Timewave

I mean, I’m no director or anything but I think shooting an entire sequence of an episode from the same front angle (there are other shots, but it’s just the same angle zoomed in) isn’t a very good idea

I could watch Timewave again. But i won’t.

I did not mean to push the submit button but the mobile layout is stupid.

I totally understand feeling burned and disappointed by a new Red Dwarf episode not being good, but calling it the worst ever just seems like recency bias when episodes like Pete exist. If XII was a third eaten by a two-parter as bad as Pete nobody would be focused on Timewave after it’s all said and done. People who haven’t watched Series VIII in years and years seem to forget how much of it is ages of tedious padding. There’s more good jokes in Krytie TV than Timewave, but it’s also yet ANOTHER episode centered around treating women as nothing but piles of orgasm-facilitating flesh. That stuff makes me actively uncomfortable, whereas Timewave I can shrug off as a middle aged man doing out of touch commentary.

Keep in mind the Petes are the most hated episodes and they actually by far the least offensive episodes of the series. I don’t want to make this out as “which offends you more, Timewave or VIII” because what I dislike most about VIII is simply how tedious and phoned-in it feels. I’ll give Timewave this, it keeps moving, and it feels like a good writer struggling while also working with perhaps not the best premise.

I don’t wanna make this another VIII thread, but it’s hard not to bring it up during a discussion of an episode considered to be one of the worst. I honestly ought to give VIII another watch and see if I feel any differently than I did last year. To BiTR’s credit, cutting out half the runtime seems to create a watchable below average episode out of one I normally find unwatchably tedious and filled with infuriatingly stupid moments.

Is there an award for Ms. G&T Rambling Pedant 2018? On a computer I’d go back and clean up a post like this but I’m on my phone on vacation and can’t be arsed.

>There’s more good jokes in Krytie TV than Timewave, but it’s also yet ANOTHER episode centered around treating women as nothing but piles of orgasm-facilitating flesh. That stuff makes me actively uncomfortable, whereas Timewave I can shrug off as a middle aged man doing out of touch commentary.

Honestly that’s fair, VIII is probably a lot harder to watch if it makes your skin crawl. For me personally it does nothing, but I remember feeling very, very uncomfortable upon seeing Timewave. I guess it’s just down to personal preference?

That said, I watched Cassandra a while ago and cringed a little at the use of ‘retarded’. I mean I still like the episode, but I’d sure like it more if they didn’t use that word.

I still think there are a number of very funny moments in Timewave, which puts it above most of VIII in my book. But I do think VIII is genuinely bad television in general, so it’s not much of a compliment. Timewave does has a mixture of dodgy politics, appalling structure and nonsensical / contradictory plot points, which still makes it difficult going. I don’t think it’s completely worthless, but do wonder how much strain was on Doug to finish 12 scripts if that actually got through.

I don’t find Cured very funny, although can acknowledge its strengths in concept and performances, so at the end of Timewave I had this horrible feeling that the XII I was looking forward to so much would end up being my least favourite of the Dave series. Thankfully the second half remedied that.

There is just so much you could do with depicting a culture where nobody is ever under duress to do anything. But, Timewave is clearly more interested in making a point than having an interesting or engaging or funny story. Who would actually wear costumes like that to work?

Plus, Simpsons did it better. “Bart’s Inner Child” features the Do As You Feel Festival that devolves into a riot, because nobody actually did their job because they didn’t feel like it. That whole sequence feels like Timewave’s central idea actually thought through as a comedy premise and not as a pretense to soapbox about kids these days.

What if Doug were to claim that nobody “got” Timewave and how he’s horrified that people think he was seriously trying to make a good episode or put forward those views, when the whole meta point was to make a dodgy shambles that fans could enjoy ripping to shreds. Would that explanation/face-saving hold water at all?

“Spit-on-her-wrist was a blatant clue! The respect you have for me is awesome, innit?”

Timewave is the Red Dwarf equivalent of a video of Doug using the toilet somehow got out.

Weird, wrong, unpleasant, unsettling.

How do you move on when you’ve seen the creators starfish?

Timewave has scarred me.