Does RDVIII get a raw deal? Is it time to re-evaluate Series Eight?

[si]

It’s all meme meme me with you.

[Pete Part Three]

TLDM

[Dave]

MEME²²

[Flap Jack]

Aww, it’s just jokes. We all know we love Series VIII really. Well, it’s not perfect if course. There are a couple of changes that could have improved it:

1. Kill Crazy needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine.
2. Whenever Kill Crazy’s not on screen, all the other characters should be asking “Where’s Kill Crazy?”.

[somecallmejames]

Having recently re-watched series 8 for the first time in years, I can confidently say in my opinion, no, series 8 is the worst Red Dwarf has to offer.

Let’s get the good out of the way before trashing it. It’s great to see Rimmer again for the full series, Kochanski is less annoying and Kill Crazy is awesome (even if he doesn’t get nearly enough screentime).

Now, onto stuff that affects the entire series before looking at individual episodes. The CGI. It looks better than 7, but still nowhere as good as model shots. Pretty much every episode having non-consensual sex, or something like it, is uncomfortable and in bad taste. And whole concept feels wrong, prison, the whole crew being back, it just feels so bleak. And of course, alot of the time, the writing just isn’t very good.

Back in the Red is the UK TV version of the Hobbit, in that it goes on for way too long and should have only been a single installment. The very long recaps and horrific pacing make it agonsing to watch. And why the hell does the home video release contain an extended version!? Why not just recreate the original 1 hour special (Although I still think it should have just been 1 episode)?

Cassandra is easilly the best of series 8 and feels the most like Red Dwarf (even if the whole ‘Kochanski almsot sleeping with Rimmer’ is a bit gross and somewhat out of character, this is how I think it should have been handeld: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11986125)

Krytie TV just sucks.

Pete goes on for way too long.

Only the Good was ruined by bad editing (such as having a cliffhanger that’s never going to get resolved properly). Here’s the good version of it: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtspkj

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Pete Part Three]

Red Dwarf VIII takes are so hot right now.

[Dave]

I agree, it’s time for a more nuanced debate.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

This probably deserves its own thread but there’s no need for another series viii thread right now …

How would series viii have faired, and what do you think it would have looked like, if Chris hadn’t returned?

 

If everything else was the same, I can see maybe Lister and Cat being bunked in a cell together and then you’d have Lister & Cat pairing and Kryten and Kochanski pairing, which could affect stories a little more, and certainly affect the comedy.  i.e. having more Kryten & Kochanski interactions ala Archie and ‘have a fantastic period’.

It’d be interesting seeing Cat take on Rimmer’s role in the bunk conversations.  But also it’d probably look more like Samsara scenes.

I’m not sure Rimmer’s absense would be felt as much (certainly not as much as vii) given how much the show changes.

It would help thin the core cast and make it feel a littleless crowded and potentially give Cat a little more to do.

The stories wouldn’t need to change so much without Rimmer.  He doesn’t particularly behave very Rimmery in a way it affects the plot outside of his role in Back in the Red, and I think you could take Rimmer out of that equation and just remove a level of AR they find themselves in and basically have everything else go as it does, without all the sexual magnatism virus stuff.

Or, would it have affected Doug’s take on the series altogether and, not having to bring Rimmer back, doesn’t go down the resurrected crew route.

Thoughts?

[Dave]

Having Rimmer back was one of the few things that helped it retain the feeling of actually being Red Dwarf, I think. Without him it would be even worse.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I’m not sure I agree it feels any more like Red Dwarf because Chris is in it.  I’m hesitent to even say Rimmer because it’s not our Rimmer and he doesn’t act like Rimmer half the time.

But I get your point.

[Pete Part Three]

Initial reaction to Series VIII was positive – mainly, I believe, because of aesthetic choices rather than anything more nuanced such as looking at the quality of the writing or characterisation. Rimmer and Holly are back full time! The studio audience are back! Red Dwarf is back! The filming style is no longer single-camera! Let’s overlook the fact that it’s a pile of absolute wank!

I think Chris being remaining absent would have dented the “back to the good old day” mindset or, at the very least, hurried along the mainstream reappraisal.

[Warbodog]

As discussed elsewhere, having a resurrected Rimmer added subtle tension on the first watch as we morbidly looked forward to his next inevitable death. Though ultimately this was only played with in Cassandra before being completely botched in the cliffhanger.

[Loathsome American]

VIII being more of an aesthetic return to form actually kind of worked against it for me. When we got VII over here, it looked different and felt different and Kochanski’s there and Rimmer isn’t, so the whole thing felt like it was evolving and that was just something I’d have to get used to. Then VIII comes along and it looks like it’s back to normal in a lot of superficial ways, but it’s also different enough that for me it was in an uncanny valley of being “close but not quite.”

When VII wasn’t funny in the same way as I-VI, it felt like a choice to do something different, whereas when VIII wasn’t funny in the same way, I wasn’t sure if it was a choice or if it just wasn’t working.

[Loathsome American]

I also think VIII pulls a bit of a bait and switch. I’d always found the pre-accident flashbacks in I and II interesting, so I thought the crew being resurrected had a lot of story potential. In Queeg we see that for all the angst of being stuck in deep space, Lister enjoys his personal freedom and would have a tough time returning to duty rosters and regulations. You could have a Rimmer who wasn’t the same one Lister came to know better and missed, Kryten adjusting to more people to look after, Cat interacting with people at all, Kochanski maybe falling into routine a little easier. But instead we get, “There is a space prison, I guess?”

I am aware this critique of VIII boils down to Doug not making the fan fiction version of the series that appears to live only in my head, you don’t need to point it out.

[International Debris]

Yeah, the more populated universe, portrayed in a less obviously sitcommy way isn’t a version of the show I necessarily wanted, but it did feel like a brave move forward and I wish Doug had stuck to it rather than going down the Chucklevision with knob gags route. VII is interesting, if nothing else.

And yeah, there is potential in the crew returning. Rimmer would be Lister’s actual superior again, Cat might be quarantined because of being an unknown species, Kochanski would have to get used to an alternative version of the crew, but then the Captain would call on them for their deep space expertise any time they came across something unusual, which would really annoy Rimmer as Lister would basically be going over his head, but it would also frustrate Lister as he’d be of major importance, yet still be stuck as third technician. There’s loads of interesting stuff there, but instead we got what we got.

[Stilianides]

I guess part of the reason for the return of the crew was that Doug was planning for the movie, so that may well have happened even without Chris.

I agree that the contemporary reaction would have been much worse without Rimmer and, even though it certainly isn’t the character at his best, his presence did at least give the show some of the Lister/Rimmer dynamic which it has always largely been based around.

It’s true that there are too many characters in Series VIII, but Rimmer is one that it couldn’t afford to lose imo.

[Stilianides]

I would also say that bringing back the crew was a daft idea anyhow imo (and it seems even dafter now that we have had several further series with primarily only the core cast).

You have pretty much the perfect setup with the 4 main characters trapped together (with or without the inclusion of Holly) and adding new main characters was always going to dilute that. Not to mention, that it was necessary to force a concept like the Canaries in order to keep them trapped together.

It must have eaten up a reasonable chunk of the budget, too.

 

[Stabbim]

Rimmer kneeing Death in the groin with a battle cry of “only the good die young” will never not amuse me.

and the early episodes did a good enough job of making me miss the dead crew/empathize with Lister missing them that the idea of them being revived was potentially interesting.  All those years of Kochanski being Lister’s white whale only to have her just not like him that much/dump him due to him being smeggy is pretty funny. Fun subversive anticlimax to the “romance” of S1 and S2.  The idea, if not necessarily the execution thereof, feels like a very Red Dwarf thing to do.

There’s bits of it I like but, yeah, over time, it’s been the series I rewatch the least for a reason.  It’s tough to watch what was done without thinking about what could’ve potentially been done better.  And not surprising that every change it introduced got undone for Back To Earth and beyond.

“And yeah, there is potential in the crew returning. Rimmer would be Lister’s actual superior again, Cat might be quarantined because of being an unknown species, Kochanski would have to get used to an alternative version of the crew, but then the Captain would call on them for their deep space expertise any time they came across something unusual, which would really annoy Rimmer as Lister would basically be going over his head, but it would also frustrate Lister as he’d be of major importance, yet still be stuck as third technician. There’s loads of interesting stuff there, but instead we got what we got.”

yeah, the captain/crew having to reckon with the fact that they were actually 3 million years into the future/deep space from where they remembered being, and/or the fact that they had all died and were reconstructions of themselves, could’ve been fun.  And perhaps forced Capt. Hollister to rely on the core Red Dwarf cast as a salvage team (functionally equal to The Canaries that we got) because they know deep space.

Oh well.  Instead we got what we got, indeed.  At least Chris Barrie was back as Rimmer.

[Author]

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