Red Dwarf X: The Beginning

You know the drill by now... this will be spoilerific, so go away if you haven't seen it yet.

And I'll keep it brief, because there's important novelling to be done. I think the most important thing to be said here is that if they never make another episode of Red Dwarf (although all concerned have amply proven they can still do just as good a job as the beeb ever did), at least now it will have ended on a good note.

'The Beginning' was not the non-stop gag fest that 'Trojan' was, although it had more than a few laughs, but it was a superb bit of science fiction in its own way, what with simulant Death Ships looking all 'deathy' and some nice little nods to Star Wars and to earlier Red Dwarf - the first oblique reference to the ending of series eight, and right back to episode one, 'The End'.

Anyway, while all this Death Ship malarky is going on, Rimmer finally decides to play a holographic message from his father, who (massive spoiler) turns out not to be.

And that's when everything changes. Rimmer stops feeling like he has failed his father, stops trying to impress his father by being someone he obviously wasn't meant to be. He realises his father was somebody else, somebody who had entirely different expectations of him and would have been proud of who Arnold Rimmer actually was.

Isn't that what we all need sometimes, to realise who our Father really is, and to think about what He wants and expects from us, how He feels about us even when those around us seem to think we are worthless? Once we know who our Father is, we can begin to get a sense of who we are - and once we start trying to be that person, instead of whoever we think other people want us to be, that's when we can make a difference to the world around us.

And so, armed with a new found sense of self-worth, Arnold Rimmer finally sucks it up, grows a pair and acts like the senior officer on board, managing to save the day in what I at least thought was quite a fun sci-fi way.

And since fun sci-fi is what Red Dwarf has always been about, there could hardly be a better way to end the series. A very satisfying climax to what has, overall, been a return to form for Red Dwarf.

Tuesday Tunes: Red Dwarf Top Ten

As this blog has been on something of a Red Dwarf theme lately, it was kind of inevitable, wasn’t it, that we would get here: The Top Ten Red Dwarf Songs.

10. Vincent Gene – Cat Man
Who knew it was going to start off all rockabilly?

9. Psychonaut – Starbug
I couldn’t not have a tune about Starbug, even if this one is rather longer than strictly necessary. It does change a little in the second half, but you know, just skip ahead when you get the idea.

8. Marc Gunn - The Mining Ship The Red Dwarf
OK, they get the name of the ship slightly wrong, but its an Irish drinking song about the Cat. How can you not love that?

7: Born to Hula – Red Dwarf
Actually has nothing to do with Red Dwarf, but sounds very cool.

6: Disasterpeace – Kitty Cat and Spacey Man
Sounds like it should be the tune from the Mega Drive game of Red Dwarf. Heck, it might be, for all the research I did!

5: Republica – Holly
Indie dance rock tribute to Norman Lovett. Probably.

4: Altered Images – I Could Be Happy
The relevance of this song will not need explaining to Red Dwarf fans, of course.

3: Missing Andy – Dave
We haven’t had a song about Lister yet, so he can have this one. It’s kinda fun, but messes with his backstory a bit…

2: Tom Songs – A Rimmer
This one actually is about that A Rimmer. And it’s pretty good too!

1: Ccada Luge – Red Dwarf
Fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun. The coolest version of the theme tune I could Spotify at short notice.

Red Dwarf X: Dear Dave

I'm briefly interrupting my NaNo writing to continue the mini-series of Red Dwarf reviews, mainly because this isn't going to take very long.

Dear Dave was not a bad episode, but it didn't have a lot of structure or depth to it. It had a few nice comedy moments, and had the feel of a much earlier episode, Lister being all melancholy about being the last human, Kryten and Cat failing epically to console him while Rimmer is just... Rimmer.

But the trouble was, all the various plot points (such as it could be called a plot) were things that had been done before in earlier episodes. To give realism its due, in 20-odd years with the same three smegheads, conversations are going to be repeated occasionally. Still, taking bits of old storyline and gluing them together with some new jokes didn't really work; the episode needed something a little more meaty than a letter from Lister's ex to hang all the other bits on.

There wasn't much Cat in the episode, but he did, once again, get all the best lines for his trouble. The random reference to the JMC on-board computer (don't they remember Holly?) was a bit odd and disrupted the sense of continuity from earlier Dwarf that the episode otherwise maintained.

Oh, and I quite like the way Red Dwarf has taken Douglas Adams' vending machine nightmares off to a completely different extreme, especially in this episode (although I'm sure nobody in the known multiverse would really try and lift up a vending machine by lying on it and jumping up and down).

On the plus side, the cast are all well in their stride now, so combine that with the (presumably) minimal budget spent on Dear Dave, and given the overall goodness of Red Dwarf X, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a decent finale next week...

Red Dwarf X: Entangled

So, if last week was the low point of Red Dwarf X so far, I think this must be the week we can safely say that yes, the boys from the Dwarf are back on form.

Basically it involves Lister losing a game of poker to some genetically engineered life forms, and relying on a decidedly stupid scientist to save the day. Admittedly, her stupidness did get a little tedious at times, but that's easy to overlook just by considering how awesome some of Cat's lines were.

We're all acutely sorry bud. Apart from me and him and him.

Yes, this was the episode where he really came into his own, partly by virtue of being quantum entangled with Kryten, meaning they delivered some of their lines in perfect synch, much to both characters' surprise.

Lister is at his slobbiest, Rimmer at his most officious (having just reinvented the ship's health and safety rulebook), and Kryten is doing a fine Hitchhikers' Guide homage. All in all, classic Dwarf, and right up there with the moose.

Not really much philosophical discussion to the episode; Kryten and Cat develop a new understanding of the nature of coincidence, and there's a whole space station set up to establish whether two wrongs do in fact make a right.

But we don't need that. Entangled is a high point of Red Dwarf X; let's just hope they can keep the momentum going for the last couple of episodes...

Red Dwarf X: Lemons

Another Friday, another spoilerific Red Dwarf review.... look away now if you don't want to know the result.

Red Dwarf does 'Life of Brian', and ends up with, well, the lemon of the series so far. Now, I'm not the sort to get offended by light-hearted digs at Christianity. I figure Jesus is man enough to take a joke, but I guess there may be those who disagree, and might find the episode in bad taste. (Actually, some of it was in quite bad taste, irrespective of the subject.)

So while I wasn't offended by it, I was disappointed by the lack of originality at times - like resorting to how many wars Christianity has caused. There were some nice one-liners, but on the whole the humour was forced, and I'm not sure setting the thing in India worked in historical terms.

As far as Red Dwarf is concerned, the whole episode had pretty much been done before, often better, in earlier seasons. It does raise some interesting questions though: how many of the ten commandments did God break, and what would Jesus have done if he had known what would later be done in his name, just off the top of my head.

There is, of course, a lot more theological discussion that could be had riffing off this episode, and if anyone cares to comment on any of them, please do. I'm not going to go into any more detail now - maybe once I have the DVD and a chance to watch it more thoughtfully!

One point it did raise, however, and that is worthy of comment, is that Jesus is obviously still fair game for comedy; presumably Doug Naylor wouldn't have risked offending the Muslim population in a similar way...

Final word goes to Lister though, as he said to Jesus:

So some stupid people did some stupid things in your name. It's not your fault. You make a lot of people happy.

Red Dwarf X: Fathers and Suns

OK, maybe Red Dwarf is going to become something of a recurring theme here over the next few weeks, but, well, why not? This review will contain spoilers.

Way back in series VII, thanks to some 'time-travelly, paradoxy, sci-fi smeg', Lister became his own father. In this episode, he realises he hasn't been a great father to himself, and tries to put things right.

It's not up there with the funniest Dwarf episodes ever, but every episode can't be a comedy classic, so that's all fine. A couple of lines could have got in much more obvious directions, which is good. Unfortunately the running gag about Chinese whispers was lame, although I could see something of a nod towards Arthur Dent getting the Nutrimatic Drink Dispensers side-tracked - again, not followed through to the same conclusion as in Hitchhikers. Nothing close to last week's moose gag though.

What we do have is some great science fiction - Lister plays father and son brilliantly, aided by a computer straight out of A Space Odyssey. And those two plot elements combine to give plenty of food for thought, if you want to drag seriousness out of the show. Like: is the mess we made of our lives our own fault, or can we blame our dad? Or to extend that into a Christian worldview, can we blame our heavenly father? And if our Dad is a total bum (or as he might have it, a bum, but not a total bum) how does that affect our view of God as a Father? Does he want to exercise tough love and throw our beloved guitar out of the airlock? Or will he, indeed, throw us out of the airlock if necessary?

And as for Pree, the predicitve computer, well, you could get an essay on free will and predestination out of her, but it's getting late, so I won't.

In summary: Fathers and Suns was a great bit of sci-fi TV, with more laughs than the average Star Trek.

Resentment Drain

First, your obligatory spoiler warning: This will be the spoilerific discussion following Red Dwarf X: Trojan. Stop reading now and go watch the episode first!

In Trojan, a Quantum Rod causes Arnold Rimmer to come into contact with his brother Howard (also now a hologram), a prospect which stirs up the millenia-old resentment Rimmer feels for his better looking, more successful brothers. This resentment manifests itself in the form of self-created malware which overloads his brain and crashes his light bee.

In order to reinstate Rimmer, Kryten performs a resentment drain, after which we get a momentary glimpse of a more pleasant Rimmer, when he realises that competing with his brother won't make him happy.

This better Rimmer is, of course, expanded upon in the character of Ace Rimmer elsewhere in the Red Dwarf multiverse, but for the sake of the plot the old, bitter Arnold Rimmer soon returns. For a moment though, we (and Arnold) see what he could be if he would just man up and forgive his brothers for the perceived wrong they have done toward him; and a perceived wrong is exactly what it turns out to be, when Howard is also affected by a resentment overload, caused by his jealousy of Arnold's (albeit faked) success.

Unlike his brother, however, Howard's change seems to go deeper, to the extent that he willingly takes a bullet for Arnold, and then makes a deathbed confession that he is, in fact, just a vending machine repair man.

And when it comes right down to it, isn't that all any of us are? We are all flawed, imperfect human beings; and we should all be open to the possibility that we are somebody's Howard. We may not be able to do anything about our Arnold, but we can make a start by letting go of our own resentments. By forgiving our Howards, and being honest about our own faults, we can receive a resentment drain and be released from the burden of bitterness.

And who knows, we may even discover our inner Ace. Smoke me a kipper...

Red Dwarf X: Trojan

Ah, Red Dwarf. I’ve always been a bit of a Red Dwarf geek. I won’t go into the whole back-story right now, you’ve got google for that, but I will share a few thoughts about the first episode, Trojan.

Following Dave’s resurrection of the show in the rather disappointing Back to Earth mini-series a few years ago, they have returned to the show’s sitcom roots, studio audience and all, and in doing so some of the old magic that was missing in BTE was back.

Rimmer was back to his snivelling best (and gurning like a pro), there was some great random banter between Lister and the Cat, and Kryten was… a bit fatter than he used to be, but basically the same old Krytie. No sign of Kochanski, thankfully; a woman’s touch about the Dwarf was ok as a one-off joke, but the chemistry between the four guys was always at the heart of the show. Also no sign of Holly so far, but we’ll see what comes of that later in the series.

One of the great things about Red Dwarf was that it was always a science fiction series rather than just a sitcom set in space. It used proper sci-fi ideas, and those were back here too.

In the past the boys from the dwarf were often off exploring some long abandoned spaceship, and this week’s example, the Trojan, was powered by a quantum rod, which used the power of quantum entanglement to effectively contract space-time.

It was, in some ways, an episode of two halves, I thought: the first half was the funny half, moose jokes and the like, while the second half dealt with the serious stuff, the science and the philosophy. Yes, you could even get a meaningful conversation started out of this episode if you wanted to - as long as you could stop making moose jokes.

Sure, there were plot-holes if you were that bothered, the continuity from series 8 still remains a total mystery (possibly best to just pretend Red Dwarf X follows straight on from series 6 or 7 anyway), and I'm not sure what I make of the new Red Dwarf set yet...

But, based on the first episode, I think Red Dwarf X looks like being a return to form in terms of humour, chemistry, and science-fiction. And, naturally, the DVD set is on my Christmas list already.

Back to Earth

Depending on your point of view, it’s either about a month or several years past time this blog glanced in the direction of Red Dwarf. So that’s what I’m going to do now, starting with the 2009 mini-series Red Dwarf: Back to Earth.

In summary, it was a victim of it’s own hype (and, having blogged about it before the event, I guess I’m partly responsible for that). Had it met slipped quietly onto the Bank Holiday schedule of an obscure little digital channel, I have no doubt dwarfers the world over would have rejoiced. Obviously that would not have been possible, but the sheer volume of pre-event publicity it got made it a huge task for the show to live up to the expectations of fans. And, regrettably, it largely didn’t.

It was good to see the crew, and their bunk room banter, back just as we remember them. Holly was missed though, and the addition of second hologram Katerina Bartikovsky to provide scientific expertise and eye candy was a rubbish and largely pointless replacement.

It would be easy to criticise the plot – and many pundits have done so at length – but to be fair, there were some LOL moments. Not as many as I would have liked, but not every episode of Red Dwarf was a laugh riot. And I quite enjoyed the meta-fictional existentialism of the thing, although the self-references and the Blade Runner homage verged on being overdone.

What I really want to know, however – what happened after the end of series 8 – remains a mystery, explained in passing references to the successful series 9 and 10 of Red Dwarf…

The plot is basically lifted from the original episode Back to Reality, and given a bit of a twist. That’s not a bad thing, as Back to Reality was one of my favourite episodes, and the new twist was an interesting and amusing one, but still, a little more originality might not have gone amiss. I mean, I wouldn’t have been surprised to have read this story as a piece of fanfic, rather than the work of one of the show’s creators.

More thoughts on Back to Earth, and Red Dwarf in general, later...