Dave

[Dave]

DNA is a great example of an old episode that has loads of the same problems we complain about today – iffy logic problems, character inconsistencies, silliness for its own sake, an inconclusive ending – but still works for me and still features lots of enjoyable moments.

[Dave]

I’ve been introducing my daughter to the series over the past few months, and after watching I and II in order we’ve been jumping around all over the place between III and VI (and even a little bit of the Dave era too).

I’ve actually found the quality to be largely pretty consistent – I think we as fans tend to put a bit too much weight on the individual identities of each series, when watching them out of order you realise that the distinctions are often fairly minor or superficial.

It’s also interesting to see what she responds to in terms of the comedy. I’ve been appreciating Cat’s contribution to the show a lot more on this rewatch, as she tends to find him hilarious.

[Dave]

It’s clearly worse than both of those examples, though.

[Dave]

CROAK ME A SKIPPER

Documentary footage of N*rm** *ovet* reading his lines for the final episode of Red Dwarf XII.

[Dave]

JACK IN THE MED

Celebrity food writer Jack Monroe takes a well-deserved holiday to the Mediterranean. While she is there, she idly watches some cable TV and stumbles across ‘Marooned’ dubbed into Italian. She watches it for a few minutes out of a vague interest to see what the local equivalent of ‘Pot Noodle’ is, but then switches it off once the novelty wanes. It was the original version, not Remastered.

[Dave]

QUOTE ME A FLIPPER

When Kryten tries to pronounce the name of Lister’s Kinitawowi bride, everyone assumes he is instead imitating the clicking noises of a popular TV dolphin.

[Dave]

If my blog only achieves one thing, let it be that lovers of Waiting For God no longer feel the need to hide in the shadows, but can find the courage to speak out against the oppressive consensus, come out of the closet, and say with pride:
“I think on balance I might prefer this to Future Echoes.”

Now steady on, that might be going a bit far.

[Dave]

CURD

When the Boys From The Dwarf happen upon a secret research facility in which historical figures have been cloned and genetically altered so that they no longer dislike eating Lemon Curd, all is not as it seems.

[Dave]

Slimetides

When Lister accidentally leans on the button for Starbug’s laser cannon while eating a naan bread and inadvertently destroys the moon of a planet made entirely of snot, the ebb and flow of a delicately-balanced phlegm-based ecosystem is thrown out of whack.

[Dave]

Mimewave

In a series of unlikely coincidences, Rimmer gets trapped in an invisible box while Lister has trouble pushing an apparently immovable balloon. Meanwhile, Kryten must walk to work on a windy day while Cat starts pulling a rope with something really heavy on the end.

[Dave]

I’ve never understood why Waiting For God is so maligned. I think it has some of the most fun and clever ideas of the early era of the show.

I think the image of Lister dressed in a golden doughnut with a golden sausage in his hand just kills the whole thing for some people.

[Dave]

Bill Bailey.

[Dave]

What if 1989 had started in 1987?

[Dave]

Cras maximus dignissim

But enough about Timewave.

[Dave]

ULRIKA TO RIDE

All four Dwarfers discover that they are each simultaneously having an affair with the erstwhile star of Gladiators and Shooting Stars.

[Dave]

He can’t be bargained with. He can’t be reasoned with. He doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And he absolutely will not stop, ever, until he has combined three separate people’s opinions into one.

[Dave]

DIMENSION GRUMP

Ace Rimmer is permanently in a bit of a mard after he can’t get his wig to sit straight.

[Dave]

PALARREL UNIVERSE

The crew travel to an alternate dimension where they are all female, and discover that this version of Red Dwarf also has a racist-accented vending machine.

[Dave]

BRYNNERWORLD

When the glue attaching Chris Barrie’s wig to his head comes unstuck, Rimmer starts being regularly mistaken for Yul Brynner, as he is bald, and his head glimmers.

[Dave]

CACK IN THE BED: PART ONE

After a heavy night of curry and lager, an ageing Lister wakes up to discover that his bowels have evacuated during the night.

[Dave]

CREPIDEME

Lister encounters a sentient pancake who speaks with a really annoying accent that makes you want to put your foot through the television every time it speaks.

[Dave]

THANKS FOR THE KIPPER

Ace Rimmer is incredibly grateful when someone finally bothers to actually smoke him a kipper, as requested. Keeping up his side of the bargain, he returns promptly in time for breakfast.

[Dave]

CASSANDREX

In what is by far the best episode of series VIII, the crew encounter a computer that is able to predict EXACTLY when each of them will next need toilet roll.

[Dave]

HOLLYSHIP

When a mysterious new ship suddenly appears next to Red Dwarf, our four heroes are bemused to find that it is staffed exclusively by disembodied heads on TV screens. They quickly reboot Holly, who immediately falls in love with one of the new ship’s crew and expresses a desire to join them. But they don’t want him because he’s shit. Meanwhile, Cat has lost his trousers.

[Dave]

LIVERPUDLIA (aka The One Where Everyone’s Lister)

When a malfunction in Red Dwarf’s hologram personality files accidentally transmits Lister’s brainwaves to everyone in the crew, they all end up EATING LOTS OF CURRY and PLAYING THE GUITAR BADLY and SAYING SMEG until the episode ends 26 minutes later.

[Dave]

STROKE ME A FLIPPER

When Kryten declares his secret lifelong dream to swim with dolphins, the rest of the crew decide it’s up to them to make it happen. But the series 4000 isn’t waterproof is it? Luckily Ace Rimmer arrives to save the day just before Kryten dies in a rusting waterlogged mess.

[Dave]

DUCT POOP

Someone has done a shit in the service tunnels, but who? Kryten has a ‘best guess’, but will anyone believe him? Meanwhile, Rimmer’s removal of all the bog roll means that everyone discovers what shirt tails are for.

[Dave]

FUTURE ECCLES

The crew stumble across a time portal that sends them to a small town in greater Manchester in the year 2374. Where criticism is banned.

[Dave]

Uncle Franks For The Memory

Rimmer reminisces about his first kiss again.

[Dave]

Shabba Ranks For The Memory

When ‘Mr Loverman’ becomes the new earworm for the crew of Red Dwarf, there’s a rush to get to the memory-erasing machine and eradicate all knowledge of the eponymous artist’s oeuvre.

[Dave]

Pranks For The Memory

Rimmer decides to get one over on Lister by balancing a bucket of water on top of the door to the sleeping quarters and then waiting for him to walk in. However, after a couple of hours pass, Rimmer forgets the bucket was there, walks into the sleeping quarters himself, and… well, there are hilarious consequences, let’s just say that.

[Dave]

Banks For The Memory

When Lister decides to put his art school training to good use by becoming an enigmatic guerilla artist whose graffiti-based works are not as funny, clever or original as he thinks they are, no-one in the crew has got the heart to tell him that it’s all a bit juvenile and shit.

[Dave]

Hanks For The Memory

Everyone in the crew renames themself Henry. For some reason. To paper over the weaknesses in the script, there are several needless callbacks to ‘the Om song’.

[Dave]

Trank For The Memory

To distract themselves from the shame of breaking Kryten’s mind, the crew decide to watch the new rebooted Fantastic Four movie. Imagine their disappointment when they see what a crock of shit it was.

[Dave]

Tranqs For The Memory

In order to subdue the distressed Kryten, the crew tranquillises him. But due to Rimmer accidentally over-estimating the dose by a factor of 100, Kryten is left effectively lobotomised. For ever.

[Dave]

Tanks For The Memory

Kryten suddenly wakes in a cold sweat and feels intensely embarrassed as he remembers that awful bit from Series VII where he used military equipment to blow up Jane Austen world, or whatever the fuck it was.

[Dave]

Is Wing Commander really so easily forgotten?

Oh yes, of course it is.

[Dave]

I really like the way the question of ‘why Rimmer’s hologram’ is addressed in the novels. Putting Lister in a more dire state (both mentally and physically) really helps in justifying Holly’s decision to resurrect Rimmer to sort him out.

[Dave]

The Fast Day

As Lister and Rimmer get older, they begin to remark on how quickly time feels like it passes at their age.

Meanwhile, Cat can’t eat for a full 24 hours because he imminently has to have a general anaesthetic for a lifesaving operation.

[Dave]

Feltdown

When the crew travel back in time to the early 21st century, they are surprised to find how invasive airport security staff were in that era.

Bodyswab

Sequel.

[Dave]

Better Than Fife

When Rimmer takes up playing the flute, the rest of the crew remarks that hearing him practice is at least slightly more bearable than it was when he used to play a slightly smaller, piccolo-like instrument.

[Dave]

Although it does open up the plot hole of ‘why don’t they just turn the ship around and then go back into stasis’ for a lot longer.

[Dave]

Quran Teen

When the crew stumble across an abandoned deep-space academic research facility, discover a young Muslim scholar in stasis and decide to unfreeze her, the arses of viewers across the nation clench in unison as the audience realises that the show has decided to broach such a potentially controversial and complex topic.

However, preconceptions are dashed after the the youthful theologist leads the episode into a thoughtful and nuanced discussion of Islam, its history and its place in the modern world.

The only fly in the ointment is the arrival of Chris Barrie in a gingham dress with a penguin glove puppet, intent on ‘funnying up’ the episode while also providing a fanwanky callback to a much-loved classic-era story for the fifteenth episode in a row.

[Dave]

Barack In The Red: Part One

When the crew stumble across a research facility that claims to have resurrected several former US presidents and cured them from evil, it’s up to the crew to decide whether to trust them or leave them to die from something that is suddenly going to coincidentally show up and kill them all in a few hours. Luckily, any moral ambiguity is eliminated when it turns out that was all bollocks and they’re all actually robots, or something.

Baracus In The Red: Part Two

On their way back from the facility, the bemused Boys From The Dwarf are stunned and delighted to realise that some mutated DVD-cleaning fluid brings their favourite TV shows to life, allowing much-loved fictional characters to step out of the screen and into reality. But when an A-Team marathon heralds the arrival of Bosco B.A. ‘Bad Attitude’ Baracus, he immediately deems the crew to all be fools and insists on pitying them incessantly until they all eat at least seventeen Snickers bars.

Baraka In The Red: Part Three

When the Snickers-engorged Dwarfers get trapped inside a malfunctioning AR machine during a session on Mortal Kombat II, they are quickly disemboweled by a bald man with cartoonishly large teeth and razor-sharp swords embedded in each arm.

[Dave]

Actually I thought he was quite non-PC.

[Dave]

I think that’s the joke.

[Dave]

Quilted Red LEGION APPEARS

I don’t remember a quilted red Legion appearing.

[Dave]

I just can’t believe no-one has mentioned the hard-light yellow outfit from Out Of Time yet.

[Dave]

you know what they say!

Is it “Why did you combine three separate people’s opinions into one though?”

[Dave]

Spit on the wist?

[Author]

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