Your Unpopular Red Dwarf Opinions

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I’ll tell you my actual unpopular Red Dwarf opinion. I really like all of Emohawk. I think it’s probably one of the top three from the series. The “second half” everyone complains about is really only the last 5mins. And logic aside, it’s fun having Ace and Duane on screen together, which couldn’t have happened any other time.

Everything that comes before, all the cockpit stuff, the crashing, the GELFs, the marriage etc is all absolutely fantastic stuff. The last 5-10mins is no more of strange, unrelated tact on ending to an episode than DNA or something like that. And it’s fun. Full of laughs.

[si]

The second half of Skipper is let down for me by stuff like Everybody’s Alive Arnold and the VIII characterisation of Hollister. It’s very funny, but it also feels like Doug is intentionally going for “hey, remember this!” rather than coming up with a totally new idea.

Although the series 1 bunkroom is so well recreated (so much better than series VIII’s attempt), I think it brought a tear to my eye the first time I saw it.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I actually think the series VIII version is close to the series I/II look but the Skipper version is closer in reality to what they imagined. Dark, metallic, submarine style bunk.

The others are too polished and shiny.

[desbug]

Apparently reading the last few posts my unpopular opinion is that I didn’t like Mr Rat all that much, and preferred the first half of the episode to the second half.

I share the opinion that Emohawk is great. This may be because I saw it before Polymorph, or Dimension Jump, or Back to Reality, but anyway I like it.

[GlenTokyo]

VIII’s is more accurate by a fair bit dimensionally, but they jazzed it up, it’s bluer and has more texture. XII achieves the look of wood painted grey and if you filmed it with a 1 inch tape TV camera, would probably look identical in parts, but they scale is all over the show. It’s like it’s been stretched to widescreen so everything is spaced out and looks a bit lost. Combine the two and you’d probably have it bang on.

That said, VIII probably had a considerably bigger budget adjusted for inflation, and had Mel Bibby and potentially access to the actual Montague plans seeing as they were 10 years old not 30. Who keeps a filing cabinet organised for 30 years? No-one that’s who. Especially no-one at the BBC or GNP.

[Jenuall]

Yeah I love all of Emohawk – Duane and Ace showing up is undoubtedly straight up fan service but it’s still well handled and, importantly, very funny. Their further laboured returns in VII and VIII are what really ground things down.

I remember finding the XII recreation of the bunk room much more satisfying than the VIII one, but it has been a long time since I watched VIII so I may be doing it a disservice.

[International Debris]

I remember being disappointed by the not-quite-accurate bunk room and uniforms in VIII back when I was still a teenager on first broadcast. It felt kind of ‘off’, which I suppose matched my feelings of the series as a whole.

[GlenTokyo]

I remember being disappointed by the not-quite-accurate bunk room and uniforms in VIII back when I was still a teenager on first broadcast. It felt kind of ‘off’, which I suppose matched my feelings of the series as a whole.

The uniforms are worse than the bunk room. They’re just too 1940s US Army. The bunk room is jazzed up a bit to match the rest of the sets, but you know what it is, the uniforms in VIII are just completely different. Small mercy though I suppose that they didn’t dig out the blue overalls from VII.

[Warbodog]

For those of us seeing series 1 & 2 mostly for the first time when the remasters were broadcast, the gap of three days before Back in the Red wasn’t really enough time to build nostalgia for the look they were imitating.

[Dave]

That false nostalgia thing is interesting and something that has occurred to me before with Red Dwarf and the grey bunkroom.

Twice now it’s been used as a nostalgic callback, and it definitely does generate that reaction – but my guess would be that the majority of longstanding fans probably didn’t start with series 1 or 2 and instead came in during the III-V era.

So does the nostalgia reaction of harking back to the show’s early days via the grey bunkroom feel a bit performative? For a lot of viewers, wouldn’t it work even better to use the officers’ quarters from III-V?

[Warbodog]

The ‘this feels like series III/IV/V/VI’ response to series XI (in particular) seemed like a nod in that direction, writing-wise. One that might have worked, considering how well Give & Take went down around here.

[Dave]

It is really interesting though how the specific time that you joined during the original BBC run dictates how you think of the show to quite a large extent.

Just a few years of difference either way can really shift your perception as to whether you started with the 1-2 version of the show, the III-V years or VI, VII or VIII. And also can dictate how your first saw the earliest years of the show (original broadcast, repeat run or Remastered – or, I guess, DVDs).

I always think it’s crazy when people talk about not being able to find specific VHSs and so not having access to those shows in the late 90s, as I taped it all off the TV from the full repeat run and was also able to buy the VHSs as they came. But just a few years later you’d have a very different experience of (and access to) the show.

[GlenTokyo]

When I started watching Red Dwarf, Red Dwarf wasn’t on. It was in the mid 90s so I’d been watching 1-VI on VHS, official and recorded, for a few years before VII came on, so I had the most exposure to those than the ones I watched on broadcast (VII onwards) so I think fondly of those and both the grey and the cream bunkrooms are iconic to me, grey just edges it though I think, because by III onwards, it seems like they weren’t in it as much.

[RunawayTrain]

… grey just edges it though I think, because by III onwards, it seems like they weren’t in it as much.

This is exactly it for me, I think. I watched RD via a friend’s DVDs to start with (just the once through) then later Netflix and UKTV Play. In my mind, ‘the bunkroom’ is the grey, first 2 series, because they spent so much time there rather than in any that came after. I honestly struggle to visualise the other quarters they used because we didn’t see them anywhere near as much.

[International Debris]

Yeah, we barely see the bunkroom at all in V.

[Warbodog]

We see the quarters enough in series III that I’ve always felt at home there. I never warmed to the original bunks as much, because of the ‘My Doctor’ first experiences thing that Dave talked about, but obsessing over the DVDs when those came out and inhabiting each of the six series for half a year each gave me perspective and made me love it all.

[International Debris]

Not sure just how unpopular this is, but one of my all-time top ten Red Dwarf jokes actually comes from Red Dwarf USA. Kryten’s ‘fire exit’ gag. That must be a Rob & Doug line, surely?

[tombow]

Not sure just how unpopular this is, but one of my all-time top ten Red Dwarf jokes actually comes from Red Dwarf USA. Kryten’s ‘fire exit’ gag. That must be a Rob & Doug line, surely?

pretty sure it was in the novel

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Not sure just how unpopular this is, but one of my all-time top ten Red Dwarf jokes actually comes from Red Dwarf USA. Kryten’s ‘fire exit’ gag. That must be a Rob & Doug line, surely?

pretty sure it was in the novel

It sort of is. Kryten reads part of a letter of a book a day, so some weeks are really dull when it’s quite obvious what the letter and resulting word will be.

But it is ultimate the same sort of gag, with the same intention and energy etc.

[si]

There are some good gags in RD:USA, Fire Exit & Baseball Cards being the best two. Sadly, most of the casting (certainly in the first version) is off, and it just doesn’t work overall. But ho-hum.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Baseball Cards

I really dislike the baseball card gag as it changes the joke entirely. Rather than an ironic gag about a rather poor and low level man more concerned with an overdue library book, than therefore the fine he will have accrued in 3million years … it becomes a joke about a man more concerned with suddenly being rich after 3million years. And other than Timeslides (which is more about his situation than anything else), Lister isn’t a man that really comes across as being concerned about money.

It flips the joke and what it tells us about the character for the worse in my view.

[Dave]

I’d never thought about it in that much detail. I see where you’re coming from though. For me, they’re both just amusingly mundane and irrelevant observations that show that the full weight of what’s happened hasn’t sunk in yet. That he’s still mentally stuck in the past.

[Pete Part Three]

I’d say the “baseball cards” line is shit more for storytelling reasons, than character-stuff.

Lister owning sports cards or visiting the library? I know which is more likely, from a character perspective. In both cases, you could probably take away from it that Lister is “a bit dim”, and I guess they’re both examples of gallows humour.

However, the point of that scene in The End is to hammer home the futility of Lister’s predicament. When he hears he’s been in Stasis for 3 million years, he instantly thinks of something “bad” (he owes the library a hefty fee), but we know he’s yet to truly grasp the gravity of the situation. It’s much, more worse. Result: Lister’s throughline in that scene is “bad – worse”. The next bit is him finding out that Kochanski is dead while Holly is flippant. This is remarked upon. He doesn’t like Holly being flippant because this is not the time for dismissive jokes about people dying.

In the US version, Lister instantly thinks of something “positive” from his predicament. The flippancy completely disrupts the flow of that scene, and we suddenly don’t care. The next thing Lister says is a moan about how lonely he will be, which is a bit of a dramatic u-turn from exclaiming that he must be rich.

[si]

Alright.
That’s me told.

[Bosco13]

I liked the American pilots.
Though I thought they were good for the same reasons the original show was good so you might as well not make it and get AMericans to watch the English show.

There’s some episodes like Timewave and Back To Earth where I just don’t get what’s wrong with them.

I like seasons 7 and 8 because they were where I started watching as a kid. Though I admit they’re the weakest episodes.

[Welding Mallet]

‘Back To Reality’ is too short to be considered the all-time-great it is…er…considered to be. If anything needed to be a two-parter, it’s that one.

[Welding Mallet]

Have another one for free (now that I’ve actually read the whole thread!)..

The series should have been promoted to BBC One from VI onwards.

[GlenTokyo]

Have another one for free (now that I’ve actually read the whole thread!)..

The series should have been promoted to BBC One from VI onwards.

Comedy on BBC 2 though, that’s how it should be.

[Jenuall]

Yeah it sits much better on 2. If anything the failings of VII could almost be read as part of an attempt to court a more BBC 1 vibe.

I don’t think that’s anything like what Doug was actually thinking, at least not intentionally

[Welding Mallet]

I get it…I do think the first few minutes of ‘Psirens’ are definitely there to ensnare the “Why does he have an H on his head?” casual-types.

But then, I am of the school of thought that ‘The Royle Family’ should have stayed on BBC2 so what do I know?

[GlenTokyo]

The Tabby Ranks version of Tongue Tied is the best version.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Whilst the “stuck in a lift” episode became Samsara, and the part of Samsara that is likely predominately from that idea (the Cat and Lister scenes with Cat just being dumb for 5 mins) are generally disliked by a lot of people … I hae never taken issue with it, I find the humour funny and if a little unbelievable then so what, and I’d genuinely quite like to see that idea better realised.  i.e. a Marooned but with Lister and Cat.  There’s always a lot of comedy to be mined between those two (you get a glimpse of it in Duct Soup) yet it comes so few and far between.  I’d really like to see 25mins of those two together and how that convo would play out.

[RunawayTrain]

Whilst the “stuck in a lift” episode became Samsara, and the part of Samsara that is likely predominately from that idea (the Cat and Lister scenes with Cat just being dumb for 5 mins) are generally disliked by a lot of people … I hae never taken issue with it, I find the humour funny and if a little unbelievable then so what, and I’d genuinely quite like to see that idea better realised.  i.e. a Marooned but with Lister and Cat.  There’s always a lot of comedy to be mined between those two (you get a glimpse of it in Duct Soup) yet it comes so few and far between.  I’d really like to see 25mins of those two together and how that convo would play out.

Even though I know what’s coming, it all still makes me laugh. I think it’s partly the dialogue which I actually find believable for Cat to be so confidently wrong, partly the delivery (nothing special, just appropriate for the scene, no overacting) and partly the setting. Maybe I’m easily pleased but them being surrounded by skeletons with glow sticks shoved between bones just tickles me. I laugh at the scene every time, it’s probably my favourite part of the episode.

[loadoftottnumb]

I enjoyed the Lister/Cat scenes in Samara quite a lot. Cats line and mime about ‘your big monkey arms’ really tickled me.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

There’s so much great humour in it. Ok you may have to suspend disbelief a little as to why Lister knows who invented the magic marker. But he is also seen reading lots of books about random facts. So it’s not hard to accept he’d know

[International Debris]

The magic marker and formica stuff definitely feel like Doug Dwarf, ie lazy and not remotely how those characters would actually talk, but I really like the scene on the whole. There’s some great slapstick, excellent chemistry between the two, enjoyable rising frustration from Lister, and the aforementioned skeletons with glowsticks. As with Duct Soup, Lister and Cat are great together in these situations, because it allows them to stop just being two mates who hang out, and be two people who are trapped together, at which point Cat’s stupid pain in the arse side really winds Lister up. It’s a great pairing, and I wish the lift plot had remained, as it would have allowed for more of it, and the pacing wouldn’t have clashed with the rest of the episode.

[Warbodog]

I remember finding Samsara really engaging early on and hoping we might have a modern classic on our hands, but it was around the time that scene started dragging that I lost hope for that. There were worse things in the episode though, and then it turned out to have been a worse Justice all along.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

My only real complaint with the episode that lets it fall down being a classic is, as much as I love the mechanic of seeing the flashbacks, I wish thee revelation of the karma drive and it’s consequences on our crew, and their escape from it, we’re all shown on screen and not just explained via the flash backs

[pi r squared]

Agree that the Magic Marker and Formica stuff is contrived – has anyone even called them “magic markers” these days except when you’re trying to crowbar in a “wizard pen” gag? – but the scene on the whole is amusing. I do like seeing increasingly-frustrated Lister – starting with “have you heard the terrible news about Miss Kochanski and her ex-boyfriend Tim?” in VIII, through this scene in Samsara, and played to perfection in “I do have one small fear” in M-Corp.

 

Lister has always had surprising knowledge and surprising gaps, so it doesn’t bother me that he knows an obscure inventor in order to set up a gag. He knows Hitler’s cronies and the origins of “Mayday” but doesn’t know what an iguana is or who Shakespeare was, except when he does. For a sitcom I would rather get the comedy than perfect characterisation, within limits.

 

The direction on the flashbacks in Samsara – particular the transitions from ‘now’ to ‘then’ – is really delightful. I think I’ve said it before but it really reminded me of the way Futurama does its flashback transitions – but to do it in live action rather than animation is really impressive.

 

[International Debris]

Yeah, it’s a gorgeous looking episode, it’s just a shame that it doesn’t quite hang together right. Knowing about a past plot without the main characters knowing doesn’t really work, especially with any dramatic intrigue ruined by a Kryten best guess. I suppose it aims to be too many things when there’s potentially either a bigger or smaller episode that would work much better.

[RunawayTrain]

Yeah, it’s a gorgeous looking episode, it’s just a shame that it doesn’t quite hang together right. Knowing about a past plot without the main characters knowing doesn’t really work, especially with any dramatic intrigue ruined by a Kryten best guess. I suppose it aims to be too many things when there’s potentially either a bigger or smaller episode that would work much better.

You’ve hit on my main frustration with the episode. We don’t really see them *discovering* what’s going on. Could have done with an extra 15 mins for that (but at the show’s peak, I’m sure it could easily have been done in time). I wonder how Samsara actually started out, whether anything significant was cut along the way?

[International Debris]

Yeah, there’s real potential for an episode where the audience get the full story and the characters don’t know anything – that can lead to some great pathos – but Samsara feels like a very weird mid-ground where we know lots of stuff and the characters kind of work everything out in a best guess moment that ends up as incredibly unsatisfying. If you do flashbacks, you really have to make sure they’re justified, and Samsara doesn’t really do that.

[Dax101]

The scene or sketch with Lister and Cat starts out funny. But i think it goes on too long. It kinda reaches its peak… and then keeps going. It should have shifted to some different jokes.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Presumably, in a “stuck in a lift episode” it would have been intercut with scenes of Kryten and Rimmer trying to rescue them.  As that’s all thrown out, we get a heavily condensed version in one scene so, for some, it ends up being too long and over staying its welcome.  But had it been broken up it might have paced better.

[Dave]

Personally I find X, XI and XII, not so much as a return to form really, but sits more comfortably within the RD universe. The Dave era brings back a more relaxed atmosphere of 4 characters having lived and interacted together for 30 years. The plots are definitely weaker and less credible, and the comedy is lazy beyond belief, but the sets are good and the lifestyles reflect their aging time together.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

and the lifestyles reflect their aging time together.

Pity the stories don’t.

[Dave]

Personally I find X, XI and XII, not so much as a return to form really, but sits more comfortably within the RD universe. The Dave era brings back a more relaxed atmosphere of 4 characters having lived and interacted together for 30 years. The plots are definitely weaker and less credible, and the comedy is lazy beyond belief, but the sets are good and the lifestyles reflect their aging time together.

I agree pretty much with this. Dave era is comforting without been special. I remember I-VI vividly, yet struggle to distinguish some X-XII episodes.
Best season is probably VI, but I do like IV as well. V also good, but it contains Holoship which I loathe ( with the exception of Jane Horrocks of course) I & II however bring back the real nostalgia for me. The plots are thinner with less action but that doesnt matter, It gives a sense of “ordinary life” on board, rather than all out action every other day, which is interesting as well. In many ways without I & II, we wouldn’t be so invested with them by Series III onwards.
Most under-rated episode for me is Meltdown. Seems a bit unpopular, although not on the series VII, VIII & BTE levels, whereas I find it fits nicely within the classic era. Gunman is a bit over-rated in my opinion, but still very enjoyable. 

[Hamish]

Did you quote yourself or are there three Daves now?

[loadoftottnumb]

I don’t like how unpopular this is, and I think I mentioned it before, but I’d like to see Kochanski back in the next show (series, special whatever). Chloe Annett version. 

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Did you quote yourself or are there three Daves now?

  

[Author]

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