Your Unpopular Red Dwarf Opinions

[Piplup2003]

The title says it all. What opinions do you have about Red Dwarf that no-one else seems to agree on?

For me, it’s that VIII is my second favourite series (behind V) and that I prefer Chloë over Claire as Kochanski (this may be partially influenced by the fact that I’ve met Chloë).

And please, no arguing.

Topic

[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. 

I meant don’t know how unpopular this is 

[Moonlight]

Rimmer’s Back to Earth light blue tunic is better than the navy blue one he’s been wearing since X.

That’s objectively correct. Why would ANYONE prefer the drab, lifeless one that ditched the pearlescence?

The sad thing is the inferior one is now Rimmer’s longest-lasting costume in terms of episodes featured, majorly beating out the previous contenders – his original uniform in Series 1 and 2 and the green tunic from III and IV (and, for some goddamn reason I will never understand, the opening scenes of The Inquisitor).

Nobody try to justify that use in The Inquisitor because I will dismantle your logic. I have thought WAY too hard and long about this, and I have never seen a satisfactory in-universe explanation that doesn’t fall apart under scrutiny.

[Formica]

They should bring back Rimmer’s prison uniform

[Moonlight]

Give him a purple tunic. Like the one in Entangled that obviously should have been red but wasn’t.

[Warbodog]

Red, green and blue are the primary colours of light, so I like sticking to those thematically. Though I never really liked the red ones.

[Hamish]

Though I never really liked the red ones.

[Flap Jack]

Nobody try to justify that use in The Inquisitor because I will
dismantle your logic. I have thought WAY too hard and long about this,
and I have never seen a satisfactory in-universe explanation that
doesn’t fall apart under scrutiny.

FAN THEORY: Rimmer switched to the green tunic in The Inquisitor because he fancied wearing something different that day.

[Dave]

Nobody try to justify that use in The Inquisitor because I will
dismantle your logic. I have thought WAY too hard and long about this,
and I have never seen a satisfactory in-universe explanation that
doesn’t fall apart under scrutiny.

FAN THEORY: Rimmer switched to the green tunic in The Inquisitor because he fancied wearing something different that day.

He needed to be Captain Emerald that day, not Captain Scarlett

[Rudolph]

I think my problem is that original tunic look was a nice pastiche of space age sci-fi uniforms – they looked just over the top enough to be very Rimmer – but the current one looks like it could be a real, very sombre uniform from a modern sci-fi series.

[Dave]

I think my problem is that original tunic look was a nice pastiche of space age sci-fi uniforms – they looked just over the top enough to be very Rimmer – but the current one looks like it could be a real, very sombre uniform from a modern sci-fi series.

I preferred his Series VI look. I didnt like what they did to it in Series VII though with the 2-tone boots and extra padded shoulders. I believe Chris himself has said this was the look he least preferred.

You have to bear in mind though that Chris is in his 60’s now, and a more fitted toned down uniform is probably better suited to his age. The green & red look of III to V may be classic, but classic for their era.

Didnt like the BTE look much either with the waistband

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Yellow from Out of Time was my favourite but if he were to wear that regularly he’d probably look too much like Shatner in TOS

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Yellow from Out of Time was my favourite but if he were to wear that regularly he’d probably look too much like Shatner in TOS

And with the planet sized mid-section and unconfincing fake ‘tache he’d also look a bit like Shatner in Columbo.

[Stabbim]

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?

I’ll give the Red Dwarf USA pilots this:  one of them improved on the original “what if” of the Lister/Kochanski situation. Kochanski is impressed by Lister sacrificing himself for the sake of the cat and makes a point of telling him so before he goes into stasis.  Sure, he’s still left wondering “what if” about a hypothetical when he gets out and she’s 3,000,000 years dead along with everyone else, but having her go out of her way to come up to him and tell him she thinks more highly of him lets Lister (and us) feel more confident in his chances post-stasis.  Lister’s thus not haunted by “she might have” but by the more respectable “she would have”.

[Moonlight]

FAN THEORY: Rimmer switched to the green tunic in The Inquisitor because he fancied wearing something different that day.

Then it should have switched back to green at the end. Checkmate, bitch.

[Warbodog]

Then it should have switched back to green at the end. Checkmate, bitch.

The timeline at the beginning of the episode was already an Inquisitor-tampered one. Once he’s erased, they’re left in a weird amalgamated timeline where the alternate Lister’s hand is still around, at least some of them remember the events and they haven’t been reset back to Starbug. There’s enough weird shit going on already, anomalies to cope with the paradox or whatever bollocks Lister says in Tikka.

[Flap Jack]

Then it should have switched back to green at the end. Checkmate, bitch.

Darn, I should have known better than to test your resolve!

Um… maybe Rimmer said “Holly, I’m feeling the green outfit today, but switch me back to the red one later”, and when the timeline was restored, it was past the point in the day when his outfit was switched back.

[Jenuall]

I like the material of the BTE tunic but it’s horrible fitting and the belt is a genuine fashion crime

[RunawayTrain]

The BTE belt was only a part-time accoutrement, thank goodness.  The opposite of Odo’s belt in that it does NOT look good.

I think the X onwards uniform in the BTE material would be a decent compromise.

[DoctorEggBastard]

I think Lister should tone down the leather look a bit as he heads towards 60. Combine the boiler suit look from 6 with a leather jacket.

[Rushy]

Backwards is a better novel than Better than Life. 

[Moonlight]

I like the material of the BTE tunic but it’s horrible fitting and the belt is a genuine fashion crime

I don’t like the belt but I completely prefer the material / color to the tunic from X and on.

[Rushy]

Rimmer’s next outfit should be his JMC uniform, but it’s the series 8 variation. And they never address it. 

[Moonlight]

No, Rimmer’s next uniform should be the yellow quilted jacket. 

[Technopeasant]

[Hamish]

Am I the only one who ever heard that line as being “I really should be wearing clothes”?

[Moonlight]

I made that exact post in the “misheard lines” thread and I think it’s funnier than the actual line.

[Rushy]

Into the Gloop was worse than series 8

[Dax101]

Well Into the gloop was a little sketch script made for some fans to play the roles of the characters at a convention. I don’t think anyone expected it to be anything special. Whether it’s better than series 8 or not probably says more about Series 8.

[Rushy]

It’s the fact that it amounts to nothing more than just a petty jab at Doug Dwarf.

Say what you will about series 8, it was made earnestly. 

[Dax101]

What about it was a petty jab at Doug?

[Dave]

What about it was a petty jab at Doug?

I presume the way it implied it was the true ending for the original Red Dwarf timeline and anything else was just an alternative version of the characters. 

[Dax101]

Looking at the script again i don’t see that being emplied. Is it just because Rob Ignored all Dougs solo work and called it episode 6.0? Because yeah Rob doesnt watch any of Dougs Solo work so either way he wasnt going to continuity it. And considering how he ended it which was quite obviously a silly joke doesn’t suggest its anything but Rob messing around. 

[Jenuall]

I haven’t revisited the script in a while but I do recall the ending section basically having a bit about how they are dying as the true Dwarf crew and whilst other iterations of them may continue in some alternative dimension/universe they wouldn’t be as good as the originals?

I think you can read it as a jab, but personally I didn’t take it that way. Even if you do have that read on it I think it’s a fairly light-hearted jab

[Dave]

Yeah I always took it as fairly light-hearted.

[Renegade Rob]

The most brutal takedown of Doug’s work was his own gag in the Beginning about the corrosive micro-organism. Now that was a jab (a knowing, self-inflicted one). Into the Gloop comes nowhere close to that. 

[Rushy]

I feel like we read a different script.

Into the Gloop has the crew talk about how an alternative version of them will go on, but that they’re “nowhere as great, nowhere as cool”. And then he just kills them off. That’s the whole story. The entire thing is Rob giving a fat middle finger to the idea of Red Dwarf continuing past him. To me, it insults and diminishes the work that the cast & crew have put in for decades after his involvement ended. He’s just throwing the toys out of the pram. 

[Renegade Rob]

Okay, fine, you might have a point. I’d forgotten the exact wording, but I might’ve gotten swept up at the time in what was otherwise a heartwarming display of fan and creator interaction. 

[Dax101]

Into the Gloop is a experimental project where fans get to play the characters. Its hardly a passion project that Rob is using to jab at Doug. If anything the whole project isnt meant to be taken too seriously.

Unless you believe that Rob is so bitter that to him Red Dwarf is just a weapon to be used against Doug. Which i don’t believe at all personally.

It would be like taking Red Christmas as gospel for Dougs Solo material. Yno that mobisode Doug wrote where Santa Clause visits Red Dwarf. And yes i know to some of you its a 100% canon ;)

[Rushy]

Personally, I believe Rob Grant has nothing more to give to the franchise, and is uncomfortable with the fact that Doug does. 

Rob was always much more about the characters than the sci-fi plots. He argued against the Series III reset. His solo novel Backwards is the least storyline-heavy of all of them (at least two-thirds of it is backwards jokes, western jokes and Ace Rimmer) and what little there is is lifted from series 6. 

If we look at the bubble era with that perspective, it becomes clear that Rob’s contribution was decreasing as time went on. He still wrote great banter, but Rimmer’s tortured psyche had been done to death, Kryten has broken his programming and Lister was too busy to be lonely. Any further development risked changing the dynamics too much (which is what we see in 7-8, and why the Dave era is so conservative). 

Even Red Dwarf: Titan just sounds like Rob trying to mine the early chapters of the first book for something he finds interesting to write about. 

[Rushy]

Into the Gloop is a experimental project where fans get to play the characters. Its hardly a passion project that Rob is using to jab at Doug. If anything the whole project isnt meant to be taken too seriously. 

I agree it wasn’t meant to be taken seriously, I just find it sad that this is Rob’s idea of a sketch for fans. Sad and telling of where his mindset’s at. 

[Dax101]

Well according to Doug, Rob was reluctant to change the formula but was also the guy who kept pushing for better quality jokes. In the documentaries Doug claims Rob would always be the one that said “No we can do better” and then they would spend more time on it. And looking at some of Doug’s Solo work… you can kinda see that missing. Doug has a lot to give because he has no filter or restraint. And also been allowed a lot of trial and error with the fandom.

And we also don’t have enough to go on when it comes to Rob Grants Red Dwarf. if you bank it all on his novel alone, then you would have to bank all Doug’s credential on his own Solo novel. But Series 7 onwards has been constantly shifting balance when it comes to Sci-Fi and Comedy. Some have described Series 7 as more Sci-fi Comedy Drama. While Series 8 is a more sillier, presumably because Series 7 was considered disappointing at the time. Trial and error.

[Jenuall]

Short of jumping in our own Anywhen machine and going back to be a fly on the wall in Grant Naylor productions writers room there’s no way we can really know who contributed which elements to the scripts and what the relative quantity of output can be attributed to either one of them, to suggest otherwise is counterproductive. Series 1-6 was written by Rob and Doug working together. 

Maybe I’m misguided or unaware of the fact that more information is available that backs up some of what you’re saying, but to me it reads more like you have your own views and are projecting them onto what Rob was thinking/intending with this script. 

For my money it’s a fun convention script that spends more time taking the piss out of Ed Bye than it has any time to comment on Doug’s output post 1993. If nothing else this thread has encouraged me to reread it and that’s cool because I actually enjoyed it more than I remembered! 

[Flap Jack]

What did Rob mean by this?

[Technopeasant]

I admit, the fact that it was presumably written around the time lawyers were being called does make me less inclined to pass it off as lighthearted, but very much water under the bridge at this point.

[Ian Symes]

My interpretation of all this stuff is that Rob was cheekily setting up a scenario in which he could do his own post Series VI stories, in whatever form they take, without detracting from all of Doug’s solo Dwarf work. Setting up the ending of Out of Time as a schism from which multiple realities span off, each of them as valid as the other. The “not quite the same, not as cool, not as good” lines could just as easily refer to the hypothetical Buttskiverse versions of the characters, as much as Doug’s versions. And it’s true – one writer’s interpretations of the characters are never going to be exactly the same as the versions written by the gestalt, no matter which of them is doing the writing. But they’re equally valid. 

[Rushy]

My interpretation of all this stuff is that Rob was cheekily setting up a scenario in which he could do his own post Series VI stories

… by killing off the entire crew.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Warbodog]

Unpopular?: I don’t mind Holly being relegated to a background character with occasional highlights from series III-V. It’s a shame for Hattie if that wasn’t how it was sold, but there’s a lot going on in the episodes now and a larger cast. She’s just a head on a screen who makes wisecracks and gives exposition, she’s the most disposable character. It’s still great to see her hanging around there though, even if mainly as a screensaver.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Holly makes a lot of sense when you’re on a ship with 3 sets to work with 

As soon as you start leaving the shop they become a lot less relevant 

[Moonlight]

As soon as you start leaving the shop

[Author]

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