Review: Red Dwarf 7.1: Tikka To Ride (Revisited)

The four are here, but they're not themselves.

See here for my first, more general, look at this episode.

Red Dwarf - Series VII, Episode One - Tikka To Ride (1997)
Written 19/4/12

While the first episode of the seventh series of Red Dwarf isn't the worst that Doug Naylor's tenure produced, it was certainly an indicator of the way the series was headed, not only in its aesthetic feel but also in the way that it was written. To try and find the elements that led somewhat logically to the dire depths of Series Eight, I'll be taking a look at Tikka To Ride to find out what went wrong with the series as a whole in its last two years.
     We open, immediately, with a visual effects shot. It's obvious from the off, especially when we see the recap of the last series, that Tikka To Ride has been significantly filmised in editing and the picture quality is a lot better. The sets are more open, more spacious, and the costumes more diverse. Series Seven had a much greater standard of effects, making use of four-walled sets and CGI to attempt to create a more epic series. While this works most of the time, the CGI never looks as good as the real model shots from previous series, and thus destroys any suspension of disbelief.
    The writing, however, is what makes a series or not, and Tikka to Ride is... ok. The humour, however, has drastically changed. Wheras before it was a mix of well-used horrors and genuinely funny asides, this takes a definitely scatalogical approach. We see Naylor's writing of Kryten as Lister is easily able to completely disable his guilt protocols. The result is as equally stupid as it is unfunny. Kryten's odd mannerisms and beliefs were always a lot more funny than some of the stupid stuff he got up to, and seeing him stirring drinks with his groinal attachment and acting like an arse is more annoying than stimulating character development. Worse than that, we've seen it before. Kryten loses his guilt to the titular monster in Polymorph, and what we see there is a lot more consistant that this version of the concept, in which Kryten is still for some reason driven by some guilt. And regardless of the fact we've seen it before, Polymorph gets old really quickly. This doesn't even stand a chance.

Kryten has to tell Lister about curry supplies.

    I mean, there are some inconsistencies that don't even begin to make sense. I can excuse, perhaps, the new larger sets - it's handwaved with some dodgy technobabble about time-space differentials - and the actors looking four years older than before. But the entire conceit of the episode is flawed considerably by a single joke in the last episode of Series Six. The Time Drive, this episode's key feature, doesn't do space. It's purely a temporal thing and the big joke behind the drive was that it's ultimately pointless because it couldn't return to Earth. What do the Dwarfer's do here? Return to Earth, like it's nobody's business. It's almost as Naylor got it confused with the Matter Paddle, of which the new Time Drive suspiciously resembles. But that's not the irritating bit. The irritating bit is that even as far as that last episode, the Dwarfers' main aim has been to return to Earth. And now they have the technology to do so? They ignore it. This makes absolutely zero sense from any logical point of view and it's a massive elephant in the room.
     I did like the time-travel aspect of the episode, and dealing with Kennedy's assassination after several cheeky references does its best to tie this series in with the rest of the mythos. However, even the internal rules of time-travel aren't up to much. In the episode, the Dwarfers somehow return to September 22nd 1963, and by accidentally preventing JFK's assassination they erase the existence of the Space Corps, and thus themselves. However, they last long enough to faff about with more time travel, committ canibalism and then track JFK down and get him to come back in time and shoot himself. Future!JFK is instantly erased, and all is right with the world. Red Dwarf has never been too good with Time Travel, but at least that fact was exploited for humour in the past - here it's a serious part of the story, and the humour is left to the disgusting.
    Notable, over all other things, is the characterisation. Lister, who in the past six series had developed into an intelligent, responsible human being vaguely aware of his own cosmic importance and willing to lay his life on the line to save his friends, is carved into a caricature of his former self. It seems that Naylor thought that Lister really was the "curry eating oaf" that Rimmer so often joked about. Rimmer, in his penultimate episode within toleration, has hardly any lines and no character to speak of. Kryten I've already been over, but there's one thing that tips his characterisation over the edge for me. Mid-way through the episode, Kryten cooks the Cat and Lister a meal, and reveals that it's a man's corpse they found on the street. But his explanation for why he did this never refers to behaviour protocols. It was simple stupidity. This droid, who had worked with humans for all of his life, did not have any residual knowledge that humans dislike eating each other. That is where this episode just becomes insultingly stupid.

Kennedy finally makes an appearance.

    So Rimmer's still here, Kochanski isn't and Kryten is still somewhat tolerable. But Tikka To Ride still suffers from the bad writing of Dwarf's last two series, and contains a number of elements that will refuse to go away. These characterisations are shoddy and irritating, and they're gonna continue well into the series' end. Back To Earth, for whatever reason, has entirely different characterisations of its own a lot more reminiscient of "Classic Dwarf," which, while still lacking, are at least an improvement. Despite its grand scale, Tikka To Ride is still incredibly mediocre and an example of how Dwarf shouldn't be made, and it's sad for me to look back and see that they didn't get that.

Thanks.

P.S. This is the end of my Red Dwarf articles for now. Next week this slot will be occupied by my overview of Doctor Who Season 21, and after that will become the home of Josh's Who reviews.