What do you think are the highs and lows of the Dave era?

[DoctorEggBastard]

As someone who enjoys this era of Red Dwarf quite a lot, but can also see its flaws, I wanted to discuss what the biggest highs and the lowest lows (Timewave Timewave Timewave) of the Dave era of Red Dwarf are. It can be individual scenes, sets or whole episodes.

HIGHS

1. The series saving triple punch of Mechocracy, M Corp and Skipper.

Series 12 is overall pretty good. Cured and Siliconia are both decent. I don’t mind them at all, though Siliconia definitely needed sixty minutes to tell it’s full tale. In fact the whole novel concept of Siliconia with them all being “Krytenned” is great fun, even if the episode doesn’t quite live up to it. Then came Timewave. I don’t need to say anymore. We had two pretty decent episodes and possibly the worst episode of anything ever made.

Thankfully the next three episodes rescued series 12. I find all three to be completely enjoyable. M Corp in particular has an interesting sci fi concept that could have easily been in the classic years. 

2. Danny John Jules. I think he is by far the strongest performer of the Dave era. He even made me laugh in Back to Earth. I don’t detest Back to Earth and find it watchable but it’s not particularly funny. 

Not every thing he gets given to do is great- same old tired dig at Rimmer jokes, lines like “trading in a saville row suit for a mankini” and needing toilet paper in “Dear Dave”, but he makes nearly everything work and is consistently stealing the show. His particular highlights are the Moose stuff in Trojan, the stuff on the sinking ship of Samsara (but it does go on too long), his whole performance in Give and Take trying to weadle a kidney out of Lister, playing Mr Rat in Skipper, and throwing Rimmer into an existential crisis in Promised Land.

3. Other notable good episodes would be Lemons and The Beginning from series 10. 10 is flawed series with notable production problems but these two feel quite a lot like classic Red Dwarf. The Beginning in particular is excellent. 

Series 11 has Give and Take, Officer Rimmer and Samsara. I also enjoy Can of Worms, and Series 12 has the aforementioned triple punch at the end.

Apart from a few cringe moments The Promised Land was also highly enjoyable. The special FX were mostly top notch, the storyline was pretty decent and the Rimmer and Lister moonlight scene is the best thing Doug has ever written for solo Dwarf. Also Lister attempting to get Kryten to nod in that scene is a particular highlight. 

4. The return of location shoots in series 11. It was during this series, particularly Give and Take and Can of Worms where it really felt like vintage Red Dwarf to me. Fantastic, grungy, grimy old factories doubling for abandoned spaceships (and shot and lit mighty well it should be added) were a welcome return after the complete lack of them (save for a shot in Lemons) in the previous series. On that note I also really like the sets and lighting in series 11 onwards.

LOWS

1. Timewave is one of the most godawful episodes of anything I’ve ever watched ever. Just everything about it feels wrong and “off”. This however is much covered ground. Moving on..

2. Taiwan Tony and the Medi Bot spoiling “Fathers and Suns”. It’s still a good show, but what a shame! The Lister speaking to his dad scenes and the Pree stuff was all excellent. The Chinese Whispers B (make that Z) plot is just rubbish.

3. I know they were hit with production problems but the vending machine ending to Dear Dave also felt pretty rubbish. Couldn’t Listers jacket have at least got caught in the machine? 

Sadly, Entangled also has flaws as a really fun episode falls apart at the end. This isn’t all Doug’s fault however as the location shoots were robbed from him late on and he had to do frantic rewriting.

4. The Kryten mask in series 10. It was fine in Back to Earth, and I’m a big fan of it in Series 11 on, but blimey, it was pretty bloody awful in 10. 

Topic

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Actually I thought Kryten looked worse in 11 and 12.

[Unrumble]

2. Danny John Jules. I think he is by far the strongest performer of the Dave era. Not every thing he gets given to do is great- same old tired dig at Rimmer jokes, lines like “trading in a saville row suit for a mankini” and needing toilet paper in “Dear Dave”, but he makes nearly everything work and is consistently stealing the show. His particular highlights are the Moose stuff in Trojan, the stuff on the sinking ship of Samsara (but it does go on too long), his whole performance in Give and Take trying to weadle a kidney out of Lister, playing Mr Rat in Skipper, and throwing Rimmer into an existential crisis in Promised Land.

Broadly agree with all this. In contrast (and I know this was discussed at length during the rewatch) Chris Barrie dials Rimmer up to 11 far too often, losing a lot of subtlety in favour of extreme nasality and gurning. 

[Warbodog]

Only really disagree about Siliconia, which is just awful to me (after the funny opening scene).

TPL is the high point of the era by far, finally landing that step beyond the traditional format after so many failures and disappointments. M-Corp is probably the only standard episode that I find just as good as the median bubble era episode (and it took a delayed rewatch to get over what I didn’t like). More are probably lower bubble quality than latter BBC era quality, so a worthwhile effort overall.

[International Debris]

I’m not sure I’ve read a post on here that I agree with more. I’m actually going to have to try very hard to make this not just seem like a school kid subtly rewording a textbook article as their own essay. 

Highs

1. The final four episodes (so far). I think the run from Mechocracy to The Promised Land is by far the best Red Dwarf since VI. A mix of great ideas, very strong gags and a feel of freshness, that this isn’t just a case of ‘an idea from III reworked into the style of V’ as a lot of the Dave era is. 

2. Character humour. Of all VIII’s biggest crimes, the hardest for me to get my head around is the total loss of character. The IX directors commentary was so relieving, to hear that Doug had been revisiting the classic era to remind him of what made the show so great, and for all of that series’ faults, it’s so heavily character-oriented that it actually feels like Red Dwarf again. The vast majority of episodes since then have had focus on characters driving the plot, with a handful of ensemble runarounds thrown in for good measure. 

3. CGI. Because of the naffness of the VII, Remastered and, to an extent, VIII computer graphics, CGI became somewhat hated in Red Dwarf. But the graphics from XI onwards show how now, even on a comparatively small budget, you can get some amazing looking stuff. The station in Give & Take is a particular highlight. 

4. Danny’s scene-stealing moments just walking into a room in Trojan. Twice. After a slightly dodgy start, his entrance to the bunk room is the moment where you realise that this really is Red Dwarf again. Then walking past the door at the end and getting a laugh the same size. Brilliant. 

Lows

1. Every episode having a least one stinker. While the high points of the best episodes are enough to place them fairly high in my rankings, on the whole there’s not a single Dave era episode without at least one moment that makes me really cringe. Whether it’s the drive room scenes in X, Chris struggling to come across like anything but a gurning panto character, totally unnecessary callbacks like the end of M-Corp, the general lack of pathos in XI/XII, the whole B-plot dragging Fathers and Suns down, or general VIII-esque gags and performances scattered throughout the whole run, even in the best episodes you’re never too far away from a reminder that this is the Dave era, and it’s just not as tight as the bubble. 

2. Model shots and musical cues. Obviously technical issues plagued the model shots, which led to some limitations, but on the whole it’s surprising to find that some of the worst looking moments of the era come from miniatures. Combined with that same bloody music cue on about 80% of the fly-by scenes and there’s a real disappointment to these moments. 

3. Callbacks. The bubble did callbacks occasionally – when it benefits a plot, when they realised they were doing a similar idea, for a good gag – but on the whole they were few and far between. Doug started doing them in VII, but they absolutely litter the Dave era, and for some reason they bother me. It comes across as a mixture of unoriginality, trying to recapture past glories and simple fan service, and it rarely works. I enjoyed X a lot when it broadcast, but even then I was really disappointed how several episodes had at least one moment which just seemed to come from a past story – Lister being his own dad, the post pod arriving, Rimmer doing his astro-navs – and it continued into the later episodes. Reusing the Justice machine, Polymorph III, another multiple Rimmers story, Uncle Frank, Talkie Toaster, the closing scene of M-Corp, the opening scene of Twentica feeling like a very conscious attempt to do a VI cockpit scene. If there were just one or two it’d be fine, but there are so many that it just feels a bit naval gazey to the detriment of the show for me. And the only time Doug seems keen to totally ignore a past plot – Ace in Skipper – it’s a strangely glaring one. 

4. Pacing. There are a lot of episodes that feel like they’d probably benefit from an additional five or ten minutes. None more than that, but some just try and cram too much in. The largely unnecessary b-plots in X mean the main stories struggle to breathe, while Siliconia scraps its really good themes for a big, daft action finale. In contrast, I actually think the first half of The Promised Land is a touch too slow and think it would be better as maybe a 70 minute story. I wonder if it’s simply due to being out of practice: Rob and Doug were writing and producing so much stuff in the 80s and 90s that working to a strict timing would probably have come much more naturally to them than Doug only really making 20 stories in the past 23 years, so he’s just out of practice.

5. Twentica. Tutting, the Space Corps Directive, Rimmer’s Inner Critic and the characters being recognisable save it from the very bottom of the pile for me, but it’s still bafflingly awful. After being underwhelmed by the first two decent but not brilliant episodes of XII, this was a real moment of ‘oh shit, maybe Doug used up all his good ideas in the previous series and has totally lost it’. I still have no idea how it even got made.

[Unrumble]

And the only time Doug seems keen to totally ignore a past plot – Ace in Skipper – it’s a strangely glaring one. 

[Unrumble]

5. Twentica. Tutting, the Space Corps Directive, Rimmer’s Inner Critic and the characters being recognisable save it from the very bottom of the pile for me, but it’s still bafflingly awful. After being underwhelmed by the first two decent but not brilliant episodes of XII, this was a real moment of ‘oh shit, maybe Doug used up all his good ideas in the previous series and has totally lost it’. I still have no idea how it even got made.

[Dave]

[Formica]

[International Debris]

Look, they both start with a ‘T’ and share a lot of letters, that’s good enough for me. 

You’d be amazed how many times I’ve gone to write Better Than Life when I meant Back to Reality, or vice versa.

[Unrumble]

[Dave]

[International Debris]

[Formica]

[Moonlight]

[Moonlight]

[Formica]

Man, another point to your point – Danny sure does have the best freeze during Bob the Bum’s firing.

[Rushy]

Highs:

Fathers and Suns is one of the best episodes the show ever did. 

The Beginning is a lovely coda to Rimmer’s arc. 

That vending machine from Dear Dave was great, and could have stuck around as a recurring gag (like maybe her AI takes over all the other vending machines). 

Twentica doesn’t make much sense, but it’s a lot of fun. 

The bunkroom scenes in Samsara are some of my favourites. “I’m dead, how unlucky is that?!” “You’re dead but you’re still talking!”

Snacky is a wonderful addition to the show, and Give & Take in general is pretty solid. 

Officer Rimmer is a classic. 

Krysis has jealous Kryten at his best, and the scene with the Universe feels like it’s right out of the bubble era (until Kryten’s corny love speech). 

Cured is the best Cat episode

Everything from Timewave to Promised Land is mostly solid gold. 

Lows: 

The constant greenscreen in X. And Kryten’s mask.

The blue lighting in XI and XII. 

I really dislike the overt atheism in Lemons. I know the show was always critical of religion, but Lemons feels downright spiteful. 

Entangled is as messy as Pete, just shorter. 

Most of XI is frustrating, because the episodes have some truly phenomenal moments in them but also moments of total crap. 

Siliconia is really forgettable. 

Chris Barrie deciding to become a cartoon in his old age. 

[Flap Jack]

I really dislike the overt atheism in Lemons. I know the show was always critical of religion, but Lemons feels downright spiteful. 

Atheism? The episode is essentially a full on advert for the Church of Judas!

[Moonlight]

The bunkroom scenes in Samsara are some of my favourites. “I’m dead, how unlucky is that?!” “You’re dead but you’re still talking!”

I absolutely love the opening scene of Samsara. It’s one of the few times Doug solo writes a Rimmer / Lister banter convo that feels truly on point to me.

[Author]

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