Red Dwarf rewatch

[Mobbd]

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.

Maybe Rob let Doug write a scene on his own. Silly sausage.

[JamesTC]

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.

I take the "country and western channel" to just be the future equivalent of a music playlist. I always imagine that they have some level of knowledge of some things they encounter in space from either records on derelicts or encounters in off-screen adventures.

One thing of note in the enforcement vehicle scene is Lister fucking up the reverse line. He says "bony butts our move let's".

[JamesTC]

Maybe Rob let Doug write a scene on his own. Silly sausage.

We know Rob never written any scenes alone as nobody was mutilated by a barbed penis.

[petril]

S6 is a hard one to place for me. Like S1-2 is very Monday/Tuesday night to me. early part of the week, just the routine to look forward too. Perfect fit for the bleakness of the setting.

S3-5 were prime Thursday night comedy. Top tier, something to get excited about. the pre-weekend reward is seeing Lister call Rimmer a cunt in some form or other, and Kryten to back him up. All the good stuff. Never saw 3 til the repeats though, but the whole lot just feels very Thursday. hard bits over, let's have some fun before the proper fun time. Even the location bits in like Timeslides and Meltdown work. Just that level of grey skies bringing out the green of the grass and trees just has me thinking of typical Thursdays, end of the main push of the week but a bit extra to make tomorrow easier so we're ready for the weekend. Somehow. Thursday.

I think 6, in my Scheduler's Dream analogy fits in around a Friday, 9 o'clock. perfectly enjoyed after a few minutes' giddy anticipation watching the end of the Gardening Programme(never mind the comedy, gardening felt like it was NAILED to half eight on a Friday.)

I wanted to like Polymorph SO bad after Legion and Gunmen, and the premise was alright. Meeting a load of other sentients was weird, but meh. Revisiting the polymorph, Ace and Dibbly was always going to feel clunky to me and I remember trying so hard to like it. Felt like a meet and greet intro at a convention.

Maybe doing a polymorph without the space of Red Dwarf hampered things a bit, there's so little space there. They did alright with that constraint. It's decent but nowhere near a favourite. I think here was where I originally got a bit worried. At least the next two episodes helped

[Ornlu]

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.

This never irked me at all, I must say. I always thought Rimmer's and Cat's appearance changed drastically enough, in a presumably short time, that it was an immediate transformative effect of the Polymorph. (Not at all sure why it didn't affect Lister or Krytie though.)

[DrGreggles]

Didn't the original Polymorph change Rimmer's appearance too?

[Schrodingers Cat]

Didn't the original Polymorph change Rimmer's appearance too?

Sort of. In the scene afterwards, he now has a goatee and glasses (if memory serves), but as we've already seen, Rimmer can ask Holly to change his haircut and outfit in an instant (the "and I look...like a complete and total tit!" scene), so I always took it as Hippy Rimmer choosing a new look to fit his new personality, rather than anything the polymorph did directly. Cat changed too, but just now looking disheveled and unkept rather than suddenly growing buck teeth and a new haircut in an instant.

[Dusty Substance]

Hang, on. So, the D.N.A craft in Season 4 *is* confirmed as alien technology? Or do they leave it ambiguous?

[JamesTC]

Hang, on. So, the D.N.A craft in Season 4 *is* confirmed as alien technology? Or do they leave it ambiguous?

It is human tech. Red Dwarf has no aliens.

[Evian Mousemat]

I love the model shots in Emohawk. Even though flaming Starbug looks like everybody on board should be extremely dead, it looks fucking great as well.

[rue the polywhirl]

Legion

This episode marks the point for me where the joke-writing in the show shifts irrevocably forevermore into patchy territory, skirting constantly between alright to absolutely wearying and tiresome. The first 5 minutes are like a bingo of bad typical Red-Dwarf jokes - 'space corps directive', 2x Cat fashion jokes, nationality jokes. The first good laugh of the episode happens when Lister is biting into his space weevil and gets annoyed when someone fills in his 'how good is your memory' quiz. 'That was you, don't you remember? No one else spells Thursday with an F'. The episode does start to suddenly click with a decentish story and premise although it is more dated looking than other episodes and the banquet scenes are incredibly grim and an eyesore to look at. The closing shot of the episode is always a hoot. A good episode for series 6 but still incredibly ropey when compared to nearly all the preceding 5 seasons.

6.5/10

[Lungpuddle]

I love how Danny John Jules delivers the second fashion joke in a tone of voice which suggests that even he is sick of them. "I'm doing one of THESE jokes AGAIN." That said, I think Legion is one of the best episodes of Dwarf ever. I also never tire of series 6's space corps jokes because of Robert Llewellyn never bothering to hide the fact that he's just reading them from off-screen.

[thr0b]

I would be remiss not to post this.

http://www.dirtyfeed.org/2020/12/broadcast-on-all-known-frequencies/

[idunnosomename]

oooh. i do like the location shots in Legion. yeah you can tell it's a hi-tech corporate look, but it really works

[Lemming]

S06E05 Rimmerworld

The opening plot here is weird. Lister comes across, uncharacteristically, as kind of a lunatic - he hides crucial info from the rest of the crew (to the point of editing readouts), talks over them and demands to go to the simulant ship despite Kryten and Rimmer (ie half the crew) not being on-side, and then waits until they're already on the simulant ship before pointing out that their weapons won't work. The fuck? His attempt to flirt with the simulant assailant comes across as utterly odd too, inappropriate and bizarre considering he's being held at gunpoint by a maniac. I don't think he's meant to come across as being out of his mind here, but I don't know what else they were going for.

The simulants continue to make no sense. Apparently they routinely torture victims by keeping them alive for long stretches of time - common knowledge, which Kryten is aware of (of course). So, there are tons of people out here now, right? Lots of traffic for the Psirens to eat and the simulants to attack and the Space Corps to send probes after. Weird that we never meet any, and that Legion's stronghold was somehow uncontacted for millennia despite being right next to simulant space, GELF space, Psiren space, Space Corps jurisdiction and what-have-you.

Also: the teleporter thing allows for time travel? The crew now have the ability to go back - or forward - and tell themselves anything? What is going on?! The risk posed to Cat and Lister doesn't matter, because Rimmer and Kryten can use the teleporter without any issues. Massive game-changer, which isn't acknowledged on as one.

Let's just lay this out: the crew are escaping from a collapsing simulant ship. The teleporter has a 20% chance of killing Cat and Lister, and they'll need to use it twice to return to Starbug in their own time. Rimmer is in an escape pod, condition unknown. If you were in this position, you'd think the first frigging thing you'd do, having miraculously time travelled, would be to warn your past selves of the imminent danger. Instead, past Kryten says he doesn't want to know, and the crew leave, back to their own time and mortal danger. Great stuff.

Anyway, the titular Rimmerworld plot kicks in after the ship escape. How the fuck does Rimmer get his own DNA to make a clone? He has no DNA, being made of light, and it's not like there was a sample of the deceased Arnold Rimmer's DNA on board a simulant escape pod.

As you can probably tell from the tone of the review so far, I really wasn't feeling this episode at all. The plot isn't great to start with, but worse, it's not particularly funny - the one-liner model is running at about half speed here, but it doesn't come out with very many good lines. There's the occasional laugh but it's just kind of a slog to watch. The episode feels like it's retreading territory already handled by Me2 and Terrorform, but the script is far more shallow than either of those. Whereas Me2 and Terrorform tried to demonstrate to the viewer certain key facets of Rimmer's personality and the way he relates to other people, Rimmerworld is essentially just an elongated joke. All the Rimmer-people are pantomime-y "snidey", "smarmy", "backstabbing two-faced judases," by their own description. They're a paper-thin list of broad traits, because that's what all the characters essentially amount to at this point. As mentioned in previous reviews, this isn't always a problem when the episode is fun (as Legion, Gunmen and Emohawk all are), but this episode lacked the "the writing might be all over the shop but at least it's a laugh" quality that the rest of the series has had, for me.

Considering the plot can't be taken as much other than a joke, it's presented quite strangely. There's no real joke payoff for the whole concept (though the "something terrible has happened to Lister" joke at the end is one of Red Dwarf's better endings), and the exchange during the prison scene in which Rimmer describes how Rimmerworld progressed isn't really played for laughs, nor does it get many from the studio audience who otherwise laugh at everything. We don't even see the effect that 600 years of captivity in a small cell has had on Rimmer. I'm a big, big fan of episodic TV and generally averse to things that are fully serialised, so the last thing I want is a boring series-long arc of Rimmer dealing with the psychological fallout of his captivity or some shit like that, but it feels very abruptly handled here - Rimmer's been alone so long that he's forgotten the crew's names, but 5 seconds later they're teleporting out (with the teleporter that has a 20% chance to kill you, which they've now used three times) and everything's... just fine.

Not going to even get into the Rimmerworld itself, which is 600 years old but full of Roman soldiers and palaces and dungeons (all built by clones of Rimmer who, apparently, have Rimmer's personality and skillset), because IT'S NOT WORTH THINKING ABOUT. Nor am I going to get into all the things Rimmer could have done to make things far easier, the foremost of which occurs to me is to just turn himself off inside the escape pod on day one and wait for the crew to arrive and collect him.

Highlight of the episode is Lister's escape plan, resulting in "or we could use the teleporter". Only proper full-on laugh I had in the episode, but it's a really good one. Other laughs include the aforementioned ending joke, "nobody's ever built the prison that can hold Derek Custer," the joke about communication with single-cell protazoa... again, there's a few laughs, but it doesn't really coalesce into a strong episode.

[Shaky]

I love how Danny John Jules delivers the second fashion joke in a tone of voice which suggests that even he is sick of them. "I'm doing one of THESE jokes AGAIN." That said, I think Legion is one of the best episodes of Dwarf ever. I also never tire of series 6's space corps jokes because of Robert Llewellyn never bothering to hide the fact that he's just reading them from off-screen.

The light switch joke is obvious but brilliantly delivered by Legion. I still try to work the way he says, "Not... really," into conversation when I can.

[Ornlu]

The faux-cheeriness that permeates "I need it to turn the lights on and off!" is sublime as well.

[frajer]

The faux-cheeriness that permeates "I need it to turn the lights on and off!" is sublime as well.

The fact that he is bound by social contract to politely explain why Rimmer can't buy his light-switch is such a gloriously strange joke.

[Lemming]

S06E06 Out of Time

Pretty fun episode to end the series on. As with a lot of Series 6 episodes, it feels like it's split into two segments - one of them arsing around on Starbug (morale meeting, unreality pockets) and one of the main plot. I like this structure and I think it worked really well in episodes like Emohawk.

The "we're in deep space in the 15th century" joke is fantastic.

I'm surprised by how little I have to say about the episode - it feels a bit lightweight up until the ending, but it's enjoyable. The jokes work, the characters are largely likeable and their dynamic with each other is fun, the future crew are a laugh, and I really like the scene where the present-day crew are looking through the security cameras to see what's happened to future Lister - "ohhhhhhh dear".

Didn't find the plot too engaging, especially since the solution of just destroying the time drive in the present is obvious right away. Still, it's a decent enough vehicle for some quality jokes. The crew's heroic stand against the future crew at the end feels well-earned, and the death of everyone but Rimmer is a nice effective scene. Did get an unintentional laugh out of the shot of Chris Barrie running down a corridor with a bazookoid with dramatic music playing, feels a little bit overwrought, but that's not a bad thing.

Of course, it doesn't really matter whether Rimmer reaches the time drive in time or not, because the future crew blowing up Starbug destroys the time drive anyway...

Alright, so, we've finished the Grant Naylor series. No matter what your opinion is - whether you still think the first two series are head and shoulders above the rest (I'm still in this camp) or you prefer the more action-y and joke-filled series 4 - 6, one thing virtually everyone agrees on is that the best of the show is now behind us. Join me as we enter DOUG NAYLOR territory. We're in his world, now, and the only way out is through.

[servese43]

I think it's bit daft how they keep on falling for the illusions that the unreality bubble creates in the episode, but at least those scenes are funny. I too don't really have much to say about this episode, I suppose it's just that it doesn't have much of an interesting plot (at least until the end). Definitely one of the funnier series 6 episodes though.

[Shaky]

S06E06 Out of Time
Did get an unintentional laugh out of the shot of Chris Barrie running down a corridor with a bazookoid with dramatic music playing, feels a little bit overwrought, but that's not a bad thing.

It largely works although I've always been distracted by the bit of scenery bouncing off him!

[markburgle]

I think this is great, easily the best of this season, but I'm always a sucker for time travel stuff and also I love the dramatic ending. It's one of those "the drama has colonised the comedy" moments like the end of Blackadder Goes Forth, Brent getting fired, Kerry's dad trying to send her to prison to save his own hide etc. Drama can be at its most effective in a show that spends most of its time trying to make you laugh (matter of opinion of course, for others it seems to be more a troubling sign of pretension but I'm nearly always swept along by it).

I'd say rather than destroying the time drive, the much more obvious solution would be for them to travel back. They'd only have to go back one day to escape destruction. Also, another obvious thing they seemed to miss initially is the potential to travel 3 million years back in time, set a course for Earth, enter stasis and return home.

I'm repeating my "why-didn't-they-just" type complaints that I had for earlier episodes but this kind of stuff does annoy me and takes me out of things. I'm not saying they should've told a different story either, they could raise these possibilities and find ways to dismiss them in a couple of lines if they wanted to, just to make the characters feel more effectively locked into their course of action. It's like when Rimmer goes "I can't have put on much weight, I'm a hologram" and Lister is like "wrong, cos you have". They spent no time actually trying to explain why or how but it was enough - your niggling little "hang on..." doubt is addressed and then dismissed on screen and it allows you to drop it and stay invested. Oh well. The good era of the show goes out on a high after a bit of a crap season so that's nice.

[idunnosomename]

The fact that he is bound by social contract to politely explain why Rimmer can't buy his light-switch is such a gloriously strange joke.

not to mention, that you could just end the joke with "that's the light switch" womp womp, on to exposition while Rimmer mugs in embarrassment.
Some effort did go into the writing at times.

[frajer]

not to mention, that you could just end the joke with "that's the light switch" womp womp, on to exposition while Rimmer mugs in embarrassment.
Some effort did go into the writing at times.

Definitely. It's a wonderfully peculiar and elegantly structured approach to what could be an obvious joke.

Also harkens back to Series 1 & 2 Rimmer who was obsessed with getting along by presenting a different, "better" version of himself to his social superiors and would inevitably fall on his arse. Mr Gazpacho.

[petril]

Also, another obvious thing they seemed to miss initially is the potential to travel 3 million years back in time, set a course for Earth, enter stasis and return home.

they slipped that in as a gag right away. as it turns out it's only a time drive, not a space drive, so they were 3 million years in the past, but still 3 million years away from Earth

[Gulftastic]

they slipped that in as a gag right away. as it turns out it's only a time drive, not a space drive, so they were 3 million years in the past, but still 3 million years away from Earth

Hence, go 3 million  years into the past, set course for Earth, go into stasis for 3 million years.

[Replies From View]

they slipped that in as a gag right away. as it turns out it's only a time drive, not a space drive, so they were 3 million years in the past, but still 3 million years away from Earth

I think that's what he meant by setting a course for earth and entering stasis.  Still need to travel to earth, but when you get there the human race isn't extinct.

Really, they would have needed to travel 6 million years into the past, if Red Dwarf would have taken a further 3 million years to re-enter the solar system.  Allowing them to arrive within roughly their own century.

[markburgle]

Hence, go 3 million  years into the past, set course for Earth, go into stasis for 3 million years.

Zactly

[Replies From View]

Zactly

Should be 6 million they travel back, dufus

[markburgle]

Should be 6 million they travel back, dufus

Where are you getting these extra 3 million years from?