Review: Red Dwarf: Camille and DNA

Series Four, Episode One - Camille

"What vision of loveliness lies behind those doors?" 

Series Four follows on from where it left off, giving us some Kryten development, and certainly helping us empathise.
          Lister is teaching Kryten to lie, which is forbidden by his programming. After a few successes, he fails and commits that despite understanding the concept of a noble lie, he cannot do it. Rimmer then takes him Asteroid spotting on Starbug, and on the way they hit the distress call of a ship distranded on a planet about to explode. Kryten uses Lister's training to bypass Rimmer's cowardly orders and go down to rescue whoever is on the ship.
          On the ship, Kryten encounters what appears to be another 4000 series mechanoid called Camille. They seem to fall in love, but she reacts negatively when she finds that there are other members of the crew. Regardless, Kryten brings her on board. There, we find that each member of the crew see her as their perfect mate: Lister sees a pretty Scouse girl, Rimmer sees his sister-in-law (who shares his love of Lamp posts) and The Cat sees himself. Kryten, feeling betrayed, asks to see her true form, which is a big green blob. It turns out that she is a genetically enhanced life form designed to provide people with love.
          Kryten and the blob go out on dates, but soon her male partner blob comes along and Kryten sacrifices his love for her wellbeing.
          As noted throughout the episode, the plot is a basic sendup of Casablanca, but this doesn't affect the emotion of the story. For a half-hour episode it manages to fully develop Kryten's character and the main themes surrounding him. This episode also created the term GELF, which is used in the space of "alien" for the rest of the series.

Series Four, Episode Two - DNA

"Looking at kettles shouldn't give you a triple-polaroid!"

This is the second time in the series that we get to see Rob Llwellyn in the skin, and this is the only one in which he plays his main character. This episode also has a focus on Kryten, but after Camille it doesn't have the same effect, as well as being played more for comedic effect.
          Red Dwarf locks in with a ship built of unknown construction, and they journey around the ship, finding horrifically mutated skeletons. While Kryten and Rimmer look at the mutants, Lister and Cat come across a control room. Cat presses some buttons and accidentally turns Lister into a chicken. Kryten arrives and helps Lister return, but in asking Cat to experiment with the controls accidentally mutates him into a human.
          Kryten laments his lack of zoom function, radio nipples and better brain functions. He is also bewildered by his sexual organs and his fetish for machines, his mind not fully changed over. While Rimmer plans to create a body for himself using the machine, Lister persuades them that the machine is wrong, and manages to mutate him back. In experimenting with the machine, trying to create a sheep, Rimmer mutates a lamb vindaloo into a hideous beast, which is left to be defeated by a mutated Lister who is super strong, but unfortunately quite small.

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Overview: Red Dwarf: Series Three

So, there's a new series with a bigger budget and a few new actors. Therefore, we can surely expect some higher quality episodes? Well, the quality in general stays the same; it's the feel of the sereis that changes, and I think that is for the better.
          Norman Lovett steps down as Holly, replaced by the more gender appropriate Hattie Hayridge. She doesn't manage to match the deadpan snark of Lovett, but she appears as a more competent and generally more benelovent computer system.
          Another addition to the crew was the return of Kryten, from the Series 2 premier. With a more subdued personality and a different actor, Robert Llwellyn, the character was, in my opinion, quite abused. it was easy at times to forget that the character existed at all, and it wasn't until the series finale, The Last Day, that he evolved into his helpful guardian personality more apparent in Series Four, Five, Six and Seven, although this can also be seen in part during scenes in the Series Three premiere.
          Series Three has episodes which all feature either a foreign setting or creature to deal with, moving away from the more sci-fi conundrems of early series to more typical trappings. Despite this, the series is clear that all foreign elements are either natural phenomena or man made creations, with no alien species in sight.
          In essence, the series' turn to a brighter atmosphere doesn't do it any harm. While the backdrop of the empty universe is suddenly shattered, the alternative opens a wide amount of potential for interesting environments and concepts, as well as more comedy.

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Review: Red Dwarf: Timeslides and The Last Day

Series 3, Episode 5 - Timeslides

 "I'm fed up of playing Durex volleyball!"

Another interesting speculative fiction episode that again looks at Lister and Rimmer as well as both of their backgrounds.
          Lister is endlessly bored with his life. Kryten finds that some of the developing fluid has mutated, and so the images developed in it become portals to the time of that photo. After experimenting with some old photos and an image of Adolf Hitler, Lister goes back to one of his old photos and makes his past self invent something called the Tension Sheet, making him immensely rich. Rimmer is left alone on the ship, and so goes back to try and make himself invent the sheet, but the sheet is instead invented by the original inventor, who shared a dorm with the young Rimmer.
           This is a great episode that while a little inconsistent with the laws of time travel, is still entertaining and funny.

Series 3, Episode 6 - The Last Day
"No Silicon Heaven? But where would all the calculators go?"

Aaaaand after almost an entire series, we finally get some character development for Kryten. And it works as a great finale.
          Kryten gets Lister breakfast, and Lister tells him that he doesn't need to serve anyone. Kryten then throws the breakfast in the bin, but Lister eats it anyway. The post arrives and the single letter shows that Kryten is out of date and that its new model is on the way. The gang team up to make Kryten feel loved, and then gang together against the replacement when he arrives. The replacement, however, is a super-strong and insane, meaning that it wants to kill them all. Kryten eventually uses his newfound ability to lie to trick the robot into thinking that there is no Silicon Heaven, which is a concept built into robots to stop them from going insane.
          This is a funny episode with interesting character development for Kryten especially, who has been neglected for most of this series. I'll do my series overview tommorrow on Tuesday.

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Review: Red Dwarf: Polymorph and Bodyswap

Series 3, Episode 3 - Polymorph

"ALHABETTI SPAGHETTI?!?!"

Take the action of Episode One and the character drama of Episode Two and you get Polymorph, which manages to create an interesting scenario that taps into the psyche of all four characters.
          A genetically engineered weapon called the Polymorph escapes on to Red Dwarf. The Polymorph is a creature that can transform into anything, and feeds off of the emotions of the creatures around it. While rampaging around the ship, it takes Lister's fear, The Cat's pride, Kryten's guilt and Rimmer's anger. They finally manage to destroy the creature when misfired thermal energy balls kill it.
          This episode has it all. The action, the character dvancement, and, most important of all, it's an entertaining and funny episode.

Series 3, Episode 4 - Bodyswap

"I want my body back NOW!"

Another look into Lister and Rimmer, Bodyswap is a look at the freaky-friday story type.
          The skutters have rewired the ship, and the only system that hasn't been found is the self-destruct system. Lister accidentally sets it off, and so the crew need to find someone with clearance to shut down the sequence. They remove Lister's mind and replace it with that of a high-ranking officer, who tries to shut down the ship and fails. It then turns out that there isn't a bomb in the first place.
          Rimmer, stuck in a body without senses beyond sight and hearing, asks Lister to swap bodies with him so that Rimmer can make Lister healthier. Lister agrees, and they swap bodies. Unbeknownst to Lister, Rimmer takes this oppurtunity to feast, and Lister soon takes back his body after it is revealed that Rimmer has put more weight on.
          Rimmer, still lusting after a physical body, chloroforms Lister and steals his body. They chase after him and eventually they catch him. The episode ends with Rimmer stealing the Cat's body.

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Review: Red Dwarf: Backwards and Marooned

Series 3, Episode 1 - Backwards

"Wilma Flintstone is the sexiest woman who ever lived."

New Title Sequence! New Holly! Kryten! All of the cast changes are explained in a quick, Star Wars style flyby as the episode starts, beginning the period known as Classic Dwarf.
           The episode first focuses on Rimmer and Kryten, who are working on Kryten's driving test. On the way, they fly through a Time Hole, and end up in a universe in which the Big Crunch has begun, meaning that everything is backwards (They're also conveniently on Earth). Lister and The Cat follow on a supposed rescue mission, and for a period think they're in Bulgaria. They soon find themselves in a club where Rimmer and Lister are working, as "The Incredible Reverse Brothers" - "Watch... as he drinks a glass of water... FORWARDS!" While Rimmer and Kryten can only see the positive attributes of this world, their plan to stay here in the Backwards earth is cut short when they are fired, and then get in a reverse-bar crawl (the one they are fired for.)
          For an episode that has to introduce new characters and concepts to the series, it works well as a piece of speculative fiction. It also has very few scenes in the original ship, and this negligence of the vast spaces of grey makes it an overall more cheerful series. I'll talk more about the characterisations and the effects of Kryten in my overview.

Series 3, Episode 2 - Marooned

"You see the thing about black holes is, they're black. And the thing about space is, it's black. How am I supposed to see it?"

To make up for the lack of character drama in the last episode, Marooned takes a breather and develops Rimmer and Lister.
          Escaping from five black holes, Rimmer and Lister end up stranded on an ice planet, waiting for Kryten and Cat to rescue them. Rimmer shares some deep thoughts about his past life as Alexander the Great's cheif Euneuch, as well as his family life and his dependance upon military ideas. Lister talks about how he lives for excitement, while eating a tin of dog food.
          This was a welcome look back at the desolation of Series One and Two, while still sharing the warmth of Series Three.

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Review: Doctor Who Classic: Attack of the Cybermen

It's 1985. Doctor Who is struggling against falling ratings, as a new Doctor, played by Colin Baker, didn't exactly impress in his first serial tacked onto the end of Season 21. Season 22 needs to be good, the opener even more so, to ensure that Who stays on the public radar.

John Nathan Turner, producer since Season 18, has revolutionised the show. For this season he decides to put his plans into action. They change the previous format of 25 minute episodes to a more lengthy 45-minute variety, similar to today, as well as moving it back to the Saturday spot.

Colin Baker had been introduced in Season 21's episode Caves of Androzani, in which he regenerated from Peter Davidson. Uniquely, he got a first-impressions adventure, which didn't prove all too promising - this new doctor was violent, rude and generally unlikable. It was up to the production team to make the first true adventure of Baker's Doctor into something worth watching, and so thought was given to an Eric Saward script that shone light on one of Saward and Nathan-Turner's famous monsters, the Cybermen. Eric Saward was also the script editor on the series, and so he had the episode attributed to his wife, under the psedonym Paula More.

So, when we look at the episode, what do we find? Well, it's a mixed bunch. There's some quality here, but it tends to be dissolved in a lot of misunderstanding and melodrama, as well as too much fan-pleasing. I'll try and break down the plot for your convenience.

The Doctor and Peri find an alien signal in 1985, a year before the events of the first Cyberman story, and The Doctor hopes to find some poor alien trapped, he instead finds an empty signal box. Meanwhile, ex-Dalek Mercenary Lytton organises a bank raid with three cronies, and plans to blow the bank up from benath. His cronies find, however, that Lytton is instead leading them to a  Cyberbase in the sewers - time travellers from the far future that want to destroy earth to stop the events of the first Cyberman story, which destroyed their home planet, Mondas. The Doctor gets involved along the way, and there's this all-female race, and it's complicated.

The script could have done so much more with the actors and the scenarios had they just had a better budget and didn't have John Nathan-Turner. While the episode did manage to stir up some revival for the series, the damage had already been done and the viewing figures would continue to steadily decline.

The commentary on the 2entertain DVD of this story is quite good, with most of the main players (well, the ones that aren't dead) using their snark, aged-driven wit to look over the story with a little more light-heartedness than it is apparent the actors do in the original story. Colin Baker is my favourite Doctor, but this was not his finest hour.

Next week, and I review another JNT Cyberman story, Earthshock.

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Review: Day and Night

Day and Night - The Killers

I had never remotely heard of The Killers before their hit with "Human." That's a song that deteriorates with age, and when I listened to the whole album, a certain amount of annoying smugness becomes apparent. The absurdity also present in this music isn't used well; comparable to Conrad Poohs and His Dancing Teeth.

The first three songs are the best on the album; light, absurdist rock with a jokingly deep message that works well with well-written music and excellent lyrics. And then it falls strongly down hill. The rest of the songs are forgettable, deeply repetitive and annoying or simply bad.

If you thought "Human" and "Spaceman" were good, then I wouldn't reccomend this album to you, on the basis that the early wit is soon changed over for droning, obfuscating tripe.

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It's Moffat, dear Watson

The man on the left is Steven Moffat, the showrunner of Doctor Who, and one of the best comedy drama writers that the show has ever had. He's revolutionised the new series and has combined the best bits of the old series' charm and the new series' format and fandom.

And now he's teamed up with the genius that is Mark Gattis (known for roles in The League of Gentlemen and writer for Doctor Who as well as making a cameo in Series 3) to write a modern-day take on Sherlock Holmes, with new boy Benedict Cumberbatch as the detetive and Martin Freeman (The Office, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Love Actually) as Watson. It looks brilliant, and I'll be reviewing it here on Audenshaw Reviews.

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Overview: Red Dwarf: Series Two

Series Two is a swansong, of sorts, to the early concepts that littered Series One. The large, empty ship, the polarisation of the characters. But it brought with it the bounty of new ideas, smoother characterisations and a sense of knowing what its doing. This series was made almost entirely of "What if" situations - "What if the crew were the opposite genders?", "What if you could transplant memories?" Only a few of the episodes managed to fulfull these questions to their full potentials, but all had fun exploring them.

The first thing you notice is the wider scope. The producers had decided that basing all of their episodes on the same empty ship had only finite potential, and so it was the next logical step to make the series cover planets and asteroids as well. This included the advance of technobabble, and a lot of more conflicitng sets. It provides some freedom from the dull greys of Red Dwarf, as well as introducing foreign elemants to the usual four players. It also gave the characters some valuable personality time using the greater technology avaliable, using basic ideas channelled through the tech, which is what true Sci Fi is about.

This series also saw the end of many elements present from the beginning. At the end of this series, the production team had their first ReVamp, and so many things were lost in Series Three. The Cat's polarised behaviour, the original sets, the madness of Chris Barrie, Norman Lovett as Holly, as well as the original title sequence were all lost in the transition. The feel of the empty universe would never be visited again until rare moments in Series Eight.

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Review: St Damien's Choir

Uh, wait. One sec. Why's my name of a list? Oh, there we go.
          Yes, I, as a musical student, was invited to a talent-scout-induced concert in which ten students from St. Damiens School came up on stage and sang some songs that weren't intended for a choir. Here we go.
          The first song was "Shine" by Take That. The song choice is a logical one; a song designed for four men does logically extend to ten, and the voice variation allowed for a wide variety of notes that couldn't be created by the piano backing. When they finished, I thought they had done a good job, although the last few shouts of the chorus were less singing and more whiny shouting.
          Then there was the, er, more illogical choice of "Haven't Met You Yet," by Michael Bublé. My first reaction was, Why does it make any sense for ten boys of varying vocal range and quality to sing a song sung by one very good Canadian? It doesn't, but despite some jarring discreapancies, it stood as adequate entertainment. After that finished, the overly posh music teacher from St. Damien's did some... wait for it... MASS PARTICIPATION! You heard me right, folks! Why is it that every educational event thinks that what people under 16 want is to uniformly chant and clap?!?! "coughs"
          Anyway, so then she said, "And now a final song," and I thought, this could be at least pleasant. Then she said that only three of them knew the song. I thought it could work, three singers isn't the end of the world. And then the piano bloke started, and it was a very strange. And then they started singing. It felt like the world was ending. I knew those lyrics. This was, "I'm a Believer," by the Monkees, a cherished part of my younger childhood. And they were not only singing with the wrong notes, they were also whining it instead of singing. This wasn't singing. This was criminal.
          One and a half songs out of three isn't bad. For the very little practice they admitted doing, and the fact that the oldest one there was 14, they had a high quality. But from a more objectified analytical standpoint (ooh big words) it just doesn't cut it.

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