Red Dwarf 11.2: Samsara

Warning: This review is being published before the official Dave broadcast of Series XI, at the pace of the UKTV Play streaming service. It's free, it's there right now and I love Red Dwarf too much to wait. If you want to wait for broadcast, stop reading now.

Usually I'm not sympathetic to adultery, but I kind of like these
guys?

Red Dwarf XI continues to be fantastic! This is great news! Samsara continues this series' reverence towards Series IV and V with a fascinating episode with a great concept whose foreshadowing is layered from the moment the episode starts. Apparently this episode has been divisive in the fandom - and that's to be expected, with an episode so driven by a simple concept, and one which pushes Red Dwarf norms. I will admit that there are places where this episode could have been considerably improved, but I was laughing throughout and that's generally a good sign.
     The USS Samsara crashes into an ocean planet, a single escape pod launching into orbit. 3 million years later, and after a particularly unlucky game of "Mineopoly", the crew discover the escape pod, its two inhabitants dust and the ship repeating a broken warning. The crew head down to the ship proper and discover through trial and error that the ship was destroyed by its Karma Drive, an offshoot of "Justice Field" technology that manipulated reality to reward those who abide by its moral code, and punishes those who do not. We find out through flashbacks that this was the fault of a pair of crewman, the two in the escape pod, who were engaging in an adulterous relationship and inverted the Karma Drive to continue their affair, only for everyone else on the ship to be punished and destroyed.
     The episode's pacing starts off ambitious, and the mystery hidden within the comedy worked really well, but after the break it starts to go downhill. By the midpoint of the story the mystery becomes a lot more obvious, and the explanations and flashbacks start to feel a little redundant. Added to this is a long, long sequence between Lister and The Cat in the dark which, despite having a great punchline, felt out of character and unfunny. Together they stall the episode and create an incredibly abrupt ending, making me wish that the format of the show on Dave allowed for the extra 6 minutes it's now missing.

Give me strength.

     As to the controversial flashbacks that run throughout the episode, I have no problem with their actual content. While they seem to be following Doug's "dramedy" stylings from Series VII, it works better without the actual cast present, and I don't mind the performances of the two guest actors (whose names I can't find because IMDB doesn't seem to have been updated). I liked the fluidity of the transitions between the past and present, and until the mystery was revealed later on they added a great deal to the tension of the story. I would have watched more of the flashback rather than sit through that cringe-worthy Cat scene again.
    That said, the episode looked just as good as last week, and I really liked that the pacing wasn't as break-neck - I liked the Lister/Rimmer scene at the beginning and I felt that overall the characters were much more familiar. This episode of the season was the one with the lowest budget - and that makes a existence of a few things make more sense - the length of the talking scenes, the relative lack of special effects. I was impressed that the writers decided to do what you *should* do with a bottle episode and make up for a it with a great concept, and as a result this episode is nowhere as bad as it could have been.

Thanks.

Red Dwarf 11.1: Twentica

Warning: This review is being published before the official Dave premiere of Series XI, at the pace of the UKTV Play streaming service. It's free, it's there right now and I love Red Dwarf too much to wait. If you want to wait for broadcast, stop reading now.

The boys are back in town, and the return is fast-paced goodness.
From Den of Geek

This morning, at about 11am, I sat down on my girlfriend's bed, a tray of eggs and soldiers perched before us as I clicked onto UKTV Play. Compared to the anticipation I felt for the arrival of Red Dwarf X four years ago, I could have been watching Poldark. Twentica definitely benefited from that lack of expectation, but at the same time I felt like it didn't really need it - this episode was much more assuredly Red Dwarf than any episode since Series VI, and four years of work and a higher budget mean that the show is looking more gorgeous than ever before.
     The episode's main conceit is yet another historical farce - this time a bit smarter than Tikka to Ride and Lemons, although borrowing elements from both. After a race of time-bending Simulants steal a piece of tech from Starbug under duress, the Dwarfers go back in time to an Alternate 1952 in which said simulants have prevented humanity from developing, culturally and technologically, beyond the 1920s. Instead of living under a prohibition of booze, however, any technology more advanced than steam is banned, leading to the hilarious idea of speakeasies full of Theoretical Physicists. Eventually the Dwarfers manage to piece enough technology to get home.
     Something which made Series X a little bit weird for me was the amount of time I spent analysing each and every joke and scene in a way that I just wouldn't with the older stuff. Unfortunately I've found myself doing that with this episode, noting in particular the episode length. The Dave episodes are a full five minutes long - as trivial as that may seem, that's a lot of breathing room for jokes and ideas. Twentica blew through its 24 minute runtime so fast that there were always going to be jokes that didn't work. A scene in the scientist speakeasy where a guest character reeled off lots of Physics references as jokes was hilarious to me as a Physics student, but it went on a tad too long for comfort. On the other hand, a minute-long gag about the Dwarfers mistaking a bum for Albert Einstein felt a bit rushed and cheap. The jokes about cliches and quantum mechanics had me tickled, but they might not have been to everyone's tastes.
     A lot of the pre-publicity for the series (which I've been following since filming started for Series XI/XII in December of last year) focused on the technical effects, which usually is just something that appeals to hardcore Red Dwarf fans who can tell the difference between shades of green on Starbug models. The new sets for Starbug were gorgeous, as were the steampunk streets of 1952. I was a little disappointed that our only shot of the new Red Dwarf sets was a brief scene at the end, but I'm glad they focused on story instead of just giving us a set tour to satisfy nerds like me. One thing I think is important is seeing whether Doug Naylor has learnt from the mistakes of Series VII and VIII - that good special effects do not good comedy make. Luckily, I was laughing my ass off.
     Comparing this episode to X's premiere, Trojan, the latter definitely feels like it's trying too hard. Twentica, odd name aside (is it some kind of pun on the Twenties and robotics?), instantly felt like Red Dwarf. The gang were all here, doing the same thing as usual, although with the same character development they carried over from the last series. If Red Dwarf X showed that Red Dwarf as a concept would work with older characters, then this season will hopefully demonstrate that the show can be high-tech and flashy and still be as funny as the "Golden Age" of the early 90s.

Thanks.

P.S. Yes, it's been a while. Also, out goes the "Review" prefix at the beginning of articles. You know what you're reading.

Red Dwarf and other blog news

The Dwarfers are back!
From digitalspy

First off: Red Dwarf is coming back! It's official: two new series, one for 2016, one for 2017. What with this blog and its history of following Red Dwarf stuff, I'll of course be wanting to talk about them when they come out. That may or may not happen, but if there's anything which can give me motivation to continue Nostalgia Filter, it's two new series of Red Dwarf.
     So, about continuing Nostalgia Filter. My plans to review The Walking Dead more or less fell through - those reviews will probably be written at some point, but right now I have neither the time nor the motivation to sit through The Walking Dead's early season drudgery. Nor will there be articles on Orphan Black or Game of Thrones - I can't really analyse them in detail and I just enjoy watching them without doing that sorta thing.
     One thing I have considered is going back and finishing my reviews of Misfits, finally explaining what stopped me reviewing and covering the final season and a half. If that happens, it's likely to start in the summertime - right now I'm spending half of my time doing coursework and the rest procrastinating studying dutifully for my exams.
     Talking about Red Dwarf, I've wanted for a while now to find some way of revisiting those old reviews - anyone can see that my writing style has changed since my 2010 reviews, and even since my 2012 reviews (my style now seemingly being that I don't write any more, I say with bitter laughter). Revisiting all of the episodes might be a little difficult though, and it really would affect the infrastructure of the blog to have two or more reviews for each episode of what is a half-hour-format comedy. If I did revisit them, I'd have to make sure that I had something original and useful to say, and that's difficult.

      Before I stopped writing I did have something to do with Star Trek reviews - I almost started reviewing Voyager's third season, but I then put off writing a review for Flashback, the 30th Anniversary Special, and then didn't bring that boxset to Uni with me. I do however have some Deep Space Nine boxsets on me, and this summer might see either individual episode reviews or season overviews. I have to be honest with myself about what I'm capable of now that I'm this out of practice.

Thanks.

Happy Anniversary Red Dwarf!

Today marks the 25th Anniversary of the initial broadcast of The End on BBC2, and thus 25 years of Red Dwarf!

Albeit with a few large gaps in the middle. But ho hum.

Also, a shout-out to my friend Joel, who is 17 today.

Thanks.

Review: Red Dwarf 10.6: The Beginning

Dat Simulant Ship.

Red Dwarf - Series X, Story Six - The Beginning

The Beginning made me both very happy and very, very sad. On the one hand, it was an interestingly made and action-packed finale that had a lot of nice idea and exploited well all of the characterisations at play. On the other, it took a fundamental part of what makes Red Dwarf what it is and completely removed it, finishing the process started in Trojan and completely and utterly ruining Arnold Rimmers character. There has to be a Series XI, if only to give the show a proper conclusion, but I will be very annoyed if this betrayel of his character has large effects on the series.
     A visit by strangely racist archetype Roguey Hoagie, a rogue droid obsessed with his destablisiation ray and duals across space and time, leaves the ship vulnerable to attack from a group of Rogue Simulants who are intent on revenge and destruction. While the crew escape on Blue Midget, they accept that they are going to die; Rimmer plays a last holo-message from his father, who tells him that he is in fact the son of their incompetant gardener Dungo; thus, compared to his family's accomplishments, Rimmer is a hero. This inspires Rimmer to find a way to destroy the Simulants, which he does as his first act as a Common Man.
     The essence of the Rimmer/Lister dynamic is most adequately described in Series II's Thanks For The Memory. There, a drunk Rimmer explains the problem; Lister is a complete and total bum - a waster whose instinctive intelligence is left behind, and yet his life has gone relatively well by his own standards. On the other hand, Rimmer has desperately tried his entire life to be the model of sophistication and power, driven by his high-acheiving family and their pressure on him. Despite this, he is incompetant, snide and, by his own standards, completely worthless. The battle has always been between a man who thinks he should be better and man who is better but doesn't care. As of now... Rimmer and Lister are on a level playing field. And that sucks.
     The episode, however, wasn't terrible and it had a lot of great moments. I enjoyed the perception of the Simulants as a dictatorial society run by a snide Dominator, as well as the scene wherin he deliberately implies that one of his generals should commit Seppuku before informing him to simply polish the blade. Elsewhere, and there was a cheeky reference to the ending of Only The Good..., which despite being something I'd wished to forget, at least allowed Dwarf some humility. (If still not explaining whether this Rimmer is the Original or the Duplicate.)

Hoagie The Roguey

     The Beginning left Red Dwarf's future uncertain. Perhaps instead of a sneaky reference to the pilot episode, The End, The Beginning tells of a new era in Red Dwarf's history - a NuDwarf of sorts. Whether that's something I want, or something the world needs, is to be decided. But for now I can say that this series has been... ok. It's been as good as I expected it to be, and despite its many failures it's good to see Red Dwarf back on our screens with a new spirit and ideas.

Thanks.

Review: Red Dwarf 10.5: Dear Dave

Lister accidentally (or not so accidentally, I don't know)
chats up Vending Machine 23.

Red Dwarf - Series Ten, Episode Five - Dear Dave
Written 1/11/12

The lesser the budget, the higher the quality. That's always been a very general rule on Red Dwarf, and in this very, very low budget episode of a series that's already strapped for cash, there had to be something to say in the rule's favour. Dear Dave, I think, was much better off without cash to spend, as it instead took the whole episode to develop Lister in a really fun way that took the inklings from Fathers and Suns and developed them into real ideas. Themes and ideas from across the series were re-addressed, and done so in a way that combined slight vulgarity with absolute hilarity. It's my favourite episode so far.
     Lister is down about the Human Race, sad that he's the last member of his species; the other members of the crew are unsympathetic. While Rimmer gets a message from the computer that he will be demoted to the same rank as Lister if he doesn't find a reason to take a sabbatical, Lister accidentally hits on Vending Machine 23 and Vending Machine 24 gets jealous. A mail pod arrives containing dozens of letters, one of them from one of Lister's old flames, telling him that her unborn child may be his. He scrambles to find the letter following, and in the process helps Rimmer to write his sabatical report. It turns out that Lister isn't the father, but he's over it.
     The vending machines have been incredibly well-used this season, after first showing sentience at the end of Series VIII being voiced by a tired Tony Slattery. Here Isla Cole (I think that's the name, IMDb has nothing) voices both, and manages to create two distinct and funny characters. I do think that the vending machine plot was a little out of the way, but then again there wasn't much to the main plot either. I'm still not sure whether this episode's thinness of plot was a good thing or not - it allowed for decent character development while keeping the laughs high, but it never felt consistent and the solution to all of the plot strands felt unsatisfying.

Never ask Cat to play charades.

     But it was interesting too, and all of the actors really got their chance to sink their teeth into the role - especially Craig and Chris, who both really feel as though they're used to playing their characters again after such a long time. And that was weird, really, as at times the episode felt very similar to those first two embryonic series in which the characters were just being developed. And that was to its credit. I really did quite enjoy Dear Dave, and while it wasn't as pacey or imaginative as the good old days, it still make me chuckle in its own way. Next week we visit the provocatively titled The Beginning - is this the End for Red Dwarf?

Thanks

Review: Red Dwarf 10.4: Entangled

Kryten and the Cat suffer some weird coincidences.

Red Dwarf - Series Ten, Episode Four - Entangled
Written 25/10/12

That's much more like it. After last week's really quite poor episode featuring the Novocastrian Messiah, Entangled saw the return to form for Red Dwarf X, and it is by far the best episode yet because it did a lot of things that previous episodes were trying to do and did them without it feeling tired. It wasn't perfect, sure, but I certainly couldn't pick out as many faults as I've been able to in past weeks. No doubt the Red Dwarf fandom will disagree with me, but Entangled is exactly what Red Dwarf should be - at least when it isn't being particularly high-concept.
     Lister is interested in a nearby moon showing life-signs, and bypasses Rimmer's new obsessive health-and-safety procedures in order to take a look. At the same time, Cat and Kryten become quantumly entangled, meaning that when they are togther, outstandingly coincidental things are more likely to happy. Lister returns from the moon, occupied by a gang of GELFs, having lost both Starbug and Rimmer in a game of cards. Their only problem is that Lister has had a bomb attatched to his knackers that will go off if he doesn't deliver the goods. When they confront the GELFs, the Cat and Kryten's powers accidentally cause them to choke to death, leading them to awaken from stasis the bomb's creator at a space-station based on erroneous thinking. After she helps to turn the bomb off, she accidentally gets sucked out of an airlock.
      When I first saw the trailer-clip from Entangled, I thought that the gimmick (whoo, Cat and Kryten keep talking at the same time, how funny) was a bit lacklustre, but they realy made it work because it developed beyond that and, quite like the luck-virus from Quarantine, it allows a series of conveniently absurd events to unfold without it seeming strange. The only hitch was probably the sorta-unexplained death of the three GELFs, but that didn't matter because the pace of the episode was enough, as in the past, to smooth over any lumps and bumps.

Beggs GELFs bargain for Rimmer's life.

     The most important thing that the episode got right was in the characterisations. As much as I enjoyed Lister's older persona in previous episodes, I found that this episode got the characters dead on and that, in a way, cemented the episode's success. When you look at it, the episode doesn't seem to keep focus very well - one moment we're with some Gelfs, next we're on a spaceship, next there's a quirky scientist girl, oops she's dead oh well. But the main concepts regarding the Cat and Kryten's synchronicity gave the episode enough oof to hold up its characterisations, and enough firepower to have a hell of a lot of fun.

Thanks.

Review: Red Dwarf 10.3: Lemons

Lemons truly are a remarkable fruit.

Red Dwarf - Series Ten, Episode Three - Lemons
Written 19/10/12
Spoilers from the off.

This isn't gonna be a traditional style review, because I missed it on initial broadcast and when I caught up with it I had very, very mixed feelings. On the one hand, the episode did a lot of things in a very interesting ways. On the other, it tried to execute a fun idea and did so in a way that robbed it of all rhyme or reason. That wasn't to say that I didn't enjoy Lemons, but I felt that the core premise of the story was one that was not only fundamentally unnecessary but one that was almost guranteed to come with the level of disappointment that the episode inevitably came with.
     The episode began on a promising note, with the standard style of weirdy technobabbly device to take us to Earth in the past. Our crew landed in "Albion", or England, in 23D, and then proceeded to completely ignore the opportunity to have the Dwarfers mess around with Romans. Instead, they got a quick-cut to India from the same time period, which was in a thousand ways anachronistic. So perhaps they fucked up a bit there, I can take that, I've seen the mess Stasis Leak caused and I'm still ok with that. It's what happens next that hammers the final nail into the episode's coffin. And that's Jesus Christ.
     More specifically, a Jesus Christ (who isn't the real Christ, but we only find that out at the end so bah) with a thick Geordy accent who speaks perfect English despite having been born in Judea (/Turkey) several thousand years before Modern English was invented. There was a fun bit of comedy background comedy with Rimmer, discussing the reason why his middle name is Judas, but did the episode use the fact that they were covering Jesus to do anything interesting? To make any satirical statements, mock ideologies, did it have any opinion on anything? Not one. Oh, it tried, of course, they always try. It had our Geordy Jesus breaking the ten commandments and sprouting off common criticisms of the Bible to a chorus of gasps (in India, where the predominant religion was Hinduism and thus this shouldn't have shocked anyone and what the fuck are Roman soldiers doing in India in the first place and argh) and it had Lister arguing the negative and positive aspects of Christianity's influence on the world, but... something was missing. It may not be very nice to say so, but so far it feels like RDX doesn't have the... what's the word I want... the intelligence to deliver that kind of comedy.

The Last Supper. With Dwarfers.

     In the past forthnight I've been too scared, too much of a fan, to actually say anything negative about the series. I knew it wasn't going to be as good as the olden days, I knew that, and I know that it's nowhere as bad as the Dark Days of the late nineties. But if you're gonna even go near that topic, it needs to be done with subtley and/or intense parody. Best example? Goddamned Waiting For God, the fourth episode of the series, which despite its failings on an acting and production front, manages to get across a more subtle, nuanced and interesting view on religion than Lemons ever even comes close to doing.
     I still enjoyed Lemons, in the same way that I've really enjoyed the rest of Series X so far, but I have a few underlying problems that make this otherwise ok series feel a bit stagnant. The Dwarfers don't end up doing anything interesting beyond the dialogue, and while a lot of the dialogue is very good it's nowhere near as polished as it was in previous series. For ever Moose scene there's a hackneyed Telephone joke, for every Lister-v-Lister convo there's an ill-thought-out robot. For every decent running gag, every fun scene or piece of background, there's a Jesus Christ from Newcastle. I'll still be enjoying Dwarf, but I will have to get used to this new style and hope that I've come to terms with it by the time the show ends.

Thanks.

Review: Red Dwarf 10.2: Fathers and Suns

Lister and Kryten celebrate Father's Day. Den of Geek.

"Taiwan's a bit Chinesey"

This week saw a greater focus on Dave Lister, something we've been lacking since it was accepted that Chris Barrie was the show's biggest asset. It was certainly better than last week, even if the main sci-fi idea that drove it wasn't utilised as effectively as it could have been. Instead, the focus on character won out and it presented a new, more modern and certainly more interesting Lister that used his Ouroboros past in a really interesting way. I became worried after Back To Earth that Charles would never be able to recapture the essence ofd the character after such a long time, but he's proven me wrong with an excellent new take which makes sure that time is used and not ignored.
     It's Father's Day, and Dave is continuing a long tradition of writing himself a father's day card, getting sloshed and then having Kryten deliver it to him. Rimmer points out that he's been a terrible father to himself, and so one night he goes on a drunken bender and leaves a series of video messages for his "son" to follow. When Dave awakens, he finds that his "father" predicted exactly his behaviour - and is trying to force himself to get some qualifications. Meanwhile, Rimmer and Kryten have found a new AI on a derelict to replace water-logged Holly, and they install her - the new computer, Pree, is capable of predicting a person's behaviour based on security footage, and delights in having conversations for people before they've had them. When Lister's "dad" resigns from the Space Corps to force himself onto the recruitment undergrad program, his "son" then discovers that he's several years too old to join up (how the years have changed, eh?) Pree therefore suspends his oxygen rights, kicking him off the ship in a spacesuit. Without Lister on board, Pree declares their mission changed - now they have only to clean themselves up from space, and they prepare to self-destruct. Luckily, Dave arrives back and convinces Pree that his "son" is still a member of the Space Corps, giving him the power to shut her down.

Pree - beautiful, but deadly.

     The episode's best scenes are by far those surrounding Lister's daddy issues, and the ideas put forth are explored in a really interesting way. There's a distinct difference in personality between the two Listers, and that's entirely down to a subtlety in Charles' acting that basically puts most of his Series I and II stuff to shame; he drives this episode forward like Barrie did before him and it would be lost without him. His storyline shoves Pree so far into the background, and yet we don't really miss her. The stunning Rebecca Blackstone plays her with a great degree of skill and she can be quite hypnotising at times. I would have liked to see more of her weird predictive behaviour expressed in other ways before her sudden but inevitable betrayal, but if it's in exchange for some more of Craig's excellent monologue work in this then it's a fair deal.
     I'm struggling to find things to say, really; I'm not used to having to review things this relatively short. But suffice to say that I found this to be an improvement on last week. Trojan was a safe bet to get fans back into the series, but Fathers and Suns was the first glimse of a new Red Dwarf that doesn't try to ignore its age but instead celebrates it, taking elements of the seasons we hated and putting them to good use in fun and interesting ways. It cheered me right up after a tiring week, and I'm glad that Red Dwarf is still able to do that in the modern age.

Thanks.

Review: Red Dwarf 10.1: Trojan

Howie and Arnie face certain doom... or do they? Digital Spy

"It's a Moose!"

I've been waiting for new Dwarf for a good two or three years. Of course, that can't compare with those actually conscious enough to have seen the last broadcast series, who've been waiting a whole damn decade and a half for some new action. But it's still been a pretty exciting time. When I first made this blog back in the halycon days of 2009, I couldn't have even dreamed that we'd be seeing new Dwarf, and when it was announced I doubted that I'd actually be here to review it. For me, this isn't just the return of one of my favourite TV shows. This is an acheivement, an honour, and something that I find very rewarding.
     Trojans is quite simply a statement of what Red Dwarf X has set out to acheive in this short series, and that is, admirably, to make us laugh in a way which we haven't done since Series VI. It was short, sweet and had within it a series of developments that managed to balance respectful references to the show's past and well-worn characterisations with brand new material reflecting a much more modern style of comedy. At first I was a bit wary, but soon the performances and the script actually won me over to it in a way that I really haven't felt since Rob Grant left the series. Spoilers will always follow.
     Rimmer has just failed his astronavigation exam again, and no technique will help him get over his anger. They find a ship called Trojan, a high-class Star-ship with a drive capable of vast travel across the Universe. Unfortunately the drive is dead in the water, but the ship is still powerful enough to receive a message from a hologram on a crashing ship, which turns out to be from Rimmer's brother, Howard, who is also a Hologram. Recovering from an attack of Resentment that nearly wiped his memory core, Rimmer decides to pretend to be the captain aboard the Trojan. When Howard arrives with his Simulant colleague Sim Crawford, he appears to be respectable and quite shocked at Rimmer's acheivements - until a resentment attack reveals that Howard is very similar to Rimmer after all. Crawford decides to rebel and use the ship to unite the sector's simulants, but Cat is able to download the Rimmers' resentment into her and she is disabled. Howard collapses and wishes his brother farewell.

Kryten and Lister weren't the focus, but they still
got stuff to do.

     This episode dealt with a lot of the problems innate in Red Dwarf's premise and converted it to a more modern setting. Aside from the aesthetic - plasma screens, hand-held devices and other such things - it also managed to perfectly balance all of the character beats. While Rimmer was the main focus, the other three characters got their own smaller personal stories that kept them busy and provided them with motivation in the central plot. Even if you pick out a few spots that weren't quite as well done as they could have been, this was a strongly written script. It dealt out the funnies in a way that both eased us back into even having Dwarf in the first place and managed to squeeze some character work in for good measure.
     No matter what you think, it's good to have Red Dwarf back on the air, especially when it's of this high quality. It feels like a privelage to still be here for Dwarf's return, and Trojan made sure that I wasn't disappointed. For every niggling doubt, every hang-up, every worry, Trojan had an answer and at points, I was laughing like a loon. I've missed ya, Dwarfie, and I'm glad you're back.

Thanks.    

Review: Red Dwarf: Back To Earth (Revisited)

Coronation Street does not, in fact, play part in my
metaphysical theory. It does help it, though.

See here for my previous look at this story.

Red Dwarf - Series Nine - Back To Earth
Written 29/9/12

Metaphysics, eh? I spoke about this in a really boring way a month or so ago, but re-watching Back To Earth in preparation for Red Dwarf X has allowed me to realise that for once, Doug Naylor has written something that is both incredibly clever and incredibly frightening in a million different ways. At a glance, the scenario created by Back To Earth is just played for laughs, and ends up being a throw-back to universally loved episode Back To Reality from back in Series V. But at its heart, what Naylor has created is something rather profound and, within the confines of the story itself, astonishing in its scale.
     So the Dwarfers believe, due to a run in with a female Despair Squid (who thus uses hallucinogenic happiness ink because girls are soft and such and suchlike yawn yawn), that they have entered our reality, in which they are fictional characters in a Red Dwarf TV Show. Their "real" world is of course subtley different to ours in a number of telling ways; London appears as it does in Blade Runner, the Creator is played by Richard O'Callaghan instead of the erstwhile Doug Naylor, and for some reason both Kochanski and Chloe Arnett exist at the same time. The end of the episode sees them kill their Creator, and find out that this was something that he had scripted; the typewriter of their Creator can be used to control the world, but ultimately there is another typewriter somewhere else controlling that. Here lies the key to their brilliance.
    We may say that the Dwarfers don't exist, and so there's no point in arguing about metaphysics. But with the Quantum Multiverse, they do exist, somewhere, and it's a world that does have a Creator. Essentially, we live in a Godless Universe in which our imaginations allow us to inadvertantly control the paths of other, similar universes. In other words, anyone who has ever written fiction, or imagined a hypothetical scenario, is a deity to another Universe. The Dwarfers weren't being controlled by "The Creator," but they are, ironically, controlled by another creator, Doug Naylor, who has set this whole thing up.

It's almost as confusing as that poster...

     This explains so much, and it seems obvious when you think about it. Back To Earth pushes against both the Fourth Wall and against the differences between the Watsonian (the in-story) and the Doylian (the out-of-story). Those subtle differences between our reality and their "reality" reveal not the shoddyness of the script but instead the fact that Naylor is specifying that while this resembles our reality, it is in fact yet another layer of metaphysical existence. The back of the DVD cover being similar but not the same, the existence of Series IX and X in 2009, the head of the Red Dwarf fan club being called Redge Wharf - these aren't just jokes, my friend, they're genius. When the despair squid arrives, it makes Rimmer fear for his life - which is obviously an indication that the squid focused their shared hallucination on Lister, which begs the question, why? Well, we now know the answer. Because Lister is the Main Character.
     Or at least that's how I rationalised it. Metaphysical buggery aside, Back To Earth does feel like a poor imitation of all those things that came before, but I admire it for trying to do something incredibly interesting and for, in the end, inspiring Dave to commission a brand new series of Dwarf which, at the time of publishing, is due to start tomorrow. My best hopes for Red Dwarf X and my thanks to Red Dwarf, Back To Earth.

Thanks.

<< Model Dependant Realism and You ----------Metaphysics---------- Metaphysics and Gene Hunt >>

Highlight: Red Dwarf VIII

Cassandra. Predestination fun amidst horrific caricatures.

I... I don't like Series VIII. It disagrees with me in so many variously horrible ways that it's often hard for me to contemplate without collapsing into floods of metaphorical tears. Notably, the 1999 series took a series that I loved and destroyed it before my eyes. Albeit I was watching the series for the first time in 2009, but it still felt so heart-breaking when instead of great comedy, Series VIII just both literally and metaphorically took a shit on Red Dwarf's memory. I've watched some bad things in my time - seen some awful movies, managed to enjoy some of the worst Doctor Who and found joy in such blind banality as Survivors and Outcasts. Nothing comes close to the pain I felt when I reviewed Pete, all those years ago. Unfortunately we have to keep this positive, and so I will make a nod towards Cassandra, and episode that manages to be funnier than both the Naylor series combined. A stark combination of Future Echoes' predestination and Legion's sense of entrapment, Cassandra is great fun and is the only redeeming thing about this whole damn excercise.

Thanks.
Written 9/6/12

NEXT TIME: Business as usual. Oh, and Red Dwarf X starts on Thursday, Just mentioning.