Moonlight

[Moonlight]

THE SEVEN VOYNICHS OF STARBUG

Rimmer prints seven copies of a book he can’t read and distributes them on the next jaunt to a planet’s surface.

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FANTASTIC VOYNICH

Rimmer finds a really really good book he can’t read.

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THE VOYNICH FROM THE DWARF

Rimmer finds a book he can’t read.

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SEE WHO IN TEN MINUTES?

Rimmer is excited to meet the mystery guest star of the week. Unfortunately their car broke down on the way to the studio, so the second half of the episode must be improvised on the spot.

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I am extremely tempted to take the The End Remastered skutter and paste him over pornography.

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KEY YOU IN TEN MINUTES

Lister damages Rimmer’s car.

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SEE NOBODY IN TEN MINUTES

Chris Barrie glances out into the audience halfway through the recording of Timewave and sees they’ve all gone home.

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DIMENSION LUMP

Rimmer’s testicular self-examination reveals a tumor capable of crossing dimensions. Lister tries to use it to get a curry. Meanwhile, Cat and Kryten have a quiet night in watching the rest of that Planet Earth XVIII episode about polymorphs.

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PINKWAVE

Wait, this is just Timewave. You liar, you tricked me into watching Timewave again! Son of a bitch, I’ll slit your throat!

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PINK

Lister dreams of Rimmer. Oh my.

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GETTIN’ MEAD AND TITS, MAN

Lister goes on a pub crawl.

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M-CORN

It’s corn season. Rimmer travels with Kryten to the corn decks to harvest their bounty. Meanwhile, Talkie Toaster commits suicide because nobody wants corn bread.

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GIT & TATE

Rimmer goes on a date with guest star Catherine Tate. Hilarity ensues as he makes jokes about her nose. Meanwhile, Kryten dies.

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M-PORN

Lister purchases a dildo for 190 dollar pounds.

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As for why the Cat is smarter in AR… well because its funny.

Citation needed.

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Fruitlessly wasted ten years

Yes, because obviously we’d be so much better off with a Series IX made hot off the tail of Series VIII without any involvement from Doug. Because that’s what we would have got if the TV series continued, and it would have been garbage.

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What kind of person pays for slash fiction?

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CRAIG CHARLES – Almost immolated and drowned Robery Llewelyn for a light. Wasted the legal system tens of thousands by being falsely accused of rape, something he should have known was a poor career choice. Never responded to any of my marriage proposal tweets. Git.

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ANDREW ELLARD – Laughed really really hard at Series 8 and was immediately hired to judge whether or not future scripts were working. Signed off on Taiwan Tony. Once argued with me on TOS about the exact technical nature of certain terrible-in-execution-and-concept effects in The End Remastered when I was 12 or 13.

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CHRIS BARRIE – His stereotypical portrayal of a dead man as a neurotic gimp was directly responsible for the 1992 mob lynching of six dead men in broad daylight.

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CHARLES ARMITAGE – Responsible for the existence of Series 8. Tried to get Doug to replace Rimmer’s H in Back to Earth with a D for “dead” to avoid confusing new viewers. Spent the Series 10 audience money on a bet that Doug couldn’t throw out half the scripts and write new ones over a weekend, but embezzled the money and had to pay out the bet with the OB budget.

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I assume the radiation mutated the wooden ship into a shape shifter. It would explain the way it looks totally different every 12 episodes.

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The show switches to radio with Chris doing the missing voice(s).

Or if we’re really unlucky, Craig has to play everyone.

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Personally I feel we can still save this shambles by developing a new injoke and then running it into the ground for 200 posts.

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SMOKE ME A LISTER

Series XVI begin with Rimmer explaining that Lister went off to become Ace Lister – offscreen. He is replaced with a parallel universe Yvonne McGruder, who acts permanently concussed and wears glasses upside down. Rimmer constantly tries to trick her into sex, with Kryten readying the chloroform in case she refuses.

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I thought Chris Barrie was already dead.

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Reboots usually don’t share the same cast to be fair.

You could just be like the rest of the internet and use the word “reboot” to describe a revival of a show that’s directly continuing the original run with the same cast. I’m pretty sure most people think _any_ show returning is a “reboot” even when it’s fucking not.

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Series XI is one of the best series of Red Dwarf.

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There’s several scenes throughout the first two parts that were originally just one (far better written and performed) scene that were were split into multiple (over-extended and over-played) scenes.

Rimmer’s famous salute was a rewrite of that scene. The original is so underplayed it legitimately feels like we buy what we’re seeing as pre-accident Rimmer. But this Rimmer being pre-accident Rimmer is a conceit that Series VIII almost immediately gave up on.

I am profoundly confused by the Blue Midget dance’s existence. Everything about it feels like a really transparent bit of padding, especially with how nonsensical it is from a plot perspective, but I know for a fact it was extensively planned and couldn’t have possibly been cobbled together at the last minute.

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I have ranted about this extensively in the past. The answer is that Back in the Red sets up a story that initially makes sense and then just goes completely random bonkers in Part 3, completely violating and contradicting the story they had established.

The entire purpose of the AR simulation in Back in the Red is to ascertain the crew’s guilt by watching how they would behave in a hypothetical escape situation. Cat’s state of mind being somehow altered by the simulation instantly invalidates it for this purpose, because they are no longer watching what he would actually do.

Their easy escape is reasoned away as being caused by the luck virus. This makes complete sense. But instead of conveniently finding a Blue Midget running with the keys in – or something to that effect – you have this utterly bizarre dance sequence that completely throws reality out the window. I put it to you, why the fuck is any of this cartoon nonsense even possible in a simulation whose expressed purpose is to mimic reality? And if Kochanski was suspicious about their escape being weirdly easy, why doesn’t she say anything about a clearly choreographed-yet-impromptu dance routine with shuttlecraft? Are Lister, Kryten and Kochanski just sitting their quietly in the Blue Midget while it dances?

It’s almost as if the episode gets confused and decides the simulation is specifically operating on Cat’s sense of logic to trick him – only, that makes no sense either, because it doesn’t have anything whatsoever to do with their trial, nor do any of these breaks from reality serve an expressed purpose that couldn’t be accomplished while remaining totally grounded.

Cat being the one to figure out the puzzle used as evidence they are not in reality is a dumb joke that doesn’t seem remotely concerned with adhering to the logic of the story it’s a part of. It’s basically “Haha, Cat is smart so this CAN’T be real!” even though for that to happen the simulation would have to be actively altering his brain for absolutely no reason.

The gist is that Back in the Red could’ve been a mediocre hour long episode without Part 3, instead of an unwatchably slow nonsensical mess. I have a fan edit that runs about 47 minutes, and honestly I kind of enjoy the episode in that form (and those of you familiar with me know that I find any Series VIII episode to be a tedious slog). But it’s very telling that Part 1 can be told in 15 minutes, and that you can ax basically all the Part 3 setpieces and not even notice anything is missing.

Back in the Red feels like it starts out with Doug actually sort of interested in writing something resembling Red Dwarf, and then you get a hastily rushed Part 3 written and filmed long after the production went to hell and he’d stopped giving a shit.

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THANKS FOR THE MARMITE

Rimmer becomes obsessed with the idea of tracking down a single person in Earth’s history who enjoyed the taste of marmite. His impossible search continues. Meanwhile, Kryten’s rich uncle Steam Shovel dies and leaves him a ten million dollarpound haunted mansion, but only on the condition he spend a single night within its accursed walls.

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SPUD COP DEFECTORS

Jake Bullet arrests Rimmer and Lister for peeling potatoes with a programmable virus. Unfortunately, they move to Russia before the trial.

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Yeah, well, we saved your ass in World War II.

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GIVE & TAKE (GRANT EDITITION)

Lister’s kidneys are ripped out by Asclepius. Meanwhile, Cat’s barbed penis rips a woman’s vagina to shreds.

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Nobody liked Rimmer’s hair in X. Nobody.

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I was just dreaming I was listening to the Last Human audiobook, but read by Chris Barrie, and McGruder was given an ill-fitting nasaly cartoon voice that I very much disliked.

But speaking of the actual audiobook, I think Craig manages to nail the speech patterns of his fellow cast members even if he can’t do the voices.

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Pretty fair to presume that a light bee wouldn’t be able to project a hologram if there’s a solid object between the bee and the intended location of the hologram – e.g. if you locked Rimmer in a room (and he couldn’t convert to softlight or whatever), then he wouldn’t be able to escape by just projecting himself outside the room.

And yet Entangled has him walk through a wall as if his light bee just isn’t there, or as if he really is walking away from it and they couldn’t be arsed to add it floating there. What else could that shake be when he returns if not realigning with it?

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I was watching Pete Part 2, and I was about to phone my lawyer when something didn’t make me laugh. Then about 20 minutes later a single funny thing happened. I’ve been hooked on Pete Part 2 ever since.

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Literally every time I use that phrase people make that joke.

I never learn, do I?

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For the record I’m abnormally good at memorizing TV quotes, in case it sounded like I’m pouring over the episodes repeatedly in a deliberate attempt to memorize them.

I don’t need no idiot boards noways, you scaly old piscines.

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I really have to insist large swathes of Series XII and more so Series XI are classic-era quality in terms of the enjoyment and rewatchability they have in my eyes. A bit different of a writing style, as you’d expect from one writer taking over the work of two, but I find myself going back to my XI/XII favorites incredibly often in a way I just don’t for Series VII-X. They also have that newness that Series I-VI obviously don’t, as I’ve been watching them since tweenhood. I haven’t regularly watched VIII in many years, but I watched so much Red Dwarf then I still feel like I remember it word for word in a way I’m only starting to for the new eps.

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DIG ME A SCABBER

Lister keeps picking at a scab. This makes Rimmer so unbelievably angry that the series finally just admits he’s on the autism spectrum. At this point, half the viewing audience mails Chris Barrie death threats bevause the internet just hates autistic people that much.

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BATSIDE DOWN

Mr. Bat joins the crew, and hangs from various ceiling grates. Kryten follows with a mop, cleaning the constant rain of shit. Meanwhile, a group of Blue Midgets put on a production of Waiting for Godot that recieved rave reviews in Rimmer’s weekly review.

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SKATE ME A KIPPER

Ace joins a skateboarding competition, unknowingly falling right into Taiwan Tony’s evil plot to skin every knee in the universe. Meanwhile, Rimmer blames Lister for the hideous mess he left in the microwave. Lister simply accepts this, because it certainly sounds like something he’d do.

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RATWORLD

Spinoff series in the alternate universe, featuring such delightful episode as “Warm and Snuggly” and “Fucking Hell, We Can’t Show That On TV”. Guest starring Ainsley Harriet as Rat #7.

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KATE ME A SKIPPER

Katydid gets sick of Idea for an Episode, and goes off in search of a thread where she isn’t such a giant loser. The impossible search continues.

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BOOGIESNATCHER: POLYMORPH IV

A polymorph eats Cat’s funk, and boogies away. Can a disco danceoff against the groovy ‘morph win back the Cat’s cool? No. Of course not.

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6 OF THE ALL OVER THE PLACE

Red Dwarf’s most unfocused episodes together at last, from Dear Dave to Can of Worms to Pete Part 2.

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GRANTWARDS

A million agonies are unsuffered by Rimmer. Meanwhile, Cat uses his barbed penis to repair a woman’s vagina.

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BACKWASH

The gang only have one bottle. Don’t do it, Lister. Don’t you…

Oh fuck. How are we supposed to drink that now, filled with all the white floaty bits? You truly are disgusting.

[Author]

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