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Maybe it was Minecraft

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For years and years, until just the other day, I thought the line at the end of Psirens was “besides, the Cat has invited me to the weekly craft game”. Turns out it’s “crap”, which is a type of card game. I always thought “craft game” sounded weird, but it never irked me enough to look it up until now

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Timewave is basically the Red Dwarf equivalent of that one Wallace & Gromit short where it’s all live action and everyone is played by Lenny Henry. Just really fucking weird, wrong, unpleasant, and unsettling in every possible way you could imagine

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Not a big fan of milk on cereal really, it gets all moist and soggy. As I type this I’m eating a bowl of dry Grape Nuts and it’s pretty good

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>Sugar Puffs and milk barely go and that’s their intended purpose

I circumvent this problem by eating my Sugar Puffs dry

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He eats one in Waiting For God and Holoship as well, doesn’t he

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They’re called “Honey Monster Puffs” now for some reason, weirdly. Not sure what all that’s about, Sugar Puffs is a much better name. Who’s going to want to eat a cereal called “Monster Puffs”? It’s a bit too aggressive for breakfast time

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It’s been a while since I’ve read any of these, but I remember really liking the strip set during VI where they find Red Dwarf with all the crew alive again, only for it to actually be the second Polymorph from the ending of Polymorph. Arguably a better sequel to Polymorph than Emohawk ever was, and a better “the crew are alive again” story than the whole of VIII

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>In his Smegazine strip, “Duane” was a disgruntled party worker turned rebel who had his memory wiped and face and personality changed and was hiding out in the video game or something

I really like this idea, to be honest. Just something about the most innocent of the group secretly being
a fugitive rebel is interesting, plus there’s irony in Cat thinking Duane was a loser when actually he was the coolest out of all of them.

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Netflix should work out some new deals where they actually put stuff people would want to watch on their platform. The only decent thing I could find on there was Red Dwarf, and I’ve already seen that

Also they have Ghostbusters 2 but not the first one??

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I thought the hallucinations started right after the squid sprays them with the ink and Rimmer goes “Look out!” as right after he says this, the camera angle in the cockpit changes all of a sudden
despite there being no real need to do so. Like, I thought that was a visual indicator of sorts

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>Kryten does make a point of saying the dinosaurs are unconvincing, and I’d assume that they would have written/filmed that line before they got the footage of the creatures to put into the edit.

It’s not so much the dinosaurs looking fake that bothers me, it’s that the quality of the footage doesn’t at all match the rest of the episode. It’s all grainy and horrible, so it doesn’t look like the dinosaurs are even in Waxworld at all, it just looks like Kryten is reacting to footage of an old monster movie- which he is, but still, it breaks my suspension of disbelief

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>…Maybe they could slow down (Holly activates reverse thrust because light speed is too scary), they just wanted to maintain the incredible speed they’d built up over millions of years and 4,000 years was considered an acceptable trade-off, because they’d still get back to Earth much faster than if they slowed to a more conventional speed and turned around. But then they decide to do the latter anyway. I don’t bloody know.

It’s explained in Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers that during the events of Future Echoes, Holly managed to do some complicated maneuver that allowed them to turn around. Sure, this isn’t shown in the show, but given that they’ve turned around by Series 2 then it’s the only way that really explains how

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>Ignoring the fact that it supposedly takes 4,000 years to turn around (thus they’re still not remotely heading back to Earth and never will in their lifetime)

Holly mentions in Better Than Life that they’ve turned around though, which is why the post-pod was finally able to catch up with them.

Also I think Meltdown is a good episode on paper, but the dodgy location footage, fucking awful dinosaur effects, rubbish scene transitions etc. all kind of sour it a bit. If they had the money to do it how Rob and Doug had envisaged, I’m sure it would have been less crap in terms of visuals

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>the location footage looks like a couple of fields somewhere in England, not an alien planet.

I think even Rob and Doug were annoyed about this, to be fair. As I recall Rob mentioned in an interview “they could have at least put up a few signs saying ‘Welcome to Wax-world’ ” or something like that, and pointing out how it isn’t really convincing that they’re in this wax droid theme park

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Looking at confidential files gets you and your friends 2 years in prison, giving the Captain an erection gets you weeks of laborous punishment detail, but creating a dinosaur that grossly endangers the crew and vomits and shits all over them means you get let off with a reprimand. The rules on punishment aboard JMC mining ships are far too unclear

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>Have you seen the state of the resurrected crew? That’s a quick fix for at least some of VIII’s logic holes, it’s a ship of fools.

Yeah, I mean they somehow didn’t notice when Kryten walked through a security checkpoint with the time wand VERY visibly hidden inside his head. It’s really that easy for convicts to sneak things on board? Surely that’s a massive safety hazard to literally everybody on ship. With a crew that stupid, I’m surprised the drive plate wasn’t blowing up every week. (As much as I can tolerate Pete, that scene always makes me irrationally angry)

And then you have the therapist, who’s just a fucking idiot, and Hollister, who is incredibly lenient towards Rimmer and Lister to the point of still letting them on probation after they indirectly caused a dinosaur to shit all over his face and drown him in vomit. Surely any sane captain would have, you know, at least extended their prison sentence for that. I guess you could argue though that as Pete goes on Hollister isn’t exactly sane anymore, but still.

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Timewave made me feel genuinely deeply uncomfortable the first two times I watched it, but now I can look at it and it’s just really really crap. I wish Doug would stop trying to do bizarre social commentary on current events and issues and just write some funny jokes. I was about to say “At least it hasn’t stooped as low to be making jokes about the US presidency” but then I remembered Mechocracy was a thing

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>Rimmer was always a kind of ur-incel

Interestingly, as I’ve been rewatching the show with a friend, she made this exact same point. She also REALLY liked Parallel Universe because of the point it makes about gender roles and tying up the twin babies plot point from Future Echoes. As I recall, someone on the forum said it was their most hated episode of the whole show, so I guess it’s a rare example of a I-VI episode that’s fairly divisive.

>Also worth mentioning I find “he was a transvestite but at least we could have gone dancing” a bit iffy. And maybe the crossdressing stuff in Tikka, too. I guess now I have trans friends I’m more sensitive to this stuff, but it was always off to me.

As someone who’s trans, I find the stuff about J Edgar Hoover in Tikka fairly inoffensive. It never felt like it was trying to be a joke or anything, it’s just part of the story as to how the alternate 1966 ended up the way it did. The line in Balance Of Power I don’t particularly mind either, although that’s probably only because I find Craig’s delivery of “At least we could’ve gone dancing” to be really funny. Rimmer’s transphobia in Dear Dave is just fucking abysmal though, and it doesn’t even add anything to the plot (at least Cat’s droopy titties led to them getting arrested, which is part of the story) so it’s entirely unnecessary. It also feels like the kind of thing you’d read in a particularly nasty Facebook comment, not an Emmy-award winning sitcom

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I couldn’t possibly say, but I know I’ve seen a lot of I-VIII enough times that I have them more or less entirely memorized in my head. I’ve unfortunately even seen Only The Good enough times that I remember how to say cesiumfrancolithicmixealibidiumrixydixydoxydexydroxide without having to look it up. (and yes, that might not be how you spell it, but then it’s never written out in the episode so whatever)

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I always found it a little unsettling that the audience are laughing when Kryten tells Lister he loves him and then walks off to the kitchen crying in anguish. To me that scene’s not funny, it’s just incredibly sad, so to hear the audience laughing at it makes the whole thing more disturbing than intended. Also, interesting to note is that when Future Rimmer mentions the Hitlers, the audience just goes completely quiet, as if even they’re a bit taken aback by the whole chain of events

>I was never sure if Kryten piling all the chillies onto Lister’s plate – “at the rate you’re going, there’ll be none left for tomorrow” – means he knows Lister’s supposed to have his accident imminently, or is just desparate to make every meal extra special from now on.

I think the implication is the accident is meant to happen that same day- hence Kryten saying “And I thought that since today had …no special significance… it would be appropriate …to…”

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The idea that Rimmer is a massive transphobe is unpleasant, to be honest. I mean yes, he behaves somewhat homophobic in Dimension Jump in regards to Lister and Ace, but that’s out of jealousy that Ace is better than him and is much more liked by Lister and the others etc. In Dear Dave he’s just transphobic for no reason at all towards a woman he knows literally nothing about

It’s the Series X equivalent of the “droopy ass titties” line, I think. It’s needlessly aggressive and mean-spirited for absolutely no reason whatsoever

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Although obviously people are allowed to be offended by something if it makes them uncomfortable, I think of all the stuff relating to objectifying women in Red Dwarf, the line in Timeslides about the “teenage temptresses” is incredibly tame. Like, it’s nothing compared to Lister doing an assault on Kochanski in VII, Lister doing an assualt on Kochanski in VIII, Rimmer’s transphobia in Dear Dave, Lister’s misogyny in Dear Dave, the casual asphyxiation of a woman in Entangled, that dodgy as fuck line in M-Corp about women talking too much etc.

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Kryten’s “Last Week on Red Dwarf” narration in Nanarchy is removed as well, isn’t it? I remember hearing somewhere it was just replaced with a caption saying “LAST TIME on Red Dwarf…”

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>Do you always go into watching series 6 forgetting there are another 6 series to come??

Well no, but it’s a reminder that after this great episode you’ve just seen, there’s a rather crap one coming up next. It’s like watching Back In The Red. I enjoy Part 1, but then at the end of the episode I’m reminded there are two more parts of it to come which become increasingly rubbish and silly. It’s linking a good episode to one that’s not so good

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Out Of Time is really excellent, it’s definitely somewhere in my top 5. The only thing I don’t like about it is the “To Be Continued…” at the end, as it takes a bit of edge off the ending (if it’s going to be continued, then obviously they won’t stay dead) and also reminds me that Tikka To Ride is up next.

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>Because it’s part of my single-digit childhood nostalgia it can get away with murder like autocue reading

People always mention the autocue reading in Out Of Time, but I’ve never noticed it. Does anyone know any parts in the episode where it’s noticeably visible?

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>I loved episodes 1 & 2 but haven’t been hugely enjoying it since, especially the really bad ones.

Yeah, I pretty much felt the same when I watched it tbh. I think after episode 4 I just gave up trying to watch it consecutively and just started watching episodes at random

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POLYMORPHS

New title for Polymorph that is technically more accurate to the contents of the episode, as it does indeed feature two of the titular beast.

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As I remember, Charles Augins doesn’t appear until Series 4 of Blake’s 7. He was also in the movie Revenge Of The Pink Panther, if you’re looking for other things to spot him in

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RIMMERWORLDS

The Rimmers decide to colonize other parts of the galaxy. They call it the Outer Rimm

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>Even Skipper which is the highlight of 11 and 12 for me has some issues that I feel could have been fixed very easily.

Yeah, agreed. It’s one of the better ones out of XI/XII, but I still think it has some problems here and there, especially towards the end of the episode.

I think maybe an XIII would be better than XI/XII because Doug would only have to write/direct 6 shows rather than 12, so shit like Timewave wouldn’t seep through the cracks, but even so… I don’t know. Out of the whole Dave era, the only one that actually FEELS like Red Dwarf to me is BtE. Which I know sounds weird given that the content of the story is nothing like Red Dwarf, but it works for me in a way that X-XII just doesn’t. Watching X-XII for me is like watching sort of, a slightly off-brand version of Red Dwarf, it doesn’t feel like I’m watching the same show as I-BtE.

I don’t know, I’d have to wait until a Series XIII was actually made until I could pass judgement on it. One one hand, it could be an entire Series of stuff as good as Give & Take, but on the other hand it could open up another Can Of Worms, which would be rubbish. I think an XIII has the potential to be good though, that’s for sure. Doug can write really good Dwarf sometimes

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>It would feel wrong if the members of G&T were to like it, let alone consider it an improvement. I look forward to reading all the negative comments and articles surrounding this release. ;)

Honestly same, I’m looking forward to the G&T article on the Blu-Ray more than I’m looking forward to the actual Blu-Ray

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>I think every Red Dwarf series could be broken down this way

I don’t know, I think almost all of I-V’s episodes are great, and 4/6 of VI’s are great. The two great/two average/two below average system doesn’t really work for me

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I don’t think I’d mind if there wasn’t an XIII. XI/XII were really inconsistent in terms of quality, and if we’re going to get an XIII with another episode as dreadful as Timewave, or as poorly-structured as Can Of Worms, then maybe it’s better to just leave it as it is. For all the problems I have with Skipper, it does work well enough as a final episode of the show, although arguably BtE and The Beginning were much, much better finales. Red Dwarf doesn’t need to go on forever, and I think 29 years is a pretty good run

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Maybe they just have an assortment of weird shit lying around for any scenario imaginable, given that in Emohawk they also just inexplicably happen to have Duane Dibbley’s exact outfit from a hallucination they once had.

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>“are they wearing flayed, dead GELF skins in Beyond a Joke? What else could those be?”

I always thought it was implied they were just costumes Kochanski had made, given that when they’re putting them on she has a sewing machine next to her. However they look far too realistic, and much like the mirror universe machine in Only The Good, there kind of needs to be some explanation as to where exactly they came from

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KELLY- I’m saying… Kambrook, Jr.

KAMBROOK- What about Kambrook, Jr.?

KELLY- He isn’t your pressure cooker…

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KOCHANSKI- Good, because there’s no way I could ever eat a person.

KRYTEN- No way I could ever cook one either. Not without my Kambrook pressure cooker.

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>There is just so much you could do with depicting a culture where nobody is ever under duress to do anything. But, Timewave is clearly more interested in making a point than having an interesting or engaging or funny story. Who would actually wear costumes like that to work?

Yeah, surely if you could wear what you want, you’d just wear like, pajamas or something? Or maybe just dress really casually, or maybe if you really like suits, you’d wear a suit. The idea that if people could express themselves freely they’d all dress in garish fancy-dress outfits is utterly bizarre. Also, the idea of people doing whatever jobs they want and therefore being really bad at them? Surely if you could have whatever job you wanted, you’d make an effort to do that job well and good, rather than just fucking everything up. The whole premise of this “society without criticism” doesn’t work at all in the way it’s delivered. It seems to hinge on everyone not wanting to do the jobs they want to do properly, and having a bizarre precedent for wearing ridiculously stupid costumes. There’s an interesting idea in a society without criticism, but the episode goes straight past that and instead tries to do irreverent social commentary rather than actually explore the idea

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>There’s more good jokes in Krytie TV than Timewave, but it’s also yet ANOTHER episode centered around treating women as nothing but piles of orgasm-facilitating flesh. That stuff makes me actively uncomfortable, whereas Timewave I can shrug off as a middle aged man doing out of touch commentary.

Honestly that’s fair, VIII is probably a lot harder to watch if it makes your skin crawl. For me personally it does nothing, but I remember feeling very, very uncomfortable upon seeing Timewave. I guess it’s just down to personal preference?

That said, I watched Cassandra a while ago and cringed a little at the use of ‘retarded’. I mean I still like the episode, but I’d sure like it more if they didn’t use that word.

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I honestly found Timewave to be more mean-spirited, because although there is admittedly some dodgy shit in VIII, it never feels like the writing is trying to justify what is happening as an okay thing to do. Timewave goes out of its way to say that the posse are doing the right thing by trying to leave the crew to die and being really fucking horrible to them. I think that stings more, seeing the characters behave like assholes and being rewarded for it

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BANDERSNATCHER

After watching the new Black Mirror special, Rimmer goes insane and starts stealing parts of Lister’s body in order to create his own meta-narrative. Luckily, Lister chose to put Sugar Puffs in his sandwich at breakfast that morning and so the story branches onto an entirely different path in which Rimmer travels through a mirror into another universe and things all get a bit complicated

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Update- we only got up to Confidence and Paranoia before we broke up. We agreed to remain friends though, and naturally one of the first things I asked was “Can we still watch Red Dwarf together?” to which, surprisingly, the answer was yes. So far her favourite character is Holly, so I’m interested to see how they react to the end of Queeg/the sudden replacement with Hattie Hayridge in III/ the character being shafted entirely from the show in VI.

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I mean, I’m no director or anything but I think shooting an entire sequence of an episode from the same front angle (there are other shots, but it’s just the same angle zoomed in) isn’t a very good idea

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One of the things that really confuses me about Timewave is why the Planet Rimmer (why the fuck is it called that anyway? it’s a moon) greenscreen is so awful. Red Dwarf has done really good greenscreen before, and it’s done really good sequences on the surface of planets, so why does it look so bad? And why is it all shot from one angle?

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>The “neck end” follow-up could go either way. Since it’s VIII, I can see it being more anal fixation, but the idea of Rimmer struggling to turn Lister around and pull down his pants while wrestling for control of the guitar and then referring to this incident later without shame makes it harder to swallow.

To be fair, there are a lot of off-screen incidents in Red Dwarf it’s hard to imagine the characters actually doing. Although yeah, it is particularly hard to imagine Rimmer trying to shove a guitar up Lister’s arse. Maybe he tried to do it while he was asleep?

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How the fuck did Rimmer wrench a fridge out of the wall and lift it up anyway?

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>Because it follows VI’s similar “fridge-free diet” bit, I always assumed the guitar was going in the mouth.

I thought that bit was about the arse as well…

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VIII and Days Of The Week

Back In The Red
-“I was hoping for a manicure and a leg wax tomorrow, how about Thursday?”
-“See you on Friday. Incidentally, it’s black tie.”

Cassandra
-“Give me a chance, it’s only Monday!”

Krytie TV
-“It replaced the Wednesday night movie.”
-“I have a date with Miss Patricia Carling from Supplies on Saturday night”

Pete
-“I did, we’re meeting for drinks on Thursday!”

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