A celebration of mediocrity

In my opinion, there’s not one rubbish Red Dwarf episode from the whole of Series I to VI and I’m fairly confident that that is a view shared by the majority of fans reading this.

Today, I tried to think of my least favourite episode (the most mediocre, if you will) from the first 36. It’s certainly a tough one to call. I feel that some people would wrongly opt for Meltdown, but they are idiots. I’m also willing to bet that a lot of you would chose an episode from Series I, and you are also idiots. But let’s get away from my assumptions and random idiot calling for a moment, and focus on what I think is the worst of the best.In my opinion, Series I is just perfect – but only if you view it in the correct context. That is, it was a first series and it certainly did as much as it possibly could have, as a first series. True, if you compare it to the other 5 good series it will come out unfavorably, but that’s unfair. I feel every single episode from this Series I is laying the foundation for something brilliant in the future and its wonderful watching this these episodes, and seeing the shows birth before your mortal eyes and face. No short listed episodes for Series I, then.

Series II is also a near flawless series, and I see no episode worthy of making my mediocre short list. As we all know the performances and characterisation matures greatly in this series and it’s hard to pick apart anything from it.

So, on to Series III and I have my first nominee with Body Swap. The idea was nice but I don’t think it was executed as well as it could have been. The laughs are also a bit thin on the ground, too, I thought.

Series IV, and another entry to my short list comes in the form of DNA. I’ve noticed many people seem to consider this episode a bit iffy, and I would agree. There’s no one thing I can put my finger on, but it’s an episode I’m more likely to skip than the others.

Series V is perfect, so shut up.

Series VI, and my final mediocre nomination, is the episode that is the episode called Psirens. My reason for its inclusion is that I feel it plods that little bit too much, written as it was, for a first time viewers in mind. My views on this episode may come from the fact that I first watched Series VI during the 1995 repeats, in which Psirens was cancelled from the run (unbeknownst to my young, idiot, self). So when I discovered that Psirens existed, I thought of it as an imposter, of sorts. Does that make sense? No, I thought not

So, the short list is:
Body Swap (Series III)
DNA (Series IV)
Psirens(Series VI)

And the winner of the Worst of the Best Mediocre Episode Pointless Time Wasting Award goes to: DNA. But having said that, I still like this episode quite a bit and so I’m having a hard time justifying my choice. That says a lot about the quality of those first 36 episodes, I think.

What about you, then?