Let’s Talk About Give & Take (on Dave) News Posted by Jonathan Capps on 6th October 2016, 10:00 As the great splitting of the Red Dwarf fanbase enters its third week, those of you waiting for Give & Take to appear on broadcast television in glorious HD need not wait much longer as that momentous event will happen at 9pm (BST) tonight on Dave, Red Dwarf‘s seemingly nice but slightly weird step-dad. Once you’re done watching the episode then you should probably mosey on over to the Let’s Talk About thread from last week and have a sneak peak at at the bulk of what we’ll be talking about tonight in our Talking Points article. If you want some in depth opinion on the episode then my review is the place to be for my usual brand of post-episode giddiness. And now, finally, since I’ve rested control over this article from the tyrannical clutches of Ian ‘Ian’ Symes I can finally give you this sentence with the correct use of capital letters in our podcast’s name, so join us for our Live DwarfCast at 10pm (BST) tonight. We’ll be doing our usual deep dive analysis on the episode and, for reasons that I am still yet to fully comprehend, encouraging you to soil us with your filthy opinions so we can read them out on air in condecending voices. Once the stream is live you’ll have a handy link up there in the top right where the terrifying countdown currently resides, plus we’ll be Tweeting about it, too, if you like that sort of thing. tl;dr: watch G&T, listen to G&T, drink G&T.
I’m sure you’ve all discussed this to death in the last week, but what exactly was in the bell jar if not Lister’s kidneys? It really felt like there was something missing from the episode there, if only a single line to explain what they actually were. The introduction of time-travel was a *bit* too left-field for me, but I like how Doug connected all of the opening with Rimmer’s lift troubles and Lister’s hangover into the denouement so I’m willing to let it slide. Generally really liked the episode, definitely in the post-Rob top 5 or 10. Also: Is it me, or were the scenes of Rimmer, Lister and Kryten operating on Cat as seen in the title sequence (right after Craig’s name) nowhere in this episode? I presume (knowing nothing more) that they’re actually from “Can of Worms”, which has quite an intriguing mystery building up around it.
>but what exactly was in the bell jar if not Lister’s kidneys? Something to make us assume that they were Lister’s kidneys. I feel if they addressed that incorrect assumption by explaining what they were, it’s counter-productive. I don’t think misdirection needs to be “dissected”.
Personally I’m totally on board with Snacky not revealing his identity. He’s a snack dispenser, customer service will be part of his programming. He’s eager to please.
To be fair they didn’t need to show the kidneys in the jar, just don’t show them and when kryten and Rimmer get lister back to the dwarf they would discover they are gone and assume the crazy medibot removed them and obviously with the station being destroyed it’s likely the kidneys are gone also, infact it probably would have made more sense that way. See how easy that was? ;) Btw holdship is on, can we talk about how much of a classic that episode is :D
Doug tweeted earlier that there’s a podcast out tomorrow where he’s interviewed “And talking about what was really in that jar. (Unless they’ve cut that bit.)”
I read a comment on Twitter a little while ago with someone saying the new series is ok but it lacks the sharp Wit of the early series and i can’t fully say that may not be true as Watching holoship after Its surprising how sharp and quick fire the jokes are in that episode alone.
Given that they had zero time to search, I don’t get why they didn’t just have an exchange about not being able to find them in time. It’s a perfectly reasonable excuse given the oncoming asteroids. Also since we know Asclepius thought Lister was a transplant patient (obviously the donor Mrs. Johnson would be the Cat, come on), so I’m sure he was ironically preparing to perform the very life-saving operation Lister needed as Rimmer and Kryten showed up to get everybody off the station (which was made of some nice CG, especially during the asteroid collisions). And bonus points for purple bazookoid fire. That was awesome.
>but what exactly was in the bell jar if not Lister’s kidneys? Something to make us assume that they were Lister’s kidneys. I feel if they addressed that incorrect assumption by explaining what they were, it’s counter-productive. I don’t think misdirection needs to be “dissected”. It bugs me a bit as to where two things that could conceivably be mistaken for kidneys came from… but I suppose it’s not really worth going on about. (EDIT: Reading Andrew’s Twitter, I’ve seen somebody suggest that they were new kidneys being grown by the creepy medical bot played by that bloke who was in the last series of Doctor Who. Which is an explanation that is both quite funny, and makes sense. So I’m happy.) Also: this series is really reminding me of Futurama, for whatever reason – a lot of the plots, including the next two ones, feel like ‘stories Futurama would do’ in a way that a lot of previous Red Dwarf episodes don’t. The “kidney/hole” exchange was strikingly similar to a line of Bender’s in “Murder on the Planet Express”, which I’m sure is complete coincidence but tangentially related to my point.
