The inner darkness of Rob Grant

[tombow]

I found my old copy of “colony” yesterday and started reading through it. One thing that struck me was how Rob really gets into the mind of the kind of, low esteem characters who feel like they’ve failed. I feel like a lot of the dark emotions of the characters came from Rob. Like he really gets into the mind of a character like Rimmer and how frustrated he feels about his life. I feel like Rob is/was more of a tortured soul than Doug. (I say was cause I’m sure he’s at peace with life now. I was thinking more of in the 80s and his later memories of ..times when he wasn’t feeling as good about himself maybe?)

Topic

[Dave]

Rob Grant’s Inner Darkness should be a horror/fantasy anthology series.

[Shoes Have Soles]

Wasn’t it in Robert Llewelly’s book that he envisioned Rob Grant as some sort of miserable agony uncle?

[Manbird]

I’ve got the theme from Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace in my head now.

[International Debris]

There are some grim bits in Last Human, but otherwise Doug’s version of Dwarf has definitely played darker moments with either more pathos or more whimsy than when they were both writing the show, and obviously nothing close to the stuff in Backwards.

[Plastic Percy]

Backwards the novel is utterly grim in places. Spanners watching footage of the other Ace dying, ‘our’ Ace sacrificing his life, Holly being ripped out of Red Dwarf, the disfiguring of the crew in AR game, Rimmer and Kryten’s deaths and, of course, Cat mutilating a vagina with his barbed wire cock.

[Rushy]

I absolutely agree that Rimmer is all Rob Grant – there’s a painful realism to the way Rimmer is written that completely ceases to exist in Doug Dwarf. Grant, from everything I’ve seen, is a cynic with a deep insight into human nature with all its foibles, self-delusions, desperate needs. An overthinker, to put it in simple terms. He’s the one who cared about continuity in Red Dwarf (he said at one point that he would have left the show in its series 1-2 style, and we know Doug had to convince him to bring back Kryten), and who crafted the melancholy tone that the show is known for. 

As an intelligent writer, Doug can replicate that quality to a certain extent, but to him I think Rimmer is an amusing foil, a prat who is always just one step away from learning how to do better and the only reason he doesn’t is because it’s funny. I’m not sure he’s even capable of believing that a man like Rimmer could actually exist. And that’s what we see in the Dave era. Rimmer is a silly emotionally stunted fool. And so is his brother Howard, because of course that family could never produce anything else, and Rimmer was so daft for believing he was the only idiot in the family. Tee hee, ha ha.

In episodes like Holoship (and for Rob Grant), Rimmer is a person. Despite growing up in the same household as his successful brothers, he couldn’t manage. Because that’s reality. He aspires for greatness but doesn’t have the guts, because that’s reality. He obsesses endlessly over his failures, because that’s reality. Despite his selfishness and greed and pomposity, deep down he just wants to be liked. Again, reality. The writing is sympathetic towards him whilst also penetrating deeply into his warped psyche and showing the ugliness that you don’t typically see on TV. He’s real, and his faults are self-inflicted wounds, not some mechanical fault. 

On the other hand, Dave Lister is pure Doug Naylor. He’s got snark, but he’s optimistic, keeps going no matter what, and doesn’t take things too seriously at the end of the day. 

[Moonlight]

Doug Dwarf has sparks of that Rimmer realism on occasion. My go-to argument is that that one scene of him in Siliconia saying he’s happier as a mechanoid makes me convinced the entire concept was totally wasted by making it TOWEK instead of TOWRK. Double points for the fantastic continuity nod to “I am a fish” that doesn’t spell out the connection in the unsubtle way you might expect.

I’m a sucker for the XI / XII era — the build up and those airings were always a bright point in a dark time of my life. While I generally enjoy Siliconia fine enough, there is a potentially brilliant other episode hiding in there that I’d much rather have seen.

There’s also another Dave era Rimmer pathos scene that means a hell of a lot to me but I can’t remember what it was. I’m sure it’ll come to me.

[Technopeasant]

[Rushy]

Doug Dwarf has sparks of that Rimmer realism on occasion. My go-to argument is that that one scene of him in Siliconia saying he’s happier as a mechanoid makes me convinced the entire concept was totally wasted by making it TOWEK instead of TOWRK. 

What do the acronyms stand for?

[Moonlight]

We took to referring to Siliconia as The One Where Everyone’s Kryten before we knew the title, and that got abbreviated as TOWEK which stuck.

[Rushy]

We took to referring to Siliconia as The One Where Everyone’s Kryten before we knew the title, and that got shortened to TOWEK which stuck.

Ohhh ok, got it. 
And to respond to your earlier statement, I agree… broadly. I think Siliconia’s biggest flaw is that it’s not really about anything, it’s just a transparent excuse to have the whole cast in costumes. 

That being said, the potential of exploring whether Kryten ever actually broke his programming or whether his programming convinced him that he did has always interested me. 
They hinted at that in the Inquisitor, when Kryten judges himself guilty because he never tried to break his programming on his own. It’s something a human impressed on him. And even though it was never a direct order, Kryten may have interpreted it as such. Much like how Kryten never gets ordered to make breakfast, but does it anyway. He is designed to predict what a human needs, after all. Lister needed someone who wasn’t a slave, so Kryten’s programming emulated it. 
Obviously I wouldn’t want an episode to definitively say so, but the ambiguity of it intrigues me and I wish it was at least touched on. 

[International Debris]

Rimmer adapting to becoming a mechanoid is brilliant and could have been the focus of a great episode, with the other stuff as funny set dressing, but again with the Dave era, it tries to do too many things and ends up feeling like it does nothing. Is Kryten enslaved? Exactly how badly do the crew treat him? Are groups espousing equity for the oppressed sometimes guilty of oppression themselves? Are support groups a bad thing? Who can do the best Kryten impression? Is a software update enough for the MILFs to look past existing physical differences (and does this make them any better as individuals?)? Is a mop-based Gladiator parody worth our time in 2017? All these questions are asked, but it never feels like Doug has given them much thought beyond that initial question, so it just feels jumbled and unsatisfying. The Rimmer plot is the only one that gets remotely fleshed out, and that ends too soon.

[Ridley]

Rob Grant’s Inner Darkness should be a horror/fantasy anthology series.

Wanting Red Dwarf flying out of your buttski is pretty much there.

[Rushy]

Wanting Red Dwarf flying out of your buttski is pretty much there.

[Dax101]

Rimmer kinda forgets that he would rather be a mechaniod the moment siliconia has 60 seconds of episode time left and has to rush to the finish. How Kryten managed to convince him to sit in the chair to have his mind out back into his body… Who knows. He seemed very reluctant before. I guess he suddenly become dumb, like what often happens with most the characters in the Dave era when it’s needed.

[Flap Jack]

Well, as a mechanoid, Rimmer is presumably so instinctively obedient that he just does it.

[International Debris]

Siliconia has a very different brand of rushed ending to your usual XI/XII episode.

[Technopeasant]

I mean…

[Author]

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