I’m a new user and I like Red Dwarf

[BlossomiestBlossom]

Hi everyone!

I’m BlossomiestBlossom (yes it’s a mouthful but you can shorten it Blossom).

I think this site is really cool!

I’d say I’m a fan of Red Dwarf, but I only started watching it recently. I’m currently on Series VI (just finished Emohawk), and I’m loving the show!

I look forward to chatting with you all!

Topic

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Welcome Blossom :)

[Dave]

Welcome!

Which parts of the show have you enjoyed most so far?

[BlossomiestBlossom]

[BlossomiestBlossom]

Welcome!
Which parts of the show have you enjoyed most so far?

Tough question!

My favourite characters are the Cat, Kryten, and Holly, and my favourite episodes are the ones that play with the format and do experimental things.

[Moonlight]

Glad to see a new face. Have fun trying to parse some of the references we make. Bluescreen skutter¹ Danny has switched the rice² Paul Jackson stealing Craig’s shirt³ Vindalunar⁴ what does POV mean⁵ my favorite episode is Star Knot⁶ Cat’s barbed penis⁷.

And we’ll be publishing the footnotes for these things in next month’s Smegazine.

[BlossomiestBlossom]

 Bluescreen skutter¹ Danny has switched the rice² Paul Jackson stealing Craig’s shirt³ Vindalunar⁴ what does POV mean⁵ my favorite episode is Star Knot⁶ Cat’s barbed penis⁷. 

What?

What?!?

WHAT?!?

I NEED ANSWERS

[Moonlight]

[Rushy]

What?

What?!?

WHAT?!?

I NEED ANSWERS

I unfortunately know about the Cat’s barbed penis, it is a reference to a sex scene in one of the Red Dwarf books. I won’t tell you which one, though, you can discover that on your journey. Xd

[Renegade Rob]

Welcome! If you’re still on VI, then it’s not too late… my advice is to skip VIII entirely. Just go from Nanarchy to Back to Earth. You lose nothing plotwise since there’s already a time jump and offscreen reset for BtE, and you get to keep some brain cells as a bonus. It’s also genuinely heartening to see that actual fans of the Thirteenth Doctor and her era do exist, as the detractors tend to be a little too vocal (I thought 13 and her era were fine, not my favorite, but better than RTD or Moffat at their worst). 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> my advice is to skip VIII entirely

This is terrible advice honestly.  Let people discover their own likes/dislikes for the show in their own.

If nothing else, skipping VIII would mean not understanding half the shit we talk about on this forum, as we’re obsessed.

[Renegade Rob]

Okay, touché. That’s all quite reasonable. So scratch my prior advice. In fairness, it’s advice I’d give to my past self. Series VIII brings the average quality of the collective show down so much that it bums me out and part of me regrets having seen it. But that’s a me thing. Maybe you’ll love it. 

[Flap Jack]

I agree with Quinn on principle, but I agree with Rob in practice, because I’ve long believed that skipping VIII would work well but I’ve never heard of anyone who actually did it. Be the guinea pig. You can always go back and watch Series VIII later.

… or just do whatever you want to do, it’s all good.

[Technopeasant]

Welcome to the madhouse. I’ve only been posting a year myself but been an on and off lurker since the late 2000s.

[Moonlight]

The only context you need from VIII can be gained from watching the last three minutes of Only the Good and then waiting ten years to continue.

[Renegade Rob]

> Be the guinea pig.

[Hamish]

Spoilers!

[Technopeasant]

[Jenuall]

Welcome Blossom! Stick around I’m sure you’ll find some of us at least tolerable… maybe

[Unrumble]

[Ridley]

VII and VIII are foundational to post-VI Red Dwarf.

[RunawayTrain]

VII and VIII are foundational to post-VI Red Dwarf.

This is one thing that irks me.  So frustrating that the worst parts of RD by far are essential to the latter half of the canon.

Also, hi Blossom!  I’m not very chatty here nowadays so I’m late to the welcoming party, but, welcome. 

(Also, welcome, Rushy, if you’re reading this.)

[Technopeasant]

Are they though? If you skip Back to Earth as well is there really that much you’d miss? They explain the setup in Fathers & Suns (via Rimmer, who was not even there) about Lister’s parentage, and the references to finding Kochanski don’t amount to very much. I suppose you would not know how they found Red Dwarf again, but frankly that is less confusing than parsing the bridge between VIII and BTE.

[Flap Jack]

I can see the argument for VII, but VIII is completely disposable.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I can see the argument for VII, but VIII is completely disposable.

Yeah, there is nothing in VIII that is needed to be seen for any of the later series

The gag in the beginning still works if it’s a silly off camera thing that’s not explained.  It’s just less meta and doesn’t hit as hard. But it does’t break anything

[Rushy]

VIII is worth watching just for the experience and the conversations later on. It’s such a baffling and memorable outlier, I’d hate to see it skipped. 

[Kris Carter]

I mean, watch Red Dwarf VIII by all means, but to paraphrase Rimmer, if you’re going to watch garbage, expect pain. Plus watching it allows you to indulge wholeheartedly in Red Dwarf VIII hate threads, it’s oddly soothing.

[Flap Jack]

But as I said, there is also the option to watch it retrospectively. Save the best for last.

[Renegade Rob]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Someone with better editing skills than me hav lister watching series viii in place of Rimmer’s death video and doing a spin on through it 

[International Debris]

For all VII’s flaws, it does a lot of new and interesting things and feels like a genuine expansion of the stuff that was happening in V. It might not have fully worked, but it’s an interesting experiment that’s worth at least one watch. 

VIII isn’t Red Dwarf in any real sense.

[Renegade Rob]

I agree with that. Despite my earlier GIF, I actually really like VII, and it was during a marathon at the end of VI and the start of VII that I first saw the show and became a fan in the first place, so maybe it’s imprinted on me a bit. VII feels like a merging of the Series VI setting with the Series I-II character dynamics, and I respect a lot of what it’s trying to do, and conversely to Series III which I just argued in another thread ages poorly, I find that VII ages quite well. Definitely worth watching, and I actively enjoy the vast majority of it. 

[Moonlight]

I desperately want the version of VIII that’s a refined take on VII over the one we have.

[International Debris]

Yeah, while obviously all the criticisms of VIII still stand, my biggest issue with it is that it was Doug consciously trying to make a version of the show that he thought fans wanted, but one that wasn’t authentic. I’d much rather he carried on further into VII territory, exploring a deep space subtly more populated than before, with the mix of more character-based stories and adventure ones, only with a lot more confidence. 

[Rushy]

Now I’m imagining how it would be if it took them another series before they found Red Dwarf

[Ben Saunders]

I long to live in the universe where instead of Series VIII we got Series VII II.

[Hamish]

Series 72?

[Ben Saunders]

Series 72?

Takes place after Series Ten.

[Unrumble]

Someone with better editing skills than me hav lister watching series viii in place of Rimmer’s death video and doing a spin on through it 

[Renegade Rob]

[Rudolph]

[BlossomiestBlossom]

Don’t remind me of Angels & Demons, that episode genuinely grossed me out 🤮🤮

[Rushy]

Don’t remind me of Angels & Demons, that episode genuinely grossed me out 🤮🤮

Rimmer’s outfit though

[Renegade Rob]

Don’t remind me of Angels & Demons, that episode genuinely grossed me out 🤮🤮

Yeah, that Pot Noodle scene was hard to watch. 

[Author]

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