Asclepius

[Asclepius]

Absolutely love Promised Land. The Dave era had its ups and downs, but this episode was its gem.

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“can anyone help me get my head around why the smeg Lister being around Three Million Years hence was causing all the universes to collapse into each other?”

No. No, I cannot.

Duane Dibbley’s back. FFS. We thought Doug went broad and crass with the Reservoir Duanes in Series 8, but this is *literally* Danny dressed as the Cat as Duane just shouting “I’M DUANE DIBBLEY”. It’s either a meta joke on the shitness of Doug doing it, or a reminder that Rob wasn’t all that, and was always capable of this shit, too.

The ending. I can’t see how they all get out of being about to die as they crash. But also similar to the Backwards ending where, despite everything…all four of them reconnect (and at the right age). Yes, clearly a sequel was intended. I’d read an Andrew Marshall sequel.

*Really* should have gone with “It’s a smegging garbage pod” in the end, as another poster has gone with.

I did enjoy the “Dead, Dave” callback, too.

“A part of me kinda wishes they’d been brave enough to just have this series be solely Rimmer and Lister rather than finding ways to artificially insert Cat and Kryten”

Agreed. Cat was well written, but unnecessary. 

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“Well, I think we all thought the same thing when “Norman” starts talking about how Red Dwarf screwed him over and stole his personality to make into Holly, right…? That whole chapter blew me away, on a meta level.”

Yeah, I liked the reveal. I like the name. As for Norman acting it? Yeah, it’s tricky, but I’ll cope. The idea of a man with lovely ethics having them taken away…yeah, one of the better ideas here, I think.

“What is Chris’s Ingrid voice supposed to be ??? It sounds like Eric Morecambe to me! Might have to ask him about that at the convention this weekend. “

I *hated* this voice. It just didn’t work for me. (Although I read and finished the book with my eyes, I’ve started listening to the first chapters as audio now).

Dr. Godbold. Didn’t gel with this character at all. A joke in search of a personality.

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Rimmer as Raymond? Yes, I liked this. And Curzon as the agent. This worked.

“maybe I was reading too quickly but I didn’t really get why Rimmer was famously wanted? The stuff he’s meant to have done didn’t seem severe enough to make him a top criminal on Titan.”

Agreed. People being murdered and mutilated all the time, and Rimmer is wanted for…what? Jaywalking? I can’t remember what else.

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Picking on what others have said.

Yeah, the Cosmic Plot just…doesn’t work much for me. The subplot of Kochanski and Themis is great and works well. But not so much the Cosmic Plot.

And Petersen and Pear is a bad joke that doesn’t work, and is repeated ad-finitum.

Yes, Peterson could suddenly *get* Art and love art. But he wouldn’t have the terms for it that he uses.

The stuff about the bad guy’s identity was quite well done. I don’t think it’s revealed in this part, so I won’t go There though.

Rimmer and Byle is fine, but the endless dream sequences…again, a weak joke repeated.

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– Page 70 “it’s not cheating, Lister, it’s turpitude…It’s what all great men do”. Great line! Too much ‘thicko’ stuff after that though
Yes, the “thicko” stuff was so dull.

– I can’t help imagining series 1/2 Rimmer and Lister, I guess because of the pre-accident setting. Then I struggle to imagine how the action scenes would look with a series 1/2 budget  
I think the only way of picturing the constantly hysterical and shouting Rimmer is to picture Series 1 Rimmer. As for the action scenes, I struggled to picture them anyway as I found the description in the world-building to not be helpful for building up a mental image of the world. Everything described was so simile-heavy, always going for the next joke, and so NOISY – like Quanderhorn.

Picture the description of Titan compared to the beautiful writing as Lister explores Garbage World in the first book. Outstanding stuff.

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A long Guardian article all about Esperanto:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/jul/28/nudists-peaceniks-freeloading-travellers-esperanto
No mention of Red Dwarf, sadly.

Cerys Matthews was playing songs in Esperanto on her Sunday show. Again, no RD mention, sadly!

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Finished Part One now.

The climax to it, and the ‘return’ of Kryten feels like it’s trying to plough similar ground to the return of Holly halfway through the Backwards novel, but it has none of the poignancy of that scene. 

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The writing feels very Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers. And that’s good. But it doesn’t feel as committed to being a novel as Infinity did. A lot less character exploration through narration.

Yes, it’s a lot of “and then what happened was…”

The insights into characters’ thoughts and drives in the first two books remains unparalleled.

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I can’t tell whether the shameless use of Lost in Space comedy is meant to be a loving homage or outright theft. 
(For context, I’m referring to Rimmer’s use of alliterative insults for machines, the same exact shtick employed by Jonathan Harris on the show. Some of the insults are identical)

Sooooo many insults for machines. Feels like a Series 6 cockpit scene, that’s been extended.

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Well it kinda is a throwback since it’s set in the past. It just makes more sense being a throwback than it would if it was set after all the other series.

True.

It’s just tricky trying to picture this set pre Series 1. Most of the references are of tech that’s familiar to us in 2026. And either Rob or Andrew’s love of Strictly has influenced at least three dances being referenced at this point…

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Carson is more copeable now that you’ve pointed out he should be read as David Ross, and not as Kryten. But yeah, he’s a lot too much. All done for Jokes, which really aren’t all landing.

Finally, there seems to be a bit of plot evolving with Rimmer and Lister’s bit. Finally.

Didn’t like the bit where Lister tricks Rimmer into thinking that he actually likes him. It’s been done on TV in Terrorform, and then was neatly skewed in the beautiful Moonlight scene of Promised Land. This throws it back to the 80s. It’s just unkindness. And doesn’t serve a plot point. Nor does it work ad a punchline.

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I’m really struggling with this tbh. I know I’m a lot older than when I last read a new Dwarf book, but I’m finding it a chore to sit down and see what happens next. There’s no got-to-keep-reading urgency to it.

The whole bit with Petersen suddenly ‘getting’ art was the nadir so far. Yes, there’s a joke in that he might be really moved by appreciating art…but he wouldn’t have the vocabulary for it that he does in the book. As a joke, it just doesn’t work.

Hollister is playing golf repeatedly. It’s pretty much joke-free.

The Kryten that’s not quite Kryten is so like Kryten that we read him as Kryten (or I do, at least) but because he’s not *quite* Kryten, it just ain’t working. He’s too annoying and precise.

Lister’s written pretty well.

Rimmer seems overly ridiculous – the bit of him doing him repeated salute right in front of the Captain suggests a significant learning difficulty rather than just his usual innate Rimmerness. The bit with people thinking he’s a hologram because a car collision has left an ‘H’ mark on his head is just ridiculous. It stretches belief just too far.

Kochanski feels pretty sound, and her plot is genuinely interesting. But it’s only a small part of the book so far.
The humour feels much more Quanderhorn – OTT, shouty, slightly gross – than Dwarf.
I will persevere. But it’s not working for me.

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I thought Alan Davies was a pretty good choice for the Doctor, he’s underrated as an actor in my book.

If he met a bad guy or a monster he would defeat them by biting their ears off. As he is prone to do to homeless people.

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Since the Smegmeister can’t butt in on me this time and say “We’ve polled this already”, here are the Goodreads ratings for the various Grant/Naylor books (not including script books):

Sin Bin Island: 4.22 (27 ratings only, so take this one with care!!)

Better Than Life: 4.09 (13,196 ratings )

Infinity Welcomes: 4.08 (28,850 ratings )

Backwards: 3.98 (10,076 ratings )

Last Human: 3.86 (8,369 ratings )

Incompetence: 3.78 (1,730 ratings)

Fat: 3.68 (989 ratings)

Colony: 3.64 (1,227 ratings)

Quanderhorn Xperimentations (script? Adaptation? A close call): 3.38 (125 ratings)

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These are all really, really funny. Good work

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I have high hopes. Backwards was my least favourite Dwarf novel, and the Into The Gloop sketch made me cringe, but this isn’t just Rob writing. It’s Andrew Marshall, too. There’s a discussion elsewhere about how Doug doesn’t have his Dave Dwarf scripts checked…because the script editor is his kid, so is never going to say “This is shit, Dad”, but Andrew Marshall is a guy with huge experience, huge gravitas in this world, and was clearly loving working with Rob. I have high hopes that this double-act will work.

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I can’t decide whether IMDb ratings are uniquely weird, or they’re actually normal and it’s everywhere else that’s weird. For most shows 6/10 is effectively the bottom of the scoring range in terms of averages, but maybe the general population are kinder than hardcore fans and just give a pass to anything that doesn’t physically injure you when you watch it.
Still, Pete Part II has a 6.9 average, and the worst Red Dwarf episode of all time has a 7.4, the same as Twentica and Mechocracy. That is fucking bonkers.

But I do enjoy the suggestion that Doug should have balanced Series XI and XII by just somehow knowing how the episodes would be received once they came out. What a mundane use of clairvoyance.

It’s not about “knowing how they’d be received” just…showing them to some people and getting some feedback. Or is it the same issue that RTD had with Dr. Who – he’s so all-powerful that no-one will say “Erm…about the Captain in a tutu…about the outrageous ‘oriental’ accent….etc etc”.

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The premise of this conversation with IMDb ratings is nonsense when Samsara and Krysis are implied to be episodes worth keeping in a single 6 episode series when one is complete piss and the other is mostly piss.

Eh. I liked them.

The failures for me were the five at the bottom of the IMDB list. I thought M-Corp, Twentica and Mechocracy were a little dull. I thought Siliconia was outright boring to the point where I struggled to concentrate, and Timewave was an episode of Red Dwarf that happened once.

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If only there was a more in-depth series of ratings for Red Dwarf episodes.

Valid. I thought IMDB would take us out of the (probably smaller?) sphere of people who filled in the survey too, and onto ‘the wider public’.

Doesn’t look like there’s any controversial markings on their score chart though. Ironically, it’s the “anti woke” episode that gets hammered. Whereas IMDB folk have been notably the opposite way around when it comes to when they decided that Dr. Who had become ‘woke’ (i.e. female) and voted ‘accordingly’.

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When Series XI is generally good.

And Series XII is less good…

Why didn’t Doug switch some episodes around a bit?

According to IMD, the best-rated episodes are:

Skipper 8.3 (XII)

Give and Take 7.8 (XI)

Officer Rimmer 7.7 (XI)

Can of Worms 7.7 (XI)

Samsara 7.6 (XI)

Krysis 7.5 (XI)

Cured 7.5 (XII)

M-Corp 7.5 (XII)

Twentica 7.4 (XI)

Mechocracy 7.4 (XII)

Siliconia 7.2 (XII)

Timewave 6.4 (XII)

So of the best six episodes, five are from Series 11, and the Series 12 one is Skipper.

Doug, Richard, anyone else involved *must* have realised which ones were working better than others, mustn’t they? Far better to give Series XI a bit of a dip, than to let Series XII start relatively strongly and then just fade to piss (only being resolved by Skipper being so popular).

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Was gutted on Saturday morning. Sat down with the kids to watch the next episode with them, which was set to be Emohawk – and there were no episodes available until Series 9! So we watched something else.

At least they’re back now. And there’s a longer wait between the highs of Gunmen and the lows of Emohawk.

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A shot of the TARDIS in space with the caption “Three Years Later”, and then we find the Seventeenth Doctor in situ.

The numbers are ridiculous now, aren’t they? Eccleston was The Doctor. Tennant was the one after him, and then it starts getting bogged down in numbers of regenerations, fake regenerarions, Mayfly Doctors, Doctors from unknown times.

Scrap the numbering again.

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My youngest would like to know why the crew didn’t stay with Legion. Their line – and mine – that they had to leave to find Red Dwarf didn’t wash with him. Legion could give them everything they want. Why did they want to go back to Red Dwarf? Everyone they knew was dead. At least with Legion they could be happy.

Go on, parent better than me.

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If you’ve never listened to Big Finish I can give you a series of good recommendations.

They’ve done some great stuff. Protect and Survive was absolutely chilling. 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men was great fun.
But while they still either refuse to (if Nick Briggs is to be believed) or literally financially can’t provide any visuals for their stories, its still a struggle for me to get into Big Finish as a regular hobby because I struggle to visualise the stories and so much of Doctor Who’s appeal to me is the visual spectacle, even on a budget.

I find the only way I can focus on them is to be doing something like running/jogging. I just can’t sit/drive/walk and focus on them.

Still, it gets me out the ‘ouse.

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Rumour going around that they’ve already filmed the special in total secrecy. As nonsensical as it sounds, I almost want it to be true, but then that’d mean we’d get an episode that’s likely just a couple of actors in one set talking. 
And if that bloody UNIT lot are in it, I swear to god…

This sounds *amazing*. I really hope it’s true.

Now, time to read the rest of this thread…

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I have an issue with the whole S6 cliffhanger into S7 resolution.

Cat, Lister and Kryten are dead. Killed by the Future Selves. Right?

Rimmer ‘saves the day’ by destroying the time drive…*just* as the ship is about to be destroyed by the Future Selves.

But if the Future Selves were going to destroy the whole ship anyway…including the time drive…then why did Rimmer even need to intervene? Could he not have sat back and just waited for it to happen anyway?

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Chris Barrie, Robert Llewellyn, Craig Charles and Danny John-Jules at Comic-Con Liverpool 2024

I like how *both* Chris and Robert look like both Ted *and* Ralph at the same time.

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Series VI has a fair few model shots augmented with computer graphics, but it’s still almost entirely physical models. It’s not until Series VII that CGI is used in place of model shots for the first time.

I think it was most noticeable as Starbug was making its way through the asteroid field. The asteroids were looking very flat…as was Starbug.

It’s odd revisiting all of these. I’ve probably watched them all twice…three times maybe? And not for many years. But I’ve heard them dozens upon dozens of times. To get a belly laugh out of me, a gag needs to be entirely visual, or needs to have a visual component to it that I’ve totally forgotten about.

That said, I’m still laughing at it more than my kids do. They still keep asking to watch it, but never get an actual full laugh out of it. Weirdoes.

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And so, last night, we reached Psirens as the kids watch RD for the first time, and me for the umpteenth.

It’s at this point that the lovely model shots turn into CGI for quite a few of the action scenes, isn’t it? I wasn’t expecting it, and it came as a bit of a surprise. It’s some of the most dated stuff we’ve seen so far! What was the thinking at the time? It’s cheaper? It’ll look better…?

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I see increasing popularity of Cured over the years and feel it’s my duty to stop it. It’s a poor episode. Some good gags, but a really saggy plot. Fathers and Suns has the whole Taiwan Tony plot which stops it being perfect, too.
My Dave era best-of would be:
Lemons, The Beginning, Give & Take, Krysis, M-Corp, Skipper, The Promised Land (feature length finale). 

I think Cured’s the strongest episode of that last series. I do like it, but I do recognise its crappy plot. But it is fun. I enjoyed it watching it, I’ve enjoyed rewatching it.
I’d forgotten that Taiwan Tony featured in ‘Fathers and Suns’. I just remembered the Lister stuff and Pree. They were good bits.
I’ll take your list too, tbh. The Beginning has a cringe moment for me where Rimmer’s gardening father has the ridiculous name ‘Dungo’ or something, and Rimmer carries out the antique lamp that’s just appeared out of nowhere. Argh. I have trouble getting past those moments!

Krysis – yeah, good call. That’s a good story, and Butler is great.

M-Corp I’ve struggled with too. It’s an interesting idea, but as my young child says about various Doctor Who episodes – you know that what’s happened (Lister’s ageing) isn’t really real and is just going to be reset at the end of the episode.

Skipper is a good laugh, but those laughs are almost entirely through “Oh, look who this is from the olden days” or “Here’s that joke again”. It would have been amazing to watch being recorded though, I imagine. But yeah, it is funny!

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Lemons really grinds my gears because all the Red dwarf fans on Reddit absolutely love it. You’d think there had never been a better episode the way they clap like seals whenever it is mentioned. It must appeal to American sense of humour or something. Whereas I loath it. Full of all the wak gags, out-of-character behaviour, and bad Chris acting that is familiar to us. Moreover, I could just about buy it if Lister and Cat were the ones who needed a battery, but having Kryten there (who somehow now has less knowledge of DIY batteries than my mum), just makes the whole premise of *walking to India* eye-wateringly dumb. The whole episode reads like fan fic. Bad fan fic, not even good fan fic.

I hadn’t spotted the plot hole about the battery before. Argh! You’ve killed it for me now! Boooo….!

But I do like the episode. The Geordie Jesus is brilliantly well written and well played. The parts where he discovers what “he” is responsible for re: Christianity, the initial ‘Jesus! Yes?’ gag. It’s all good stuff. Without a good Jesus actor, I think the whole thing would collapse massively. But it has got a good Jesus, and I do like it. It’s fun, it’s funny and it’s a little bit moving at times. Feels like a lesser Series III/IV episode to me.

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I am sure he’s actually lovely in person but the way he wears his glasses lately always makes Chris look like he’s about to say something cuttingly sarcastic.

Presumably he puts his glasses on to type. Hence the scary shit he types.

I’ve heard and read from many fans that, in real life, he’s been absolutely lovely to you all. I suppose a lot of people are like that – it’s easy to hate and dislike a group of people, but one-by-one it’s impossible to be rude to them.

My Dad’s passed on now, but he was a self-identified racist, and he was clearly also misogynistic. But I never once heard him be rude to anyone in person.

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My favourite bits of the Dave era are up there with some bubble stuff, and I definitely felt the joy of it feeling like Red Dwarf whenever it returned. The cracks are also a lot more obvious on rewatches, though, and despite the major upturn in writing, it’s clear that Doug’s worst impulses in both VII and VIII never fully went away.

Trojan, Fathers and Suns, Lemons, Give & Take, Officer Rimmer, Cured, The Promised Land (feature length finale).

One perfect Dave-era season of seven. You can remove whichever one you want to make it six.

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Chris to his wife when he gets home: “Crikey. Bobby’s let himself go.”

[Asclepius]

So, a history of the Directors:

Feb ’90: Grant Naylor Productions founded
by Dec ’90: Rob Grant, Doug Naylor, Kevin Jackson, Christopher Bell (secretary)

Nov ’91: Rob Grant, Doug Naylor, Christopher Bell (secretary) [Kevin gone]

Jan ’94: Rob Grant, Doug Naylor, Charles Armitage, Christopher Bell (secretary) [Charles joins]

Aug ’00: Rob Grant, Doug Naylor, Charles Armitage (Director and secretary) [and Charles becomes Secretary as Christopher goes]

May ’14: Rob Grant, Doug Naylor, Charles Armitage (Director and secretary), Lesley Armitage [the first spouse joins the board!]

Feb ’17: Rob Grant, Doug Naylor, Lesley Armitage [Charles passes away]

Oct ’17: Rob Grant, Doug Naylor, Lesley Armitage, Kevin Jackson [Kevin rejoins]

Mar ’20: Rob Grant, Lesley Armitage, Kevin Jackson [ the ‘coup’ – and Doug is gone]

Mar ’23: Rob Grant, Doug Naylor [ after all the legal stuff, Doug returns, and Lesley and Kevin go]

Feb ’26: Doug Naylor

Apr 26: Doug Naylor, Linda Naylor, Richard Naylor

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I can get behind series 13, but let’s not get into seasons

I’ll let you have that.

Procrastinating with some work that I can’t be bothered to do, I had a nose at your profile as I recognise your name from lots of Dwarfcasts..and I’ve been going through your Bandcamp since. I really, really like your work. I couldn’t even begin to explain why (I’m not good at writing about music, and I particularly don’t get why I like some ambient work but not others), but it’s really good stuff.

[Asclepius]

I see what you mean about the later directing. I don’t mind it tbh, and it recreates a bit of the feel of early Dwarf. To me, anyway.

The thing I *don’t* like about it is the effort it clearly took Doug to write and direct at the same time. I think it’s to the show’s detriment. I don’t know the order Series 11 and 12 were filmed in, but certainly the stinkers are in the second half of that pack suggesting a) that he was running out of ideas/time and b) that he remains not the best judge of his own best work, or he’d have staggered the episodes differently (see also the ‘Moonlight’ speech at the halfway point in Season 13, which he wasn’t going to originally include)*

*I included the phrase “the ‘Moonlight’ speech at the halfway point in Season 13″ purely to encourage angry coughing fits in its readers. I provide no apologies :D

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Since Doug was writing, directing and producing the show
So Ed Bye really wasn’t needed. 

Tbh, once the major budget issues of Back to Earth/X were resolved, I feel it was a huge mistake not to draw Ed back in. 
Doug has directed, but he’s not a professional director. 

Hard agree. He might have had more success with all of the last-minute-rewrites (how many episodes did that happen to?!) if he hadn’t been directing at the same time. But I gather the directing and writing aspect was partly to save money, wasn’t it?

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We’ll never know for sure, but I think that’s very feasible. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since Rob died, especially as we’ve been revisiting the build-up to the split in our Smegazine and Re-Disc-Overy casts, plus reading up on the Grant Naylor years for the obituary. If it is the case that Rob was unwell, then I can totally understand why he needed to suddenly break away. I can also totally understand how tough that would have been for Doug to be left to pick up the pieces. It would have perfectly reasonable for both of them to feel resentful towards the other, and it’s naturally going to damage a friendship. It’s just really, really sad that they never worked through it, and never got back what they once had.

A tiny, tiny bit of solace, and they’re not things I’m massively familiar with, but they didn’t they bat around – and completely? – an old script – Bodysnatcher? – some years back. And do some tie-in DVD commentaries? Hopefully that was a pleasant memory for Doug. But obviously whatever legal issued occurred more recently with GNP (and Doug stating he much he spent on legal fees in that interview) may have spoiled thar small bit of niceness…

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The idea that Doug was having to write individual episodes The 10%ers to have them approved by Rob and the manager (?) seems a) really mad but also b) does suggest that there may have been some writer’s block going on with Rob at the time. Someone above suggested the pressure of being successful and needing to keep being so. Easier to disguise writer’s block if you’re working on your own than with others.

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Would definitely listen to a Dwarfcast where the Boys From the Dwarf(cast) are listening to that recent Doug Naylor interview, and pausing every few sentences to give commentary on it.

Please.

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What did he say about the break up?

Give it a listen. The relationship with Rob is a theme throughout, and it’s well worth 45 minutes of your time.

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P.s. do listen to the interview. It’s really interesting, partly from a writing point of view, but also because I’ve never heard him going into so much detail about the time and the machinations if the break up.

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I’m frankly gobsmacked that Richard had to convince Doug to keep the moonlight scene. From the way Doug describes it, he had written it in a vacuum with no clue as to where it will fit in, and didn’t realise it was the integral moment of pathos between the two characters until Richard said so. 
God, this man needs an editor so badly. 

Doug is a brilliant writer whose chief flaw is not being the best judge of his own work.

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Additionally, Doug said in the Writers’ Gym podcast linked today that he and Rob didn’t split due to creative differences as is often claimed. But “musical differences” was another common Rob quote, as seen in this interview with someone called Johathan Capps on a website that my browser thinks isn’t safe: http://www.robgrant.co.uk/Rob_Grant/Interviews/Entries/2007/5/12_Interview_for_a_fan_website_run_by_Jonathan_Capps.html

There’s a frustration to Doug’s voice around that moment. Like he realises that now he’ll genuinely never know why Rob wouldn’t work with him any more.

Such a raw podcast. I’ve only listened to the first 20 minutes or so, but the timing is unreal. It’s amazing they went ahead with it tbh.

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I think leaving the ship was inevitable, but transitioning into an action series was not.
Part of the appeal of I and II is that Rimmer and Lister are the lowest of the low. They don’t know how to run the ship. They don’t know how to fix anything more important than a vending machine. They can barely grasp Blue Midget, a tiny shuttle that probably has the most idiot-proof controls. 

Given how much of technology we ourselves do not understand, it feels very appropriate and realistic. In so much of sci-fi, the characters inexplicably know things beyond their professional remit because “it’s the future” or “they probably learned it off-screen”.
But in early Red Dwarf, they’re completely reliant on Holly. We see this especially well in Queeg, where they can’t even get any proper food without him. 

White Hole still pays lip service to this concept, but I don’t believe Rimmer/Lister could ever comprehend Starbug or even the bazookoids (the latter based on my own personal experience with having to learn how to handle a bazooka in the army… long story short, I didn’t). 

Even Kryten shouldn’t know how to do these things, he’s a cleaning bot. It’d honestly be funnier if he was enthusiastic to be the science officer, but kept making mistakes. 

100% agree. It was like we were as lost as the rest of them. As a teenager I definitely preferred S3-S6, but my own kid dramatically lost interest as we transitioned from S2-S3. We’re towards the end of S5 now, but it’s definitely been more at more instigation than his!

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I think the last time America did anything with trains we were crashing them into each other in the 30s as spectator events that killed many onlookers.

Hah, this reminds me of a piece I wrote of one of these very events, but from the late 1800s. A different time!
https://kriscarter.co.uk/2017/11/12/crush/

I loved reading that. Thank you!

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I think Rimmer was being sincere? The gag being that present Rimmer and past Lister got on great. 

Oops. I always thought this, too. Other posters seem to have corrected me/us…

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Cassandra is the only VIII episode I could ever see myself casually throwing on but Timewave is the only XII episode I couldn’t.

That said, I generally prefer XI. I’ve been having a hot, steamy love affair with Officer Rimmer since it aired regardless of how it kinda falls apart in the last couple minutes. There’s no other episode post-VI that I like as much as it.

Love Officer Rimmer. The starting point with the printed Captain with the deformed face is perfect early-Dwarf. Absolutely hilarious, yet dripping with pathos and a weird sort of dignity. Amazing.

[Author]

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