite.

Sigh.

Lemming

Quote from: Mobbd on December 08, 2020, 03:22:40 PM
This was just a really good review, Lemming. Great stuff.

I'd somehow never noticed how the enforcement vehicle chapter makes no sense whatsoever. What even is that? How can there be space filth out here in deep space? I think I just didn't notice the strangeness of it because I was ultimately still having a good time. I'm happy to let mad things pass when when things are fun. (I didn't usually feel this way in Series VII.)

Thanks!

There's a lot of weird stuff in the enforcement vehicle scene. It also stood out to me that Cat says the headset is "stuck on the country and western channel", and Rimmer says the crew could be put on trial. Both statements are obviously not intended to be taken seriously and exist only for the sake of a punchline, but it creates a bizarre feeling that all of a sudden, there's a functioning legal system out here in deep space with judges and courts, and also commercial radio stations somehow exist.

the

Quote from: Lemming on December 08, 2020, 04:17:14 PM(...) all of a sudden, there's a functioning legal system out here in deep space with judges and courts,

This idea could possibly align with the legal forces that created the prison in Justice. The idea of enforcement here might not seem so jarring if you have that episode in the back of your mind (particularly as Rimmer does actually go on trial in it).

I despair at the awful 'weyyyyy everyone it's Dwayne and Ace!' final act, but I still enjoy this episode because it's such a romp. And the stuff in the Gelf village is very atmospheric.

Just a hunch, but I think the bent logic and recycled characters in this one might suggest the script was finished off in a hurry.

rue the polywhirl

Psirens

Coming back from what is possibly the greatest Red Dwarf episode of all time ie Back To Reality, Psirens makes for a good season opener and a strong episode in its own right. The show skips 200 years into the future and does away with Red Dwarf the ship and also Holly which is great because I'm not such a fan of the Hatty Hayridge incarnation and it freshens up the antics at least for one episode. The writing is noticeably gaggier and but still mostly character-driven in this episode and they either mostly land or they don't stink up the joint. 'Plainer than a Bulgarian Pin-up' is an ok line, right? Plot is good, very nice and tidy and not bogged down and with a lot of good psiren eye candy. Physical humour is on point with Howard Hughes Lister in opening scene, Lister smooching the nozzle of ghastly fly psiren midway, psirens and their slurpy straw motif and trash-compacted Kryten at the end. The scene where they try to identify the real Lister is really good as well. Good start. Possibly the best that season 6 gets.

8.0/10