In Defense of Timewave

[Renegade Rob]

So I’ve had a couple weeks of distance from Timewave, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t hate Timewave quite as much as everyone else seems to. Some of that I think is down to my charitability and chirpy optimism; as someone who enjoys entertainment and the creative process, I’m usually inclined to give out more points for good things than deduct for bad things. To paraphrase Steven Moffat: “There are a million ways to miss a target but only a few ways to hit a target. Also, don’t blink or whatever.”

So maybe I’m disqualifying myself by admitting upfront that, like the 11th Doctor in the Van Gogh episode, I can firmly separate something’s pile of good things from its bad things. It’s why I like Phantom Menace more than Force Awakens: while Force Awakens sustains a safe B-quality througout, Phantom Menace fluctuates wildly from A to F, and I respect that more and will take the A-stuff any day (Qui-Gon, Maul, world-building) because I’m able to separate it from the Jar Jar shit.

So when during the Timewave Dwarfcast, I think it was Ian who asked for someone to give the other side’s perspective, of seeing Timewave in a more positive light, I did a little introspection and analysis and figured I might as well be the devil’s advocate. So without further ado, this is my attempted defense (yes, American spelling. Defence sounds like de-fence, but removing fences sounds like the opposite of defending something) of Timewave…

First thing’s first: Timewave is not a great episode of Red Dwarf. I’m the self-appointed defender of this episode, and even I’m not going to pretend that it is. The bad stuff has been well-documented by this website and others: the writing being off, repetitive Cat jokes, dodgy lines, uncomfortable Ziggy implications. I’m not going to refute any of those problems because I can’t. What I can do is point out the things about it that I enjoyed, sometimes just tiny things in the margins, that prevent this episode from falling into the Series VIII black hole of “so nihilistically bad that I skip from VII to IX and don’t even acknowledge it’s existence.” So here’s the pile of points and good things in no particular order:

1) Johnny Vegas – Maybe he’s a little underutilized, but in isolation he gives a really funny performance, injecting his own brand of humor to a show that can probably use some fresh alternative creative energy every once in a while.

2) The Diner Set – I’m not saying any good scenes take place here, but it’s a really cool set. With a guy dressed as a raspberry in the background.

3) The Draining Scene – With the notable exception of “spit on a wrist” this scene wasn’t that bad. The inner critic was actually really cool, a great performance by Barrie, and it’s actually pretty neat how they foil him by pointing out that Rimmer looks foolish anyway. There’s the divine Space Cops directive gag as well. I think it’s a better climax scene than Siliconia (what, you can’t take out 10 more seconds of pointless mop battling to better explain the update station?). An all-time great climax? Perhaps not, but it goes a long way towards partially salvaging the episode by just being kind of decent.

4) A Sense of Fun – I enjoy Red Dwarf largely for its wit, characters, tight plotting, and imaginative exploration of concepts. But that’s not the only way to enjoy an episode of Red Dwarf. I watched this with a good friend of mine, a fellow RD fan, and he absolutely loved it. Is it because he has bad taste? Well actually, yes. Because he’s not a snob who digests things with a critical eye; he just really enjoys silly, random humor: The Eric Andre Show, South Park, Filthy Frank, etc. So this episode was up his alley. He laughed out loud at the flute guy, the titties line, even Ziggy. He’s not the kind of guy who gets offended at things, so none of the major gripes we all have even phased him. Now is he the target RD should aim for week to week? Hells no. Was he laughing for the wrong reasons? Probably. But it reminds me that not everyone who watches and enjoys RD is coming from a place of critical fan-site-forum-level analysis. Some people are just bro’s who like to kick back with a beer and enjoy a 30- minute television show. I don’t think RD should always try and lower itself to my friend’s broader sense of humor (and indeed episodes like Quarantine and Meltdown are sublime in balancing the silly and the sophisticated) but I don’t mind throwing him one isolated episode once in a while where such silliness is part of the concept itself.

5) Tutting – That was an admittedly funny bit. Good gag, good guest performance.

6) Creative Experimentation – Before XII premiered, the recurring theme from the set reports was that, even more than XI, XII was “out there.” And so far, that’s proven true. Building off the momentum from XI, I’d say XII is not only a better, sharper series, but it’s bolder and more confident. It takes more risks. Now of those risks so far, 4 out of 5 paid off. This one didn’t. But these things aren’t in a vacuum. I’ll take Love and Monsters any day if it eventually leads to Blink, and I’ll take Timewave any day if that same energy also gives us Cured, Siliconia, Mechocracy, and M-Corp. Something has to give somewhere, and thankfully it seems Timewave took the bullet as the shit episode, perhaps siphoning that potential shit from the other episodes. (My understanding of shit-mechanics may be flawed). This episode but off way more than it could probably chew with its concept, and probably should have stuck with one approach instead of a generalized scattershot exploration of the criticism concept, but somewhere in the DNA of this episode is a respectable level of ambition.

7) Structure – For all this episode’s faults, it at least has the feel of a 3-act RD episode structurally. Unlike VIII, which, for all its cringey smeg-awfulness, didn’t even have the good manners to be coherently structured. For better or worse RD episodes have a rhyme scheme to them, and this episode kept to it. A crappy haiku still gets points for actually still being a haiku.

8) Meta-Commentary – I’m positive this wasn’t intentional, but an episode about the flaws of a society where everything is crap with gaudy colors becomes itself a crappy episode with gaudy colors. I will forever remember this episode as “The Pink Stupid One.” But since that’s how the society is regarded as in-episode, it makes the stupid pink pill a little easier to swallow. This isn’t Series VIII where the entire series was offensive and ill-conceived, but just a single episode where a certain small percentage of that offensive ill-conception was actually the point.

So that’s my list. I’ll end this overly long think-piece with a quote:

“There is skill to it. More importantly, it has to be joyful, effortless, fun. TV defeats its own purpose when it’s pushing an agenda, or trying to defeat other TV or being proud or ashamed of itself for existing. It’s TV; it’s comfort. It’s a friend you’ve known so well, and for so long you just let it be with you, and it needs to be okay for it to have a bad day or phone in a day, and it needs to be okay for it to get on a boat with Levar Burton and never come back. Because eventually, it all will.”
-Abed from the Community series finale.

Red Dwarf is at its heart a fun show, and yes, Timewave represents a bad/phoned-in day to be sure, but as the bad/phoned-in episode of a batch, I found it largely tolerable. Renegade Rob out.

Topic

[Hamish]

The thing about things like the Blue Midget Dance, Reality Sucks, or even the Dibbley Skutters is that with them the show was at least trying to be fun.

Timewave is just no fun at all.

[Ben Saunders]

8 year old me loved the Blue Midget dance. 8 year old me has declined to comment on Timewave.

[International Debris]

“Come back Mr. Sucks!” is a great line.

[Author]

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