Best And Worst Episode Endings

[bloodteller]

Rob and Doug supposedly often had trouble writing endings to an episode, and would somtetimes change them or come up with them at the last minute. Sometimes this worked really well (Queeg, for example) but other times it arguably didn’t. Which episodes do you think had the most satisfying endings? Which had the least satisfying ones? Mine would be-

Best- Queeg, Thanks For The Memory, Back To Reality, Krytie TV, Give And Take

Worst- Officer Rimmer, Timewave, Only The Good, Dimension Jump, Justice

Topic

[bloodteller]

The best part of Queeg’s ending is the audience laughter as it dawns on everyone that Holly was playing a prank all along

[Warbodog]

There are more obvious ones, but first one that came to mind was Me², since I’m still impressed at how quickly and organically that whole episode seems to have come together. Closing the mystery and double Rimmer plot efficiently, Rimmer’s soul laid bare, and a tender bonding moment immediately destroyed because Lister’s got a great pun.

[MANI506]

Backwards has a superb ending, I always think that was part of the reason it got bumped up to episode 1.

[Bargain Bin Holly]

Interesting question, I’ll bite. Though I think this question would be asking which ending is the most memorable rather than ‘best’, unless that’s the criteria.

Best: Balance of Power, Better Than Life, Timeslides, White Hole, Gunmen of the Apocalypse, Out of Time (Personal Favourite), The Beginning

Worst: Dimension Jump (I don’t hate any tbh)

Best Honourable mention: The End (I’d have put it, but I’d only be doing so cause its classic and not out for my personal enjoyment), Rimmerworld (Hate the rest of the episode, but this always made me laugh)

Expect Entangled to receive several mentions down below, fingers-crossed we don’t get into another Irene E debate

[bloodteller]

Can’t believe I forgot to mention Polymorph under worst- original or Remastered, Polymorph’s ending is absolutely rubbish. They should have just ended it on the model shot revealing there were 2 of them in the pod and left it at that.

In the episode as broadcast, the effect of the second Lister transforming is dire, and Remastered’s version could have been good- end it with another shot of a beach ball coming down a corridor,fairly good idea- but then they elected to add that painfully unfunny epilogue.

[Dave]

I always quite liked the end of Justice, although I know a lot of people don’t. Lister’s over-enthusiastic explanation of the ideas underpinning the episode followed by a good slapstick gag feels like it puts a nice cap on things.

The end of Balance Of Power is good, even if it is immediately undermined by the next episode.

And the ending of Gunmen always puts a smile on my face.

Bad endings? It’s the inconclusive ones that bug me the most. DNA feels like it ends before resolving everything that it needs to, and Officer Rimmer just

[Dollar Pound]

back to reality has a nice vibe at the end: cosy, quiet, profound, flat in a good way

[bloodteller]

Beyond A Joke’s ending is pretty lousy, I thought- the final Curry World scene feels like an unnecessary addition that just kills the momentum of the episode.

Same goes for Pete Part 2- the final big laugh of the episode is the baby dinosaur screeching during Hollister’s massage, so the extra office scene after that feels like it just kills the flow

[Dax101]

>In the episode as broadcast, the effect of the second Lister transforming is dire

As an ending i really like that one. alot of polymorph was a homage to alien and they likely wanted to end it in a way that felt like a horror movie.

The effects aside, personally i think it was a crime to remove that ending from the Remastered.

[Ben Saunders]

I was about to get angry at you for DARING to claim that the ending to Justice was unsatisfying.

But then I realised I was getting it mixed up with Meltdown.

[Ben Saunders]

I love Terrorform’s ending.

I’ve heard it a million times but I still simply cannot believe that the Queeg twist wasn’t planned from the beginning. It just works so well, and the idea of writing yourself into a hole like that just makes me question what the fuck they thought they were doing.

Tikka to Ride has the best ending of any episode of Red Dwarf if you cut it by about seven seconds

[Dave]

Tikka extended’s ending is good, but the lack of audience laughter makes it weird and sad.

[Ben Saunders]

I always thought it was a bit extreme, and incredibly awkward without laughter, and the way Lister sops up the curry sauce with his napkin and sucks on it freaks me out

[Dave]

Not as awkward as the front two-thirds of Starbug blasting forwards on those shitty little boosters.

[bloodteller]

>the way Lister sops up the curry sauce with his napkin and sucks on it freaks me out

It’s not a napkin, it’s a bread roll.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

It’s a napkin. Well, one of those little towels they warm up for after the meal. Apart from the fact it’s whiter than a shirt in a Daz advert, it’s in a little plastic sleeve. When was the last time you saw individual bread rolls in little plastic sleeves? When was the last time you saw a bread roll with a curry?

[Warbodog]

Me aged 12: Is that a “poppodom?”

Dad: No.

[bloodteller]

No, it’s definitely a bread roll. Look closely and you can see the top of the bread poking out. The reason it looks like a napkin is because it’s all wrapped up, and Craig couldn’t get it open properly- but they didn’t feel like doing another take of the scene, so him struggling to get it open is left in the episode (he even tries to open it with his teeth a little at one point)

He only manages to get the top part of it open, meaning it looks a lot like he’s holding a napkin. I can’t remember where I heard this bit of behind-the-scenes trivia, but I’m sure it’s legit.

[MANI506]

Episode endings that made me go wtf..

Emohawk – Polymorph 2 – the first wtf
Beyond A Joke
VIII Episodes 2-8
Back To Earth Part 2
Entangled
Dear Dave
Samsara
Give And Take
Officer Rimmer
Can Of Worms
Timewave

[bloodteller]

Why Give & Take? I thought that had a really good ending tbh

[bloodteller]

Also yeah, Emohawk’s ending is absolutely dreadful. “What A Dibbley” can fuck right off. But then so can most of the second half of that episode, really

[Warbodog]

Napkin, it flattens out when he takes it out of the packet:

https://youtu.be/lQrWCIQ84Ao?t=4m32s

[clem]

If it was a bread roll surely he’d take a bite instead of just sucking it. Nobody ever says “serviette” anymore, do they?

[Lily]

I’m in the ‘warm towel’ camp. Is that not the essence of the joke, that he’s so desperate to eat the curry that he’ll suck it off a towel?

[International Debris]

Is that not the essence of the joke, that he’s so desperate to eat the curry that he’ll suck it off a towel?

When the full thing is there right in front of him?

It always made me feel queasy, either way. The only food that should be sucked is a lollipop.

Why the hell didn’t they show the Xtended versions to audiences instead of the 30 minute versions? That would at least make them watchable.

[Ben Paddon]

Beyond A Joke’s ending is pretty lousy, I thought- the final Curry World scene feels like an unnecessary addition that just kills the momentum of the episode.

Not to pick nits, but… it’s an epilogue. It’s not supposed to contribute to “momentum”. I mean, yeah, it’s a crap ending, but still.

[Ben Saunders]

>Not as awkward as the front two-thirds of Starbug blasting forwards on those shitty little boosters.
To be fair, it is space. You don’t need all that much thrust.

[Ben Saunders]

(Unless it absolutely rockets forwards, I can’t remember)

[Ben Saunders]

The ending of Fathers and Suns is good on a conceptual level, but awkward in execution, because they only had about 3 foot of corridor to work with and they spend an awful lot of time being “crushed to death” by increasingly non-threatening spikes

[Dax101]

The ending of Fathers and Suns is kinda frustrating because i feel like Lister should have realized how to stop pree before he got shot out into space and then he came back through the scoop to save the day.

What we got instead was Lister being shot into space and then making it back onto the ship just to be like Ok what do we do now? and it just makes the whole being shot into space thing seem like just an excuse for some floating in space effects to be used on screen.

The tripping on the boxes and falling into the airlock in entangled almost defies the direction in which people would normally fall over. but then i suppose she did do everything wrong… but then that also feels like a poor excuse to make the ending work.

The tikka to ride extended ending isn’t great as its almost like it doesn’t know when it should end because there is no big gag to go off on.

Terrorform i have always felt that it fell flat with the final gag as it felt kinda obvious Rimmer, Lister and Cat would say “No” so it wasn’t a surprise.

[Ben Saunders]

Fair point on the Fathers and Suns thing

[si]

Officer Rimmer doesn’t have the worst ending. It just doesn’t have one.

[Ben Saunders]

Timewave has a pretty shit, sudden ending as well

[Flap Jack]

Timewave’s ending is perfect, by which I mean I mean it’s equal in quality to the 30 minutes that preceded it.

[bloodteller]

Timewave’s ending is doubly more infuriating than it normally would be for me, because the actor playing Ziggy stumbles over the last line of the episode- “Drain ’em! Drain ’em…them all!!!”. Like, what the fuck? Could they not get a better take of that one line? Did someone really look at that and think “yeah, that’s okay, leave it in, good job guys”. I guess you could say the same for the rest of the episode, but leaving in a take where the actor fucks up his line is just lazy.

It”d be like if The End ended with “The slime…slime’s coming home!” If the actor fucks up the line, you’re meant to do another take. How come they forgot that?

[bloodteller]

I guess it’s a pretty minor nitpick in comparison to the faults that plague the rest of the episode, but even so

[Dave]

I can barely remember the ending tonTimewave now, as I haven’t actually watched it again since the first stream on the UKTV Play app. I don’t know if I ever will.

[Dax101]

I think i have only seen Timewave all the way through the once but i believe it ends with Rimmer,Lister,cat and Kryten running away from the table because they criticised a picture.

[bloodteller]

There’s also the part where the threat that the entire episode spent building up-the Enconium crashing into Rimmer’s Moon- is resolved instantly in one line of dialogue, rendering that whole part of the plot completely useless aside from an excuse for the posse to board the ship to begin with.

I guess M-Corp had the same problem though, with Kryten instantly defeating a mega corporation in all of 5 seconds-resolving the plot in a single line is really really unsatisfying, and I don’t know why Doug thinks it’s a good idea to keep doing it.

[Dave]

Maybe he increasingly sees the plots as a platform for the comedy, and thinks people care more about the show finding time to be funny than about a satisfying plot resolution.

I agree that the balance seems to have shifted a bit, to the show’s detriment. I expect you could pick holes in the plot of any episode from any era, but it does feel like the Dave-era plots in particular are a bit less rounded and satisfying (with some exceptions, like Give & Take).

[si]

Not watched XI or XII in ages. I can barely remember what actually happened in most stories. Should maybe catch up before DJ. I’ve been more Who than Dwarf in recent months.

[Dax101]

> I don’t know why Doug thinks it’s a good idea to keep doing it.

Probably because Dougs episodes usually are so jam packed with ideas the episode need to be compressed somehow.

Craig went through the whole old age make up thing for something that didn’t really make much impact to the story. infact i ain’t totally sure i understand what even happened there

[Dax101]

Siliconia isn’t great either. it goes full speed towards the end and alot of things get forgotten about,

I am glad they cut that ending with Cat and Rimmer singing though.

[tombow]

The only was I could enjoy “Justice” is if I just imagined really hard that they saw Lister was ok and he was waving for help or something.

[Ben Saunders]

>Maybe he increasingly sees the plots as a platform for the comedy, and thinks people care more about the show finding time to be funny than about a satisfying plot resolution.
The fan reaction to VII/BtE may have convinced him of this, if I were going to try and armchair psychologise him

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Don’t Dave … you’ll spend an hour scrubbing yourself clean.

I swore never to watch it again after I first watched the UKTV stream, then I did a few weeks later just to see if maybe it was a little better on second viewing. It wasn’t. I wanted to vomit.

[bloodteller]

Timewave got a little better for me on second viewing. That’s not saying much though, as on my first time watching I felt legitimately confused and upset about what I’d just seen. At least on the second watch I was only thinking “wow, this is fucking awful!”

[Dax101]

>The fan reaction to VII/BtE may have convinced him of this, if I were going to try and armchair psychologise him

Well the early series did it just fine. infact if you compare Back to reality which had a moment of exposition at the end (which actually made sense) to Back to Earth where id argue the exposition feels abit messy, id say Doug is either more or less compensating or he feels he is improving on the show.

[Manbird]

When you say endings do you mean the last scene or plot resolution? For all the knocks it gets – quite rightly so, perhaps – “Officer Rimmer” does wrap everything up quite neatly (albeit unimaginatively). For sheer ‘we really can’t be bothered to think of anything better’-arsedrudgery, I’d say “Gunmen of the Apocalypse”. I’m not saying that to be controversial, I just feel it’s so half-baked building up the tension only to spunk it away on self-congratulatory bit of (in-episode) continuity fan-wank.

[Hamish]

Explanation?

[Author]

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