International Debris

[International Debris]

Dreamt about Back to Earth, only it wasn’t really Back to Earth. Some elements were similar – good drama, mostly shit jokes; Craig starred as Craig – but it was a devastatingly sad piece of television and I cried through much of it. Cat, Lister/Craig, and Rimmer were all trapped in their own dream worlds, each had its own plot. Craig had settled into a house in the country, but was sure he was actually Lister and missed being in space. Rimmer’s was about the abuse he had as a child. Cat’s was naive and childlike. It was broadcast as a 90 minute TV movie.

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I think he was probably mask-off when we were all mask-on, to be fair.

I also doubt he really knows what the actual issues are beyond wokeness and globalisation and The Great Reset.

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Good to know the wildfires due to fossil fuel-related climate change and the EHRC guidelines removing trans rights are on his mind. 

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Honestly, that line has always confused me.
How so?

It’s a discussion about Rimmer’s clashing faiths, and a couple of people wondering why an atheist went to a religious service, as well as mention of other things the service could be, and people coming up with theories for how a religious service could happen when there’s nobody on the ship, in context of a show in which Rimmer never utters a line like that in another episode, and you’re wondering how I might not have fully understood where Rimmer has been and why.

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I went to a C of E primary school, so I have no experience with proper religion. Three school services a year, a couple of weddings and a couple of funerals, that’s my entire history of going to church.

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Honestly, that line has always confused me. 

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Not even free time, I’m stuck in bed most of the time so I have plenty of that. I just think younger brains take to watching the same things over and over better than older ones. Same with most things: toys, albums, books. I get bored of stuff as an adult in a way I didn’t when I was a kid.

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I think age is a thing too. It’s much easier to repeatedly rewatch something when you’re younger. I did put a couple of XI/XII episodes on a second time, but for the most part didn’t rewatch them until I got the DVD. Seen them maybe three or four times since. As opposed to the ‘90s episodes which I’ve seen many, many dozens of times, quite probably more than a hundred in some cases.

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I get that it isn’t the most well loved bubble episode, but putting Waiting for God on the same level as Pete and Timewave?!

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Am I right in thinking the cow moos at some point? They’re drowning a live cow in curry.

Also why is it that liquidy? And why is Kryten throwing – what I’m assuming are – cabbage leaves onto the surface? Had the designers ever even seen a curry? 

God, I’m beginning to see some real problems with VIII. 

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“Someone else tell him… I’ve got gussets to scrub.”
Best not to think about this entire exchange too much otherwise you come to the inevitable conclusion that Kryten’s cheerful and devoted manner is a facade and he’s actually been living in enslaved turmoil this entire time. 

Every now and then they seem to forget that Kryten enjoys his work and it’s always really jarring. 

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To be fair, the scene in Polymorph is a bit daft if you think about it for more than a couple of seconds. Lister wants to have a meal with a bit more class, so instead of going to the officers’ club or the catering deck or wherever, he goes to the medical unit to get scalpels to eat with. 

I mean I get it’s for the joke, but it is pretty ridiculous.

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I was like “I’m enjoying seeing some unconventional rankings” until I saw Bodyswap in D tier and now I’m going to switch you off until we reach Earth.

Wow, I got to Cured being in S before getting a headache and having to give up.

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Yeah, I think a lot of the appeal of Red Dwarf is the authorial voice(s) of Rob and Doug. It’s not easy to judge the impact of the guest writers on VII and VIII, given how wildly those series veer from usual Dwarf at times, and how bad they frequently are anyway, but I do think it’s telling that the episodes with guest writers are almost all among the very lowest rated episodes. When we do get spinoff stories – some of the tie-in books, the Smegazine comics – they usually miss the tone by some margin.

It’s not like Doctor Who or Star Trek, which always had a constant rotation of writers.

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The third season of Picard was ok, had some nice fanservice for those who enjoy nice fanservice, threw in a bit of DS9 for the cultured among us. It was still basically just “remember TNG?” though for the most part. 

First two seasons were terrible. 

The problem is no one seems to think a show like any of the earlier Star Treks would work anymore, so they’ve tweaked the formula to feel more contemporary, but done in a way that basically removes the Star Trekness from it. 

Like, Discovery gets a lot better with the changes for the third season, but it’s still just a very, very different show that happens to share some lore and species with Star Trek.

Strange New Worlds is fun, but it feels very self-aware. In some ways it’s more like, say, The Orville than earlier Trek: it’s making incredibly conscious decisions to feel like a remembered version of what Star Trek used to be like, rather than simply being a natural continuation. 

I don’t know if and how a new series could work that could feel fresh and yet fully in keeping with the earlier series’ broader style. But then, I don’t know if we actually need that. Shows can end, franchises can end. Let’s have proper, genuine new ideas, not half-new ones bolted onto familiar names.

ok this formatting looked shit without me having to edit it. Cappsy fix the fucking site.

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Doug has said there isn’t a single movie script, but many which varied quite a bit. So who knows. 

Still feel like a book covering them with a couple of full scripts and bits of others and a load of behind the scenes stuff is, surely, a very good idea for a book that would sell fairly well. 

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3.3%, that Jaguar Lager would now be marketed as a Super Session Lager or something. 

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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”, 

Andrew Ellard’s dad might want to know about this.

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All the hologram stuff in TPL really feels like something from the bubble, it’s a funny idea with excellent execution, with existential horror behind it, and ultimately played for a moment of genuinely effective pathos. 

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Skipper has another Dave Dwarfian quirk I really hate where Kryten makes sure to point out “the skipper does require recharge time between skips” and this gets referenced once and promptly forgotten about immediately for the montage gags. Someone on the Discord said a lot of Dave era scripts feel like they’re one draft away from completion and this is one instance where I think that sentiment applies, I wonder if anyone ever proofread Naylor’s scripts before he’d submit them.

That was probably me and yeah, it does bug me. It’s literally there to explain why Rimmer doesn’t leave the first alternate timeline as soon as Holly starts the alert, and never happens again. There are so many little niggles like that in the Dave era that are so frustrating, because as a viewer you shouldn’t be able to pick up on them and be able to mentally improve them on first viewing. After a bunch of nerdy rewatches, maybe, but the Dave era is full of those holes immediately.

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Ok so the second half can basically split into four scenes: the nobody’s dead Arnold one, Mr Rat, the montage, the bunk room one. The first of those is fanservice (and my least favourite part of the episode by some margin), the middle two aren’t, the last one has the original bunk room but doesn’t get its jokes from fanservice.

So I’d still argue that the episode just being fanservice and the second half just being “remember series I/II?” is a vast overstatement. It’s my second favourite Dave-era episode because I like the ideas and jokes.

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Skipper is lifted up by its relentless fan service. Half of it is one gag, and the other half is “remember Series I/II?” 
It’s not terrible, but it is the laziest episode of that year. 

The series I/II fanservice counts for five or six minutes of the episode. The second half has Mr. Rat, the sacrifice, multiple Listers, Rimmer as Holly, Blue Dwarf, Rimmer saying no as soon as the doors open, a montage of weird noises… there are loads of great gags in there that aren’t just fanservice. Even the scene with the original bunk room isn’t exactly fanservice other than the sets and costumes. 

“Nobody’s dead, Arnold” is shit, but there’s much more to the second half than “remember series I/II?”

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The originals went out of print on VHS and the versions that were shown on TV for a while were the Remastered ones, so it certainly seems like they intended to be the definitive versions of the episodes.

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To answer your question, yes it is a classic gesture meaning sex or phwoar!

Although a dated one; I’ve never seen it outside of older British comedies.

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I can’t be arsed to search for the images, but in my head, the lighting in V is quite varied, there are different colours and brightnesses depending on the location, scene and episode. And yeah, it’s overall quite dark, but this makes everything look very distinct.

XI/XII are just constant dark blue, which I don’t think works in the same way at all.

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I have very few issues with Skipper and it’s in my top 20 Red Dwarf episodes.

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It turned into a jacket…?

The pencil sharpener in The Beginning.

Dinosaur bowel movement frequency tables.

Everything we’re saying is- bananas.

You’re finished.

Most of the cuts in the first half of Skipper.

And killed himself, twice. 

The cut-out guitar reveal in Fathers and Suns. 

Maaargh.

Divide your mass by your weight. 

Ainsley Hitler 

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The religion basically teaches cats to be like Lister who, at that point, had no real cares for how he dressed. 

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Why’s everyone feeding the troll?

For me: Yes, God? is a plus. The gap is a very weird moment without it.

Perhaps less controversially, the extended ending of Stasis Leak. It doesn’t reach quite the same crescendo in the original and that’s a shame.

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Personally I’d have stayed. It’s not a prison if you’re willingly staying there, and they’d have had a way better time than they would back on Red Dwarf.

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I mean if it was real, and the Cat still thought what happened with the Polymorph was normal sex…

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That’ll be because it’s written by Moonlight.

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The last episode I particularly enjoyed was the first post-Maddy one, Satan’s Chimney or something? Could not get into anything beyond that, and it felt like Renwick was out of ideas. Even the third series has some very out there concepts.

But those first three I do love. 

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I think one of the big reasons the more modern tech in the Dave era jars so much is the gap. If the show had gradually evolved over the space of 30 years, it wouldn’t have been such an issue, but there’s basically one particular version of the show, then a gap, then a very different looking version that’s come along after a number of huge changes in technology, so they end up feeling totally at odds with each other.

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Just in case the point hadn’t been made.

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If it’s not actively taking money away from the original artists, and the people doing it aren’t taking in a massive profit, and the quality is good, I have no ethical issues with it.

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Beat me to it.

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One of my favourite Red Dwarf jokes is from Last Human, when Lister is accidentally sent to someone else’s torture chamber in Cyberia – which for him is a paradise – and then receives an earnest apology from the GELF government before he’s redirected to his own. 

Dunno if this would be unpopular, but I agree, it’s the one part of the book that’s always really stuck with me. I found the idea utterly fascinating and absolutely hilarious.

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First time I watched VIII, “ok I’ll do it,” was the point I realised something was wrong.

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C’mon KT, get with it.

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Series VI: space weevil for dinner

Series VII: oh no, we haven’t got the right foil to roast a chicken. 

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I do think Stoke is a nice farewell for Rimmer, giving him the opportunity to become a better person. 

I also hate the whole Ace Rimmer, multiverse-travelling superhero thing so much. I don’t like Red Dwarf being an epic space opera, I don’t like the characters being anything other than just people who were unfortunate enough to end up their situation. So superhero Rimmer and Ouroboros Lister don’t appeal.

So I have complicated feelings about Stoke.

One thing I do know is that it’s a hundred times better than Tikka, which does not belong on a good episodes list.

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I think he should appear in Doctor Who and the Draculas.

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Let’s get this one out of the way first, shall we?

[Author]

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