Least favourite Red Dwarf episode?

[cliff]

Come on, i know it’s hard but if you have a favourite you gotta have a least favourite.

I’ve put least favourite as apose to worst episode cause i believe every episode has it’s good points.

Personally i tend to avoid Holoship on season v dvd, but then i do have feelings for Jane Horrocks!….may have to re-think this!.

Topic

[Ian Symes]

i believe every episode has it?s good points.

I think you’re forgetting Pete Part Two.

[Pete Part Three]

Indeed. And about 15 other episodes.

[cliff]

oh, er yes, when i talk about red dwarf episodes i kinda overlook series 7&8.

[Danny Stephenson]

What a coincidence. So do we!

[Anonymous]

Pete Part 2, BITR Part 3, Beyond a Joke, Ouroboros.

[Andrew]

Waiting for God, Camille, The End, Nanarchy, Pete.

[Seb Patrick]

Just curious, Andrew – what about Camille doesn’t do it for you? I know it doesn’t usually make people’s “favourite” lists, but it generally seems to be middling or thereabouts in people’s opinions, from what I’ve seen. Would be interested to see why you hold it as a least favourite…

[Andrew]

It always used to rank low, as far as I recall. And even your own poll only pegs it 30, which is pretty low – in the bottom fifth, in fact – once you knock out VII and VIII.

For me, I find the whole episode quite clunky – scene after scene that doesn’t quite work:

– Kryten’s life being saved never felt dangerous to me.
– The first meeting with Camille jumps to ‘being in love’ in under four minutes, in real-time.
– I never feel romantic chemistry between the characters (which is ironic given the casting, but sticks to the tedious truism of real-life couples on-screen).
– Speaking of which, Suzanne Rhatigan’s performance doesn’t work for me.
– I think laughs are inhibited by the clever cutting around Camille’s various forms (which is not to say that you should never do that, it’s just an observation).
– Once the big discovery is made – in a fairly flat way, which oddly requires Lister to have the knowledge and do the exposition – the story has little else to do…so settles for some ho-hum dating scenes and then pulls a ‘oh, didn’t we mention it?’ ending. One that certainly deserved a proper set-up, and doesn’t really make much sense. (Hector has a ship, a means to find and board Red Dwarf, but somehow left Camille on a dying planet?)

I could also mention the sexual politics, which I still find a bit…awkward. Camille’s not a great female character in any of her forms – which we get away with because it suggests that what our boys want is someone not too strong-willed who’ll hang on our every word. Only…I’m not sure that IS a perfect mate. It’s an idealised one, arguably, but superficial; and it nags at me that THEY don’t get to be funny. Dwarf doesn’t have a great history of female characters, and this isn’t the worse offender, but…couldn’t one incarnation be strong and funny?

It’s none of those particularly, though. I could do a list of great stuff just as easily – two Cats, learning to lie, a stack of great lines and some nice imagery – so the rest is just the vagaries of taste. I kinda agree with Rob Grant, that Series IV doesn’t reach as far to be special as II, III, V and VI. (Though I have a lot of love for DNA and Justice.) Still, in the end, it’s an episode that leaves me flat at the end, and it’s rare that Dwarf does that to me.

[Danny Stephenson]

Usually my least favorite episodes are not because of any lacking story arc, it’s because they’re usually the first episode of various series. I get bored of them. Not so much recently, really but when we had taped them off of TV, we used to watch various series on various night, me and my brother and we’d never get passed the first episode or so, so we used to get a little sick of Camille and Holoship (this was before the Full re-runs you see). So, yeah. When I had to compile my list for the 51 Best Eps thing, i felt so guilty about where certain ones were going, but my tastes vary a fair amount. I’m in the middle of an ‘early series’ stage at the moment…

[Phil]

When we did the G+T favorites list, we ranked every episode. Here’s my bottom ten from that list:

Pete II
Back in the Red III
Stoke Me a Clipper
Emohawk
Dimension Jump
Timeslides
The End
Duct Soup
Waiting For God
Beyond a Joke

Yes, yes, I know, at least a few of those are going to upset people, but it’s how I honestly feel. Couple that with the fact that I allowed many VII/VIII episodes to escape the bottom 10 may well render me the least popular person here.

[Andrew]

Stoke surprises me, Phil, but I’d say that was a respectable list. I’ve never had Dimension Jump in the top half of my list, and Emohawk isn’t unreasonable either.

You have officially risen in my estimation. And my pants.

[Phil]

Stoke has a lot going for it…there’s just something about it that doesn’t QUITE make it gel for me.

The thing is…making the list…yes, it might seem as though something coming in 35 out of 51 means you must not like it much…but that isn’t necessarily true. It’s just that you like 34 things better than that one. There are very, very few Red Dwarf episodes I can really say I don’t enjoy. In fact, it’d be the bottom three from that list, and that’s about it.

I don’t think it’s that I cut VII/VIII any slack, either, nor that I’m easy to please. It’s just that all of the episodes, for the most part, do at least SOMEthing that brings me joy.

You listed Nanarchy, and it seems that a lot of people dislike that one. Whereas I personally think it’s great, and maybe the second best of VII. It’s funny just how widely opinions can vary when we all, basically, love the same show.

[Andrew]

> There are very, very few Red Dwarf episodes I can really say I don?t enjoy

I think that caveat – late-series debates aside – goes more or less without saying. I’d still take the eps at the bottom of my list over an awful lot of TV. When rewatching the series, I don’t skip them – there’s plenty of pleasure to be taken.

(Come to think of it, there’s only one episode of ANY show I genuinely adore that I actively avoid – and it’s “The Long Goodbye”, an episode of The West Wing’s fourth season showing CJ going back home to see her ailing father and attend her school reunion. Or something. It’s so utterly…wrong for the show that it feels like Sorkin allowed it to happen only after losing a bet. AND it’s got Matthew Modine in it. Yeesh.)

[Mr Flibble]

BT were using Timeslides to promote BT Vision in the Arndale Centre today. Some sad git was stood there watching it.

If I go through there tomorrow and they’re doing the same, I’ll tell them to choose a better episode (although I quite like it).

[John Hoare]

Phil! What have you got against Timeslides? It’s one of my favorites. You dorty fecker.

As for Camille – I still think it’s a great episode, but the problem I have with it is I think they let the parody guide the story too much near the end. Which I don’t think suits Dwarf at all.

[Jonathan Capps]

Phil, you’re a sick fuck, you know that?

[Jonathan Capps]

> (Come to think of it, there?s only one episode of ANY show I genuinely adore that I actively avoid – and it?s ?The Long Goodbye?, an episode of The West Wing?s fourth season showing CJ going back home to see her ailing father and attend her school reunion. Or something. It?s so utterly?wrong for the show that it feels like Sorkin allowed it to happen only after losing a bet. AND it?s got Matthew Modine in it. Yeesh.)

I know what you mean. For a show that’s managed to build such brilliant characters in the middle of what can only be described as a cacophony for three years, it seems so heavy handed and limiting to suddenly show so much of one character’s family problems. I remember Sorkin saying something in an interview about The West Wing showing what happens before and after what you normally see of The White House, and I like that they did that with the characters, too. Only showing snippets of events that other show would dedicate episode upon episode to. We didn’t see a long and painful discussion between Sam and his dad in Somebody’s Going to Emergency, Somebody’s Going to Jail and that was a million times more effective for it.

[TheLeen]

1. Duct Soup
2. Duct Soup
3. Duct Soup
4. Duct Soup
5. Duct Soup

[Andrew]

> We didn?t see a long and painful discussion between Sam and his dad in Somebody?s Going to Emergency, Somebody?s Going to Jail and that was a million times more effective for it.

Exactly. Long Goodbye what any old TV drama could do (and with zero plot twists or turns, either). It was a John Wells ER-like move, plenty of mawk, and WW is jus so much better than that.

I’ve only seen the ep twice. On subsequent rewatching of the DVD I skip past it, which is extremely rare for me.

[Jonathan Capps]

> I?ve only seen the ep twice. On subsequent rewatching of the DVD I skip past it, which is extremely rare for me.

I usually take the rough with the smooth, even if I know an episode I’m about to watch is a bit bobbins. I’ll be coming up to my second watching of season 4 again soon, but I don’t think I’ll skip it. It’s such a painfully brilliant season that I’ll just make sure I watch the episodes either side of it in the same sitting :)

It’s interesting, actually, that CJ really does end up feeling like the main character, especially after we lose Sam. She gets two introspective episodes and an ever so slightly improbable promotion to Chief of Staff, where as everyone else seems to be treated far more evenly. Allison Janney must have one hell of an agent.

[Somebody]

5. Ouroboros
4. Ouroboros
3. Ouroboros
2. Ouroboros

And the worst RD episode ever ISSS…

Ouroboros

[pfm]

Episodes I don’t like – Waiting For God, Camille, BITR (most of it), Epideme/Nanarchy (ugh), Ouroboros, DNA, Emohawk, Rimmerworld.

When I say ‘don’t like’ I still mean ‘like’ because…well, it’s Red Dwarf and I do love it in a way (like how Alan loves Sonja). There are laughs in all of the episodes I listed.

What about the worst SCENE in Dwarf??

My personal pet hate is the chewing-gum-gets-covered-with-hair-and-stuck-to-people sequence. God it’s dire and goes on forever. I hate it much more than the Blue Midget dance.

[Ben Paddon]

I don’t understand all the hate for Waiting for God. I love it, personally – it’s probably my second-favourite episode of the first series, and it’s definitely in my top five list. I love the way it picks apart religious precepts and notions. But then again, I’m fascinated with the concept of religion, so maybe that’s just me.

Least favourite episode overall, though? Probably Terrorform.

[John Hoare]

No, I’ve never got the hatred for Waiting For God either. It has the worst line of Series 1 – “So what else is new?” – but I think it’s fine, and I think the two storylines work well together. (Although as I’ve said before, the notion that there are no aliens – and the audience is expected to be automatically on Lister’s side – feels slightly odd.) Never understood the dislike of the temple scene, either. Maybe it’s just because it feels atypical for Dwarf.

Terrorform is fucking great though, you nutter.

[Dave]

Beyond A Joke.

Episode title or review? Discuss.

[John Hoare]

Once you get past Stoke – which I don’t even like very much – it’s only Blue that holds any interest for me in VII (and that’s only for the final scene). At the very least, it’s not the kind of telly that interests me in the slightest, the odd joke or line aside.

Pete has a million and one problems, and I don’t think it’s very good telly either – but it’s at least trying to do something that I enjoy. For that, it ranks above most of VII for me.

[Danny Stephenson]

What about the worst SCENE in Dwarf??

The Potato eating virus makes me cringe and I feel embarrassed watching it, Craig’s sudden fake laughter (he’s feigned laughter better than that before! (See ‘Blue’ with the reverse psychology scene)) and the music is just… shit.

[Danny Stephenson]

> It has the worst line of Series 1 – ?So what else is new??

Are we talking about the toaster’s line here? Why’s that, John? I quite like it…

[ChrisM]

A lot of people seem to dislike beyond a joke. It’s probably my favorite from season 7. Sure it’s got some plot holes but it’s a lot of fun. We’ve got Jane Austin world, multiple heads exploding (come on that was funny) and killer simulants and of course Able. The ending was a bit hokey, (which still works ok since it’s hardly a serious show) but otherwise great stuff I thought.

My worst… probably a toss up between some of the season 8 stuff (not bad but dragged a bit for my liking) and Confidence and Paranoia. Actually I quite liked the dream hallucinations to start with but for some reason found the Confidence character irritating. That my own prejudism though, as the character was supposed to be irritating I guess. To be fair it wasn’t badly written.

[Joey TORDFC]

Waiting for God has one of my favourite jokes ever in it (garbage pod) so it has to be up there for me.

Least favourite? The Last Day. Kryten’s wet drippyness annoys me in some episodes and this is one of them.

[pfm]

> Least favourite episode overall, though? Probably Terrorform.

These words are BLASPHEMY!!!!!!

> Least favourite? The Last Day

DO – NOT – BLAS – PHEME!!!!!!!!!

I 100% get the dislike (‘hatred’ is a little strong) for Waiting For God. All the cat stuff is really bad IMO. It’s actually improved upon in the Re-mastered. In fact, it’s one of the only episodes that’s better in it’s Re-mastered form, so what does THAT say?? Rimmer is way OTT and stupid in this episode too. His whole obsession with aliens gladly disappated later on. The cat priest scene is dreadful. The whole history of the cats is too ridiculous and unbelievable.

The fact is, if they had done this story later it would have been handled much better.

[Ben Paddon]

Ah yes, but what really makes Waiting for God work for me is, as previously mentioned, the Religious satire. That really worked for me, and it’s an idea Will Self would later explore in his novel “The Book of Dave,” and I just thought it was well-written and superbly executed.

The dialogue between the Cat Priest and Lister near the end is also alarmingly touching stuff. Despite Lister’s apprehensions about being the Felis Sapien equivalent to God, he is still prepared to say what he believes the Priest wants to hear. The only thing that doesn’t work for me in that scene is the rather exaggerated fall of the Priest as he dies.

The Quagaar/Garbage Pod plot, on the other hand, seems less to me about Rimmer’s obsession with alien life and more about his bald-faced denial of the notion that he will never, ever be able to have a solid physical form again (or at least as far as they are aware at the time). For him, the fascination is not that there are aliens themselves, but rather that there are aliens who might be able to build him a new body – he’s jumping to an unlikely conclusion in desperation here.

Thematically, it’s the strongest episode of the first series, and it has some cracking jokes in it to boot. Perhaps I’m reading far too much into it – like people who assume that They Might Be Giants’ “Birdhouse in your Soul” is about God when it is, in fact, about a plug-in Night Light – but it’s an episode that really works for me and it’s probably in my personal Top Ten.

[Pete Part Three]

>The only thing that doesn?t work for me in that scene is the rather exaggerated fall of the Priest as he dies.

Or the way he moves his leg after dying.

[Phil]

>They Might Be Giants? ?Birdhouse in your Soul? is about God when it is, in fact, about a plug-in Night Light

I haven’t done much (or…any) research on the band, but I’d have thought the night-light would have been pretty easy to come by! After all, I managed to arrive at it just in passing.

Though I’m sure the God angle is an interesting–if flawed–one. Next time I listen to the song I’ll keep that in mind and see if anything clicks. So to speak…

[Pete Part Three]

They also did the theme tune for “Malcolm in the Middle” which was created by Linwood Boomer who produced Red Dwarf USA.

It’s all connected.

[John Hoare]

The Quagaar/Garbage Pod plot, on the other hand, seems less to me about Rimmer?s obsession with alien life and more about his bald-faced denial of the notion that he will never, ever be able to have a solid physical form again (or at least as far as they are aware at the time). For him, the fascination is not that there are aliens themselves, but rather that there are aliens who might be able to build him a new body – he?s jumping to an unlikely conclusion in desperation here.

This is a very good point, and not one that had really clicked with me.

Of course, now we’ve got Bodysnatcher, all that makes a lot more sense. You can see echoes of Bodysnatcher all over that section of Waiting For God…

[John Hoare]

> It has the worst line of Series 1 – ?So what else is new??

Are we talking about the toaster?s line here? Why?s that, John? I quite like it…

Sorry, but I hate it. I really, really, really hate it!

I’ve gone on about the iguana line before, but I over-egged that a bit – I don’t think it’s that bad. But I despise “So what else is new?” – it completely over-explains the parallel, and insults the audience’s intelligence.

[Seb Patrick]

At this point (re: above discussion) I would link to the amazing Tonight Show performance of “Birdhouse”, but it appears to have disappeared from Youtube. BAH. It’s the best live performance in the history of the world ever, as well.

[Seb Patrick]

Have the video for Boss of Me instead, as it’s great (notice how Lois doesn’t appear, though, interestingly).

In fact, what the hell, have some other great TMBG vids :

Ana Ng
Don’t Let’s Start

And if you’ve lived under a rock for the last eighteen years and have never seen it :

Birdhouse In Your Soul

[Ben Paddon]

This is a very good point, and not one that had really clicked with me.

Of course, now we?ve got Bodysnatcher, all that makes a lot more sense. You can see echoes of Bodysnatcher all over that section of Waiting For God?

Exactly. And I’d be willing to chalk up his entire obsession with aliens to this very fact. We never see him mention aliens in The End, nor in any of the pre-leak flashbacks we see. Perhaps the reason the Alien obsession becomes less prominent in later episodes is that Rimmer becomes more accustomed to and accepting of his hologrammatic status…

[Phil]

>if you?ve lived under a rock for the last eighteen years and have never seen it :

Birdhouse never was a big hit here in the states. Neither was it even a minor one, that I’m aware. And so I’m glad you posted the video as I’ve never seen it before.

Funnily enough I watched it as I was getting ready to go out tonight…we went to a karaoke bar for a while and a friend of mine got up and sang, completely coincidentally, Birdhouse in Your Soul. How adorable.

[Seb Patrick]

Hmm, apparently “It reached #3 on the United States Modern Rock Tracks chart and #6 on the UK Singles Chart and remains their highest-charting single in both countries. ” (Wiki)

I know that doesn’t make it a massive hit or anything, but I think it’s fairly well-known – more so than anything bar “Boss of Me”, anyway. And it did well enough that they performed it on the Tonight Show (if you can find that performance, watch it. It’s on the “Gigantic” DVD, which I also highly recommend buying). But yeah, point taken, I know it was never completely huge or anything. But it’s spent the last couple of decades showing up fairly regularly on music TV, from what I’ve seen…

[Phil]

I’ll be perfectly honest and say I don’t even know what the US Modern Rock Tracks Chart is…so it may not be the best indicator of what’s actually being played on the radio!

>But yeah, point taken

Oops! I didn’t actually mean to make a point, I was just thanking you for the video!

[Antipodean]

I don’t really mind any of the episodes, but my least favourites are “Emohawk” and “Only the Good”.

I don’t like “Emohawk” because it’s basically three episodes clumsily stapled together, with Ace and Duane thrown in for no apparent reason. It didn’t have a proper structure to it: it was far too much like one of the new Simpsons episodes.

I don’t like “Only the Good” for many reasons. The main one is that it squashes two episodes’ worth of story into one episode. As a two-parter, with the split just after the Starbugs & Blue Midgets evacuates Red Dwarf, it could have done the story justice. Plus, the ending. Honestly, it’s the 52nd episode and you know you’re not going to make any more – why the hell would you end it on such a crappy cliffhanger? They should have used the original ending.

[Ben Paddon]

Emohawk was good up until the Emohawk was sent after the crew. I sometimes think that if the Kitawai tribe stuff had been properly fleshed out a bit, you could probably end the episode at “Change of plan! LEEGG IIIIIIIITTTTTT!!!”

[mick]

Pin the series VII or VIII DVDs to your wall, throw a dart at the eppisode listing, whatever it lands on will do nicely.

[Ben Paddon]

I hold the apparently controversial view that Series VII is not, strictly speaking, bad. I like Series VII, and I honestly believe that the series has some of the finest moments in the entire run of the show.

VIII is just dire, though. No redeeming value whatsoever.

[ChrisM]

I hold the apparently controversial view that Series VII is not, strictly speaking, bad. I like Series VII, and I honestly believe that the series has some of the finest moments in the entire run of the show.

VIII is just dire, though. No redeeming value whatsoever.

Interesting. Most people seem to prefer 8 to 7. I’m not one of them though… so nice to see I’m not the only one.

That being said I didn’t hate 8 I just thought it weaker overall than the other series. I thought the change in direction was interesting although the idea that Kryten’s nanobots could resurrect the entire ship and crew was a bit over the top. Then again taking sci-fi ideas to the extreme and having fun with it is one of RD’s main themes.

The whole dirty dozen in space idea with the canaries was good. And Cassandra was comparable in theme and quality to episodes we’ve had earlier series. I think the main problem was dragging some stories over multipart episodes which could have been done much quicker, and the tendency to cram different story threads into one episode near the end. It gave it a mish-mashed feel, as if Doug had a bunch of gags he wanted out there and crammed them in. I’m mainly thinking of the Archie thread which whilst funny in itself didn’t have much to do with the main thread of that episode. Except in giving the Cat a nasty surprise.

Overall still good telly though.

[Pete Part Three]

>Interesting. Most people seem to prefer 8 to 7. I?m not one of them though? so nice to see I?m not the only one.

Join the club. We’ve got badges.

And a magazine. Occasionally.

[Jonathan Capps]

I’m the treasurer, but unfortunately I’ve spent our last remaining petty cash on a quite delicious looking steak bake.

[Author]

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