Red Dwarf VIII Episode 7: "Pete, Part 2"

A tyrannosaurus eats curry and Kryten's penis escapes. Is there a funny joke in this episode? The tiresome repetition of "we're finished" can't even be salvaged by Chris Barrie, the "absolutely no control over your penis" joke is stupendously predictable, and the "see you in ten minutes thing" is just weird. The only genuinely funny moments in this probably come from Hollister, as it happens; while the "do you know what happens when a dinosaur eats..." joke is absurdly drawn out, I like the bit when he goes "Do you know? Do you know what happens?" and when, in Lister and Rimmer's cell, he turns suddenly, making Rimmer jump. This, however, is set up by a very cliché "he's standing behind me" gag. If it wasn't for Mac McDonald, there probably wouldn't be a laugh to be found in this episode.

The number of redundant scenes in this is mind-boggling. Note especially that after the first Captain's office scene and a few gags about punishment duty, the Canaries are sent back out and Baxter steals the time wand. Lister and Rimmer then immediately change back into their prison jumpsuits, visit Hollister again, who delivers a handful of lines, and then Lister and Rimmer immediately change back into their Canaries outfits and go back out again, now inexplicably without Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat. It's possibly worth it for the delayed fight sequence, although that's probably only redeemed by when Rimmer flies backwards. It's also unimpressive that, when they both fly backwards to the far wall of the office corridor, you can very identifiably hear the rattling wheels of the trolley they're being pushed on.

The dinosaur effects are arguably okay, and they get the job done, but one can't help but think that it's just a special effect for the sake of a special effect, and it doesn't serve much comedy except for a bit of scatological humour later about burps, vomiting and diarrhoea. The over-the-top curry gag is just the show descending further into "Tikka to Ride"-esque self-parody as well. The "Archie" aspect feels awkwardly shoehorned in, and one can't help but feel that the episode doesn't know what it's about. If "Pete" had been a one-episode-long story about the time wand and what it could do that might have been interesting and more funny, but this repetitive run-around is just Series VIII being daft kiddy nonsense.

Red Dwarf VIII Episode 6: "Pete, Part 1"

The Dwarfers play basketball and Kryten zaps people with a time-altering dildo. Thus goes the first part of what I believe some fans consider to be the worst Red Dwarf ever made. Laughs are few and far between in another messy episode as Lister and Rimmer are repeatedly called to the Captain's office for punishment and get into all sorts of scrapes. One arguable strength of the episode is that it actually bothers to give a plot to Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat, but as that plot isn't funny or very interesting it's a bit of a wasted effort.

The basketball sequence has to be a low point. Even though Craig Charles and Danny John-Jules evidently know what they're doing, there's something painful about watching Chris Barrie in a scene where he's meant to be playing basketball. The whole idea that Lister and Rimmer have been playing pranks on Ackerman, and then do so on the guards' basketball team, seems very inconsistent with the characterisation of the weaselly Rimmer, who was trying to be a "model prisoner" one episode earlier and in previous series rarely tends to do anything that could potentially get him into trouble except in a very good cause. In general, though, the basketball bit just feels so "American" and out of place in Red Dwarf.

There's nothing especially funny about Lister and Rimmer's hair and clothes being eaten by the "programmable virus", although the bald caps are convincing. Meanwhile, our forgotten other three protagonists find the "time wand", this two-parter's arbitrary sci-fi gimmick. The fact that they're able to just take it once again exposes the odd presentation of the Canaries as being totally unsupervised. The jokes involving that are pretty lame as well; turning Baxter's lunch back into a chicken is real kids' TV stuff. I suppose Cat and Kochanski's retro hairstyles and outfits are kind of funny, although Kochanski gets the dreadful joke wondering if the Time Wand can do "boob jobs". Kochanski's a woman; did you know? On the other hand, this at least gave us the Smeg Up in which she adds "I nearly said blow jobs" and then Danny John-Jules runs in and says "There would have been a long queue!" This really is a series in which the Smeg Ups are generally funnier than the episodes themselves.

Probably the only payoff of all this rigmarole is the one joke I enjoyed in the entire episode, after they meet "bird man". Lister asks him why he's called that, and Rimmer retorts "Because he really likes instant custard. Why do you think?" It's probably the only truly funny bit in the whole episode. Why does Lister suddenly have such good connections with the Skutters? The "tapping the pipe" gag is way too drawn out and the potato room looks incredibly crap. I'm not sure whether this is better or worse than the following episode. It's probably a bit better because there's less mucking around with CGI dinosaurs and big prop feet.

Red Dwarf VIII Episode 5: "Krytie TV"

Lister and Rimmer become even bigger pervs and Kryten foreshadows the rise of shit "prank" (read: harassment) shows on the internet. Apparently, however, Kryten's fake beard in this is a reference to a mid-90s British TV "prank" show called Beadle's About which was already off the air before this episode was made, showing just how on-the-money and timeless the writing was for this series. This episode is the nadir of the entirety of Red Dwarf in terms of cheap boyish humour, the objectification of the female lead and the diminishment of Lister's character from a fair-minded egalitarian to an overgrown adolescent. How are we supposed to believe that he has any genuinely deep or noble feelings for the woman he professes to love if he's willing to watch her in the shower without her permission? I note that this is a Paul Alexander script, who had originally proposed a story called, in all seriousness, "Phwoaarr", which involved a sequence much like the ending to "Cassandra" but featured a virus which caused people to fornicate themselves and each other to death, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised.

The establishing stuff of Kryten in prison is just ridiculous, and is stupid rather than funny. It's also, once again, pretty sexist: women skipping, women painting their nails, women with their clothes off in the shower. What's actually the joke when Kryten's painting his whole foot, anyway? If he's a robot, why's he in the shower? Why is he in the women's section of the prison?!? The idea that he doesn't have genitalia and is therefore a woman is a nonsensical idea that could be reflected upon for comedy, but it isn't. They could have at least given Kryten a "bunk room scene" with Kochanski to try to go into this, or literally into anything that might have given them more characterisation in this series, but they don't, so even in an episode in which the two of them are quite central to the plot they once again really become peripheral characters in the "Lister and Rimmer's wacky prison life" show.

That aspect has its moments, but again everything has to be measured against how vulgar the core concept of the episode is: Kryten being reprogrammed to film the women in the shower without their knowledge or consent, "another one for the boys" as it's put in the Series VIII documentary. Lister and Rimmer's reluctance to leave the cinema raises a smile, especially Rimmer's "one, two, go!" and then failing to move, as does their ludicrous comedy turn when Kryten starts filming Kochanski. Nonetheless it still makes Lister look like an unprincipled sexist, and while his bemoaning of seeing "all three terrible hours" of the thing is also kind of funny, it's hard not to feel fundamentally repulsed by the whole concept. Probably the only highlight is Rimmer imagining how Lister's apology letter to Kochanski would be phrased, imagining it describing "three gobsmacking hours of steamy fun" and how he was sending "two bags of self-raising, something I didn't need any help with yesterday."

I don't mind the character motivation of an appeal and it turning out to be about guitar strings. Ackerman's scene with his missing glass eye is kind of amusing too. The highlight, however, is probably "Attack of the Giant Savage Completely Invisible Aliens", the concept of which is a pleasant relief from the relentless "hurr hurr naked women" humour of the rest of it, even if the film sequence has a self-indulgent reference to "surfboarding killer bikini vampire girls" from Series VI. Nonetheless, more humour of this fashion would have been preferable to the apparent humour of Cat saying "oh mama" or the incredibly awkward conversation in which Lister and Kochanski talk about her being naked, which makes me shudder in horror even to think about. Honestly, how objectified can the character be? It's also worth pointing out how nonsensically written this all is when Kochanski blames Lister, who at least informed her of what was going on, and does nothing to Kryten (his being reprogrammed and kicked out of the womens' section turns out to be ruse) or indeed the real people responsible, the convicts led by Kill Crazy who reprogrammed him. Wouldn't that have been a more appropriate finale - the Dwarfers sorting out Kill Crazy and his gang, perhaps with the assistance of a guilt-ridden, reprogrammed Kryten, a reluctant Cat who either didn't understand or didn't care about what they'd done, and a panicky Rimmer fearing it will endanger the appeal?

This is another episode which shows Series VIII struggling to decide what its main focus is, as this one tries to awkwardly hybridise the ongoing interest in Lister-Rimmer hijinks with a continuation of the unfulfilled romantic plot of Series VII, notably the only real time this comes up in Series VIII apart from some deleted material from "Back in the Red" and "Only the Good...". What does Cat do in this episode apart from saying the word "naked" an uncomfortably large number of times and making some cliché exclamations? The sequence in which Lister trashes Ackerman's room (thinking it's Tim the Chef's room) and then Rimmer helps him undo the damage is pretty feeble prop-based comedy. Why would Rimmer have Christian rock music? The whole thing's daft, and it's noteworthy that the episode has no consequences; despite their argument, Lister and Kochanski are hanging out like normal in the next episode as if nothing happened. This, however, is still not the low point of Series VIII.

Red Dwarf VIII Episode 4: "Cassandra"

The Dwarfers join the Canaries and meet Geraldine McEwan. Easily the best episode of Series VIII in terms of both humour and story, this instalment is nonetheless still let down by cheap-looking props and sets, excessive characters and its regular dose of Series VIII Kochanski-objectification.

While the idea of the Canaries is somewhat interesting, in principle it's misconceived and merely reflects the contradictions of Series VIII's overriding premise. It's a plot device enabling the show to do Series III-to-VII style sci-fi adventures, while still retaining the prison gimmick, and it feels like the show trying to have its cake and eat it too. It also exposes the weakness of the prison setting by emphasising the strengths of the show's earlier formula, such that the show itself seems to be aware of the limitations of its own premise. Also, I don't know much about real life convict units, but isn't it a little odd that the Canaries are allowed to run around, fully armed, with no supervision? For instance, what's to stop the hardened criminals from simply shooting Warden Knot or any of the other guards who are sent out with them? I know, it's a sitcom; it doesn't matter.

Despite this, however, the episode succeeds because unlike most of Series VIII it's actually funny and is also somewhat clever. The idea of a computer predicting the future with one-hundred-percent accuracy is interesting and ties effectively back into the ideas established in Series I and II of a deterministic universe, raised in this episode in a slightly self-referential way, which was later discarded by episodes like "Timeslides" and "Tikka to Ride". Geraldine McEwan, unsurprisingly, is very good as Cassandra and brings a welcome presence to the episode. The set in which she appears, however, looks dirt cheap, with elements like a Nineties-looking floor lamp and stand fan, which detracts somewhat from the idea of a highly technologically-advanced computer room. Furthermore, the location work used here, as with much of the show and many UK sci-fi productions, makes the mistake of using rusty old boiler rooms and stuff as the interiors of supposedly futuristic spaceships, which is not terribly convincing. It makes it look like deep space is littered not, as we're lead to believe, with state-of-the-art Space Corps derelicts, but rather with turn-of-the-century ocean liners

Still, there are some great lines in this, including "giving it rizz" and Lister suggesting that the miners' canary would "complain to the foreman" if the air wasn't breathable. The bit in which they pretend to be the prison choir is somewhat cringeworthy, however, and the whole episode feels poorly structured, with repeated trips back and forth to see Cassandra and with Lister leaving the ship along with Kryten and the Cat and then going back in what basically amounts to a comedy diving costume. This would at least be remedied in "Back to Earth" when he goes underwater in something more Lister-appropriate. Kill Crazy is also introduced in this episode, and while he's kind of funny, the character is unnecessary. Above all, however, the episode is too focused on Rimmer.

I know Rimmer's a popular character; hell, he's almost certainly my favourite character in the show. Nonetheless, in a scenario like this it'd be more funny as an ensemble number with more predictions of the future coming true for the characters in unexpected ways. Imagine if, at the end of "Back in the Red", they'd pissed off in Blue Midget and this episode just featured the main cast and Cassandra. It'd probably be far more neat. What does Cat get to do in this episode? To be fair, he has a couple of funny moments, like saying that if Rimmer died he'd have to help dig the hole, and whacking Lister over the back of the head with an axe handle because he confuses their guaranteed survival with an immunity to pain. Kryten, however, has become such a source of exposition that he even figures something out off-screen, just to have it reported by Lister later. The payoff of this is Rimmer's exasperated "Did he really have to figure it out quite so damn fast?"

The ending sequence of Rimmer and Kochanski apparently being forced together by the deterministic nature of the universe would be more effective if we'd seen them interact substantially before, to better establish Kochanksi's dislike of him. As it is, it just feels like another round of the show going "What do we do with this female protagonist? The blokes can lust over her and we can get her sprayed with water and forced to get her kit off." Look, don't get me wrong; I think Chloë Annett's a very attractive woman, but the way she's utilised in this just seems to constantly be with no mind other than "good-looking lady who gets perved over by the men". It's mildly redeemed when, after Lister says he doesn't kill Rimmer, she replies, "Oh, but Cassandra promised", probably Kochanski's only funny line in Series VIII (which puts her one step ahead of Kryten).

"Cassandra" is a flawed episode, but it's much better than the others. Issues aside, if this had been the base line for Series VIII's quality I think it would be regarded much more positively in hindsight.

Red Dwarf VIII Episode 3: "Back in the Red, Part 3"

The Cat does a dance and the Dwarfers get put in prison. At this point the show just feels like bad kids' TV with sex jokes in it because of how much material is just silly and whimsical rather than funny. The opening flash forward to the prison seems like even more time-wasting, with Rimmer moaning about his no-longer-potentially-incredible career in a manner which won't really be raised again until "Only the Good..." given that he spends the rest of this series mostly acting like a cheeky chappy getting into scrapes with his good mate Dave Lister. The Blue Midget dance is weird if nothing else; what's the point of it? I think it's a shame, because obviously the crew, the effects people and Danny John-Jules put a lot of effort into it, but I don't think it's successful. It seems like filler and it's way too twee. Note an odd bit early in the episode in which the Cat is talking to the (imaginary) flight controller and the rest of the cast are bizarrely bouncing up and down on their seats in the background as if they don't know they're being filmed.

What's the point of the dance? The CGI is mediocre, as is to be expected from a TV budget and the late Nineties, and it goes for far too long. The interior set of the Blue Midget cockpit seems like a wasted opportunity too, given how little it's used. It's noteworthy that a Children In Need sketch was shot on this set with all five Dwarfers, including hologram Rimmer in his Series VII costume, as shown in the "Overview" article. It's an odd vision of what might have been. Even watching this now I have this inexplicable belief that they're going to escape from Red Dwarf and Series VIII will somehow become radically different to what it was.

The claymation sequence would be funnier if it didn't look so cheap or rely on puns. I dunno what Holly's going on about when he says he created more nanobots to recreate the crew, in order to provide another diversion for Lister. Is that a necessary element of the plot? Why couldn't the original nanobots have done that? Also, Holly says "it's my job to keep Dave sane". No it isn't; that's why he brought Rimmer back. It's just the writing overthinking itself. I'm fairly sure this is the only time in the entire series that they bother to give Holly a role in the plot, only trotting him out occasionally in later episodes to deliver the odd emaciated one-liner.

"Back in the Red" was originally meant to be a one-hour special, and this episode is obviously padding, as they wake up from Artificial Reality twice and spend ages sitting around in a lift trying to convince Rimmer to join them. Why do the writers bother giving Rimmer his "old" personality? May as well have just said that rebuilding Red Dwarf meant the Rimmer hologram got turned back on, but the nanobots built him an organic body or something. I've read some people saying that it was necessary to "reset" Rimmer's personality from scratch because he'd become too heroic by early Series VII, but while I do think that's to an extent justified it would be easy enough to provide some new motivation for further smeg-headedness, perhaps due to them reclaiming Red Dwarf or due to the fact that, with Kochanski around, he's no longer the highest ranking person aboard; Lister points out in "Balance of Power" that Rimmer, despite their situation, still cares about the hierarchy even if no one else does.

Getting back to the episode, the bit in which Rimmer edits the Artificial Reality, interrupting Lister's threat to cut off his bollocks and causing Kryten to inexplicably say "bananas" is kind of funny, I suppose. Two versions of Holly? Was that necessary? Kochanski gets influenced by the sexual magnetism virus again, which is tedious. The only other funny bit I can think of is the way Chris Barrie says "circumcised" to the officer Rimmer is threatening, and when Holly tells Rimmer that they're giving him a chance to screw up his life "in a new and original way", but it's a mercy when this is over and the Dwarfers are thrown in the clink for crimes against comedy.

Red Dwarf VIII Episode 2: "Back in the Red, Part 2"

Lister and Rimmer take advantage of women and everyone puts mops on their heads. Chris Barrie carries these episodes. That's not to say there's anything wrong with the other actors. It's just that they aren't given enough to do or enough jokes. This is the episode in which the "sexual magnetism virus" goes way too far; instead of simply being "it makes you more appealing to people" it's portrayed as "it compels people to uncontrollably force themselves upon you sexually". This might make a tiny bit of sense for Rimmer, who seems to swig a whole vial of the stuff, but not for Lister who licks a little residue off his finger. Rimmer at least gets hoisted by his own petard; it makes Lister look very dodgy when he expresses disappointment when Kochanski stops making out with him, even if he used the virus by accident.

I note that in this episode Lister rescues Kochanski and the Cat from "somewhere" without much explanation of how it happened. Kryten's restored to his factory settings for all of a few minutes, making that whole plot seem totally rushed. The "Duane Dibbley" thing is extremely lazy, the show cashing in on itself for cheap laughs. The "Reservoir Dogs" gag at the end of the episode is awful. It's dated, heavy-handed and not funny. The bit in which Rimmer hammers his groin seems to purely be there for the sake of the opening titles.

The opening of the episode is arguably where the strongest stuff lies, including Rimmer's long-winded salute to Hollister and the bit in the trial when the Cat tells them to huddle so they look like they know what they're doing. The "anus soothe pile cream" joke is a pretty anaemic prop gag, and the sequence with Kryten telling Kochanski that he's been classified as a woman is basically a laugh-free zone, as is the part when Kryten pulls the gun on the senior staff. I know people hate the "Data Doctor" sequence, but that did give us Kryten's "cheekiness" emotion, which is funny, so it was worth it to an extent. That being said, Part 1 makes a big point of how Kryten was built after Red Dwarf (in all likelihood probably about 200 years after), so how do they have the technology to reprogram him? Even the nanobots fixing the JMC cutbacks wouldn't change that. No, I'm not happy that my brain goes to these places when watching a daft sitcom.

The whole idea of Kryten being classified as a woman is stupid and is just another aspect of the way this series treats women purely in relation to men. This made sense in the days when it was largely four blokes trapped alone in deep space (along with a female computer with a decreasing role in series III to V), but in the two series in which one of the main characters is female, more needed to be done. This is really emphasised in the extended scenes on the DVD in which Kochanski has a big speech in the trial about how she won't survive in prison, with further reference to stereotypes about femininity, such as the fact that she didn't join the space marines because she couldn't bring moisturiser with her. This weak dialogue isn't missed, but it does mean she has even less of a role, and while the line about wine in prison is kind of amusing, it falls back heavily on the simplistic "Kochanksi is posh" characterisation. Note this coming from a series in which, in a much earlier episode, Lister criticised Rimmer for treating women like "aliens". Kochanski's posh, Kryten's a woman, the Cat's relying on references to better episodes of past series, and Rimmer and Lister are sexual assault cases waiting to happen. What more do you need?

Red Dwarf VIII Episode 1: "Back in the Red, Part 1"

The Dwarfers are back on the Dwarf and get arrested. It's weird to see the cast in Starbug at the start of this episode, which had been the mainstay of the two previous series, before it's destroyed shortly afterwards. I'm not sure the sequence is necessary, especially since Kochanski appears to have had time, between leaving the medi-bay in "Nanarchy" and walking down to the cockpit in this episode, to change outfits and hairstyles. The whole Starbug sequence sets a precedent for "victory lap comedy" in Series VIII, with a rehash of the "blue alert" and "red alert" gag from "Legion" of two series and many years prior. Holly's "straight up your nose" joke is okay, and the "ratarsed" one raises a smile, but the entire sequence of a tiny Starbug flying around ducts just feels like pointless CGI nonsense. Chen and Selby's cameo is pointless as well.

The problem is that the episode is way too plot-driven, with the efforts of the Dwarfers to prove themselves, find the nanobots and escape while also dealing with the revived crew providing few opportunities for good jokes. The amount of contrivance required to get the characters imprisoned is absurd, particularly because the script has to figure out a way to get Rimmer in with them despite the fact that he wasn't on Starbug when it crashed. It's too much. Notably, the crew of Red Dwarf seem almost totally nonplussed about the fact that they're three million years into deep space with no apparent hope of getting back. Other than Lister and Rimmer, the characters only get brief appearances, in this case Kryten's meeting with the psychiatrist (who sadly isn't "Brannigan" of Series II) and Cat's medical examination. Why would Kryten be interviewed by a psychiatrist anyway? I also think the description of Cat's anatomy is a bit much. Another thing that occurs to me is this: wouldn't Kochanski be held responsible for what happened? She should have got a scene with Hollister or something. Anyway, I think it's obvious that when it came to pass that "Back in the Red" was not going to be a one-hour special opener it should have been rewritten as something else, probably with the characters being imprisoned at the end of the first episode.

These plot and character issues would all be irrelevant if the episode was funny, but it isn't particularly. Mac McDonald's performance is amusing, but I think the opening scene with Lister and Rimmer in the cell is a bit overdone. Is Rimmer's "the world loves a bastard" funny, or perhaps a bit too smug? I also don't mind Holly's joke that Floor 13 was known to anyone who'd seen The Twilight Zone. The only joke that sticks with me, however, despite the fact that I said it was a weak pun in the series overview (and it is), is when Lister is arrested and he's asked "Do you require any form of aid?" He retorts "Yeah, lemonade, and a really large scotch." Maybe it's all in the delivery but that does make me laugh, I must admit.