Refresh For The Memory: Series VIII Byte 2

[Ian Symes]

You asked for it. Ahead of the forthcoming 35th anniversary poll, the G&T community is embarking on a big old rewatch, tackling half a series (or one feature length special) per week. This is your designated thread to make notes, share observations and start pondering your rankings.

This week, we’re watching KRYTIE TV, PETE (PART ONE), PETE (PART TWO) and ONLY THE GOOD. Have at it!

Previous threads:

Series 1 Byte 1
Series 1 Byte 2
Series 2 Byte 1
Series 2 Byte 2
Series III Byte 1
Series III Byte 2
Series IV Byte 1
Series IV Byte 2
Series V Byte 1
Series V Byte 2
Series VI Byte 1
Series VI Byte 2
Series VII Byte 1
Series VII Byte 2
Series VIII Byte 1

Topic

[Unrumble]

They find a device which exerts full control over the space-time continuum, and Kryten just starts confidently pressing random buttons and pointing at people. Was he always like this and the better surrounding material just made it less obvious?

Even guilt-free Spare Head 2 thought he should take the time to learn how the time drive worked.

Guess he’s always been guilty of jabbing it too hard 

[Dave]

Only The Good…

I don’t know if it’s just the context of watching this after Krytie TV and Pete, but somehow this didn’t feel quite as awful as I remembered.

A lot of the incidental scenes and gags are actually pretty good, and again suggest that there would have been some mileage in just playing the prison setup fairly straight for a couple of episodes, rather than always having to have a big sci-fi plot intrude.

The Rimmer-Lister cell banter is fine, Mac is again good in the scenes he’s in, the sketch with Cat trying to get beaten up is funny (until it all goes a bit GAY PANIC), “you’re gonna squeeze their rolls?” always gets a laugh, and Tony Slattery’s dispensing machine is actually really good (and in retrospect set the tone for the vending machines in the Dave era).

It’s only really once the main plot finally gets going (with only about eight minutes of the episode left) that it all falls apart. Although it does that in a big way. All the mirror-universe stuff comes out of absolutely nowhere, the plotting is all over the place (with the machine breaking and working and breaking according to the needs of the story – see also stuff like Tikka and Skipper) and it’s all clearly hastily written and cobbled together without any plan.

Plus that cliffhanger. Not to beat a dead horse, but it was a shit ending in the first place, and the fact that it was effectively Red Dwarf’s ending for a decade only made it hurt all the more.

I think there might still be a lot of stuff we don’t know about the making of Red Dwarf VIII, because the extent to which it’s obviously cobbled together and almost semi-improvised in places makes me feel like it was a much more troubled and last-minute production than we already know about. It’s the only way I can see how such unfinished and incompetently-made episodes could make it to the screen.

But given the quality of the rest of this series, Only The Good might actually be the second best episode of VIII.

[Warbodog]

Only the Good…? More like “Only the Bad…”!

Like Stoke Me a Clipper before it, this was the episode from this series that cleary wasn’t the worst, but I always had a personal grudge against and just hated. It wasn’t all down to it being a rotten finale, since I remember going into it with low expectations after having belatedly realised during Pete Part 2 what a shitshow series VIII was. I never liked any of it.

But time is a healer, it’s no longer the final episode ever, and I’m able to appreciate it as just some more shit Red Dwarf.

– Got to love that profound ellipsis in the title, like the Latin in Pete. At least ‘Krytie TV’ was upfront.

– I don’t really see the evidence for quinn’s time jump theory (though I like the headcanon), but I figure at least a few months have passed for Hollister to be so calm with Rimmer, optimistically assuming realistic characterisation.

– Rimmer’s career talk with Hollister and his venting in the corridor is a nice “mirror” of what his dead self learned from the dead captain’s notes during series 1. Would have been nice to have had more of that full circle / second chance stuff since Cassandra, but it’s too late now.

– “The nanobots must have resurrected you too” continues to pointlessly overcomplicate the nanobots. Did they resurrect all the people they’re going to meet…?

– More audience-misleading head nods a la Krytie TV’s guitar strings amnesty.

– Yeah, that vending machine interaction’s not bad, even if I don’t really love that stuff in the Dave era. More a Series VI Rimmer than a Classic Rimmer, but I’ll take it.

– The “rock” “gag” has always represented the peak of FUCK OFF for me. The mirror opposite of “I’d prefer chicken.” Update: “Duel” is no better.

– The period scene has a similar feel to Krytie TV, but probably funnier. The audience reaction to the tampon hasn’t come very far since the time of The Young Ones, which I suppose is a point they’re making. I have to admit, I was never sure how much of an innuendo was intended with “come on, open it.”

– Funniest bit: “Cell inspection in ten minutes.” Rest of the scene is rubbish.

– Kryten’s cackling letter is his most bizarre characterisation so far, which is saying something.

– I was grateful for the absurd character Big Meat bringing back some of that ironic enjoyment from Pete Part 1. You’ve got to laugh, haven’t you.

– I understood that Cat was trying to get beaten up, but back then I didn’t get what he was jutting his face out for. I thought it was some kind of “I smite thee” face, idk.

– I felt the absence of a real plot around 20 minutes in, then they overcompensate with a rapid catch-up and maybe the most ridiculous solution since Ouroboros, I’ve lost track of the stupidity.

– Of course they’re able to immediately invent something that makes Kochanski’s hypothetical thought experiment a reality. Kryten figured it out!

– Can’t be bothered with the mirror universe. Unoriginal idea, poorly executed, without either the internal logic or good gags that would justify it. Backwards was a good comparison.

– The ending is a worse Out of Time, then the real ending is just terrible. Maybe Rimmer died, I never really cared. I’d see when they made the next series in a couple of years.

[Warbodog]

Only the Good
If I remember correctly, this was shown in some graveyard slot on a Sunday. 
Yes and no – it was a Monday, as the usual Thursday slot was taken by some golf. But it was the usual 9pm time.

I think it was during a school holiday week too, at least I remember still processing it in the car the next day on the way to Waterworld.

[Ian Symes]

Just looked it up – it was Easter Monday.

[cwickham]

Only the Good premiere: Monday 5 April (bumped out of the usual Thursday slot due to sports)

Only the Good narrative repeat: Friday 16 April (also bumped out of the usual slot because of sport)

Only the Good second repeat: Wednesday 21 April (additional repeat to make up for both the premiere + narrative repeat being out of their usual slots)

1999 viewers would not have been able to see VIII scheduled weekly even during the October-November repeat run, which began on Thursday 9 September; after Pete (Part One) was aired on Thursday 14 October, Part Two was not shown until Friday 29th, and finally Only the Good… was shown for the last time on BBC primetime on Friday 5th November. There was never a BBC airing of VIII where every episode was shown once a week, on the same day each week.

[Dave]

They were moving it around in the schedule to give other shows a chance.

[Flap Jack]

Pete Part II – And now the saga continuums AND NOW THE SAGA CONTINUUMS…  yeah, there isn’t really that much of a quality distinction between the 2 parts of this story. This is slightly better than Part I on the basis that it actually focuses on the main plot (Archie aside), but it’s worse for containing the more infamously bad scenes like the tediously drawn out descriptions of Pete’s bodily fluids and the “he’s behind me, isn’t he?” scene. Plus, we’ve traded Ackerman for Kill Crazy, which I have decided is not to the episode’s benefit. Thankfully it is Homicide Enthusiast Kill Crazy this time, but his bits are pretty weak, and Jake Wood is no Graham McTavish. What probably makes Part II overall worse than Part I for me is that while on paper the plot is more focused, in practice the whole duration is just wasting time talking about stopping Pete and repeatedly losing the time wand, until they eventually do what they should have done at the beginning and zap him back to a bird. This is a 2 parter but it would struggle to be a 1-parter without feeling padded.

Still better than Back in the Red though.

– It’s pretty telling that absolutely nothing from the Lister and Rimmer side of Pete Part I was considered important enough to include in the “Last time on Red Dwarf” recap, not even the part where they meet Birdman. It’s almost like everything they did in that episode was a pointless waste of time.

– I should have mentioned this for Part I, but Rimmer telling everyone to follow him only for them to all go the opposite way is not a bad gag. Almost too subtle in its execution for this series.

– As others have mentioned, there’s absolutely no reason why Kryten would throw Bob the time wand, and it’s baffling to watch. Robert Llewellyn says on the commentary this was intended as a Jurassic Park homage, but even if true that’s not an excuse. Kryten could and should have ended the issue right there (or even earlier than that, to be honest), but he didn’t because he wanted to do a film reference? It’s just frustrating.

– Following on from that, why exactly does Pete eat Bob? (And whole, too.) Do T-rexes enjoy the taste of small robots? Him going for Kryten I can excuse because Kryten was noisily distracting him, but Bob I can’t understand.

– Big question that looms over this episode: why don’t they just kill Pete? It’s a dinosaur, not a fucking Terminator. Get the bazookoids or something.

– Incredibly lucky that Bob operating the time wand from inside Pete reanimates the crew, and doesn’t, say, immediately kill everyone. Although maybe Bob immediately became an expert with the time wand and knows what he’s doing… somehow.

– Where did they get a whole cow from? Surely Red Dwarf doesn’t have livestock.

– As much as it must have been a huge money sink, I honestly don’t think Pete looks too bad, especially the animatronic version. (The cartoon dinosaur shaped hole in the wall can fuck off though.)

– Why is it that Rimmer and Lister are brought into the Captain’s office alone to be scolded over what happened with Pete and instructed on what to do next? Kryten, Cat and Kochanski were responsible for like 95% of that, and I know they get told off off-screen, but they should have been in there with them. Rimmer and Lister have literally never used the time wand, so why are they the ones being given the responsibility of operating it? Give it to Kryten, or get Kryten to teach a military type person who isn’t a prisoner how to use it. (I know Kryten obviously sucks at it given he caused the whole problem, but still, he has some idea.)

– I understand the dinosaur is on his mind, but Hollister seems very casual about the discovery of a device that can bend the fabric of space-time to the user’s will. “Just use it to turn it back into a sparrow, whatever”. What a boring guy.

– 2 JMC personnel are concussed “by pieces of carrot the size of tree trunks”. How? Does a big creature eating carrots magic them into gigantic carrots?

– At one point I asked in the “Jokes you don’t/didn’t get” thread ‘why does Lister zap Hollister in the “See you in ten minutes?” scene?’, and I did not get any responses. I’m still none the wiser. Obviously it’s there to pad the runtime, but it would be nice if there was even a hint of any logic to it.

– “He’s behind me isn’t he?” is eyeroll-inducing cliche, and it isn’t even well executed. For that comedy set up to work, the target of the mean jokes needs to walk in when the joker is mid-flow, meaning they definitely heard the insult. In this case Hollister walks in during a pause in Rimmer’s dialogue, giving Lister ample opportunity to just say “oh hey, the Captain’s here. Hi Dennis!”, but he goes for the tortured “but you do respect him, don’t you, Rimmer?” carry-on anyway. As Andrew Ellard observed on Twitter just the other day, farce doesn’t work if you have to force it.

– The Archie sub-plot (or rather, the Archie 2 scenes) feels as out of place as it literally is, and it feels especially awkward to establish Archie going missing and so quickly have him show up, and then he factors into nothing else. As an aside though, it’s oddly sweet that Kryten cared so much about affirming his identity as a man that he made his own penis. Is Kryten an inadvertant trans masc icon? In this essay I will-

– “Because now, like all men, you have absolutely no control over your penis” is a groaner for like 5 different reasons, but at least they remembered to give Kochanski A Joke. Doesn’t always happen.

– The Canaries sequence is the most obvious padding, because why are they taking a shuttlecraft (?) as a group to search for Pete, when Hollister already told them that Pete is sedated in the cargo bay? All they needed to do was stroll up to him while he’s sleeping and zap him, but oh no, we have to randomly wander around while pointing guns at things for a bit so that Baxter and Kill Crazy have a chance to steal the time wand.

– Pretty silly that Rimmer is so determined not to be a grass when the potential consequences of not getting the time wand back are so serious. In Krytie TV he was willing to get beaten up for the chance of a shorter sentence, in Pete Part I he was more frightened of being beaten up for losing a basketball game (???) than of having to serve a longer sentence in much worse conditions, and now he’d rather get a worse sentence and potentially get killed by a dinosaur than get beaten up. It’s all over the place.

– Credit where it’s due, the delayed beating is some well done physical comedy. (Although the bit from the opening where they’re propelled waaaay to the back wall is pushing it too far.)

– The fact that Lister so easily learns how to use the time wand without any instruction makes Hollister seem pathetic for not being able to use it. Maybe the time wand only works if it detects the fingerprint of a protagonist.

– Rimmer for no good reason tells Lister to destroy the time wand, when he knows that Baxter and Kill Crazy are still gorillas. The desperation of stretching the episode out for a few more minutes is incredibly apparent. And once again, it just doesn’t occur to them to try killing the dinosaur.

– I’m glad that Lister and Rimmer weren’t being sent to The Hole at the end, because Baby Pete wasn’t (directly) their fault. Kryten got off so easy in all this.

– Final scene is so-so, but I like that Hollister predicted Lister and Rimmer’s responses with his cards.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

a shuttlecraft (?)

   

[Dave]

Where did they get a whole cow from?

Nanobots.

[Dave]

2 JMC personnel are concussed “by pieces of carrot the size of tree trunks”. How? Does a big creature eating carrots magic them into gigantic carrots?

I think that one is a joke about people thinking there are always chunks of carrot in vomit.

[Warbodog]

Where did they get a whole cow from? Surely Red Dwarf doesn’t have livestock.

It’s clearly dead (well, it’s clearly not real, but let’s pretend), so frozen butcher supplies. Or maybe there’s a farm or petting zoo on this new Red Dwarf, like the squirrels in the botanical gardens, and Kryten killed it, is that what you want?

why are they taking a shuttlecraft (?) as a group to search for Pete, when Hollister already told them that Pete is sedated in the cargo bay?  All they needed to do was stroll up to him while he’s sleeping and zap him, but oh no, we have to randomly wander around while pointing guns at things for a bit

To match up with deleted scenes from Cassandra.

As much as it must have been a huge money sink, I honestly don’t think Pete looks too bad, especially the animatronic version.

I never thought VIII’s CGI looked bad by 90s TV standards. What got me was the dino head pushing into soft fabric that they try to pass off as metal. I pinpoint that as the exact moment the penny dropped for me about series VIII in general, then the episode continued of course.

Final scene is so-so, but I like that Hollister predicted Lister and Rimmer’s responses with his cards.

Lee and Herring did a bit on that trope, coincidentally(?) one month after Pete (I didn’t remember TMWRNJ series 2 overlapping with half of Red Dwarf VIII, but that was very likely a factor in my diminishing enthusiasm as they immediately became my favourite new show).

[Stabbim]

Rimmer kneeing the grim reaper in the groin is too ridiculous for me to hate.  And lucks into a long-distance call back of sorts to Future Echoes.

And all those days of watching Whose Line Is It, Anyway? reruns on Comedy Central gave me enough of a soft spot for Tony Slattery to carry over to his turn as the voice of the vending machine.

But even I won’t try to argue that it’s a “good” ending per se.

I liked the idea, on paper, of a resurrected crew and a repopulated Red Dwarf, but even in the best case scenario I figured that would mean the end of Red Dwarf’s narrative.  One way or another it couldn’t last and by Only The Good… it was time for them to go.  Lot of holes in the “logic” of the crew leaving The Boys (and Girl) From The Dwarf behind to die and writing themselves out any future episodes of the show (which, for a long time, there weren’t), but “logic” had about as much involvement with Series VIII as Rob Grant did.

Ah well.

[cwickham]

“See ya in ten minutes?” was the ending to the originally planned one-part version (and it does *seem* to make more sense as an episode ending); my interpretation has been Lister activates it by accident and they get stuck in a loop, but I can’t be arsed to check if that’s borne out by the script book right now

[Flap Jack]

Hmm, OK, Interesting. It’s still absolutely baffling execution in its final form – Lister does it on purpose, he only zaps Hollister not himself, they’re not stuck in a loop – but at least it came from somewhere.

[Moonlight]

– I understood that Cat was trying to get beaten up, but back then I didn’t get what he was jutting his face out for. I thought it was some kind of “I smite thee” face, idk.

Surely he’s just trying to get punched in the face so he’s sticking out that part of him.

– Where did they get a whole cow from? Surely Red Dwarf doesn’t have livestock.

That prop is so horrendously bad I was always confused growing up about the intention of whether it’s supposed to be fake animal bait in-universe, or is just a papier-mâché trash pile.

– 2 JMC personnel are concussed “by pieces of carrot the size of tree trunks”. How? Does a big creature eating carrots magic them into gigantic carrots?

Giving VIII the benefit of the doubt is a bad idea, but I would assume it’s just giant slabs of half-digested carrot stuck together. Which is cartoony but you don’t need to assume the literal carrots themselves became giant.

Not that this would make much less sense than Back in the Red.

[Flap Jack]

Dave-era Rimmer watching back the security footage of Series VIII like

[Warbodog]

Surely he’s just trying to get punched in the face so he’s sticking out that part of him.

I know, it was just one of those things I randomly didn’t get at 13, which stick in the mind more when they’re in episodes I didn’t really rewatch after that time. Maybe that’s why we gave the genuinely nonsensical things more of a pass back then. See you in ten minutes will probably make sense when I’m grown up.

[Stilianides]

Only the Good…

I rank this much lower than either Cassandra and Krytie TV, as it features many of the plotting issues that have become a recurring theme in Doug’s Dwarf. While I’m sure there were some production issues for Series VIII, there are 60+ minutes of deleted scenes on the DVD (and additional scenes that were edited back into Back in the Red). I don’t think most of the problems were financial, rather than they were down to Doug simply not having a clear idea of where the scripts were going.

Mac MacDonald and Chris are both very hammy in the opening scene, and Tony Slattery is then also incredibly over the top. It’s a shame that they didn’t bring Tony Hawks back.

There is some comedy value to the ‘Have a fantastic period’ idea. It’s not exactly subtle, and VIII overdoes this kind of thing, but I can understand why it gets such a roaring laugh from the studio audience.

Norman shows that he could still be funny with the right material. The Brylcreem gag, for example.

The Lister/Rimmer Duel conversation isn’t hilarious, but it’s inoffensive and it’s a relief to just have a relatively normal moment featuring those two characters.

The hooch prank feels like a very un-Kryten thing to do. It’s comedy at the expense of character and, in some ways, Doug should simply have written a different sitcom containing some of these ideas.

That said, I like, “You’re gonna squeeze their rolls.” It’s just a shame that it’s followed by the painful Cat-trying-to-get-himself-hospitalized sequence.

It’s ridiculous that the microbe situation is only discovered very suddenly after 20 minutes. Then, less than a couple of minutes later, the ship has been evacuated, Kryten has analyzed the microbe and he has built a machine to create a mirror universe?!? Doug’s Dwarf frequently contains too many ideas crammed into too short a time, but this is preposterous.

Kryten’s suggestion that it will take 20 minutes to fix this magic machine is one of his most insultingly stupid “best guess” moments.

The Rimmer/Hollister interaction is hideously overacted and, with 5 minutes of the episode remaining to save the ship, Doug could have used the time to focus on what should be a dramatic section of the story.

Rimmer kicking the metaphorical Death in the balls is a fittingly throwaway ending to a series full of disposable moments.

The alternate ending of the crew repeating the name of the formula is pretty terrible imo. There ought to be a sense of peril and urgency, and yet the crew are lounging about without a care in the world. The actual final moment of Kryten waving goodbye might have worked, but a lot prior to that needed a rethink.

[Flap Jack]

Only the Good… – Easily the second best episode of the series, and that is extremely sad. This actually has similar structural problems to Pete Part I, where the plot doesn’t kick in until practically the end of the episode. In fact, it’s probably even worse, because this doesn’t have a Part II (yet still obnoxiously ends on a cliffhanger) and the chameleonic microbes are only seeded briefly at the very beginning, compared to the Kochanski/Cat/Kryten team finding the time wand on a Canary mission. And yet, despite this, the material leading up to it is noticeably stronger than in Pete. Highlights for me were the Rimmer/dispensing machine conflict, Craig and Chris’s drunk acting, the Cat/Big Meat scene (although I could have done without the fat jokes), and Ackerman, who completes his streak as the secret weapon of Series VIII (unlike Kill Crazy, who was good in my memory and in concept but turned out to be a huge disappointment in this rewatch). There is still plenty of crap in this episode of course, but hey, that’s Series VIII for you.

– It sure was convenient that the chameleonic microbes waited until Talia was clear of the escape pod and everyone was looking the other way before they destroyed it. Are the microbes intelligent and treating this as a stealth mission? I guess they must be, or they surely would have destroyed the escape pod long before it got to Red Dwarf.

– The fat jokes against Hollister are incredibly tiresome. I’m not saying they can’t do any, but maybe come up with something else for episode 8 of 8? Does Hollister genuinely have no other character traits you can draw upon?

– The nanobots resurrecting Talia is some extremely misguided plot hole filling (just say the escape pod had a stasis booth on it???). The implication is the nanobots have been hanging around on Red Dwarf this entire time, ready to resurrect any corpses that come along. Not only would those little guys’ superpowers have been KIND OF useful at various points in the series, but their involvement in this episode highlights a serious missed opportunity – how, HOW, do you establish two different sentient ultra-powerful microscopic beings, and not make their epic battle the climax of the story?! Good vs. Evil, Robotic vs. Organic, Creation vs. Destruction? Come on!

– Rimmer tries to shame Hollister for potentially cheating on his wife, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count as adultery if your spouse has been dead for 3 million years (and Hollister has too, technically). Plus, as far as Rimmer knows, the Hollisters had an open marriage. Mind your business, Rimmer.

– Bit harsh that the dispensing machine requires direct payment when vending machines have never worked like that previously in the show, so in a way Rimmer was righting a wrong by stealing from it.

– So after our heroes got the BS sentence of 2 years in the brig for looking at the crew’s files, now they’ve been given an inexplicably shitty version of probation, where they have to stay in prison but just do extra work?

– Kryten seems like a cheapskate for gifting just a single tampon, but then again, it is prison. Maybe he had to trade 10 packs of cigarettes for that.

– I think Kryten pretending to whisper his revenge plan to Kochanski but actually just making unintelligible noises is meant to be a joke, but it just comes off as weird.

– “Cell inspection in 10 minutes” is probably the funniest Holly gag of the series. Not a high bar to clear, but still.

– The Brylcream gag was decent too, so of course they have to ruin it by immediately explaining it.

– Kryten getting both Lister and Rimmer in trouble with the warden, and potentially killed by Baxter, as revenge for being mildly embarassed in front of one (1) person is absurdly disproportionate and out of character. Rimmer didn’t even do anything!

– Maybe it happened too fast to think of it, but Lister could have just reported Kryten for stealing and planting the hooch, right? He literally left a note confessing to it.

– Who knew that all they needed was a little motivation, and they would realise that they could very easily escape prison via the non-existent security in the brig medi-bay?

– Big Meat actively identifies himself as evil. The characterisation in this series is on another level.

– There’s no logical reason why Holly had to be left behind as everyone else evacuates Red Dwarf, but he stayed behind anyway. Accidentally kind of sweet.

– The way they go “oh, if we could go to a parallel universe where the antidote exists, that would solve our problem” and then it immediately cuts to them having successfully invented and built an interdimensional portal generator is most probably the most amazing plot leap in the show’s history. Great stuff.

– The mirror universe is woefully underdeveloped. The fact Rimmer takes the place of their Rimmer, some things becoming opposite when they pass through the portal and others not, the vague and arbitrary ways “opposite” is actually applied, the absence of Lister, Kryten and Holly (and Rimmer, arguably) counterparts. If done well the mirror universe should have been the whole episode, not just the end of it.

– The multiple misleads about Talia are eyeroll-inducing, and ultimately feel like a waste of time. The mission is quite urgent, right? If Rimmer is worried nobody will believe him if he tells them the truth, he could still say “oh, I’m suddenly feeling much better. No time to talk, Talia, I’ve got something important to discuss in the lab”.

– I know it’s just a word, but Danny’s seemingly effortless pronounciation of the antidote name is pretty satisfying.

– I think we’re supposed to see it as a cruel twist of fate that the name of the antidote turns into the name of the virus, but my more immediate reaction was “how exactly was Rimmer expecting to create the antidote just by knowing the name of it?”.

– Here Rimmer being the highest ranking person left on the ship automatically makes him Captain. Thank goodness that dispensing machine wasn’t around in Series 1 to tell him that, or he would have been insufferably smug.

– Although certain details of the ending (the grim reaper, “THE SMEG IT IS”) are crap, and entering a hiatus after a cliffhanger is crap, on the whole the final sequence is effectively dramatic. Series VIII could have used more of that.

So yeah, Series VIII. It’s bad. It’s just such a waste to get all these talented performers back on Red Dwarf and back in front of an audience, and the best you can get them to do is… this. It’s bad enough to make this the last taste of Red Dwarf in everyone’s mouths for the next decade, but I think the one who got the shortest end of the stick was Chloë Annett. She deserved the chance to be a proper co-lead in a comedy series, not a supporting player who gets to mainly deliver generic lines that could be given to anyone, play the victim of cliched sexist humour, and showcase her character being treated like an object. Chloë Annett deserves the chance to come back to the show and play Kochanski under better circumstances. In fact, given his recent online embarrassments, I’d even be willing to give “replace Chris Barrie with Chloë Annett” another try.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

– It sure was convenient that the chameleonic microbes waited until Talia was clear of the escape pod and everyone was looking the other way before they destroyed it. Are the microbes intelligent and treating this as a stealth mission? I guess they must be, or they surely would have destroyed the escape pod long before it got to Red Dwarf. 

The microbe is chameleonic. It is the escape pod. It turned into an escape pod, and Talia escaped in it. It’s stupid but it’s not all that vague.

[Unrumble]

[loadoftottnumb]

Oh god the Chameleonic Microbe was basically a Polymorph? So Can of Worms was Polymorph 4? That doesn’t improve my opinion of it. 

[Warbodog]

It sure was convenient that the chameleonic microbes waited until Talia was clear of the escape pod and everyone was looking the other way before they destroyed it.

The ‘six hours later’ caption before the pod suddenly corroded made me think it was another “part of their molecular process” situation, but it could have just been another of their randomly specific time stamps.

The implication is the nanobots have been hanging around on Red Dwarf this entire time, ready to resurrect any corpses that come along.

I thought the implication was that the nanobots were flying around local space on a resurrection kick, but the whole thing seems too vague or confusingly explained.

HOW, do you establish two different sentient ultra-powerful microscopic beings, and not make their epic battle the climax of the story?!

Great idea. Good luck to anyone trying to fan “edit” this into reality.

The multiple misleads about Talia are eyeroll-inducing, and ultimately feel like a waste of time.

I always thought snogging your sister should be higher up the gag than snogging a nun, but this is Red Dwarf after all.

Ackerman, who completes his streak as the secret weapon of Series VIII

He was really enjoyable within the context, and Mac/Hollister was great half the time when he was being natural. The rogues gallery of Kill Crazy, Birdman, Big Meat and possibly Mex is fun for pisstakes, since the series is beyond salvaging anyway (Cassandra excepted).

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

<Blockquote> The nanobots resurrecting Talia is some extremely misguided plot hole filling (just say the escape pod had a stasis booth on it???). The implication is the nanobots have been hanging around on Red Dwarf this entire time, ready to resurrect any corpses that come along </blockquote> 

as Warbodog said, the implication is the nanobots are out there resurrecting other people too. Which frankly is more of a concern as given enough time they’ll have basically kick started the entire human race again.

Though perhaps that resolves the series viii cliff hanger. Nanobots do fight off the microbe and rebuild the ship in the classic style.  Rimmer could, I dunno, find some or something and set them to work.

[Dave]

I think Kryten pretending to whisper his revenge plan to Kochanski but actually just making unintelligible noises is meant to be a joke, but it just comes off as weird.

I find this pretty funny. It’s incredibly cartoonish, but in the context of Series VIII that makes it feel like Shakespeare. 

[Dave]

Though perhaps that resolves the series viii cliff hanger. Nanobots do fight off the microbe and rebuild the ship in the classic style.  Rimmer could, I dunno, find some or something and set them to work.

That would fit with the “total fluke” references of X. Maybe Rimmer accidentally says something with his dying breath that’s a command for the nanobots to kill the virus, but it takes so much effort that they’re killed in the process and any recent living constructs (ie. the resurrected crew, including Rimmer) die too. So Holly brings Rimmer back as a hologram and then nine years later it’s time for Back To Earth.

[Flap Jack]

Good points about the nanobots. I did figure that them running into Talia’s pod out in space was probably Doug’s intention, but it just seems SO unlikely that I figured the nanobots still being on Red Dwarf was much more plausible.

Although the nanobots resurrecting Talia does jar with the idea the microbes were the escape pod, because I would have thought that in that case the nanobots would have realised the escape pod was a fake and done something different. Maybe if the “chameleonic” can disguise them down to the atomic level.

Also, if the microbes were disguising themselves as the pod, surely we wouldn’t have seen a shot of the pod being partially destroyed by microbes, we would have seen a shot of the pod completely disappeared, and there being a microbe-hole in the floor or something.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

 

I have never, ever, noticed that he is saying “it must have been the escape pod”.  My mind, from tween right up to a man in his mid 30s, must have heard that, decided that makes NOOOOOO sense whatsoever and absolutely refused to hear anything other than “it must have been on” or “arrived on” … never “it is this thing”

When you see the shot of the escape pod, its looks like it is being eaten my a virus from the inside out, much like Red Dwarf is.  It doesn’t in anyway look like the escape pod is turning back into the … whatever it is.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I thought the implication was that the nanobots were flying around local space on a resurrection kick, but the whole thing seems too vague or confusingly explained.

Even now they’re flying around the galaxy resurrecting everything that ever died. I dread to think what’ll happen once they reach Earth. Good going Holly, you just brought back everything that ever lived on planet Earth all at once. That’ll make the Snap look like a fart in a jacuzzi.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

It’s a blatant clue, isn’t it? Blatant clue.

[Stabbim]

blimey, no wonder you only got 4% you twonks

[Stabbim]

– Here Rimmer being the highest ranking person left on the ship automatically makes him Captain. Thank goodness that dispensing machine wasn’t around in Series 1 to tell him that, or he would have been insufferably smug.

well, except a human automatically outranks a hologram, so in fact Lister was the actual de facto Captain all that time. Tony Slattery Vending Machine could have, to it’s absolute delight, absolutely ruined S1 Rimmer’s day by pointing out LIster was in charge.

[Moonlight]

I’m bored. Can we do Back to Earth already?

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I’m bored. Can we do Back to Earth already?

I’m not sure, can we still do it if there’s no Byte?

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Tony Slattery Vending Machine could have, to it’s absolute delight, absolutely ruined S1 Rimmer’s day by pointing out LIster was in charge.

Maybe he did. I wouldn’t put it past Rimmer to anguish about it in private for a while and then never mention it and just hope Lister doesn’t find out, and I doubt Cat would be interested enough to pass it on if he heard.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I’m bored. Can we do Back to Earth already?

I’m not sure, can we still do it if there’s no Byte?

Can’t do any of the Dave era then

[Unrumble]

I’m bored. Can we do Back to Earth already?

[Flap Jack]

I have never, ever, noticed that he is saying “it must have been the
escape pod”.  My mind, from tween right up to a man in his mid 30s, must
have heard that, decided that makes NOOOOOO sense whatsoever and
absolutely refused to hear anything other than “it must have been on” or
“arrived on” … never “it is this thing”

Same. For this whole discussion I’ve been reacting as if the idea the microbes were the escape pod was a headcanon, not something directly said in the episode. I feel quite the fool.

I hope it’s a forgivable mistake, because it’s based on “chameleonic”, but a chameleon just changes colours to blend in with its environment. Like it might turn brown to match the colour of a tree trunk, but it doesn’t magically transform itself into a tree. So I think when I heard “The microbe’s chameleonic, so it must… ” my brain just expected the following to be about it being good at hiding. Honestly, I think the story makes more sense if Rimmer’s just wrong here.

Although… if the escape pod was the microbes, who’s to say that Talia wasn’t microbes too? After all, the idea that she was resurrected by nanobots was just an assumption by Dennis, it wasn’t confirmed. Perhaps the Talia gambit was all part of the long game – once they find Red Dwarf is being destroyed by microbes, Talia can go with Hollister in his shuttle and destroy that too. And maybe there were microbe sleeper agents on all the other shuttles too, in the forms of mice or flies or what have you, and that explains why the crew never came back after Series VIII.

well, except a human automatically outranks a hologram, so in fact
Lister was the actual de facto Captain all that time. Tony Slattery
Vending Machine could have, to it’s absolute delight, absolutely ruined
S1 Rimmer’s day by pointing out LIster was in charge.

I don’t think living people outrank holograms as such. It’s just that in perilous situations, keeping a living person alive is higher priority than keeping a hologram running.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

the idea that she was resurrected by nanobots was just an assumption by Dennis

I don’t think he actually meant that’s his name when he said that.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I love the idea that Talia is also microbe. Like hundreds of microbes in a long coat. It makes a lot of sense as to why we never see her or the rest of the crew ever again. 

Also why she doesn’t question it when Dennis says “the nanobots must have resurrected you too” like, if that was me I’d be thinking “nano what’s? Who’s resurrected? Where are we exactly?”

[Flap Jack]

That’s the secret of how mirror universe Talia is opposite to Talia Prime. Mirror universe Talia is Not Microbes.

[Jonathan Capps]

Mirror universe Talia is Not Microbes.

I’ve finally got round to tackeling the smeggy subject of whether or not Talia is microbes and if the mirror opposite of microbes is human. Check out the vid here @sistertalia @microbes @dennisdohnuts

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Hahahaha well done 

[Dave]

I’ve finally got round to tackeling the smeggy subject of whether or not Talia is microbes and if the mirror opposite of microbes is human. Check out the vid here @sistertalia @microbes @dennisdohnuts

Jonathan, please take your Red Dwarf fan theory down. Parts of it are utterly logical and funny which has nothing to do with Series VIII.

[Moonlight]

I hope it’s a forgivable mistake, because it’s based on “chameleonic”, but a chameleon just changes colours to blend in with its environment.

I’m fairly sure that chameleons change color based on temperature differences and cannot consciously control it. It’s animals like the mimic octopus that do what you’re describing, albeit taking a step further to change shape.

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, that’s fair. I should have looked it up! Chameleon PR really over-sell the camouflage element of the colour changing.

I guess it’s fine if you call something “chameleonic” based on the popular conception of chameleons rather than the reality, but Rimmer is still making a big leap with “chameleonic means polymorph”. Even the TARDIS isn’t as powerful as these microbes.

[Unrumble]

Chameleon PR

Sounds like another failed Alan Partridge business 

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Sounds like a disappointing and egotistical set of obscure Doctor Who villains from an overrated 60s lost serial gave up kidnapping tourists and instead got into the public relations business.

[Author]

Replies