Red Dwarf X - Episode Six: The Beginning

Well, after what seems like no time at all, the new series of Red Dwarf is over. This does leave me with a vacant timeslot on Thursday evenings, but I am encouraged as the fact that the series went by so quickly is a clear indication that I enjoyed it. This final episode – like every other from this latest series – had its share of mis-fires, but by and large it proved to be a satisfying conclusion to this series. It did not, however, seem to be the end.

The episode began with a flashback to Rimmer’s past, where his uncaring father was also his teacher. The actor who played young Rimmer was impeccably cast, as he looked just like a young Chris Barrie. The only problem with this scene was that its punch-line seemed a bit anti-climactic, as I almost expected the scene to continue when it ended.

One of the weaknesses of the episode for me was the amount of screen time given to a new character, who was introduced in a manner that seemed to suggest we should already know who he is, and buy into his idiosyncratic habit of challenging people to a ‘dual across time and space’. There were some funny lines in this exchange, but the scene didn’t exactly endear this new character to me, instead I was left feeling a little irritated that so much time had been given to him.

The ship was then attacked by killer simulants who also did their best to chew the scenery during their overly generous amount of screen time. Don’t get me wrong, the characters displayed some good comedic timing at points, especially the delivery of the line “kill him” from the head simulant after requesting that his crew challenge him, and having that challenge met, was very well done. The pull-back-and-reveal nature of the hari-kari scene walked on the fine line between amusing and gross, and was drawn out a bit too long.

After taking a back seat for most of the series, Kryten and Cat both had a couple of stand-out moments in this episode. Cat’s scene where he played with the string and stick, in the manner of a real cat, was very enjoyable, whilst Kryten’s ship-wide search for all the weapons available yielded a very strong visual gag. Also Kryten had what was probably my favourite joke from the entire series when he talked about how he would definitely win a ‘towel folding competition’ to the death, and proceeded to punctuate this statement with physical gusto.

The episode was undoubtedly Rimmer’s though, and after ten series we received a big reveal which may affect his character for series to come, and he was finally able to be the hero, after years of being a coward. I also enjoyed Lister’s blunt delivery of the line “It’s crap” when he learned about Rimmer’s plan, and of course the gloriously unashamed manner in which the gaping plot-hole left behind by the series 8 finale was answered!

Rimmer closed the episode with the line “The slime’s coming home” which was a cyclical nod to the final line from the very first episode, except back then it was Lister who said it. It served as a satisfying end to the series, although I had hopeful expectations when I realised there was a post-credits scene, but unfortunately it only served to end the episode on a rather weak joke.

Overall I enjoyed the series, and despite my theories about this being the final episode, there were still things left unaddressed which makes me believe that the show is not done yet. Well, if that’s the case I look forward to finding out more. Congratulations to the cast and the writers for bringing back an old classic, and making it enjoyable.

Red Dwarf X - Episode Five: Dear Dave

The penultimate episode of the new series (it has gone by really quickly!) was an interesting one, which didn’t really have a major plot-line. There were separate stories in motion, but none of them seemed particularly significant. Not that this mattered though, as there were some enjoyable scenarios and the usual throw-backs to the show at its peak. It also allowed for fewer distractions from the general antics of the crew, and to be honest it was nice to have the focus be on the main cast, without any guest appearances for a change.

I suppose that the central storyline was focussed on Lister being the last human being alive, and coming to terms with that fact. There was some funny dialogue between Lister and Kryten where they reflected on the human race, as though it were an ex-girlfriend. Lister then spent several scenes flirting with a couple of vending machines, which was a bit odd, but I suppose that being the last of your species as part of an all-male crew, anything with a female voice would seem like preferable company whenever you felt depressed. Additionally, Lister’s crewmates prove their ineptitude at making Lister feel better, all in their own obliviously tactless way.

Somewhat frustratingly, Rimmer was caught up in a largely uneventful plot-line, where he was being threatened with demotion to 3^rd technician for not reporting for duty in over three million years. There were a couple of funny moments – including a call-back to the scene in series 3 when Rimmer walks in on Lister in an uncompromising position – but this was probably one of the least interesting storylines this new series has offered up. Also, Kryten’s plotline of removing all of the unused toilet roll resulted in the mildly amusing image of a trolley stacked with hundreds of toilet rolls, but very little else. And for almost half the episode Cat didn’t appear at all, until he suddenly showed up for a nonsensical game of charades.

The best scenes for me revolved around the arrival of the mail-pod, which recalled the scene in Better Than Life. The delivery from Chris Barrie when he found a letter addressed to him was excellent, and indeed a scene I saw in a trailer before this new series began, which made me confident that the new series would be worth a watch. Then Lister finding a letter from an ex-girlfriend, who could have been the mother of his children was quite an interesting story development. Ultimately this storyline lead to something that Red Dwarf has often done very well: a good one-liner to wrap up an episode. These one-liners are at their best when they are understated, and this was the case here (and with last week’s episode as well) as they demonstrate that this is a show that doesn’t take itself too seriously – an entire storyline can be dismantled in just one line.

It wasn’t the best episode of the new series, but it wasn’t a bad one either. I’m eager to see how this new series will conclude, and whether it will mark the end of the series overall, or once again leave things open-ended, as it has tended to do in the past. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the fact that the series finale is entitled ‘The Beginning’ a counterpart to the first ever episode ‘The End’ I have an inkling that we could be on the verge of Red Dwarf’s definitive conclusion. Will that be the case though? We’ll have to see!

Red Dwarf X - Episode Four: Entangled

The new series continues in a positive way, with several throwbacks to the classic years. I have come to expect by this stage in the proceedings that every episode will have its highs and lows, but it is the presence of those highs that guarantees my continued viewership.

The episode begins with Lister starting a fire in the cockpit, after spilling the sauce from his kebab over the monitor. The attempt to put out the fire with a can of lager was a nice reminder of the scene from D.N.A. when Lister destroys the curry monster. Rimmer and Lister then rekindle their old dynamic, in a sequence which is very much akin to the opening scene in the very first episode. The exchange concerning the fact that Rimmer was responsible for the death of the crew was very well written and well acted – and did a very good job of demonstrating the pointlessness of Rimmer’s bureaucratic management.

There have been a few character inconsistencies in this series so far, but this episode did a very good job of reminding the audience that the writers and actors haven’t lost track of who these characters are.

It was also nice to see more involvement for Kryten and Cat in the form of their own plot-thread. I’m glad that this series has put Rimmer and Lister front and centre in terms of focus, but at times the other two Dwarfers have been somewhat underused. Happily they get plenty of attention here, and their synchronised dialogue sequences are very well delivered. I also enjoyed the terrified expression on Cat’s face when he realised what book he was holding. The line about space-weevil’s having an I.Q of 2, and thereby being able to outsmart Cat was also funny.

We were then introduced to the episode’s main storyline, with Lister losing Starbug and Rimmer in a game of cards to an unusual species called BEGGs. This lead to a scene very similar to the trade off scene in series VI, where Lister ends up marrying a GELF in exchange for a vital part of the ship. As much as I love the sixth series, I didn’t enjoy this scene all that much, so it came as a pleasant surprise when the supposed high-stakes poker game finale was snuffed out as suddenly as it was presented. Kryten’s inability to translate ‘choking to death’ as a language was another fun line.

Kryten and Cat’s power of synchronicity is used several times as a deus-ex-machina, first to lead the crew to the space station where they find the inventor of the groinal exploder – which Lister is shackled to – and then to assist in the deactivation of said device. Along the way the crew pick up Dr Irene Edgington – the aforementioned inventor – initially in the form of a chimpanzee. They are able to restore her to her original form in a slightly pervy scene, which would fail if it weren’t for the quality of the performances from Chris Barrie and Danny John-Jules.

The numerous plot threads all unite in a pretty well thought out pay off, as Irene strikes up a strong connection with Rimmer, and the two are discussing having sex, when she accidentally trips over a box of Rimmer’s health and safety forms and falls into an airlock. Kryten and Cat had previously deduced that her name Irene E could be construed as Irony, and her demise is certainly an ironic one. The episode then concludes with an excellently downplayed one-liner from Lister.

A lot is packed into this episode, and at times it seems a bit messy, but it becomes clear during the final scene that the episode was actually rather well thought out. I enjoyed a lot of the call-backs to the earlier series, and it seems as though the series is leading to some sort of pay-off to the Lister/Kochanski storyline, as Kochanski has been frequently mentioned throughout the series. Only two more episodes to go!

Red Dwarf X - Episode Three: Lemons

The third episode from the latest series largely takes place away from the ship, as the crew find themselves stranded in 23AD, where they have a supposed meeting with Jesus himself, during his missing years. Things naturally get a bit messy, and it seems as though the course of history may end up irreversibly altered. Either that or the invention of ‘the bag’ occurred several centuries earlier due to the Dwarfer’s meddling.

There’s a nice call-back to the third series at the start of the episode, when The Cat shows great enthusiasm for a crazy golf tournament that he’s set up in the medi-lab. The scene ends with an open ended joke: Lister found some meat in a freezer near Kryten’s quarters, but The Cat steals it from him before he gets the chance to eat it. The pay-off to this joke comes much later on, when it is revealed that the ‘meat’ was Lister’s organs, which Kryten had removed. Funny or gross? Take your pick!

There is then a little bit of character inconsistency as Rimmer reprimands Lister for reading books. This scene probably would have worked better had the reason for Rimmer’s distain been that Lister is too stupid to take in anything intellectually stimulating (such as in ‘The Inquisitor’ from series 5, in which Lister is reading the comic book version of Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’). Instead Rimmer is portrayed attempting to dismantle the work of Shakespeare – something he once tried to defend from being burned. Despite this it is a pretty funny scene: “I wasn’t even toilet trained when I was five” “You’ve barely mastered it now!” I was also glad to see Kryten acting more like his old self, as opposed the whiny scoundrel he became in the later series’.

We are then introduced to the main plot of this episode, when the crew receives a ‘rejuvenation shower’ (somehow) from Sweden (somehow!). The jokes about Swedish flat-pack furniture have been done in many other comedy series already, and given this show’s deep space setting they seem a little out of place. However, this didn’t prevent the infomercial jokes from ‘Trojan’ from working, so I can’t complain too much, and I did laugh at the hash-job the crew made of assembling the shower, as well as the line about parts left over at the end. Something goes wrong, and the crew are transported to 23AD.

Rimmer deduces that they need lemons in order to create a battery to get them back to Red Dwarf, and this leads to the crew walking 4,000 miles to India, as lemons don’t yet exist in England/Albion.  The joke about potentially going back to England once they had the lemons was funny, but I’m glad it was only a joke and not a plot device.

The crew then accidentally stumble upon Jesus, which dominates the remainder of the episode. From here onwards the material is very hit and miss. Once again there are inconsistencies with Rimmer’s character, who acts as though he is a big fan of Jesus, despite previously having stated that he thought Jesus was a hippy: Well he was, he had long hair and he didn’t have a job!” although it is good to see that the writers haven’t forgotten that his middle name is Judas! The ‘Last Supper’ image was a funny visual gag.

There were lots of possibilities once the crew brought Jesus back on board Red Dwarf, but nothing much really came of it. The prospect of Jesus learning about all the wars caused by Christianity was very rushed, and lead to the eventual reveal that the ‘Jesus’ this episode revolved around, wasn’t the real Jesus, as Jesus was a fairly common name in those days!

Overall there were some good jokes in this episode, and a couple of decent call-backs which were reminiscent of the show’s earlier seasons. The main storyline was a bit messy in its delivery, and missed out on some interesting possibilities – as not many sitcoms could plausibly get away with bringing in Jesus as a character. Nevertheless it was a fun episode, and as long as that is the case with this new series, any complaints I have are effectively nullified.

Red Dwarf X - Episode Two: Fathers and Suns

The second episode of the new series is not quite up to the standard set by the series opener, as the content is a decidedly mixed bag. There is some good material here, and one of Lister’s best scenes to date. But there are several jokes which not only fall flat but go on to frustratingly die a slow death as they outstay their welcome. The structure of the episode is all over the place this week, which gives the indication that the production of the episode was quite rushed. By no means is the episode a bad one, it just has one too many misfires which detract from the viewing experience.

Anyway before I get into my gripes about the episode I’ll talk about what I did enjoy. Just as last week’s episode belonged largely to Rimmer, this was Lister’s episode. Craig Charles did a great job with the ridiculous ‘he-is-his-own-dad’ storyline, and the scene in which he has a father-son exchange with a pre-recorded video of himself is the best scene this new series has so far offered up. The pay-off to this scene, with the cardboard cut-out guitar was one I genuinely didn’t see coming, and for that I have to applaud the writers, as well as Charles for the way it was delivered.

The storyline involving the ship’s new computer, Pree, was rather hit and miss, introducing itself with a drawn out joke in which the once prudish Rimmer demands an enlarged breast size for the new computer’s design. This joke goes on for far too long, and also comes across as rather creepy considering how much older the actors are now. There were some funny scenes involving Pree, mainly revolving around the computer’s predictive functions and anticipating the outcome of conversations before they happen. The best of these jokes comes when Pree does a terrible job of repairing the ship, having predicted that Rimmer would have done a terrible job, and so did it for him. The fast exchange between Lister and Pree worked well also: “I’ve got a task for you” “I know!” but the joke quickly becomes overused, and there is a limit to the number of times you can find the same joke funny.

The biggest misfire in the episode is the running gag involving the vending machines and whether Chinese Whispers are racist. It wasn’t a particularly good joke to begin with, but that could have easily been overlooked had it not continued to re-emerge throughout the episode. The point where one of the vending machines talks with a heavily laid-on Taiwanese accent, was where the joke should have known it had gone too far, but it continued beyond that. Worse still was the lack of any punchline, which begs the question: why did this one joke take up so much time in this episode? There must have been a shortage of material when this episode was filmed, which hopefully won’t be the case for the remaining episodes.

The episode also made me curious as to why there is no Holly in this series. I mentioned in a previous post that Holly was initially written out due to a lack of material, but this week a majority of the material belonged to either: Pree, the inexplicable Medi-Bot, or the vending machines. Since there is so much spare material flying around, why not bring Holly back?

I feel a bit bad with some of my criticisms of this episode. I do like Kerry Shale as an actor (in fact his performance in the old BBC version of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe is largely responsible for Mr. Beaver being one of my favourite characters from that book) so it is a shame to have to direct criticism towards his input in the episode – as both the Medi-Bot and the Taiwanese vending machine. Rebecca Blackstone also does a very good job as Pree, and manages to come across as intimidating in a show which has had such a variety of impressive and unimpressive villains.

Nevertheless, while not the best episode, it was still entertaining, and I am already looking forward to next week.