Refresh For The Memory: Series VII Byte 2

[Dave]

[Loathsome American]

[Warbodog]

I used to mix up Caroline Carmen and Barbara Bellini, back when they were just names in a Programme Guide. Along with Kristine Kochanski, maybe poetic alliteration enhances their romantic unattainability (Marilyn Monroe?)

Duane Dibbley being the perfectly crafted contrast, of course. Somewhat less fuckable.

[Flap Jack]

Duane Dibbley being the perfectly crafted contrast, of course. Somewhat less fuckable.

Speak for yourself, Warbodog.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

    

[Flap Jack]

Epideme – Surprisingly good! 5 years ago only Tikka and Blue were in contention for my top episode of Series VII, but after rewatching, this has got to be in the running too. Like, it actually has the story and structure of a Red Dwarf episode! It is brought down by the unfortunate reappearance of Jealous and Controlling Kryten and Sex Pest Lister, but overall a solidly entertaining and successfully dramatic effort. I don’t even find the Epideme performance that annoying.

– Them coming across the frozen remains of a former Red Dwarf crewmember is seriously unlikely, but not less likely than, say, them running into Howard in Trojan, so fine. The problem is that the only reason for Caroline Carmen to be a former Dwarfer is so Lister can lie about dating her, which was not a great inclusion. It just made Lister seem pathetic.

– Kryten barging into Lister’s quarters in the middle of the night and aggressively tearing apart the place because he thinks Kochanski might be in there is a whole new level of insecure derangement from him. And every time this comes up it just drives home how nonsensical he’s being. He never had a problem with Lister being good friends with The Cat, and he obviously isn’t interested in Lister romantically or sexually, so what the FUCK does he even have a problem with. Duct Soup very loosely tried to justify it by showing us Kryten’s belief that Lister having a romantic partner would lead to him getting abandoned, but (A) he should know better now, or what the hell was even the point of that episode, and (B) why would that make him want Lister to compliment his head shape??? If this element of Kryten’s character was just him being upset that Lister was spending way more time with Kochanski than him, that wouldn’t be so bad, but honestly this series doesn’t make it seem like Lister spends more time with Kochanski than anyone else, so even that aspect doesn’t work.

– The farce of Lister thinking Carmen is Kochanski kind of works, but Lister having no interest in actually looking at Kochanski – to the point of sending Carmen into the shower fully covered with a duvet – maybe stretches believability too much.

– Epideme tries to argue that him killing Lister is the same as Lister eating chicken, but Lister missed a trick here. All of the chicken Lister eats was already killed 3 million years ago, so him going vegetarian wouldn’t save any chickens, but Epideme is in a position to save Lister.

– “Carmen Moans” is such a niche reference. I don’t think I would have ever learned it was a reference at all without this site.

– More of Lister and Kochanski’s relationship being weirdly talked about: Kochanski says “That was a long time ago.” to Lister saying they have unfinished business. No it wasn’t! You two never dated! You met him for the first time like 2 months ago or something!

– Epideme, as a concept, takes the implausibility of a zombie virus outbreak to new extremes. It can literally only infect one person at a time, and it can only move to a new person through direct contact, and it can only spread after its current host has died. Granted, as it started out as a medicine there must have originally been many copies of Epideme, but still: all you need to do to stop the outbreak is wear protection when dealing with the body of the latest victim, and properly dispose of that body. Epideme was being seriously braggadocious and talking about ending the human race, but it must have known that if it had killed Lister, that would have been the end.

– The incidental music was especially good in this. Not that it was bad in Ouroboros, Duct Soup, Blue or Beyond a Joke, but it felt most fitting and thematic here.

– Kochanski’s plan to save Lister and defeat Epideme is so satisfying. It’s great that she could get a scene like that in a series/show which so underserves the character. Although it is funny that because she used Carmen’s arm, she had no actual reason to cut it in half, so she did it purely for the drama. I wonder if they considered having Kochanski legitimately amputate her arm there.

– Slightly odd that they flushed Lister’s arm into space but didn’t flush Caroline’s body. Sure, it no longer had any Epideme in it, but it’s still a horrible zombie corpse.

[Warbodog]

You met him for the first time like 2 months ago or something!

Since this begins a basically unbroken story into VIII, it must have been at least 18 months. 18 months of Jealous Kryten! I wouldn’t be surprised if this is directly contradicted elsewhere in the episode though.

I think there’s a mention of “2 years” of looking for Red Dwarf in Nanarchy, which… would work.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

but not less likely than, say, them running into Howard in Trojan

That was justified in-episode with the inclusion of the quantum rods.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

– Slightly odd that they flushed Lister’s arm into space but didn’t flush Caroline’s body. Sure, it no longer had any Epideme in it, but it’s still a horrible zombie corpse.

Oh yeah that, Cat wanted it. Didn’t say what for.

[Flap Jack]

Since this begins a basically unbroken story into VIII, it must have
been at least 18 months. 18 months of Jealous Kryten! I wouldn’t be
surprised if this is directly contradicted elsewhere in the episode
though.

Ah, right, right. How easy it is to forget that Lister and Kochanski conceived, birthed, nursed and abandoned a child between Ouroboros and Epideme. I was only talking about it last week, and yet.

That context actually makes Lister seem even more embarrassing for his posturing about Caroline Carmen. Kochanski is the mother of his child, and he’s doing “I’ve had loads of girlfriends, and I’ve got a moped, and I got all the skill points in Ratchet & Clank without even looking at GameFAQs” peacocking like a teenager.

[Warbodog]

I can’t remember whether past threads have concluded that Baby Lister’s growing inside Kochanski or in the medi-lab. If it’s the former, the Ouroboros ending could take place after series VIII, couldn’t it? If they also still have the Time Drive.

Maybe post-VII was the intention in the first place, or maybe it just wasn’t really thought through with all the rewrites and replaced episodes.

[Stabbim]

at the risk of damning with faint praise, Epideme’s the best of Series 7.

but it’s actually a pretty good episode, period.  And, yeah, the climax is Annett-Kochanski’s finest hour.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I can’t remember whether past threads have concluded that Baby Lister’s growing inside Kochanski or in the medi-lab. If it’s the former, the Ouroboros ending could take place after series VIII, couldn’t it? If they also still have the Time Drive.
Maybe post-VII was the intention in the first place, or maybe it just wasn’t really thought through with all the rewrites and replaced episodes.

Definitely not thought through  

VIII is something like 18months long I think so Kochanski isn’t pregnant through that. Also time drive would have been destroyed in the crash presumably.

[Dave]

maybe it just wasn’t really thought through

[International Debris]

– More of Lister and Kochanski’s relationship being weirdly talked about: Kochanski says “That was a long time ago.” to Lister saying they have unfinished business. No it wasn’t! You two never dated! You met him for the first time like 2 months ago or something! 

To be fair, if we’re to believe that Lister bringing the cat on board was the moment the timelines diverged then technically the two Listers were the same person when he and Kochanski dated and therefore they do have history. 

[Unrumble]

– More of Lister and Kochanski’s relationship being weirdly talked about: Kochanski says “That was a long time ago.” to Lister saying they have unfinished business. No it wasn’t! You two never dated! You met him for the first time like 2 months ago or something! 

To be fair, if we’re to believe that Lister bringing the cat on board was the moment the timelines diverged then technically the two Listers were the same person when he and Kochanski dated and therefore they do have history. 

Yeah, I’ve always interpreted it as the Lister/Kochanski relationship being identical pre-accident (or to be more precise, like you say, the cat-astrophe part), so she can refer back to our Lister as if they dated, because they had the same experience, and she sees him as ‘that’ guy from her past, different from the hologramatic hunk.

[Unrumble]

This punchline caught me off guard. Bravo.

[Flap Jack]

To be fair, if we’re to believe that Lister bringing the cat on board was the moment the timelines diverged then technically the two Listers were the same person when he and Kochanski dated and therefore they do have history. 

That’s a logical way of looking at it, if you subscribe to the theory that the 2 universes were in fact 1 universe before the divergence. But on an emotional level, if after the timeline split her Dave went on to be the love of her life, but this Dave went on to be totally different, Kochanski ought to consider that a more solid division between the 2 Listers.

So she may be this Lister’s ex too, technically, but it wouldn’t be “unfinished business” from her perspective, because in her universe she finished that business by getting back together with her Dave, and in this universe them breaking up and her dying was the end of it.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

The whole cottage cheese scene in Duct Soup really confuses things too.  Kochanski reacts to Kryten’s suggestion that Lister might like her as if she’s really embarrassed by it.  She makes out how it’s all history and in the past and can’t understand why Lister would be interested.  And reacts even more badly when Kryten suggests she fancies him!

Which makes no sense when from her perspective she was just in a relationship with a version of Lister, she has been in a relationship with Lister previously, they have both been attracted to each other at some point.

It’s like Doug has created this alt Kochanski with this alt history, and then immediately confused that with the two other versions of Lister’s relationship with Kochanski in the show.

Also, what the fuck is the line about holo-Lister initially being a soft light hologram making him sensitive and caring that Kryten comes out with in Ouroborus?  

[Flap Jack]

Nanarchy – Well, I didn’t hate this, but it’s just such a… nothing. It’s half emotional continuation of the events of Epideme, and half hurriedly resolving the Series VI-VII storyline, and the two halves are so loosely connected that the episode never really feels like it has an identity of its own. Some of Lister dealing with his new status as an amputee works well, but it gets completely curtailed by them just saying “Hey, what if we got Lister a new arm? Kryten, you have magic arm rebuilding robots, don’t you?”. It feels like a sequel to Beyond a Joke in that respect, with the way that abandoned one character conflict in favour of another… only this time, nothing replaces it. Even on its own merits, the nanobot explanation for Red Dwarf going missing is pretty unsatisfying. Still, nice to see Norman Lovett again, maybe Series VIII will be a return to form, eh?

– It never feels like good disabled representation to have the disability taken away so quickly like this, and it’s surprising to get that story from a disabled writer. I know it’s not exactly the prerogative of a comedy to deliver morals, but Nanarchy does leave you with the impression that if the nanobot plan hadn’t worked out, Lister would have just been justifiably depressed forever.

– Cat being impressed that Van Gogh cut off his ear with only one arm just feels like an inferior version of “Birds swim south for the winter? How do they breathe?”.

– “Hand, pick up the ball!” and Kryten hitting that jar with the pencil were probably the funniest bits of the episode for me.

– Holly largely isn’t very funny here, but he got a couple of good moments I guess. “He’s back. Kicking bottom, or what?” is pure cringe though.

– Craig does an excellent job of selling Lister’s despondency, insecurity and frustration here, even if it better serves the drama than the comedy.

– The nanobot explanation is quite convoluted, considering they both turned Red Dwarf into a planetoid and also used what must have been 0.00000000000000001% of the total mass of Red Dwarf to constuct a microscopic version of Red Dwarf for themselves. Makes it seem like the nanos could have made their nano-Dwarf and vamoosed without noticeably damaging the main ship at all, and yet they destroyed Red Dwarf anyway for some reason, the jerks.

– Both stretches in deep sleep combined, how many hundreds of years has it been since Back to Reality? It’s quite a shaggy dog story, that they have to backtrack their entire search. Then again I suppose they haven’t actually been trying to chase Red Dwarf since Series VI.

– Chloe noted in the commentary that she liked Kryten being horrid to Kochanski, and this made me realise that the writers probably weren’t intending for it to be so one sided, that it was planned to be a Lister/Rimmer-esque back and forth banter kind of deal. Shame that didn’t really work out.

– The nanobots are way too OP, and we haven’t even got to Series VIII yet. For the end of this episode only, the Dwarfers have infinite alchemy powers, and they can travel anywhere in space-time at will. It’s pretty incredible.

– On the subject of the time drive, this is the third episode in a row where they’ve needed to work around the issue of not having the time to get to where they need to go, and they didn’t even consider using the time drive. Idiots.

[Stilianides]

Doug talked in the Series VIII script book about being told that they needed to have a woman as part of the crew in order to get funding for the movie, but I wonder how accurate that advice was. Were stacks of cinemagoers really going to hand over their cash to see Chloe Annett (lovely as she is)?

They could have hired some absolute scorchers to play Kochanski and a couple of Homo Sapienoids anyway and included them in the promotional material.

That way, the dynamic of the show wouldn’t have been damaged so much in VII. I just thought I’d mention that now, before returning to the subject of ‘Bad decisions made with an eye on the non-existent movie’ when we talk about Series VIII next week.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

It never feels like good disabled representation to have the disability taken away so quickly like this, and it’s surprising to get that story from a disabled writer. I know it’s not exactly the prerogative of a comedy to deliver morals, but Nanarchy does leave you with the impression that if the nanobot plan hadn’t worked out, Lister would have just been justifiably depressed forever.

It is only right now that it occurs to me there’s two potential scenes we could have had with Lister only having one arm and we got neither

1. The funny version of this scene is Lister having a little moment with Holly having not seen him in years, and being upset about his arm.  Punchline is Holly then says something like “how do you think I feel, I’m only a head”

2. The more sombre version of this scene is Lister having a proper one-to-one with Rimmer as now he is a step closer to understanding how he felt for 5 years (ignoring Bodyswap).  There’s a real bonding moment there where Rimmer shows a little sympathy and gives him some good advice.  Think BTL observation dome but roles reversed.

[Rudolph]

Both stretches in deep sleep combined, how many hundreds of years has it been since Back to Reality? It’s quite a shaggy dog story, that they have to backtrack their entire search. Then again I suppose they haven’t actually been trying to chase Red Dwarf since Series VI.

I’ve often wondered if it was another two-hundred years journey back. But it’s only last week that Starbug got a 300% speed increase to its engines. But this is VII, so that’s probably already been forgotten.

If it did take them two-hundred years, let’s hope time doesn’t run concurrently between dimensions, as her Lister, Cat and Kryten would be long gone.

Speaking of Kochanski, I think my big problem was making her a posh type. You struggle to see what she could’ve possibly seen in Lister in the first place. Alright, he’s got a roguish charm, but they have nothing in common. Grogan’s Kochanski felt a bit more ‘working class girl done good’, with her own cheeky, flirty sense of humour. I really can’t imagine the Annett Kochanski going down the disco like we see in Balance of Power.

[Unrumble]

Nanarchy – Well, I didn’t hate this, but it’s just such a… nothing. It’s half emotional continuation of the events of Epideme, and half hurriedly resolving the Series VI-VII storyline

– Craig does an excellent job of selling Lister’s despondency, insecurity and frustration here, even if it better serves the drama than the comedy. 

Yes, reservations about plot, characterisation etc. aside, I think Craig’s acting is fantastic from waking up minus an arm on Epideme, through Nanarchy. 

Feel like he’s on the edge of corpsing during the dunking biccie scene though. 

[Stilianides]

Speaking of Kochanski, I think my big problem was making her a posh type. You struggle to see what she could’ve possibly seen in Lister in the first place. Alright, he’s got a roguish charm, but they have nothing in common. Grogan’s Kochanski felt a bit more ‘working class girl done good’, with her own cheeky, flirty sense of humour. I really can’t imagine the Annett Kochanski going down the disco like we see in Balance of Power.

Yes, I think there’s a lot of truth to this.

I’ve also always felt that there are plenty of similarities between this Kochanski, and the Kochanski of the American pilot. Doug may have complained that the latter was “fundamentally unlikeable”, but the plot of Series VII demands that Chloe Annett’s version does her fair share of moaning. She’s also shown to have no sense of humour, and there are precious few moments when she and Lister seem like a believable couple.

[Stabbim]

Speaking of Kochanski, I think my big problem was making her a posh type. You struggle to see what she could’ve possibly seen in Lister in the first place. Alright, he’s got a roguish charm, but they have nothing in common. Grogan’s Kochanski felt a bit more ‘working class girl done good’, with her own cheeky, flirty sense of humour. I really can’t imagine the Annett Kochanski going down the disco like we see in Balance of Power.

And for that matter, I struggle to see what Lister would see in her.  Grogan Kochanski, it makes all the sense that Lister would get hung up on her and What Might Have Been (and, in later episodes, what was).  Annett Kochanski calls up thoughts of the sort of people Lister’s mocking and dismissing in his “WINE” speech from Stasis Leak.  She’d blow him off and he’d be relieved to fall off her radar and leave her to her WINE.

And that’s not inherently a bad character concept: there’s even a lot of comedy potential in the anti-climax of Lister finally “getting the girl” only to have the reality clash with the dream in every possible way.  Just jarring, relative to what we’d been shown in previous episodes.

[She was also stuck effectively replacing Rimmer, which was probably impossible and certainly unenviable.]

[Dave]

She’d blow him off and he’d be relieved

[Loathsome American]

There are definitely ways to make the class-based “opposites attract” trope believable, because you see it all the time:

a.) They have an immediate chemistry or spark or sexual tension 

b.) There is a conquest/slumming element for one or both parties but they eventually become emotionally attached

c.) One or both parties is putting up a facade to act a certain way according to class, and the other party draws out the “real” person inside 

But we don’t really get any of a.) between the characters (or actors), b.) would maybe make us think poorly of either Lister or Kochanski, and c.) doesn’t seem to be the case because Lister and Kochanski seem genuinely comfortable with who they are. 

[Flap Jack]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I wish I could pinpoint at what point my attitude towards VIII (and to a lesser extent VII) changed.

I was 10 in 1997 so VII and then later VIII were the first Red Dwarf I saw air.  They’re also the first series I had in full on video.  I had Six of the Best and Smeg Ups/Outs but not much else.  So I watched VII and VIII a lot and being 10/12 years old I wasn’t as critical and really enjoyed them.  Also had a lot less older material to reference against.

At some point that attitude changed and I ended up where everyone else has, being really critical of both series for different reasons.

The one thing I will say, is that I do tend to agree with John Hoare on the “at least VIII is funny” side of things.  Because it is funny at times, it’s trying to be funny.  It has jokes.  They might be broad and unDwarfy but there’s plenty of comedy in there. 

Back in 2009 I led a 24hour Red Dwarf re-watch on TOS on the run up to Back to Earth, finishing about half an hour before episode one aired.  now, it probably didn’t help that by the time of getting to VII I’d been awake well over 24hours, but it really really dragged.  And I like lots of VII. Tikka is a stunning episode.  I like what Ouroboros does to Lister’s character.  Blue is a fantastic reflection of Lister and Rimmer’s relationship.

But by god was it tough to get through at the time.  As soon as VIII started up, whilst everyone that had made it that far was basically not looking forward to it, we all generally felt relief from how heavy VII is and really just enjoyed the fact VIII is light hearted and full of laughs.  Dumb stupid laughs, and many still open to criticism.  But laughs non-the-less.

So it’ll be interesting to see how people react in this re-watch, whether two weeks of VII will be enough to give VIII a bit of lift and allow people to find something they enjoy.

It’ll be hard to look past all the stupid sex/sexism/sexual assault “jokes” but I think there could be stuff there people pick up on that gives them a little kick.

[Warbodog]

At the time, I definitely preferred VIII. VII had been this dark spot that had set the tone (or at least the look) for things like Red Dwarf Night over the last two years when I’d been catching up on much better Red Dwarf on video, so it was a relief to have something literally and figuratively lighter replace it.

For historical context, VIII began broadcast three days after the end of series II remastered. That had been my first time seeing that older series, and at the time I considered the early years to be much weaker than the mid period (tsk, kids), so the new series having old-style uniforms, bunkroom-style scenes and Remastered-style effects smoothed the 10-year gap more than if I’d gone straight in from any of III to VI.

My opinion of VIII declined significantly towards the end of its broadcast. I never really decided whether I “preferred” VII or VIII in an overall sense, until presumably this rewatch, but VIII definitely has more bottom of the barrel episodes.

[International Debris]

I’m not sure exactly when I realised I don’t like VII much, I know back before VIII was broadcast I considered VII my least favourite of the ones I had on video, and I know my opinion has decreased ever since, down to my rather strong reaction against Byte 1 this time around, but I’m not sure when the exact tipping point to dislike was.

VIII I knew something was off on first watch. Jokes that didn’t land, performances that felt wrong, the whole setup. I still liked it, but it was clearly the worst even at the age of 14. I did have an “at least it’s big, bold and has jokes” response when a friend and I did a complete series run after all the DVDs were out, but the last time I watched it I realised just how much I fucking detest it. Poor as a lot of VII is, at least it feels like Red Dwarf, even if it’s not very good Red Dwarf. There’s sci-fi, atmosphere, character stuff. VIII’s complete abandoning of plots, setting and character just makes it so un-Dwarf that I can’t bring myself to find much to like at all. There are good gags, but not enough to make me put it above VII. Probably. We’ll see, I suppose.

[Unrumble]

I was 10 in 1997 so VII and then later VIII were the first Red Dwarf I saw air.  They’re also the first series I had in full on video. So I watched VII and VIII a lot and being 10/12 years old I wasn’t as critical and really enjoyed them.  At some point that attitude changed and I ended up where everyone else has, being really critical of both series for different reasons.

This is literally my experience, down to the age. Are you… me? And if so, who’s eating this chicken etc. etc. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Spiderman Meme

[Dave]

Spiderman Meme

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

oh FFS! I was trying to think of something Red Dwarf related.  The two Rimmer’s at the end of Confidence and Paranoia didn’t feel right and there isn’t much of two Craig Charles on screen in the Corrie Scene.  

Now I think about it, Cat in Camille would have worked great.  But this … this is Can of Worms finally worth something.

[Moonlight]

I first got into Red Dwarf around age 11, and at the time I found VII’s filmic look and the feature-length Xtended VIII episodes to give me a small fix of feeling like I’m watching that Red Dwarf movie I still foolishly thought could get made. I definitely remember going through a period where VII and VIII were my favorites for this reason. VII was also the last series of the originals that I got on DVD, so it held a sort of mythic quality to me as I’d only seen it once before (kinda in the way Series I and II held a mythic quality for a little bit as I’d only seen from around III onward the first time). Turns out I had never seen one of the VII episodes on my first watch either.

I am sad to say that the last BBC episode of Red Dwarf I saw for the first time was Duct Soup. And I probably liked it a lot.

Children are fucking idiots, said the grown-ass adult who likes Can of Worms just fine despite its enormous structural flaws.

[Author]

Posts