After 17 Years, Do We Need Another Fucking Opinion Piece On Series VIII?

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Yes.

Netflix has allowed me to rattle through Red Dwarf in record time and without fanfare, I arrived at Series VIII. I hadn’t watched it from start to finish for at least ten years and back then, I was in the company of new viewers who genuinely chuckled away but recently, I faced the abyss of VIII alone, cosy and tucked up in my bed but alone and boy, did the abyss stare back at me.

I can’t fathom VIII to be entirely honest. It strikes me with a strange fear as I realise I’ll be watching characters that I have seen grow and go on unreal, deep-space adventures over the years be reduced to reactionary elements in a hostile, rather brutal environment from which there will be no escape for some time. The premise of VIII is rather jarring. Doug Naylor purposefully took us back to the mining ship Red Dwarf and with it, back to characters we barely glimpsed in fifteen minutes of the first episode, a few scenes here and there across the rest of the series and alongside them, fucking shocking parodies of prison inmates and staff straight out of Carry On Strangeways.

We watched the boys (and later, gal) from the Dwarf do battle with enemies, humanoid, temporal and blob-like, we watched them fall in love with a pleasure GELF and quibble with each other but we could always rely on them banding together and never fearing the path in their wander back to Earth. We saw Lister grow up, still a space-bum but with his heart in the right place. Rimmer begins to reflect on his life, know he is a broken soul in many respects but try and indeed, succeed so resolutely when his back was against the wall. The Cat, of course, is the Cat and he doesn’t have to grow up, just be there when a woofer is needed. Then there’s Kryten, whose personal journey took him from a meek service mechanoid to not only a valued member of the crew but a friend and a sounding board with advice born from experience and his unique perspective.

Then Doug threw them in prison. Now the technicalities and legality of the JMC judicial process have been so well discussed in previous articles, forum posts and podcasts, so I find myself unhappy and anxious in many respects when I watch Series VIII. The crew, who were alone on a mining ship in deep space, still had freedom and the freedom to explore the universe and in that, explore the inner-self with the weighty philosophical and metaphysical questions that come with it all tied-up in well-written, well-plotted comedy. Now our main cast has to react, and confine themselves to situations which are forced upon them through the overarching theme of the prison and they are wafer-thin, horrible situations to begin with.

Doug wanted to bring back Red Dwarf, he wanted to bring back the crew. Now I can’t recall an interview where his reasons for choosing the prison setting are fully explained but I can only assume that he thought just bringing back the crew would be boring as we’ve already seen them in little glimpses here and there over the years. So for some fucking reason, he thought ‘I’ll put them in prison and I can populate that prison with one-dimensional, one-scene characters who do nothing but growl and punch and threaten’. There is no reason for the prison theme other than to completely remove the main cast from the familiarity of the preceding seven series. Doug wanted to mix it up and try something new, that’s perfectly understandable. Well, just bringing the crew back was change enough. We only have a grand total of thirty minutes television with Red Dwarf before the radiation leak and we know nothing about them bar stories and banter.

The prison setting does not remove the main cast from the familiarity of their previous surroundings and allow them another path with the same freedoms to explore humour and story. All it does is severely limit what you can do in storytelling, breadth of character and the overall colour of the humour. As I watched Series VIII, I felt tense and very aware that all the main cast can do is line-up the humour through the prison setting almost always. I can’t even think of a scene where the cast aren’t butting their heads against the prison theme, they have zero freedom to give their opinion and reflect without it being filtered and cajoled through this horrible and enveloping element. As much as fans of the show shouldn’t try to interfere with the production and writing of the show, we do expect that we can ride along with the cast and not have to feel anxious that there’s some fucking dickhead a cell or guarded wing away from doing them real, serious damage.

So the crew comes back, and we primarily deal with a gang of ruthlessly shite, psychopathic, sociopathic, violent and mentally unwell arseholes. That’s our lot I’m afraid. Every episode, every scene is reaction against what would be in real life, a very demanding, stressful, dangerous situation. You’re constantly getting punched in the head as you watch it with THIS IS PRISON, THIS IS SHIT, THESE ARE BASTARDS, THEY’LL HURT YOU, THEY’LL MURDER YOU, THEY’RE PEOPLE WHO IF YOU LOOK AT, LET ALONE SPEAK TO THE WRONG WAY, THEY WILL ASSAULT YOU AND GUT YOU AND THEY DO NOT FUCKING CARE AT ALL.

Punch, punch, punch. There is no escape for the main cast and therefore, no escape for you. You have to find humour in the bleakness and the bleakness of the situation is all around, in every line, shot, scene and episode. It is a game of survival at this point and the comedy has to fundamentally scour down to the very bottom. I could easily see the prison deck become one episode of an alternate Series VIII, set on-board Red Dwarf and with the main cast out of their element but ironically and happily in many respects, back amongst the people they love and adore. Old friends, old love interests, old enemies but none of them so unapologetically horrible as the characters within the prison itself.

There are no redeeming features to Series VIII, the overall theme was completely broken from the get-go, from the moment Doug thought to put them in prison. The comedy, every line of it, revolves around prison and the brutality of prison and as much as I don’t demand realism in comedy, it is such a fucking parody of prison that all I can do is see Series VIII as a strange spin-off that is in no way part of the main lineage. Series VII has big flaws in concept and writing but it still keeps the heart of the show ticking and still wants to explore the characters. I was watching Series VII and genuinely liking a lot of it but in the back of my mind thinking ‘fuck, soon I’m up against VIII’ and I shouldn’t be thinking that with comedy, let alone the show that has united us all and brought us all such joy and friendship and common purpose over the years.

If Doug wanted to change things, he could’ve brought back the crew and in that, explored life on a tramp steamer in space, amongst people who weren’t parodies or brutal, violent characterisations that didn’t have the shelf-life of one scene let alone eight episodes and we could’ve seen how the main cast felt finally being home. Maybe not back on Earth, but back amongst the hustle and the bustle, back on Z-shift, back to the day to day and in that, new adventures, new perspectives and a new era for Red Dwarf.

Topic

[Taiwan Tony]

>That was a working title for KrytieTV, I believe.

Darrell done that earlier… http://www.ganymede.tv/forums/topic/after-17-years-do-we-need-another-fucking-opinion-piece-on-series-viii/#post-216543

Am I the only person taking notes?

[Jonathan Capps]

Yes.

[Taiwan Tony]

>Yes.

*reaches for scrapbook*

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Brown Dwarf.

[Jawscvmcdia]

[Pete Part Three]

Just a few more times, and it will start getting funny, Alex.

[Hamish]

> Apparently the skeleton orgy in Samsara was actually a joke lifted from the script of Phwoaarr….or so I have been told … I should say I can’t confirm the validity of that!

If you are referring to the note on the Tongue Tied Wiki, I just said that the skeleton sex orgy was reminiscent of Phwoaarr, not lifted from it.

Strangest sentence I have ever written.

[International Debris]

Krytie TV: if it’s so easy for them to escape the tank and get into somebody’s quarters, why the fuck has nobody else done it? They do it twice with absolutely no trouble at all, and yet the series is based around them being ‘stuck’ in the prison.

[Dax101]

Well they are in a classified prison onboard the ship thats on a need to know only basis, i guess its just lucky the vents take them to wherever they need to go on the ship ;p

And somehow the captain of this mining ship spends most of his time dealing with 2 prisoners from a classified prison… surely you would have someone else to deal with that stuff while you have other captain duties to take on ;p

[Pete Part Three]

WHY IS THERE A FUCKING PRISON ON A MINING SHIP ANYWAY?

[Jimboid]

And why is it simultaneously 100 decks high and only on one deck?

They haven’t thought this through.

[Dax101]

Because the thought the design of the prison looked futuristic and cool i guess.

Its funny because in Krytie TV lister isn’t allowed his guitar strings for safety reasons but then there is a shot of lister and kryten talking while looking down at a 200 foot drop.

[Jimboid]

You can forgive these logical inconsistencies when the show is just so gosh damned funny.

[Jimboid]

Oh.

[International Debris]

How did the nanobots bring the crew back if their remains had been flushed into space?

[Pete Part Three]

Where is the other Kochanski?

[International Debris]

Why / how are there two independent Hollys?

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I wrote this piece while I was in a shitty mood and the biggest injustice in my life or anyone else’s at that point was a fucking series of Red Dwarf.

[cwickham]

Are the nanobot-resurrected crew actually the original crew, returned from the dead? What are the metaphysical implications of this? What is the distinction between the holo-Rimmer, who is “dead”, and nano-Rimmer, who is “a lot less dead”?

[Pete Part Three]

I guess they *did* cure death the instant they left Earth.

[Author]

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