Ewing

[Ewing]

Beyond gutted that Waiting For God dropped in the poll and remains the worst of the original 36. You’re all smegging insane.

[Ewing]

I haven’t been rewatching it like you guys have but I do remember all of these episodes like the back of my hand, and I’m skimming through them in another window as I write some of these thoughts down for each Byte. I’m including my scores for the Canvas.

THE END: 9/10*
– It’s a 10/10 pilot but only an 9/10 episode in terms of the larger grading scale of the show. If we had .5s it would make things easier because there’s truly so many great episodes of Red Dwarf that I had to come up with my own grading curve and baseball analogy to keep it coherent to my standards. Consider the following if you dudes over there know the game:

7-10: Home Run
5-6: Hit
3-4: Out
1-2: Strikeout

– The heart of the show is Lister vs. Rimmer and if/how that develops into a co-existence. It’s established from the very first scene of the first episode. It’s the foundational basis for everything in the show as far as I’m concerned. You take that away for a few episodes in Series VII and it’s like taking away Tom from Tom & Jerry cartoons.

– I know Grant & Naylor hated the look of the original sets in Series 1 but it’s a great example of art through adversity to me. They had no budget at all and but the cheap sets perfectly evoke that this is a low grade working class ship. It looks even better in Series 2.

– The twist that everybody the audience meets in the first 20 minutes is dead by the end of the episode is a fantastic hook. The better hook is that Lister accidentally became the God of the Cat people. The best hook is that he’s stuck with a guy he can’t stand, the consequences of his Cat Godhood, and a senile computer in the blackest of black depths of deep space.

– The unsung MVP of this episode, and the show in general, is Howard Goodall. These two pieces of music have been stuck in my head for over a quarter century by now:

– I always thought the music was at its best in these first two Series in 1988. I get that Grant & Naylor wanted to overhaul everything in the third one but I always missed the original sound of the show.

FUTURE ECHOES: 10/10
– Best episode of Series 1, probably top 10 all-time for me, maybe even top 5. You dudes have always nailed that in the older polls.

– “Well it probably is deja-vu!” is a bit I’ve shown people before to get them to watch the show. It’s better sci-fi comedy writing than maybe anything ever written for the screen to that point in 1988.

– Holly telling Rimmer off and then giving him the beehive hair is the first instance we see of Holly messing with the crew, a gag that never gets old for me.

– Always loved everything about Lister’s Zero-G Football obsession. The photo with Jim Bexley Speed and the tremendous London Jets uniform still gets a laugh out of me. “And as you can see, he was really, really, really, really, really thrilled to meet me.”

– I tend to ignore VII and VIII but it’s fun to connect Old Man Lister’s cybernetic arm with the Epideme virus. I like to think he lost it to the virus in his version of the future.

BALANCE OF POWER: 8/10
– I don’t hate this episode by any means but it’s just not as amazing as the the rest of everything else the show made in 1988 with the possible exception of Stasis Leak. It’s still a home run, like every other episode in the original 36 bubble, but it’s not a grand slam.

– The first explicitly Lister vs. Rimmer plot episode, which means the show fires on all cylinders at various points in this one. The opening argument over boredom and the checklist being one of them.

– Future Echoes introduced Talkie Toaster, Balance of Power briefly sees the introduction and exit of Chatty Crapper (I don’t know what else to call him) with the brilliant “oh crap” wordplay joke.

– The conclusion to the flashback where Lister says “alone” in both the past and the present and that smegging sad Goodall music kicks in is shockingly high art and drama for a cheaply budgeted sitcom.

– Rimmer fighting off the Petersen arm is the first we get of Barrie’s perfect physical comedy prowess.

[Ewing]

I had no idea a Red Dwarf special was in the works until it aired in 2009. I assumed the saga died with the horrendous “Only The Good” episode. This was my approximate reaction watching Back To Earth:

[Ewing]

OUT OF TIME

They should’ve stuck with the ending where Rimmer saves the day in Out of Time. I just watched an edit of the episode with that ending dropped in and it works better than what we got with the cliffhanger. You guys nailed it with your first poll when you put it top 3, it’s certainly in the discussion but it’s no Queeg for me.

[Ewing]

I need to rewatch TPL but I watched it on back-to-back days when it premiered and I have nothing but glowing memories of it. I think it’s the best Red Dwarf has been since the original 36 episode bubble. However, I’m also biased because I’ve been wanting an episode that addressed the other cat people for at least 25 years. The moment where Cat realizes Lister might actually be God is one of my favorite moments in the entire saga and I can’t say that for anything else in the Dave era.

[Ewing]

Cassandra is the least bad episode in a season full of disposable junk.

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I always find it kinda neat that from Timeslides (that also features Hitler) Kryten suggests going to Dallas in 1963, standing behind the grassy knoll and shouting “duck”

Maybe the biggest laugh I ever had in the show.

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You’re thinking Trans-Atlantic.

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MUGS RETURNS
They allegedly wanted to do an episode early on where Mugs came to life and inhabited the ship. Why not do it now?

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Oh wow, I didn’t expect so many responses so fast. I’ll try to cover some of the bases.

I’d be interested to hear some examples of what works and doesn’t work across that cultural barrier. I can imagine some of the British cultural references being too niche to be understood, but hopefully the gist of the gags is still carried regardless.

The bit in Meltdown where Lister recognizes all the worst figures in history through the window of the cell and the payoff is James Last. He must be some figure in European music because the joke just falls completely flat as an American. I only know him from the Kill Bill.

I always assumed the Berni Inn was some shitty motel chain out in the UK.

His accent’s usually described as more Canadian, I thought ‘ma’am’ might be one of those things like ‘zed’ where Canadian goes more British than American. 

It’s definitely a Canadian accent. I have a Mid-Atlantic accent and I don’t sound like Kryten at all.

 Didn’t they change a number of the cultural references in Holly’s narrations for Remastered, in order to appeal to a broader global demographic? The only ones I can think of off hand are Felicity Kendall being swapped for Marilyn Monroe, and the lowest form of life now being a man who owns a train set, as opposed to working for the Post Office. I’ve always heard Kryten’s accent described as ‘Mid-Atlantic’, and he’s always had a bit of Loyd Grossman in him to my ears. A sort-of Boston-by-way-of-Cambridge accent.

The post office line still works in America, I don’t understand the decision to change it. The Monroe line works better across cultural grounds than Kendall though. I typically avoid all the Remastered episodes.

one of the reasons I enjoyed S1 and S2 so much is because Norman Lovett’s Holly is basically just Norman Lovett doing standup and most of the laughs in a standup routine is down to the demeanor and delivery of the particular comedian.  You don’t have to really “get” them because the joke is Lovett being so deadpan.

I couldn’t agree more with this. Lovett is the secret sauce of Red Dwarf to me. He’s spectacular despite some of the references going above my head.

I did think Zero-G Football was a future version of [American] Football rather than [Association] Football, but then again I think we can lay partial blame for that on the posters in Lister’s bunk, which absolutely have an American Football aesthetic and in fact I can look back and still recognize the contemporary (to the 80s) NFL uniforms & posters they must have used as the base for the ROOF ATTACK poster et al.

I always assumed Zero-G was American football in space stations. Jim Bexley Speed is wearing pads in the picture with Lister after all. I called my fantasy team the London Jets for a few years, complete with the logo and SMEG as the team abbreviation.

I’m guessing it never crossed Rob or Doug’s mind to simply change them to Liverpool Jets.

In my head, Zero-G Football is an international sport with teams across the globe. London’s team represents the entirety of GB.

[Ewing]

Waiting for God and Parallel Universe aren’t even the worst episodes of their respective series, let alone the whole of the Grant/Naylor era.

I think Emohawk is the worst of the first 36. It suffers greatly from being in a jampacked season with all-time great episodes like Legion and Gunmen, but it’s nothing special to me at all.

[Ewing]

My thoughts on VIII after a night of bar trivia:

This four episode stumble has to be the worst run of episodes the show ever had in its entire lifetime. 9 times out of 10 I’ll take a random Red Dwarf episode over anything else that’s ever been recorded. That 1 time out of 10 is if it’s some horseshit from VIII or the ones without Rimmer in VII.  

Mac McDonald is swinging for fences but almost none of the material is worth it. Always loved Captain Hollister and the rest of the crew, annoys me Petersen wasn’t part of the resurrection. Never cared for the Canaries or the characters trapped in prison, thought the warden could’ve been a very interesting character though. Love that actor in Rambo IV. 

Losing Grant for these two seasons (American terminology, deal with it) was a colossal blow but it doesn’t become outright horrendous until VIII with the dancing blue midget and the smegging T-Rex and I say that as a guy who grew up a dinosaur junkie. VII is a step down, VIII is a slip down the entire staircase. 

It kills me to this day we’ve never had a proper episode with Holly (Lovett version) and Kryten intertwined in a plot and 8 would’ve been the time to do it. The problem is that without Grant it probably wouldn’t have worked. 

[Ewing]

Queeg is the episode that proves Norman Lovett is sorely missed in every episode without him. I love the 3-6 series run of episodes as much as the next fan but the show is just not the same without the senile computer and his SOS signal.

[Ewing]

I think you nailed why I love it. Lister ends up as a more merciful (and better) God than the myths the Cats developed. I grew up around cats, the hook of Lister accidentally breeding a cat human species is what made me watch this show in the first place way back in the mid 90s. This episode answers a billion questions I had after the pilot and I probably overrate it for that but I really think it’s a solid commentary on religion as well as answering my questions and providing maybe the best b-plot in the shows entire run with the Quagaars. If this finishes as the lowest of the 36 bubble again something is wrong.

[Ewing]

Mechocracy, M-Corp, and Skipper is the best three episode run the show has gone on since the golden era of the first six season/series (whichever word you prefer).

[Ewing]

New user and American here, I don’t understand UK politics and I’m not sure I ever will. I understand this thread even less.

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That was the first article I ever read on this website. My intelligence circuits melted.

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I realize I have like 12 episodes in the highest tier but that’s just the quality of perfect Red Dwarf episodes.

[Ewing]

Skipper is one of the top 3 episodes they’ve done since the original 36 episode run. A lot of my love for it has to do with Norman Lovett’s return (male Holly is the secret sauce of the show) but the whole of it is great too.

[Ewing]

Totally with you on this one. For me, it’s madness that anyone could think a non-bubble episode could be better.

People say Waiting For God is smug about the way it goes about treating religion but as someone raised in God fearing America I think it’s dead on. To rank it below anything from S7 onwards is insane to me.

[Ewing]

I have no idea what other people’s rewatches are like but I’ve always leaned towards Series 1 and 2 because I prefer the music cues and Norman Lovett. Thus, I’ve always dug Waiting For God. There’s no way it’s the worst of the original 36. The stuff with the Quagaars is top 10 funniest shit they’ve ever done.

[Ewing]

I’ve never understood the flack Waiting For God gets from people. It’s nearly a perfect episode in my eyes because the Cat God stuff truly fascinates me and the Quagaars bit is absolute gold.

[Author]

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