Favorite Doug Dwarf gags

[Moonlight]

No explanation needed. To explain, this is intended for standout jokes from Dave Dwarf but I figured I’d include VII / VIII to throw them a bone they desperately need.

Topic

[Technopeasant]

Also feel I will throw BTE a bone.

Might be more a “good line reading” candidate than the joke itself though. Chris still able to underplay sometimes.

[Rushy]

Also feel I will throw BTE a bone.

Same, I completely forgot about this brilliance

[Doomitron]

The jokes by themselves aren’t amazing but I always thought Chris Barrie and Mac McDonald’s chemistry played off each other really well enough to make them funny.

[Rushy]

What really gets me is that Mac in real life is significantly funnier than his character has ever been. 

[Flap Jack]

True, but I don’t think a hologrammatic catering officer would be particularly useful. Especially a permanently hungover one.

Fair to say that if you’re mulling over whether Petersen in particular would be a likely candidate for being given the privilege of writing letters after death, the joke is already ruined, but I enjoy the idea that you might need to remember lore that was mentioned exactly once in Series 1 to get a Series VIII joke.

It doesn’t even need to be about holograms anyway. It would be redundant to mention, but Petersen literally did die and come back to life, so he legitimately could have told Lister he died in a letter.

Also, the detail about Petersen having his hologram data recorded while he was hungover is novel canon only and I DO NOT accept it for the TV show… or at least I wouldn’t if my words held any authority.

[Technopeasant]

[Warbodog]

I don’t think it’s very funny outside of the ending. 

The baked potato timer putdown and callback in Blue was a runner-up for me.

[Turk Thrust]

I don’t think it’s very funny outside of the ending. 

The baked potato timer putdown and callback in Blue was a runner-up for me.

Yes, baked potato gag is a good one.

[International Debris]

It turned into a jacket…?

The pencil sharpener in The Beginning.

Dinosaur bowel movement frequency tables.

Everything we’re saying is- bananas.

You’re finished.

Most of the cuts in the first half of Skipper.

And killed himself, twice. 

The cut-out guitar reveal in Fathers and Suns. 

Maaargh.

Divide your mass by your weight. 

Ainsley Hitler 

[Nick R]

Yes, baked potato gag is a good one.

Thank you, baked potato

[Renegade Rob]

Lemons has at least two of my favorite Doug Dwarf moments. The first being the entire exchange where Rimmer explains the Church of Judas, which is just a lovely lovely classic Dwarf-style scene, and the other being Jesus’ expression of increasing bewilderment as Kryten breaks down the specifics of how the lemon battery works. (The “what’s a lemon?” punchline is okay enough but the scene didn’t even need that. Jesus’ face as his mind was being blown was already enough.) 

[Turk Thrust]

Craig’s delivery of this line works nicely.

[Technopeasant]

And of course, with the Cats evolving under artificial light that adaptation would probably fade away.

[Ridley]

[Nick R]

Plastikkrokodil

[Moonlight]

This is a very good line that gets zero audience reaction.

[Dave]

I love the brutality of this.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I love the brutality of this.

Deep down, Kryten is a bit of a cunt isn’t he. 

[Technopeasant]

[Technopeasant]

Going through XII in order, I have to say that how well Robert plays the patience scene at the start of Mechocracy actually does a lot to palette cleanse after Timewave. A bit like the moose gag in Trojan.

[Ben Saunders]

Now there’s a bit you genuinely couldn’t do in like Series 3 or something. The audience just wouldn’t laugh that much. It sort of relies on the audience being willing to piss themselves laughing at Robert Llewellyn just kind of sitting there for a while.

[Dave]

Now there’s a bit you genuinely couldn’t do in like Series 3 or something. The audience just wouldn’t laugh that much. It sort of relies on the audience being willing to piss themselves laughing at Robert Llewellyn just kind of sitting there for a while.

Weirdly it’s always reminded me of that Norman Lovett stand up routine described in one of the books where he walks on stage and says nothing for two minutes and glares at any audience members who laugh.

[Moonlight]

I remember someone being very angry about this bit at the time and unable to fathom why everyone was laughing at a scene that quite obviously to them had no jokes in it.

[Doomitron]

Going through XII in order, I have to say that how well Robert plays the patience scene at the start of Mechocracy actually does a lot to palette cleanse after Timewave. A bit like the moose gag in Trojan.

This is going to prove unpopular and not unduly so, but I think Mechocracy’s worse than Timewave, if only because I think Cat’s rant at the pink cop is actually pretty funny and nothing in Mechocracy gets a laugh out of me.

[Dave]

This is going to prove unpopular and not unduly so, but I think Mechocracy’s worse than Timewave

[Doomitron]

Aside from its questionable morals I don’t think its any worse than the rest of 12 although that’s probably because I think 12 is the worst run of the entire show (I’m only a fan of Siliconia).

[Warbodog]

I found Cat’s bit the funniest and only good part of Timewave, but I get why people think it goes too far. I’ll just take what I can get.

In Siliconia, I think I only liked the part where Lister lazily video called Kryten from the same room.

[Doomitron]

I got a good laugh out of hearing Danny’s Kryten impression come out of nowhere.

[Rushy]

Siliconia is the only one of XII I flatout don’t like! 

Although I concede that Timewave, M-Corp and Skipper have serious issues

[Doomitron]

I would say I like M-Corp but the lazy way they defeat the M-Corp AI is just egregious, how could Doug Naylor think that was a good resolution.

[Technopeasant]

Yeah, the lieutenant asshole scene probably is the funniest bit of Timewave, even if tutting guy is the closest it comes to clever. But I just can’t roll with the droopy ass titties line. It’s less mangled than spit on the wrist, but no more pleasant.

I think buying the virus would actually be really funny if it was played as “holy shit, that worked? Wow, they really were smelling their own farts.” Sort of like wishing for more wishes from a genie.

[Moonlight]

I would say I like M-Corp but the lazy way they defeat the M-Corp AI is just egregious, how could Doug Naylor think that was a good resolution.

I like M-Corp but that feels like a “I’m almost done writing 12 scripts and oh god I’m so tired” kind of resolution.

[Doomitron]

Within XI and XII there’s a very solid 1 series in there that’s been stretched to the brink to cover 2.

[Moonlight]

I am broadly of the opinion that XI is better than XII even you take into account the enormous drag factor of Timewave.

[International Debris]

I have very few issues with Skipper and it’s in my top 20 Red Dwarf episodes.

[Moonlight]

Oh, I love Skipper. But I like more episodes of XI on average than XII.

[Dax101]

Can of Worms can be thrown out for its dumb assery on the Cat

[Technopeasant]

[Rushy]

I love Norman’s scenes in Promised Land so much. Dwarf just hits different when he’s around and on top form. 

[Ben Saunders]

The Promised Land was great. They should make more.

[Asclepius]

When Series XI is generally good.

And Series XII is less good…

Why didn’t Doug switch some episodes around a bit?

According to IMD, the best-rated episodes are:

Skipper 8.3 (XII)

Give and Take 7.8 (XI)

Officer Rimmer 7.7 (XI)

Can of Worms 7.7 (XI)

Samsara 7.6 (XI)

Krysis 7.5 (XI)

Cured 7.5 (XII)

M-Corp 7.5 (XII)

Twentica 7.4 (XI)

Mechocracy 7.4 (XII)

Siliconia 7.2 (XII)

Timewave 6.4 (XII)

So of the best six episodes, five are from Series 11, and the Series 12 one is Skipper.

Doug, Richard, anyone else involved *must* have realised which ones were working better than others, mustn’t they? Far better to give Series XI a bit of a dip, than to let Series XII start relatively strongly and then just fade to piss (only being resolved by Skipper being so popular).

[Warbodog]

You might be reading too much into a list that’s nearly all rated 7s, with just the fan-service and butt-monkey exceptions. The number of people bothering to rate the episodes generally dips as each series goes on too.

I was personally happy that it finished on a fairly strong “byte.”

[Ian Symes]

If only there was a more in-depth series of ratings for Red Dwarf episodes.

[Rushy]

Skipper is lifted up by its relentless fan service. Half of it is one gag, and the other half is “remember Series I/II?” 

It’s not terrible, but it is the laziest episode of that year. 

[Unrumble]

You might be reading too much into a list that’s nearly all rated 7s, with just the fan-service and butt-monkey exceptions. The number of people bothering to rate the episodes generally dips as each series goes on too.
I was personally happy that it finished on a fairly strong “byte.”

Yeah, if you remove the top and bottom outliers, a margin of 0.6 between Give & Take and Siliconia hardly screams consensus on huge drop in perceived quality.

I saw someone on reddit recently describe a rating of 7.8 as “okay-ish”.

I countered that It’s basically 8/10, which by most metrics is surely considered ‘very good, but not flawless’, rather than ‘okay-ish’, which would be more 4-6?

Considering there are plenty of people out there who will automatically vote stuff 1/10 without any kind of nuanced thought or consideration (the ‘butt-monkeys’ if you will), just because an episode doesn’t meet their lofty personal standards, 7.8 must surely be considered a success, especially for shows with fairly polarised fanbases.

[Flap Jack]

I can’t decide whether IMDb ratings are uniquely weird, or they’re actually normal and it’s everywhere else that’s weird. For most shows 6/10 is effectively the bottom of the scoring range in terms of averages, but maybe the general population are kinder than hardcore fans and just give a pass to anything that doesn’t physically injure you when you watch it.

Still, Pete Part II has a 6.9 average, and the worst Red Dwarf episode of all time has a 7.4, the same as Twentica and Mechocracy. That is fucking bonkers.

But I do enjoy the suggestion that Doug should have balanced Series XI and XII by just somehow knowing how the episodes would be received once they came out. What a mundane use of clairvoyance.

[Doomitron]

The premise of this conversation with IMDb ratings is nonsense when Samsara and Krysis are implied to be episodes worth keeping in a single 6 episode series when one is complete piss and the other is mostly piss.

[Flap Jack]

To be fair that’s not really an IMDb problem. That’s a “people tend to think better of Series XI and XII than Doomitron does” problem.

[Asclepius]

If only there was a more in-depth series of ratings for Red Dwarf episodes.

Valid. I thought IMDB would take us out of the (probably smaller?) sphere of people who filled in the survey too, and onto ‘the wider public’.

Doesn’t look like there’s any controversial markings on their score chart though. Ironically, it’s the “anti woke” episode that gets hammered. Whereas IMDB folk have been notably the opposite way around when it comes to when they decided that Dr. Who had become ‘woke’ (i.e. female) and voted ‘accordingly’.

[Asclepius]

The premise of this conversation with IMDb ratings is nonsense when Samsara and Krysis are implied to be episodes worth keeping in a single 6 episode series when one is complete piss and the other is mostly piss.

Eh. I liked them.

The failures for me were the five at the bottom of the IMDB list. I thought M-Corp, Twentica and Mechocracy were a little dull. I thought Siliconia was outright boring to the point where I struggled to concentrate, and Timewave was an episode of Red Dwarf that happened once.

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