Canon-Strike XIV: Red Dwarf

[QualityChimp]

It's a show I've grown up watching and I really wanted my son to like it as much as I have and he's the same age as when I started.
I had to bite my tongue to make excuses about the wobbly sets or the canned laughter or how it's not constantly funny and just let him enjoy it!

[Neon Ignition]

Episode 13 - Backwards
Following the success of the second series, the show returned two years later with a larger budget and the risky decision was made to retool the look and tone of the show. Grant and Naylor also reintroduced Kryten to solve the issue they were having in constantly having to come up with Lister/Rimmer centric plots. The first episode of the third series explained away the plot threads from the previous episode and how Holly had changed gender using a fast scroll of text before diving into an episode that saw Rimmer and Kryten sucked into a worm hole leading to Earth where time ran backwards. Stuck in nodnoL, that looks suspiciously like Piccadilly Gardens in Manchester circa 1988, they survive until Lister and Cat catch up.




?ouy rof noisiced emoclew a pmaver swohs eht saW

[Hirst]

As much as they’ve got a bigger budget, I’m sure this is the episode where Lister comes out of the (cloaked) ship holding a tracking device that is very clearly a talcum powder bottle. I guess it is part of the charm though.

[Asura]

Thinking about this has really made me reflect on how the characters in Red Dwarf shine, for not being so one-note.

I love that bit in Thanks for the Memory when Lister tells Rimmer that the reason he feels bad is that he now has the same experience as everyone else - that he had a relationship with someone, fell in love, and for reasons he still doesn't quite understand it fell apart. It might sound straightforward but it's the mark of a good sitcom and a bad sitcom.

[QualityChimp]

Before we proceed, I want to state that I prefer the original title sequence.
I think the combination of the operatic music and sombre dun duuuns whilst Holly recaps gives the show a bit more gravitas.

I guess the upbeat theme is catchier, but sets a different tone. IMHO.

Anyway, how ace is Backwards?
I love how the "smart party" think it's Bulgaria, but Lister and Kryten immediately know everything is backwards.
"Nod Nol. NOD NOL!"

Another fascinating sci-fi idea that has been expanded to whole films (TENET) but is used as a vehicle for laughs:
"Santa Claus?! What a bastard! He's the big fat git who sneaks down the chimney at Christmas and steals all the kids favourite toys!"

Bonus point for featuring Tony Hawks!
Not the radical Indy nosebone, pop a 180 stiffy guy, the guy from Morris Minor and the Majors.
He's been in RD a few times though a briefcase voice, Better Than Life guide and Caligula.

->Open Spoiler<-

I also have to mention the brilliant section at the start where Cat and Lister are busy discussing how gorgeous Wilma Flinstone is, with the punchline of them realising how futile it is daydreaming about her because she'll never leave Fred.

What's more worrying is they say "I'd go with Betty, *sigh* but I'd be thinking of Wilma" and I've always thought Betty is foxier, so I'm not sure if I'm any more sane than The Smart Party.

Here's the opening text crawl/zoom:

->Open Spoiler<-

RED DWARF III

THE SAGA CONTINUUMS


THE STORY SO FAR...


Three million years in the future, Dave Lister, the last human being alive discovers he is pregnant after a liaison with his female self in a parallel universe. His pregnancy concludes with the successful delivery of twin boys, Jim and Bexley. However, because the twins were conceived in another universe, with different physical laws, they suffer from highly accelerated growth rates, and are both eighteen years old within three days of being born. In order to save their lives, Lister returns them to the universe of their origin, where they are reunited with their father (a woman), and are able to lead comparatively normal lives. Well, as normal as you can be if you've been born in a parallel universe and your father's a woman and your mother's a man and you're eighteen years three days after your birth.


Shortly afterwards, Kryten, the service mechanoid who had left the ship after being rescued from his own crashed vessel, the Nova 5, is found in pieces after his space bike crash lands onto an asteroid. Lister rebuilds the 'noid, but is unable to recapture his former personality.


Meanwhile, Holly, the increasingly erratic Red Dwarf computer, performs a head sex change operation on himself. He bases his new face on Hilly, a female computer with whom he'd once fallen madly in love.


And now the saga continuums


AND NOW THE SAGA CONTINUUMS...


RED DWARF III


THE SAME GENERATION


- NEARLY -

[Neon Ignition]

I'm all in for the updated intro, fits the new tone but also the show being a comedy more broadly. I imagine it quickly coming about through a desire to axe the Holly intro's, even in the second series they were starting to become repetitive


They were so out the gate with Backwards and it doesn't even go anywhere near as out there as later eps would. It probably says a lot that so much effort in later seasons has gone into trying to recreate the magic sauce of these eps. I know VI is the go to people have when it comes to peak recognition of the show but III-V were RD on fire.

[QualityChimp]

Each to their own, but I've always preferred the original.
Like the theme on Hitchhiker's Guide is slightly melancholy. (Although it sounds like Bowie covering Radiohead's "Lucky", too)

Hattie Hayridge actually recorded an intro to each episode, but they decided they were too of-the-time.
Like one references Shake 'n' Vac and I'm sure new viewers would have no idea what that is these days!
They're on the Smeg-Ups outtakes.

[Neon Ignition]

I'd love to know why Hayridge has never returned to the show. She's always seemed fond of it but they haven't tried it despite how rarely Holly features

[Neon Ignition]

Episode 14 - Marooned
Bombarded by Black Holes, the crew are forced to abandon ship. Lister and Rimmer take Starbug and crash land on a snow ridden wasteland without food or power. Stuck with just each other for company, the two wait to see if rescue is coming.














An episode worth being Marooned with?

[QualityChimp]

This is testament that the although the show frequently uses sci-fi as a launchpad for jokes, Marooned could easily be set on Earth with the first Artic explorers, but the interaction between the characters is still thoroughly engaging, despite the lack of "action"

That moment at the end where the two finally realise they've taken a step forward in their friendship, only for Lister to walk past Rimmer with his guitar and the final shot of him through the guitar-shaped hole in his wooden trunk.

[QualityChimp]

I'd love to know why Hayridge has never returned to the show. She's always seemed fond of it but they haven't tried it despite how rarely Holly features

Holly was originally written out when Kryten filled the role of chief exposition device and they spent a series in Starbug when they'd lost Red Dwarf.

Hayridge decided to use that opportunity to step away.

It's supposition after that, so I couldn't categorically say why she's never returned, but agree that it'd be great for her version of Holly to make an appearance.

[Neon Ignition]

Episode 15 - Polymorph
A genetically engineered lifeform finds its way aboard Red Dwarf, able to shape shift to illicit fear and extract that emotion out of its prey. One by one it hunts down the crew distorting their perceptions and personalities. More than the rest of the series that had already drawn inspiration from the film, this episode pulled heavily from Alien .




How this episode morph your opinion of the show?

[QualityChimp]

Brilliant, brilliant episode.
By this point we really knew the characters, so seeing these versions with their most prevalent emotion removed was hilarious, especially Rimmer and his "Give Quiche A Chance" shirt and his formation of the Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society...

“Call it extreme if you like, but I propose we hit it hard and hit it fast with a major – and I mean major – leaflet campaign”

[Neon Ignition]

"He was like a wild stallion! The things this boy can do with alphabetty spaghetti!"


We're only halfway through Series III and it's already striking me again as to just how damned strong a showing it was.

[Neon Ignition]

Episode 16 - Bodyswap
When the crew believes that Red Dwarf is on the verge of self-destruction, Kryten raises a possible solution - to remove Listers mind and swap it with a back up of a senior officer. The plan gives Rimmer one of his own, a way that he can once again experience what it feels like to exist within a living body...




Did the episode swap the quality set by the previous eps?