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

[Lily]

Unpopular opinion – not ever sci-fi show needs to have an arc and I think Doctor Who has suffered for it in the past.

The only arc I want to see on Red Dwarf has Cats on it.

[Warbodog]

Series 1 & 6 had good arcs that enhance those series. I’m wary of arcs because of how VIII turned out and X’s chaotic production that kept the set-up but ditched the pay-off, but I’d still love to see something more ambitious mixed in, rather than just playing it safe with Polymorphs and Backwardses until the end.

[GlenTokyo]

It’s a shame that arcs/ multiparters are seemingly not an option though on Red Dwarf because Doug blames the format and not the fact that Back in the Red and Pete were not naturally long enough to be three episodes and shit respectively, even a series before, Epideme and Nanarchy weren’t bad, not classics but fine.

I don’t really want multiparters/arcs that much but a little persistence would be nice, so something could happen and it maybe gets mentioned in passing at some point. I feel like the Dave series lack identity and having some kind of arc, or theme would help.

[Jonsmad]

Entangled is mostly genius writing of highest standard ever achieved by the whole of Red Dwarf,
its exposition including the beggs choke scene makes total sense, is consistent with Koestler it’s source material and the episode is unique among the rules of television plotting as a result of it’s non causal approach. Everything is good until the monkey/naked stuff.

[Dax101]

The beggs choking is either totally silly or actually kinda clever… But If you go by the episodes logic that Kryten and cat were just aware it was gonna happen then that’s where it gets silly

3 characters all choking at the same time seems lazy

[International Debris]

I honestly think Entangled is fantastic until the chimp shows up.

And yes, arc-wise I was definitely talking more about subtle hints and occasionally recurring ideas rather than a big, detailed single plot. The map just seems a very strange thing to have introduced and then just completely forgotten about.

[Dax101]

Id have been happy if the whole episode of engaged was just the crew on the hunt to find something or someway that they could remove the groinal exploder.

I agree that the moment we get to the chimp it feels like Doug is biting off more then he can chew with throwing in so many different ideas and trying to bring them all together by the end.

Oh and that ending with her tripping over some boxes sideways into the airlock which conveniently shuts behind her and is unable to be opened from inside is so bad IMO. even if the final line is kinda amusing it is still what Doug had to do to get to that point that is kinda stupid.

[Dax101]

I mean *entangled, not engaged…

[Bargain Bin Holly]

>and is unable to be opened from inside is so bad IMO.

Actually Professor E accidentally kills herself in that event, paraphrasing Rimmer, “Don’t press that!”

[GlenTokyo]

Professor E was so shit anyway, and as an ending killing her was just ridiculously cold. She did everything wrong, why not make it obvious she’d be great with Rimmer and then have her make the wrong decision and leave? And if you really want her gone have her borrow a shuttle and say don’t go near that wormhole and then she goes down it. At least she’s alive. Also the upside down glasses were a particular low moment in Red Dwarf history.

[Bargain Bin Holly]

lel, I didn’t think it was that bad.

[International Debris]

The upside-down glasses are terrible, Irene E / irony is weak and largely nonsense (I suppose it kind of ties in with the quantum entanglement / coincidence thing, but even then it’s pretty shit), and the idea of a person who does everything ‘wrong’ is really one dimensional and cartoony. It really goes to shit once they arrive at ERRA, which is a shame as there’s LOADS in the first 2/3 of the episode that I absolutely love. Losing Rimmer in a poker game feels like a really classic Dwarf idea, ‘apart from me and him and him’ is a great Cat line, ‘English boarding school’, the BEGGs’ descriptions of the crew, ‘Did it work?’ ‘No’. All that stuff was the point where it really felt like Red Dwarf was fucking great again, after three episodes that were almost there for me. And then the ending threw it all away.

[genericnerdyusername]

Cat’s “except for me him and him” is a shit line.

[Ben Saunders]

I know the OP said no arguing but I’ll meet you outside after school and fight you for that one

Entangled was incredible until it was shit, it was a real shame. I loved Kryten’s speech about the institute, it felt really magical and like Red Dwarf really was back. Briefly.

[Ben Saunders]

Upside down glasses though, fucking hell

[bloodteller]

i wonder if Entangled would’ve been thoroughly brilliant had they kept the original second half of the script (iirc it involved the chimp simply staying a chimp, but they couldn’t work around chimp actors only being able to do 45mins work at a time) or if the script would’ve fallen apart around that point anyway. kryten and cat’s entanglement never seems to get resolved in the episode either, so what was the point of all of it?

[Pete Part Three]

I wonder how many other episodes of Red Dwarf would be improved by a man in an unrealistic chimp costume turning up for the last ten miniutes.

[Hamish]

Officer Rimmer.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Waiting for God …. Lister follows Cat into the bowls of the ship only to find Cat has a pet chimp chained up and he is feeding him bananas.

Lister stands up for the chimp, releases him, and he goes onto causes carnage, destroying everything it comes across before reaching the garbage pod and tearing through the waste, much to Rimmer’s horror.

[bloodteller]

Pete Part 2 has two chimps for the price of one

[bloodteller]

>I wonder how many other episodes of Red Dwarf would be improved by a man in an unrealistic chimp costume turning up for the last ten miniutes.

timewave. a chimp comes onboard and leaves a banana peel on the floor for Ziggy to slip over and break his neck. he is then later killed by malpractice owing to the hairdressers doing the spinal reconstruction surgery injecting him with 500cc’s of TRESemmé

[Dax101]

>i wonder if Entangled would’ve been thoroughly brilliant had they kept the original second half of the script (iirc it involved the chimp simply staying a chimp, but they couldn’t work around chimp actors only being able to do 45mins work at a time)

I can’t remember where Doug said it but i swear he talked about the idea of the chimp playing a big part in either that episode or another episode where Rimmer and Lister were gonna be acting like parents to this chimp as Rimmer wanted to use the chimp to help him pass the officers exam and Lister was gonna be against Rimmer using the chimp like that.

I don’t know how i feel about that idea though.

[Bargain Bin Holly]

>I can’t remember where Doug said it but i swear he talked about the idea of the chimp playing a big part in either that episode or another episode where Rimmer and Lister were gonna be acting like parents to this chimp as Rimmer wanted to use the chimp to help him pass the officers exam and Lister was gonna be against Rimmer using the chimp like that.

I heard about this too, from where tho, can’t remember

[International Debris]

I honestly can’t really see any ending working well. ERRA should have been the climax of the episode, and the quantum entanglement plot should have been used to wrap things up there – somehow involving Kryten and Cat relaying the code to remove the groin exploder by talking at the same time on different ends of the ship to each other, for example. It could have ended on Kryten going ‘owwwww yeah-yeah!’ or something.

[GlenTokyo]

I think the og chimp plans are relayed via Richard Naylor on the documentary.

[Taiwan Tony]

Would now be a good time to do my monkey impression….?

[Moonlight]

Series XI is one of the best series of Red Dwarf.

[Ben Saunders]

It’s definitely in the top 6

[Bargain Bin Holly]

>It’s definitely in the top 6

Which Rob Grant-involved series did it overthrow?

[Ben Saunders]

The first one

[Hamish]

No

[Ben Saunders]

Grr

[bloodteller]

The first series of Red Dwarf is one of the best series of Red Dwarf

[Ben Saunders]

Most of the series of Red Dwarf are one of the best series of Red Dwarf, honestly. There are only 12 and most of them are quite good.

[Dave]

Apart from *that* one. Oh, and *that* one too.

[Hamish]

Yes.

[Flap Jack]

Red Dwarf Series 1 is easily in my Top 8 Red Dwarf Series.

[Taiwan Tony]

Series 1 and 2 are the best series of Red Dwarf

[Ben Paddon]

Back to Earth, while not perfect, is genuinely brilliant.

The worst part is, a lot of people agreed with me as it was going out. We loved it. And then at some point after the shine wore off, people started to talk as if it had been an unmitigated disaster on all fronts. The idea that BTE is a bad show became accepted wisdom, and I don’t get it. I don’t get that transition at all, from adored to deplored in under five years.

It puts me in mind of Avatar, a film that is universally reviled (and one I’ve somehow never seen) but managed to make nearly $2.79 billion at the box office. It’s still, still!, the highest-grossing movie in history – if nobody liked it, how come every bugger went out and saw it eleven times each?

For my money, BTE is still some incredibly strong Red Dwarf, and a good template for how a complete reboot/reworking of the series as a single-camera dram-com could work. Certainly it’s a lot better at the comedy/drama balance than VII (which I also like, though nowhere near as much). For its flaws, BTE is the Dwarf I have revisited the most in the near-decade since its broadcast, and whenever people bash it – on here, on Twitter, at Q&As, wherever – it always feels like they’re squinting at a Magic Eye picture that I can see and they can’t.

I can see the sailboat… I wish everyone else could, too.

[bloodteller]

Back To Earth was quite good outside of the Coronation Street stuff and that crap scene where they drive Carbug to some ill-fitting music, I thought.

Back To Earth is quite a strong character piece, especially for Lister- and it balances the comedy and drama fairly well- e.g. the scene with the kids on the bus is funny (“even in that Bible film, she said “Jesus? He’s not dead!”) but it’s also quite a good bit of character analysis on Lister and what sort of a guy he is.

also, the chinatown chase scene is epic. it’s intense stuff, that

[Dax101]

Funny enough i remember BTE got a very Meh! reaction after the 3rd episode, and i remember being quite saddened about it at the time as i thought it might effect Dave putting money into making a new series since a fair amount of the criticism was that it felt like a tired self-referential comeback.

In reflection though, i don’t like story because it feels like a fourth wall breaking parody with jokes about the Fans, the show in itself and the cast with one of the worse moments in Dwarf history in part 2 where the crew discovers they are characters in a tv show. its so surreal and ridiculous but is played as straight as the cast could make it work.

Reminds me of the Dispensing machine bonking scene in Dear Dave since maybe it sounded good in Dougs head but it really does not work on screen at all.

[Dax101]

>Back To Earth is quite a strong character piece, especially for Lister

Problem is the character stuff with Lister feels like an afterthought. and its possible it very well could have been since wasn’t it Andrew Ellard that came up with the idea of having Kochanski appear at the end?

Even the Joy Squid feels abit like an afterthought too since by the end the concept of the “joy” squid doesn’t add anything to whats happening until they realize that it is infact the joy squid and then Kochanski suddenly appears to keep lister there.

Yeah lister throws a line in about feeling great since they got there, but they were trying to find their creator so they wouldn’t die? pooping their selves in the elevator ride up there and then thought they killed the guy… such joy!

[Flap Jack]

Just to join in with the “at the time it went out” perspective, I distinctly remember how I felt when Back to Earth first broadcast. I was delighted to see ANY new Red Dwarf, but I was also really underwhelmed.

Outside of episode 2 the laughs were very thin on the ground, and the lack of a live audience – despite there still being gaps left for their reactions – made it feel especially awkward. The performances in a lot of scenes – such as the sneeze ironing scene or Rimmer dancing while the others were attacked by the squid – just felt kind of forced, illiciting a “this seems like it should be funny – why isn’t it funny?” reaction from me.

I still firmly enjoyed it overall – the comedy in episode 2 and the atmosphere of episode 3 helped with that – but I still couldn’t avoid being disappointed that it didn’t feel like proper Red Dwarf.

[Dave]

It’s quite common for initial enthusiasm for a series to give way to a more measured opinion over time. The same happened with VIII to some extent.

For what it’s worth, I now enjoy BTE slightly more than I did when it went out. Initially I was quite disappointed but now I at least appreciate what it was trying to do and the limitations it was operating under, and it has some good gags in isolation.

[Warbodog]

The weird fan episode polls after VII and VIII are probably the best evidence of the recency bias.

You can see it with a lot of things. If you look up reddit discussions of Doctor Who’s arc-tastic episodes from 2011 that most people have decided they hated now, they were well into it at the time.

I always thought BTE was fine for a special, but not something I’d feel like rewatching. It didn’t disappoint me like VII & VIII, but it didn’t fill me with over-optimistic confidence like Trojan either.

[Plastic Percy]

I still bloody love Back to Earth, me.

[Bargain Bin Holly]

I always agree with the suggestion they should another special in the vain of BtE, improve on it with newfound experience.

Plus, I always liked that deleted bunk scene, wish they kept it. But yeah BtE was fine, I remember being disappointed with it when I discovered the whole show and binged on it back in 2012; but now I think it’s fine.

[tombow]

I liked BTE mostly, I liked it’s ambition and the jokes were fun, I liked the silly stuff like the Starbug car and the big ideas it had. I really think it needed some kind of audience laughter on its TV broadcast though. To be honest, I feel the same way about any sitcom-style banter being put in a movie context, like the Rising Damp film from the 70s – that kind of banter just doesn’t work without an audience to bounce off.

And silly stuff like the car and going to Corrie is the kind of stuff that needs camaraderie and other fans with you to enjoy because it’s only really funny because it’s silly fun, it’s not like the most witty conversations from series 1-5 that I would enjoy in any format.

Speaking of the Rising Damp film – it would have been similar to the RD film in that it was a reboot that started again and re-made the origin story.

[Ben Paddon]

I really think it needed some kind of audience laughter on its TV broadcast though.

Every time someone’s tried to do this, it’s been terrible. It wasn’t written with an audience in mind, and showing to an audience after the fact a la VII wouldn’t have worked. BtE is better without one.

That being said… so is VII, sometimes. The Xtended versions are a brilliant exercise in showing us why stuff that winds up on the cutting room floor should probably stay there, but awkward pauses aside VII fares a lot better without the audience laughter.

[Dax101]

>It wasn’t written with an audience in mind

Well according to Doug the thought of having an audience was there, its just they couldn’t afford one.

One idea was to have the audience for everything before they go “back to earth” and then the laughter track would be gone for their earth adventure. which would certainly add an even more meta feel to it.

[Author]

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