International Debris

[International Debris]

Oh ffs, I knew that was wrong. Yes, fish n chip, that’s the one. Anyway it’s so underrated I forgot what the line was. I must have been mixing it up in my head with the “sausage and onion gravy fuck” smegup. 

[International Debris]

This seems like a pretty good thread to shift the Sonic chat.

[International Debris]

Honestly I think that might be hall of fame worthy.

[International Debris]

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”.

Nah, I’ve seen this said before and I disagree entirely. The only part of the episode I don’t like is the first universe Rimmer visits, with the awful nobody’s dead Dave bit and VIII-style Hollister. It was kind of fun on first watch, but it feels laboured on repeat viewings. Other than the bunkroom set in the last universe, none of the rest of it trades on nostalgia or fanservice at all.

What makes Skipper great:

The opposite decisions sequence, which for me is up there with ‘so what is it?’, the bar room tidy and such in terms of all-time classic RD set pieces. It’s such a good concept and performed and edited to perfection.

The Mr. Rat universe. 

The increasingly deranged run of universes Rimmer finds himself in, with the many Listers one, the sacrifice, Rimmer as Holly, Blue Dwarf, the elephant trumpeting, etc.

The word ‘anomaling’. 

It still has flaws which drag it down; if it was all the quality of the above then it would be a top five episode for me. 

As for Cured, for me the guitar scene is down there with the worst the show has ever offered. It’s so obviously, painfully written as a ‘bit’, the self-consciously ‘memorable’ scene where they do a way too fucking long silly thing direct to camera. It’s not the Blue Midget dance, but it’s not far off. I’m also fucking sick of the “disabled person is actually evil and pretending” trope. The dismissing of them as robots feels so lazy and rushed like Doug realised the end of the episode was on its way and he needed to wrap it up in 30 seconds. The plot is so, so saggy and I can never work out why the fuck Telford does just about anything he does. And honestly, I think the idea of a ‘cure for evil’ probably has some mileage in it in terms of a nuanced discussion leading to the concept of evil being dismissed as bollocks, but it’s not remotely covered in the episode and everyone just accepts it all in a really uninteresting way.

I mean, there’s stuff I like – the pairing of “Ainsley Hitler” and “oh, no, it is mine” in the space of a few seconds always has me in uncontrollable laughter – but I do recall my excitement for XII disappearing when I reached the end of the episode and just thought it was a bit crap. It’s so underwhelming and I can’t imagine ever actively wanting to watch it. I think it being one of a run of episodes with lots of guest characters probably didn’t help.

[International Debris]

Sterilised milk is different to the usual long-life (UHT) milk, I think it has a slightly sweeter taste? It just struck me as a completely silly and inappropriate thing for a mega rich CEO like this Lister to drink.

Thinking about that scene, I think the pronunciation of “sausage n onion gravy sandwich” is one of the most underappreciated jokes in the whole show.

[International Debris]

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). 

[International Debris]

Chris is really quite poor in X. I think you can see his performance gradually improving over the course of the following years, to the extent that I think he’s just about got it down by The Promised Land. But he’s absolutely the weak link in the Dave era, and it’s kind of sad.

[International Debris]

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.

[International Debris]

When it was broadcast, I liked BtE even less than VIII. That changed when I did a full series rewatch and BtE actually felt like Red Dwarf again, just very, very bad Red Dwarf, which was still preferable to whatever the hell VIII is.

I have a friend who maintains that VIII is better than everything in the Dave era, which he says is so bad it wouldn’t have even been commissioned if it wasn’t part of a show with an existing fanbase. So there are people who feel like this. Again, I think the fact that the Dave stuff actually has the recognisable characters, character-led stories and so on makes them immediately better than VIII; X being on par with VII seems fair to me, though.

[International Debris]

Obviously the BBC is allowed to reference real branded products, they goes without saying. But repeatedly calling one a bad product and making it the butt of a long running joke would be a recipe for a lawsuit today.

I think that says more about today than anything, if it’s true. Some products, services and people were repeatedly ripped to shreds by comedy, it’s just something that happened.

[International Debris]

Funny, I can actually see you making that face as you posted that.

[International Debris]

My unpopular opinion would be that Talkie Toaster should not have returned. It’s a one joke character and they basically just got David Ross to say the same lines he had 20+ years earlier.

I dunno if it’s that unpopular, quite a few of us sighed at it at the time. I think the list of bread products could have been funny if it had gone into ridiculous territory, Lister wracking his brain to try and preempt every absurd possibility, but instead we basically just got the original scene again. 

[International Debris]

In terms of Pot Noodle, it probably helps that the only time we see one, it’s a fake one.

…like the Toffee Crispy bar

But yeah, BBC programmes are allowed to mention real world products. I mean, Ian once got a whole article out of it. 

[International Debris]

Sir, surely anything from series IV is by definition proto-V?

That’s not how prototypes work. 

[International Debris]

Well they didn’t need to find Red Dwarf, they could just have found Holly. He has no memory of what happened to red dwarf until the last episode.

Yeah, but finding Red Dwarf also negates the need for STARDISbug and the existence of VIII, so let’s have it anyway.

Lovely post Kris – what on Earth must have the next lot thought going from Tikka to Duct Soup?!

[International Debris]

Kryten is Desmond, he turned up for a single plot but they liked the character enough to bring him back. 

Although I’m amused enough by the idea of him having a past as a torturer enough to go with Sayid on that alone.

Rimmer is Locke, he thinks he’s big and important but he’s really not, he’s just a pain in everyone’s arse. Also he comes back from the dead. Which, y’know, is close enough. 

Lister is Jack, he’s the centre of the story but very few people’s favourite character. 

[International Debris]

Hurrah, another vote for the ‘they should have found Red Dwarf at the start of VII’ team. 

[International Debris]

The only VII music I remember is from the Xtended video episodes, the other VIIs I never owned and barely watched. I remember that Beyond a Joke has that techno(?) bit that always sounded really out of place.

Oh yeah, the bit where they’re hiding in the asteroid belt is proper late ‘90s video game music, kind of big beat-ish in sound. I loved that as a kid but yeah, it’s really out of place

There are so many interesting music choices from this era. I quite like the dramatic music when Starbug flies to the planet where they think the cure for Epideme will be, and the weird metallic percussion in the action bit at the end of Ouroboros I used to find quite exciting.

Ive also always been very fond of the string music while Lister’s in stasis in The End Remastered. 

The best Ace music is the bit in Stoke following the coffin.

[International Debris]

The problem with VIII Holly is he has no authority. In the first two series he’s basically the dad, whatever he says and does actually affects everyone else, he drives the plot, he’s the ship personified. In VIII he’s… well, I dunno, is he in prison? It’s never really explained. But he’s just a face on a screen, he can do the odd joke about looking at supplies or whatever, but ultimately he’s like the rest of them, really: someone to do a gag when it’s needed.

The closest thing to proper Holly we get is, ironically, the conehead version.

[International Debris]

I like Lee Mack on WILTY, and I like the early Not Going Outs when it was just a daft one-liner machine programme rather than the mediocre family sitcom that it’s become, but yeah, he really can’t act and would have been very jarring in Red Dwarf. I hated Johnny Vegas’s bit, way too jarring. Also terribly unfunny, but that was Doug’s fault. 

[International Debris]

And yet Rob and Doug really struggled.

[International Debris]

I get the irritation from people who dislike the removal of Rimmer’s heroism – and I much prefer the original ending from that perspective – but actually just handwaving it away with a joke explanation of causality was surely the only way of actually getting out of it? I mean, they could have actually shown the timeline resetting and have them work out what’s happened, but would that really have been the best use of the episode’s runtime? Even as someone who doesn’t rate Tikka, I don’t think it’d be improved by seeing what we’re told. 

Since it was 3 years after and they had pretty much changed everything like the sets, the costumes and make up. They likely knew they couldn’t just film a scene set directly after. The starbug set for example in Series 7 looks the same, but there are noticeable differences. Krytens make up also isn’t the same.

In the end they just used the same logic but through dialogue.

To be fair, that didn’t stop them doing it at the start of BitR. Kochanski looks like practically a different person, the docking bay is a different shot with a different number of Starbugs, Kryten has different makeup…

[International Debris]

I’ll be honest, I’ve never understood the anger the resolution gets. Although maybe that’s because I was sure that’s how it would resolve, because… well, it makes sense. I explained it to a kid at school and he was unconvinced and then I felt very smug when the pre-credits scene came along.

I dunno, maybe a sci-fi cliffhanger should have a resolution an 11 year old can’t guess but I felt satisfied. 

Of course they should have gone back to get the time drive and used it to get Red Dwarf back and then stole it from themselves making the whole arc a bootstrap paradox, removing the necessity for STARDISbug, and relegating VIII as we know it to non-existence, but then I’ve made this point before.

[International Debris]

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.

Oh, thank you! 🩷 Very kind of you, glad you’re enjoying!

[International Debris]

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

[International Debris]

Plus, Lister pilots Blue Midget in series 2, so it’s not like these kinds of skills came out of nowhere with the almost-soft-reboot of III. 

[International Debris]

But will this movie do what Red Dwarf didn’t, and interrogate the fact that the matriarchal alternate reality makes the women masculine and the men feminine?

And, more importantly, will it feature baby robots?

[International Debris]

I have looked at that thread a bit, but at over 200 pages I confess I only looked at the first and last half dozen pages or so. I got the impression it was just jokes and memes rather than serious episode ideas so I stopped looking, should I go deeper?

Good God, no. Save yourself now.

[International Debris]

For what it’s worth, I don’t think you’re going to find many – or any – people here who think that the various issues around AI – be they natural resources, theft, or the fact that most of the AI companies financially support fascists – are offset by the quality of the work. Most of this stuff is really not much more interesting than publicity shots and stuff that we’ve seen. Sharper? Yes. The occasional angle that makes it look more interesting? Yes. But actually worth all the compromises involved in supporting an appallingly damaging and corrupt form of tech? Very, very unlikely. 

Not starting an argument with this, but I think it might be worth just rescaling your expectations in terms of the kinds of response you’re hoping to get. 

[International Debris]

Completely agree with that, but I’m trying to imagine a world in which the idea of leaving the ship never occurred to them, and thus which episode concepts would they have still tried. Some of the ways of achieving them might seem clunky in contrast with the versions we know, but would Rob and Doug have still thought “yeah, they’re attacked and wake up to find they’re in a computer game” was a feasible episode?

Justice World, the psi-moon, GELF villages, backwards Earth: none of these would have been on their radar at all. Stranded robot, high and low selves, suicidal group hallucination? I think they’d have given them a shot.

I mean, we now have a group hallucination of squid ink origin episode that doesn’t involve them leaving the ship. 

[International Debris]

I suppose the two ships could also just dock. Have one of those space docking corridor things that those sci fi programmes always have.

[International Debris]

Yeah, you can have things arriving on board to bring outside plots. Kryten could turn up rather than be traveled to – the skeleton reveal could be him trying to get them into his own shuttle – Thanks for the Memory could probably be reworked so the black box is shot off into space, Bodyswap doesn’t need the chase at the end and could be rewritten.

Parallel Universe is interesting, maybe they could have shuttles that our universe doesn’t? Or they could have merged ships or something. When they powered up the drive they could have just arrived on the female ship.

Camille is another that could work with some rewriting, have her arrive rather than be rescued by Kryten. Obviously there’s some thematic stuff that would be lost. DNA… well, the craft docks with RD, so while they leave it, they don’t need to actually use a shuttle or anything, so I’d count it. Justice is the first since Marooned that’s a definite No, the bulk of the episode and its themes being based on the nature of Justice World. White Hole would need a reworking of the ending, but it’d be doable – it’s IV’s ‘bottle’ episode. Dimension Jump would still work conceptually, but would need a good bit of rewriting to introduce Ace in a similarly heroic way. Meltdown… no ships, but I’m assuming the matter paddle fits into the ‘etc.’ category, in which case it’s another distinct No.

V barely features the main ship at all. If you wanted to stretch things, Holoship has Rimmer transported to a single ship by advanced hologram technology, so would fit, thematically, with the ‘stuck on board’ idea ok to me. The Inquisitor doesn’t need the opening Starbug scene so is fine. Terrorform is a complete No. Quarantine might be doable if Langstrom showed up on her own, although it’d need some strong rewrites to make it work. Demons & Angels… I wonder if there’s a way they could have done this to make it change their own Red Dwarf into one with areas that are high and low? I think the concept is doable. Better Than Life could be done with something appearing on the ship that shoots despair venom.

VI is, of course, a complete no, although I think Psirens, Gunmen and Out of Time would have been workable. 

VII is mostly fine. If you’re being strict about no travel, then Tikka is out, but most others would be doable with some tweaks, which is a sign of how much STARDISbug is just Red Dwarf. If you allow for the linkway to turn up, then you’d be missing Beyond a Joke, you’d need to rewrite Caroline Karmen’s arrival (another pod?), and weirdly, the episode that actually has Red Dwarf in wouldn’t be doable given that it’s about the hunt for the ship.

VIII is made redundant because without losing Red Dwarf and being on Starbug they wouldn’t be able to end up on a newly reconstructed Red Dwarf with the crew. Maybe the crew could have been resurrected another way, but it doesn’t feel like something that would have happened at all. Which is a big plus of this timeline.

BtE… they technically never leave the ship, you could definitely just have the squid appear onboard somehow, although by this time you’d imagine they’d have started quarantining everything that tried to get on the ship.

Trojan could work with the ship docking, Dear Dave is all onboard, Lemons depends on whether you’re allowing for the rejuvenation shower, but let’s go with a No. Entangled is a definite No, Dear Dave works, The Beginning could probably have been reworked.

Officer Rimmer is the only XI episode I can see really working, the others rely on Starbug travel a bit too much. 

Swap the evacuation for a power down and you can work Mechocracy, I think M-Corp might work if you do allow the travel in there as an externally added thing, and Skipper is technically all onboard ship. TPL is a No.

That makes 22 definite No episodes and a large number of rewrites.

[International Debris]

I always thought it was genuine, and even though most people here have made the counter-argument very convincingly over the years, I still can’t dislodge that idea from my head. I, too, really love the humour in Rimmer and young Lister getting on really well. I mean, I know that’s still there on Lister’s side, but my brain still reads Chris’s performance that way too.

[International Debris]

Yeah, that’s not a bad description of V. I suppose I see the run from 1-VII as a continual evolution, but VI sticks out as something a bit different, rather than a halfway point between V and VII. 

[International Debris]

V is much lower on gags than the series around it. It’s generally more serious in tone, even though it’s still obviously a comedy. VI is a lot broader, sillier, less character-based, almost cartoony in contrast, like they pulled back from the brink a bit. VII feels like Doug’s decided to carry on with the slightly less sitcommy aspects of V. They’re very different, but it VI feels like a bit of an outlier in between the two.
I always thought the idea of VII being a drama was massively overstated. It’s single camera and has more dramatic moments than earlier series, but it’s still by-and-large a comedy. I’d say the climactic scenes of The Inquisitor are more dramatic than most of VII, for example.
My post from Refresh the Memory: Series V Byte II, having just watched the show up to that point:

V, then. It’s still my favourite series, but this is the first time I’ve
properly watched the show with a critical eye and it surprised me at
how different it is to even IV. It’s definitely much more serious in
tone, and yet the characters sometimes feel very slightly broader at
times. Red Dwarf (especially the bunk room, as Rudolph says) and Holly
are in it even less than I remembered. In some ways, VII feels like a
more natural continuation of the changes than VI’s much lighter tone.

[International Debris]

VII has pathos, although it’s occasionally awkwardly handled. VIII has no pathos and is terrible. BtE has pathos and it’s the best thing about it; it’s a shit comedy but a half decent drama. X has pathos but yes, some terrible VIII-esque jokes to ruin the spell. XI and XII are surprisingly lacking, other than maybe Rimmer’s fish moment in Siliconia. TPL has a good bit and it’s actually well handled and properly enhances the story and characters.

fwiw I don’t think VI has much pathos and this is to the detriment of the series. 

V as a precursor to VII is absolutely true, VII almost feels like course correction from VI in places. I have no problem with this, I think the problem with VII is Doug isn’t as good a writer on his own as he is with Rob, not the direction the show was going in. 

[International Debris]

As someone who doesn’t drive and gets sick on coaches, I’ve used a lot of trains in my life. 

[International Debris]

Ah. I’ve had so many Discord conversations in which she genuinely didn’t know the British terminology of something that it could have gone either way.

[International Debris]

What the fuck is passenger rail?

Railway infrastructure designed to convey passengers rather than freight.

Unless I’ve missed an obscure joke.

[International Debris]

The 80x series are considerably better than the previous generation, pendolinos, meridians and voyagers being the worst long distance trains this country has ever used.

[International Debris]

uh-oh

[International Debris]

I’d be with him if I he were talking about Mark 3 coaches, the ones used on old HSTs/125s, which are super comfy and very spacious. Mark 1s are the equivalent of a car without suspension driving along a gravelly track.

[International Debris]

Emohawk: Polymorph 11

[International Debris]

[International Debris]

[International Debris]

I mean, if we’re to believe Rimmer slept with a woman who thought he was someone else and he blames her for it, and we’re to believe he actually hypnotised a woman into going on a date with him, then I’d say it’s not much of a stretch. Certainly those two scenarios are presented as things he personally believes happened. 

For me the issue is the fact that a bulk of the episode is taken up with it. There are questionable attitudes expressed by all of the characters at some point earlier in the show – laddishness of the ‘80s and ‘90s was pretty much unavoidable in a programme written, produced and performed almost exclusively by men – but they’re usually brief asides, and in the case of Rimmer’s past mentioned earlier, portrayed in a negative light. Krytie TV has it happen on screen, presented in a very light hearted way, and then has the character who is the moral heart of the show try to defend himself to one of the women involved. And while Kochanski’s reaction is actually completely reasonable and, I think, intended to be the closest thing to a message that the show has, it feels inconsequential in comparison with the “lads will be lads” vibe of the rest of the episode. 

I think there are worse examples of misogyny in VIII – “you would have been on top and I could have used you as a human shield” is truly repulsive – but it’s the amount of it in the episode that makes it stand out.

[International Debris]

Every time I watch Tikka, it’s somehow even worse than I remember. I truly can’t fathom how anyone rates it at all, let alone as the best of VII. So yeah, VII isn’t a bad one. But I think the second half of Emohawk still stands up as a candidate. It’s the first time the show draws on its own past, to the extent that it’s three sequels in one. Yeah, they’ve joked about “you wanted characters to come back, well there they all are” or whatever, but even just acknowledging that fanbase desire feels a little desperate. The show never properly traded on its past before that, the very occasional gag aside, so to suddenly go in for its first lot of fanservice and do it so heavily, creating a half-episode that a lot of people rate among the lowest moments of the bubble, two episodes before Rob left, one of which is Rimmerworld which has also been accused of being an underdeveloped retread of earlier themes… yeah, bringing back Ace, Duane and the Polymorph still wins it for me.

[International Debris]

Yeah, Bodyswap and Polymorph are the only stories which don’t feel like they could have come from an expansion of series 2. Although it would have been nice to see the show evolve in an even more gradual way rather than some of the enormous changes added all at the same time. If they’d done III as it was, but with the original costumes, opening theme and Holly intros, for example. 

[International Debris]

I spent the whole of the BtE weekend being baffled as to why the hell Doug was telling that story. I still feel that a bit, tbh.

Bringing back Ace and Duane would be the moment for me.

[International Debris]

Cat’s character changes dramatically over the years. I mean, they all do, reflecting the changes in the show. But he’s always been the most functional character. In the first two series he’s basically there to fill a gap, to stop it just being Rimmer and Lister bickering. Then he becomes Lister’s best mate in series 3; he’s basically a one-liner machine in 4 and especially 5 (my favourite version); in 6 he’s a pilot and has his absurd super powers. In 7 and 8 he’s contractually in the show.

Yeah, there’s definitely more of a focus on him being insecure in the Dave era. It does work for the character for me – he’s so focused on being cool that his biggest fear will of course be that somehow someone might see through that – although I get why someone might not like it.

[Author]

Replies