Moonlight

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I remember a really long time ago reading somebody complain that “Back to Earth wasn’t funny because the audience wasn’t laughing” which implies there was a studio audience that was completely dead silent the entire time.

There’s gotta be a phrase in that considering more casual fans seem to especially disdain Back to Earth (and VII, but not VIII).

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My uncle works at Rob Grant and he gave me the unreleased DVD of Titan Series 1. You can see it if you if you sneak me some of your older brother’s wine coolers.

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POLYMORPHKET

Lister makes a killing placing bets on what the polymorph will turn into next.

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#RedDwarf #Smegle 13/04/2026 

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“Three-parted the episode.”

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The Dibbley Family was terrible. Thats when you know you have gone way too far.

They should have included Rimmer in an Ace wig, so it could be a sequel to three sequels.

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#RedDwarf #Smegle 12/04/2026 

I was very distracted and I accidentally guessed a Series VI episode second.

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This isn’t “Red Dwarf frames with existentialist auras”, Ben.

It is now.

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“My uncle works at Nintendo” vibes.

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I’ll be real, not that I don’t want the audience, but it feels like a crying shame that we didn’t have an entire series of single camera Dwarf in the Dave era given how well BtE and XI/XII’s location scenes are shot. I think Give & Take suffers a bit for how much better the location work looks vs. the multi-cam studio scenes. It feels like the more filmic location scenes don’t mesh as well with the studio scenes as they do in the older episodes. The Inquisitor has great single camera location shooting but it doesn’t look like a different show from the studio shoot.

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We’re streaming Doug’s BtE commentary in the server and it turns out the solution to “is BtE Series 9?” was hiding on the DVD the whole time.

Doug calls it “season 8 and a half.”

So the chronology of Red Dwarf is Series 1, 2, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, Red Christmas, VIII½, X, XI, XII, AA, TPL.

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Chris delivers every third line doing this face and these movements in Series XI and XII.

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Polymorph is like a cartoon. Bodyswap is much more escalated sitcom farce, particularly with the bomb scare at the beginning.

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True, there are more grounded episodes like the one where they swap bodies or the one where they can travel in time by stepping into a photograph.

I know you’re being glib on purpose but I think there is a wide berth between “episode with a silly sci-fi premise” and “Cat getting chased by bazookoid shots like a goddamn Looney Tunes short”. Bodyswap escalates to a crescendo of insanity from a premise built on sci-fi and character whereas Polymorph is cartoon wacky sauce from the first scene. I 1000% disagree that those are equally silly or the same thing.

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III always feels defined by the cartoon zaniness of Backwards and especially Polymorph in my memory but that’s not representative of every episode.

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#RedDwarf #Smegle 11/04/2026 

DNA

4

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That’s a real rank????????? I thought it was some bullshit Rob and Doug made up. Is this my fault for being American?

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Sexy auras.

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#RedDwarf #Smegle 10/04/2026 

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Chris makes this face basically any time he speaks in the Dave era.

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I use this all the time when discussing how my day at work was.

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#RedDwarf #Smegle 09/04/2026 

I tried Promised Land, XI and XII before I realized what I was looking at.

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#RedDwarf #Smegle 08/04/2026 

Better Than Life, Meltdown, Backwards

Just all the Earthy episodes, really.

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#RedDwarf #Smegle 07/04/2026 

The Last Day

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I see the Rimmer monster (I tried to coin Rimmonster at the time but nobody bit) as a fun violent swerve for the episode. Instead of the Rimmers devolving into infighting like you might expect, they get eaten by a fucked up monster Rimmer accidentally creates by being too impatient to wait two minutes.

I do remember when I first watched the episode and they asked the monster to make a list I thought it was going to be a Chekhov’s gun from Herring turning to paper earlier where they trick the monster into “completing” its task and cause it to turn back to paper. Instead they just shoot it in the face(s).

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And of course, it’s against UK law to write an article about Red Dwarf without using X era promo photos with the eye bag mask.

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Series VI blends together a bit in my memory compared to 2-V. I can never remember which cockpit scenes are in what episode.

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#RedDwarf #Smegle 06/04/2026 

I guessed just about every other episode in the series.

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I was just watching Jeeves and Wooster and now I can’t stop thinking the guy on the left looks like Hugh Laurie.

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Back to Earth is about to be 17 years old. This is not an opinion but as a statement I feel it will prove unpopular.

Remember Headfuck Monday? I sure do.

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#RedDwarf #Smegle 05/04/2026 

Sometimes you can just tell from the predominant color of the frame, like the Back to Earth one.

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#RedDwarf #Smegle 04/04/2026 

There is only one shot in the entire show that color could indicate.

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I’m wondering if we need to invent a fan theory that Rimmer is actively taking and failing two separate exams, because they seem to flip flop between astronavigation and engineering throughout Series 1.

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#RedDwarf #Smegle 03/04/2026 

Lucky guess after DNA.

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I don’t find there’s enough difference in quality to single out any of the Dave series as notably better or worse (not counting BTE).

I will go to bat for X but I do think it feels noticeably lesser than XI and XII on average.

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Oh. That one. Yeah, that episode is a fucking mess.

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Cassandra is the only VIII episode I could ever see myself casually throwing on but Timewave is the only XII episode I couldn’t.

That said, I generally prefer XI. I’ve been having a hot, steamy love affair with Officer Rimmer since it aired regardless of how it kinda falls apart in the last couple minutes. There’s no other episode post-VI that I like as much as it.

[Author]

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