Things you like about Series VIII

[Rushy]

aside from Cassandra. XD

*I really like the visual style. III – VI had this shadowy murky look to it that I never quite gelled with. VIII has a nice saturated colour scheme that’s easy on the eyes. 

*Chloe Annett seems to be much more relaxed (and looks nicer with her natural hair). I like the way they play up Kochanski’s eccentricities. Even though she’s isolated from the cast a lot of the time, she still feels like more of a member of the posse than she did in series 7. When I was rewatching Only the Good and saw her going around with a kettle on her head, I actually felt sad at the prospect of losing her. 

*The alternate ending to Only the Good, where they do a conga dance and smoke cigars. It felt like a nice coda to all the crap they’d gone through since Back to Reality. 

*Lister and Rimmer being chummy. I don’t think it really makes sense from Rimmer’s POV (it’s supposed to be series 1 Rimmer, so you’d think he’d absolutely loathe what’s happening), but Charles and Barrie’s energy is infectious. If it was holo-Rimmer, I’d find it really wholesome. I’m glad the bunkroom scenes came back too. 

*Mac McDonald and Norman Lovett. Not their material, per se, but just the comforting familiarity of the actors. Lovett’s Holly was always my favourite character on Red Dwarf, so I can’t help appreciate him when he’s there. 

Topic

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Rushy]

Series VIII fan club only

[International Debris]

Amazingly, this is at least the third time we’ve managed to have this thread – remarkable for a place that loathes the series. 

From my Best Bits of VIII thread, which was only… five years ago (fuck):

While Rimmer’s “We’re finished” in its own context can be annoying, it’s absolutely justified for Holly’s “You’re finished” long answer joke.

Kryten’s joke about “dinosaur bowel movement frequency tables” is one of my favourite lines in the whole of Red Dwarf. Something about that particular combination of words really, really tickles me.

Holly’s cell inspection heads-up is a superbly performed gag.

For all the bad plotting issues I have with “Kryten figured it out”, Chris’s reading of that phrase is bloody great.

Attack of the Giant Savage Completely Invisible Aliens.

“You’re going to squeeze their rolls?”

Both “everything we’re saying is being bananas” and “I’m going to cut off both his b-blunt knife” are top gags.

“Come back, Mr. Sucks!” is almost good enough to warrant the Blue Midget dance.

[Rushy]

While Rimmer’s “We’re finished” in its own context can be annoying, it’s absolutely justified for Holly’s “You’re finished” long answer joke.

I agree but also I’m still mad the punchline wasn’t “Fin” instead of “bye”. It was right there. Right there!!

[Ben Saunders]

I don’t think VIII is a war crime like some people, I’ll take BitR I-III and Cassandra over them having just not made it. I like seeing Captain Hollister. I like how horrible it is when Lister snips off some of his pubes and puts it on that guy’s bar of soap. There are also some great lines that float around in my head from time to time, right now I’m hearing “THE APPEAL!!”

“I’m so gorgeous there’s a six-month waiting list for birds to appear every time I am near.”

“I’m giving you a big, wet snog with oodles of Tommy Tongue.”

“Post’s arrived.”

“Wrong number.” (fight me)

“You look like the Turkish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest.”

“You still look like the Turkish entry in the Eurovision Song Contest.”

[Rushy]

I’ll take VIII over VII honestly. 

The storylines in VIII are an absolute shambles, but it’s light-hearted and easy to digest, and there’s always a decent gag around the corner. 

VII has respectable plots, but it’s got all the pace and energy of a dead whale. 

At the very very least, VIII is fun to have for the sake of conversation. What’s there to talk about with VII?

[Nick R]

I like the way the series number appears on screen.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Odd moments and some great isolated jokes aside, Graham McTavish is genuinely brilliant to watch (in anything in general) and is a highlight of every scene he is in

[Dave]

The series 1/2 bunkroom recreation. 

[MANI506]

Git Central.

[Flap Jack]

I like the way it prompts so much fun online discussion about how shit it is.

[si]

I always thought Kryten looked great in Series VIII.

[Technopeasant]

It produces a lot of material to be used for memes out of the Smegadrive. Also E11T.

As for comparisons to VII, maybe we need to turn on hard mode and have it be things you like about VIII more than I-VI, or at least IX-XIII (and yes I am starting trouble there…).

[Dax101]

Series 8 may be the best the show has ever looked. Probably because it has the most budget the show will ever have again.

Dunno what else.

[Flap Jack]

I’ve always loved this underrated moment in Only the Good…

[Spaceworm Jim]

I like Rimmer’s ‘but I was really pleased to see you’ line in Only the Good, and it’s nice that Tony Slattery is in it. I also like that the cast seem to be having such a fun time. But I’ll never willingly watch it again.

[Warbodog]

It has 1999 nostalgia.

I can’t agree about the show being at its visual best, unless you mean some technical camera thing. I think the (otherwise lacking) Official Red Dwarf Companion captured the most aesthetic era, even if it was mainly copying Alien.

[Renegade Rob]

The idea of the crew being resurrected is legitimately inspired, and the show feints with doing something worthwhile with this premise in Back in the Red, Part 1 before it goes completely off the rails. But the potential is there, not just with the comedy, but in the full-circle-ness of the characters’ arcs. We’re seeing the seasoned Series VI/VII Lister trying to settle back into the Series I pre-accident setting and that contrast is what stories are all about. And as much as Back in the Red sucks overall, there is something amusing about these seasoned adventurers being easily outmatched by the old crew because of course, they were always losers just scraping by with no qualifications (give or take a Kochanski), so even though they’ve been through multiple series of crazy encounters, once they return to civilization, they’re immediately back on the bottom rung. 

[Technopeasant]

Even so, what the hell are Hollister and co going to do the moment they encounter GELFs or simulants? Fortunately they seem to have already entered the sedate region of space they are still in apparently by Entangled. Which, come to think of it, might be because they returned to where the Esperanto was, so they already cleared everything out (give or take a Silverberg. Manny Celeste, Hermes, Trojan, and other derelicts, which presumably passed notice the first time around while the crew were in stasis chasing the vapor trail).

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> what the hell are Hollister and co going to do the moment they encounter GELFs or simulants?

---

This is sort of Rimmer’s point when he shows off about the logs he found in Starbugs cockpit, and is them promptly punished

It also shows in Cassandra when the crew confidently deal with the situation and I guess was why Doug created the Canaries, he just wasted most the series not using them

[Dax101]

It has 1999 nostalgia.
I can’t agree about the show being at its visual best, unless you mean some technical camera thing. I think the (otherwise lacking) 

 I just feel like you can see the extra money on screen. It looks like they could afford more varied sets and location shoots. The CGI allowed them to do more without a lot of restraints. The scene with Kill Crazy and baxter beating up Lister and Rimmer but nothing is happening to them is still quite an impressive visual and Rimmer running from an expoding hallway in Only The Good is also an impressive effect which i still wonder how they did that effect without hurting Chris.
Its just visually it looked more expensive. Which i’m not sure the show will ever have that advantage again.

Obviously the Dino and the dancing blue midget wasn’t cheap either.

[Rushy]

Series 8 may be the best the show has ever looked. Probably because it has the most budget the show will ever have again.
Dunno what else.

Yeah, I just love the way the ship looks this season. If you pay attention, you’ll notice they actually mix the Series I-II & III-V designs together. But it’s also much better lit, more colourful, more spacious. 

We’re seeing the seasoned Series VI/VII Lister trying to settle back into the Series I pre-accident setting and that contrast is what stories are all about. 

He has a strange relationship with the nano Rimmer. Lister just knows him inside out and takes charge of the dynamic. Holo Rimmer acted superior to Lister right up to the end, and does the same in the Dave era too. Series VIII is the only time where they’re more like equals. 

[Warbodog]

Hollister/Mac’s good in the first two episodes of VIII when he’s played straight, but after the popular Donut Boy reveal he goes weird, culminating in Pete. He has quite a nice scene in the otherwise terrible finale, when he’s honest with Rimmer about his prospects, then back to weird.

[Dave]

It’s nice to see Chen and Selby again.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

BlossomistBlossom in here in a couple of weeks

“I really like all of VIII because it plays with the format and does experimental things”

[Asclepius]

My least favourite series – by a long way. But…

I like the laughter being back.

I like the cast playing for the laughter and working with the audience. It feels less ‘dead’ than VII.

I like Holly being back.

I like the idea of the ‘bunk scenes’ being brought back, but the dialogue doesn’t always cut it.

I like Kryten’s scene with the psych.

Cassandra has a good plot.

I like the work around the mirror universe.

I like the ending being less horrible than the original filmed one.

[Ben Saunders]

Oh, another favourite line is “Can I have an extremely long piece of paper, my dear?”

[Rushy]

I like the ending being less horrible than the original filmed one.

You don’t like the one where they win?

[Dave]

I think the basic structure of Back In The Red is a solid way to bring the show back in a way that instantly feels like the classic series while still properly following up on the ending of VII. There’s a decent sense of intrigue created as to how they’re going to end up in the situation we see from the very start of the episode.

I also think it was pretty ballsy to keep teasing a quick return to the regular status quo (escaping Red Dwarf to go off alone in a Blue Midget in BITR; Rimmer dying in Cassandra) and then not doing that, even if those decisions didn’t end up serving the show particularly well in the end.

[Nick R]

When I was a kid, I always wondered why the baddies in cartoons never tried the same villainous scheme twice, even when they’d almost succeeded and the hero only escaped through luck. Obviously the answer is “it’s boring to repeat the same idea in multiple episodes”. But from an in-universe/Watsonian perspective, wouldn’t you expect the characters to retry what had worked well before?

So when Red Dwarf VIII brought back the luck and sexual magnetism viruses, I welcomed it. Not only did it make sense to me that the characters would reuse a useful thing, but it felt like a rewarding acknowledgement of long-term continuity.

Of course I wasn’t very happy with how those viruses ended up being used in the episodes. But I appreciated the idea of bringing them back!

[Moonlight]

I like this joke.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Graham McTavish was without doubt one of the best things about that shitty series and in any other context where Doug might have written something decent for him he’d probably be very highly regarded amongst Dwarf guest actors.

Also, is now a good time to talk about my Series VIII fanedit again?

[Asclepius]

Graham McTavish was without doubt one of the best things about that shitty series and in any other context where Doug might have written something decent for him he’d probably be very highly regarded amongst Dwarf guest actors.
Also, is now a good time to talk about my Series VIII fanedit again?

Graham McTavish was without doubt one of the best things about that shitty series and in any other context where Doug might have written something decent for him he’d probably be very highly regarded amongst Dwarf guest actors.
Also, is now a good time to talk about my Series VIII fanedit again?

I would watch a Series VIII fan edit. There were some on Youtube of Series 10 (I think) that were substantially better than the actual shows (which were, themselves, pretty good).

[Ben Saunders]

When I was a kid, I always wondered why the baddies in cartoons never tried the same villainous scheme twice, even when they’d almost succeeded and the hero only escaped through luck. Obviously the answer is “it’s boring to repeat the same idea in multiple episodes”. But from an in-universe/Watsonian perspective, wouldn’t you expect the characters to retry what had worked well before?

What a coincidence, I just read the TV Tropes entry on this exact concept after going down a Thunderbirds rabbit hole. Obvious subversions include Star Wars, in which they do just build another Death Star, this time without the original weak point. https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NeverRecycleYourSchemes

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

For anyone interested: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DsV0hrOlUmOSAtImv-rEnycWlEcbCtJE/view?usp=drive_link
For context, this was intended to be the third part of a four part edit series of 7, 8 and Back to Earth (Part 1 comprising Tikka through Beyond, Part 2 Epideme – BitR, and Part 4 BTE) but my PC broke before I could finish the rest of them, so for now they remain in a rather irritating limbo state.

Incidentally, there’s also a thread about it that got brilliantly derailed by my genius friend: https://www.ganymede.tv/forums/topic/saga-continuums-a-red-dwarf-fanedit-series/

[Rushy]

Watching series 8 with my mother has been very funny, because she is continually baffled by it. 

We finished Pete Part 2 yesterday, and she’s still mourning Starbug. She couldn’t give a toss about Red Dwarf.

Just for some background, we started from ‘The End’, but she hated it so much that I decided to skip to ‘Rimmerworld’ for the most Star Trek-ish episode I could think of, and then she wanted to continue watching from there. So that’s what we’ve done.

To my surprise, she did recognise Hollister when he turned up again. 

[Renegade Rob]

To this day, I wonder about how the dimensionally-augmented Starbug blowing up in the hangar would have worked in-universe. (I imagine something like how the Doctor Who book Engines of War describes TARDISes being blown up, where they basically “bloom” as the larger interiors expand through their tinier destroyed exteriors.)

[Warbodog]

Kryten only describes the cargo decks expanding in Tikka, despite everything else looking bigger, and there was only the front bit left by the end in that big, open space.

But the bigger sections would have fucked up multiple floors as they shrank around them.

[Ben Saunders]

Straight from The End to Rimmerworld then just carrying onwards is the craziest show into I’ve ever heard. Impressed she’s still watching.

[Rushy]

Straight from The End to Rimmerworld then just carrying onwards is the craziest show into I’ve ever heard. Impressed she’s still watching.

It wasn’t my original idea lol, I just assumed that Rimmerworld might impress her enough for her to want to see the show. 

But she said she was invested in the group’s current situation and insisted that we press on, so… I guess we’ll go back to the bubble era after The Promised Land? 

[Rushy]

So far, from what I can gather from her reactions (as she doesn’t like explaining them), she likes Lister and Kochanski the most, finds Rimmer and Kryten vaguely irritating and is consistently baffled by the Cat’s existence. 

[Rushy]

Oh, and I chose to gracefully skip Duct Soup and Krytie TV

[Dave]

Just for some background, we started from ‘The End’, but she hated it so much that I decided to skip to ‘Rimmerworld’ for the most Star Trek-ish episode I could think of, and then she wanted to continue watching from there. So that’s what we’ve done.

Skipping over the chaff of those wobbly first six series, good thinking.

[Dave]

[Flap Jack]

I understand. Skipping to Backwards would have just been too obvious.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Warbodog]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Moonlight]

[Warbodog]

[Author]

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