Red Dwarf Season X - Returns!

October 4, 2012 7:51 PM

After a 13 year hiatus Red Dwarf returns to the UK on Dave TV. The first episode airs this evening in the UK. Apparently all the main cast have been booked into the show this season albeit a bit older.

The Guardian ponders, "Do They Still Have The Smegging Goods". You can decide for yourself as a trailer is available on Youtube. People outside the U.K. will be able to watch the season this November 19th when a DVD of Season X will be released .

posted by Podkayne of Pasadena (99 comments total)

Do they still have the smegging goods? Kinda scared to watch it. Even Season 9 had a few cobwebs on it.
posted by Jimbob at 7:52 PM on October 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

Cat(whatever his name is...) looks the same as he did 20+ years ago. Wow.
posted by Yowser at 7:53 PM on October 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

Kryten hasn't aged one bit! Amazing.
posted by jimmythefish at 8:00 PM on October 4, 2012 [11 favorites]

People outside the U.K. will be able to watch the season this November 19th when a DVD of Season X will be released as the torrents become available
posted by Mikey-San at 8:01 PM on October 4, 2012 [10 favorites]

Oh dang! Let me scoot on back to 1995 and tell my teenaged self. I'll be dead chuffed!

(seriously, I'll watch the heck out of this)
posted by Countess Elena at 8:02 PM on October 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

I'm not advocating pirating the episodes, just being realistic.
posted by Mikey-San at 8:02 PM on October 4, 2012

Immediate theme song earworm.

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
posted by Catch at 8:11 PM on October 4, 2012 [12 favorites]

So that's where Lloyd went during his Coronation Street absence. To the 22nd century.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:11 PM on October 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

But, but, Firefly.
posted by Malor at 8:12 PM on October 4, 2012 [5 favorites]

two of the fandoms that seem to have stuff online as soon as it's aired - and sometimes before - are SF and comedy. I imagine a SF comedy will be widely available asap.

I used to love this show so much, when I was 12 or 13 - and maybe partly because it seemed so hard to find episodes, sometimes. I drifted away after the 3rd or 4th series -- and didn't have much interest after Rimmer left the series (not only is the actor brilliant, but his character is essential to the mix -- it's the soda). Should I watch to see if they have it again? or just keep my old memories?

The first couple of books weren't bad.
posted by jb at 8:16 PM on October 4, 2012

I would never advocate using non corporate approved means to see this show prior to November. Never :(

Now if you'll excuse me I have a very interesting and long awaited show waiting for me on my Plex server.
posted by Podkayne of Pasadena at 8:16 PM on October 4, 2012

Immediate theme song earworm.

You say that like it's a bad thing.


🎵 … sipping fresh mango juice … 🎵
posted by robcorr at 8:18 PM on October 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

the theme song is so great. but I could never figure out the words from the show alone, not even playing and replaying it on VHS. Especially "I want to lie, shipwrecked and comatose..." or "goldfish shoals, nipping at my toes..."

I think the lyrics to the Red Dwarf theme song may have been one of the first things I ever searched for on the Internet, in c1996 or 1997.
posted by jb at 8:20 PM on October 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻

I'll have to quote that.
posted by ovvl at 8:25 PM on October 4, 2012

Do they still have the smegging goods?

Oh god definitely not. I defy anyone who watched the "Kochanski" seasons *shudder* to argue that they do. I can't even remember when it got bad, but it got bad pretty fast.

Mango juice?? Hmph. Well that makes more sense than "mangled jews" I suppose, which is what I always heard.
posted by smoke at 8:28 PM on October 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

didn't have much interest after Rimmer left

Yeah... Arnold Rimmer ... What a guy!
posted by zennie at 8:31 PM on October 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

They should have stopped after season six.
posted by crossoverman at 8:33 PM on October 4, 2012 [5 favorites]

No Holly? Is Holly still offline?
posted by ceribus peribus at 8:41 PM on October 4, 2012

This needs a trigger warning for those of us who have been nicknamed "Holly".
posted by kengraham at 8:46 PM on October 4, 2012

This looks fun!
posted by Brocktoon at 8:47 PM on October 4, 2012

I only ever was able to see the first four seasons. From what I've heard I was right to stop about there.
posted by solarion at 8:55 PM on October 4, 2012

Imma love me some red dwarf.
posted by roboton666 at 8:56 PM on October 4, 2012

what is this
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks at 8:56 PM on October 4, 2012

I'd always assumed that this show was a.product of the very early 80's, but it looks like I was off by about a decade. It's a weird feeling, knowing that when I occasionally watched it in junior high I was catching relatively new episodes and not something that'd been made 10 years previous as I thought at the time.
posted by item at 8:59 PM on October 4, 2012 [9 favorites]

Just finished watching it. I was apprehensive after 'Back to Earth', but I'm pleased to report that the first episode of season X is good!
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 9:01 PM on October 4, 2012

The new episode did make me laugh a few times - worth watching :)
posted by Podkayne of Pasadena at 9:02 PM on October 4, 2012

I remember watching some documentary about trains a year or so back and slowly realizing just where I'd seen the host before. Nice forehead.
posted by maudlin at 9:03 PM on October 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

My teenage self is definitely gonna watch this sometime, even if the latter seasons were meh and there's no Holly.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:14 PM on October 4, 2012

I had never watched Red Dwarf as a kid/teen, but when I was on maternity leave this spring, waiting for the baby to be born, I dove in. It was on Netflix, and I was bored. Halfway through watching season one my water broke and my baby was born later that day. So, I guess I'm a fan now.
posted by arcticwoman at 9:19 PM on October 4, 2012

So I know this is a total prickish "I stopped liking the show before you did!" move, but for me Red Dwarf is the first two series and nothing but. The show, to me, is about a few people living on in an empty universe after the end of the world, surviving with no reason and no purpose other than to annoy each other. It's bleak as hell, but funny in that pitch black Beckett way.

Everything after that is zany space adventures, which I could take or leave. Like, it's funny (or at least it was for a couple of seasons), but it's not nearly as unique and original and smart and surprising as the thing it was originally.

The only way I can justify the gelfs or whatever it's called and the time travel and all the other futurama-esque hijinks is to think of them as the hallucinations Lister has after he finally snaps under the stress of the sadness of it all and lives out his days slumped in a pile of filth in a corner on some deserted deck.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:24 PM on October 4, 2012 [44 favorites]

I think I'm with You Can't Tip a Buick.
posted by JHarris at 9:26 PM on October 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

I'll just leave this here.
posted by dumbland at 9:28 PM on October 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

I guess the thing is, it can't possibly ever be over until Lister is on Fiji...
posted by Jimbob at 9:35 PM on October 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

After a 3 year hiatus Red Dwarf returns to the UK on Dave TV. Fixed it.
posted by CarlRossi at 9:36 PM on October 4, 2012

What d'ye mean you killed 'im, cha-cha-cha?!
posted by Spatch at 9:49 PM on October 4, 2012

I... might watch this, but I might let other people be the canaries, after how terrible the "Back To Earth" movie was. Oiiii, that was awful.
posted by Rev. Syung Myung Me at 10:04 PM on October 4, 2012

Which color for a head?
posted by Mblue at 10:05 PM on October 4, 2012

It's much better than the recent series, more of a return to form. Some of the script is over-laboured in places but overall it is funny and worth watching. Not at its best ever but not embarrassing.
posted by communicator at 10:32 PM on October 4, 2012

If you limit Red Dwarf to just the first two seasons, you miss out on "Backwards", which I remember liking quite a bit.

Also, does this mean we won't get any more episodes of Carpool? (Robert Llewellyn drives comedians around town and they swap stories about whatever. Great fun.)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:32 PM on October 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

"...and lives out his days slumped in a pile of filth in a corner on some deserted deck."

So no real change then.
posted by Kevin Street at 10:37 PM on October 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

I just started watching Red Dwarf this week. Season six was the best- I appreciated the story arc. In general, the episodes feel too short (the intro and outro theme music eat up a lot of episode), the endings are obvious, and the stories feel shallow. I'm still watching it and laughing, though!

Of course I say this after having watched Lexx, which was sometimes called "The Canadian-German Red Dwarf". Of course Red Dwarf is going to feel short, shallow, and not funny enough. Lexx is like they took Red Dwarf and cranked everything up to 11, and it only keeps getting better and more refined. The way they handled the US President and his wife in the final season was an indictment of the entire US political system.

Go. Now. Watch LEXX, because it's fucking hilarious.
posted by dunkadunc at 10:50 PM on October 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

LEXX is a very different, in fact completely different kind of show. For one thing it's not a comedy at all so there's that. LEXX was a fascinating show and I've gone through it a couple times and enjoyed it but I would not describe it as "hilarious" by any means . It was more of a satirical tragedy than anything else. Very tongue in cheek. Red Dwarf is more of a slapstick comedy show that poked fun at various science fiction memes. I enjoyed all the seasons and always found at least a couple episodes which were hilarious even in the least well written seasons.. The 2009 mini-series was kind of blah - more nostalgic for me than anything else. This new episode today was a bit long in the tooth perhaps but there were a couple good bits in it so I'm willing to give it a chance.
posted by Podkayne of Pasadena at 11:00 PM on October 4, 2012

I agree with You Can't Tip a Buick in that my favorite part of Red Dwarf is the way the characters interact with each other. That central premise is still the strongest part of the show: what do you do when you're stuck with someone you really don't like, and he's the last human in the universe? Then there's Cat who doesn't give a smeg, and Kryten who cares way too much, to break up any stable situation and ensure there's constant chaos.
posted by Kevin Street at 11:06 PM on October 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

Go. Now. Watch LEXX, because it's fucking hilarious.

Heh. Never heard of LEXX. Our local crazy-weird Red Dwarf rip-off was DAAS Kapital.
posted by Jimbob at 11:24 PM on October 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

I guess I literally roll on the floor laughing at some pretty weird stuff, then.
posted by dunkadunc at 11:24 PM on October 4, 2012

I was given the pink baby scutter from one of the season one episodes about fifteen years ago, and foolishly allowed myself to be wheedled out of it by another co-worker.

Hm, I should try to wheedle it back.
posted by mwhybark at 11:25 PM on October 4, 2012

I thought the episode was good. There's definitely a old school feel to it, and they've jettisoned a tonne of canon to concentrate on the jokes. Normally, that'd infuriate me, but I didn't mind it here. It's the old team with the old jokes and it feels like home.

There's one moment towards the end of the episode which made feminist me pretty uncomfortable.

And you're all mad BTW. Season 5 was the best Red Dwarf season.
posted by zoo at 11:36 PM on October 4, 2012 [2 favorites]

Another that agrees with You Can't Tip A Buick - the black edge was what made different & funnier, and it lost the whole setup for that with the change of opening theme from S3 onwards. The original theme really set the mood…

From then on, it became less "slapstick Waiting for Godot - in space!", and more just "slapstick - in space!", though it had its moments up to S4*. After that it limped on sadly for a few more seasons before embarassing itself with the execrable S8, and dying an unmourned death.

Oh, and Clare Grogan is the One True Kristine Kochanski…

Though I'm curious to see if S10 can make up for S5-8, & the slightly-less-sucky Dave ad Back to Earth .

^{(* S4E6 - the one where they meet "Ace" Rimmer - is the definite jumped-the-shark moment for me.)}
posted by Pinback at 11:38 PM on October 4, 2012 [4 favorites]

LEXX has its moments, but I could never get over how the whole thing sort of just seemed calculated to make the viewer feel awful.

I got into Red Dwarf in the 90s, when it was on a local PBS station's Saturday night SF lineup. Thinking about it instantly transports me to this time when there was actual scarcity in the kind of media that I cared about. I used to make my parents record this crappy, flickery TV signal to VHS if I was going to be out that night, and pass the tapes around later. Somewhere in their house there is probably still a drawer containing extremely poor quality versions of most of the show's run. (Along with Babylon 5, MacGyver, and the last 15 minutes of an episode of Airwolf, I think.)
posted by brennen at 11:39 PM on October 4, 2012 [3 favorites]

LEXX is.... not a comedy at all

I beg to differ.

Oh yeah, and sure, it's a great theme song, but last time around it took me from '96 to '01 to exorcise that earworm FUN FUN FUN IN THE SUN SUN SUN.
posted by Catch at 11:54 PM on October 4, 2012 [1 favorite]

what is this
posted by A Thousand Baited Hooks

An abomination of which we shall never speak again.
posted by Philofacts at 12:01 AM on October 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm not a big fan of Red Dwarf, but I watched it last night and it wasn't bad. Mr. Moonlight and I were wondering how it would be timed because it was originally on BBC2 (according to him) and was always 30 minutes, so to make up for it they made it 40 minutes with adverts.
posted by Ms. Moonlight at 12:34 AM on October 5, 2012

I bring up the Fiji thing, because that was the big emotional catch in Red Dwarf. That, to me, was the story. All Lister wants is to retire to a peaceful existence on a farm in Fiji (ideally with Kochanski), "drinking fresh mango juice". It's a bit like Arthur Dent trying to get back to Earth in HHGTTG. And he'd better bloody get there eventually or I want my money back.
posted by Jimbob at 12:43 AM on October 5, 2012 [4 favorites]

Pinback has it exactly right. The original opening is terrific. But it doesn't take long for them to back away from that terrific bleak intro.

That intro is so incredibly bleak and dark and dramatic that it could only work at the beginning of a slapstick comedy. Anything else and it'd be overkill. Think about that.

(EDIT: Thinking about it, I think what I really mean is, the intro plus the premise. If it's JUST the intro then except for that single astronaut it's not really much different, other than the music, than the Star Destroyer in Star Wars, or the Imperial Ship in Spaceballs for that matter. The premise explains the intro though and gives it impact.)
posted by JHarris at 12:55 AM on October 5, 2012 [4 favorites]

Well but the original point was that he would never get to Fiji because Fiji hadn't been there for a billion years (or whatever), and he wouldn't get there with kochanski because she was a billion year old pile of dust (well, and wasn't the relationship with kochanski pretty much just in lister's head, anyway?).

Lister was really well written as someone with very human needs and dreams in a universe that just wasn't scaled right to make fulfilling them, or even trying to fulfill them, possible, and Rimmer was great as the officious prick too stupid to even realize that anything was wrong. And Cat was a funny little joke - "oh, yeah, humans may be long dead, but there's this civilization that evolved from your cat... but they're also dead. except for this one idiot."

Really, the version of the show that was my favorite was the one that was just a long elaboration of the first conversation lister has with holly after he was revived, the "they're dead Dave, they're all dead, everyone's dead, Fiji is gone and kochanski would be no good there anyway unless it snowed and you needed something to grit the path" one.

They didn't stick with it for long -really, I figure you can't write all that many episodes with that premise without it getting just too crushing / repetitive - but the show was great while they did.

(backwards is my favorite fever dream manifested by Lister's dying brain, fwiw).
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:59 AM on October 5, 2012 [9 favorites]

kochanski would be no good there anyway unless it snowed and you needed something to grit the path

Okay, I legitimately LOLed when you reminded me of that line.

Then I felt sad.
posted by Jimbob at 1:06 AM on October 5, 2012 [3 favorites]

They didn't stick with it for long -really, I figure you can't write all that many episodes with that premise without it getting just too crushing / repetitive - but the show was great while they did.

I would relish the challenge of trying to write up to that premise. You could easily turn it into something like the host segments of Mystery Science Theater 3000; Joel and the 'bots are trapped up in space and they don't really have a whole lot going on, but that doesn't stop the writers from using that as the basis of hundreds of bits.

The intro is so dark that you don't focus on it, as the human retina's bleakness receptors burn out easily. Instead, you focus on everything the guys do to forget about it.

Maybe they find a wormhole back to the Alpha Quadrant at the very end, or they chase an impossible dream of it, something to give them purpose. You could end the series with a deus ex machina maybe that gives them some improbable hope -- maybe time is cyclical and if you freeze Lister for billions of years more he'll be back where he started, like that Futurama episode. Or maybe Holly's gone senile, and something else killed the crew, and it's only been a couple of years, and the whole time they've been just outside the solar system, just far enough away from the Sun to make it seem like a speck, and Fiji has always been waiting for them. Or maybe Lister and company slip off into another, happier universe, or they find a planet that's similar enough to Earth that they figure they can settle.

Point is, there's a lot you CAN do with the original premise.
posted by JHarris at 1:22 AM on October 5, 2012

You could end the series with a deus ex machina maybe that gives them some improbable hope

And Red Dwarf is full of these. Yeah, let's just randomly make "Hard-Light Holograms" available so Rimmer can hold things...
posted by Jimbob at 1:28 AM on October 5, 2012

But that's it. You END the show with it. You don't throw them in willy-nilly.
posted by JHarris at 1:30 AM on October 5, 2012

[Just to note: comment edits are really just for fixing typos; please don't tack on what is basically a new comment as an update. The site should continue operating as normal, except now you can fix your typos is what we're saying.]
posted by taz at 1:33 AM on October 5, 2012

"Look out Earth, the slime's comin' home!"

Inspired by this thread, I just rewatched The End, the first episode. I forgot how heroic Lister was right from the start. He choose eighteen months of stasis rather than let his cat die, and before the accident he seemed to be the leader of his group of friends. (Even though they all ranked higher than him.) He's a slobby, lower class guy with good intentions and small dreams who never seemed to get satisfaction, but even that never got him down.

Holly is really cool, too. He delivered jokes and explained things for the audience. It became a very different show when Kryten arrived and took over the role of fourth Musketeer.
posted by Kevin Street at 1:53 AM on October 5, 2012 [5 favorites]

So I know this is a total prickish "I stopped liking the show before you did!" move, but for me Red Dwarf is the first two series and nothing but. The show, to me, is about a few people living on in an empty universe after the end of the world, surviving with no reason and no purpose other than to annoy each other. It's bleak as hell, but funny in that pitch black Beckett way.

Everything after that is zany space adventures, which I could take or leave. Like, it's funny (or at least it was for a couple of seasons), but it's not nearly as unique and original and smart and surprising as the thing it was originally.

You know, a lot of shows have that happen, although I think it's more common with US series, which have longer series with different production orders and often are tweaked between the orders, and especially are between seasons.

Examples -- Perfect Strangers, which was pretty awesome the first half of its first season, but got turned into something entirely different before that ended, and continued to morph into something pretty banal by the end of Season 2.

Dharma & Greg, which had a truly awe-inspiring (for a hippie like me) scenario for its first season, but was soon tweaked into the complete opposite of what it started out being at the start of its second season.

I haven't paid enough attention to Red Dwarf to have realized that this happened with it. I guess the few episodes of it I have seen are from later in its run, because they were all space adventure-y and stuff. Maybe I need to find that early run and check it out. It sounds like a really interesting premise.
posted by hippybear at 2:08 AM on October 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Saw this back to back with an episode from 1991 last night. You can definitely see the years on all of them. The show was pretty much what it always was, though: some good gags, some cheap fx, some nice sci-fi plot ideas, generally a bit unevenly paced and an unfortunate reliance on overwritten, trying-too-hard jokes. Still has that scrappy feel that makes you root for it though.

And definitely better than the terrible Kochanski series after Chris Barrie left. I couldn't even sit through those eps.
posted by phl at 2:30 AM on October 5, 2012

Podkayne of Pasadena: LEXX is.... not a comedy at all

Catch: I beg to differ.

You're both right. It is a comedy. It's just not funny.
posted by Malor at 2:41 AM on October 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

This is a 14-B.
posted by Jimbob at 3:12 AM on October 5, 2012

Sounds like Rob Grant is still not back on board. Given that the show's biggest dip in quality was after he left and Doug Naylor mostly took over the writing, I think I'll probably pass on this.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 3:31 AM on October 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

While most of the Kochanski season was awful and I prefer to think it was - as someone mentioned earlier - a Lister-Found-The-Medication-Stores hallucination, there were some pretty funny scenes scattered throughout it (like this, which has never failed to make me laugh).

I'm torn on the idea of a new season, though. On the one hand, I'm excited about the guys coming back for a little more, but on the other it's ... it's probably just nostalgia. Waiting on word from my friends from across the pond before I start grarrrring out on it.
posted by neewom at 4:27 AM on October 5, 2012

I had no idea that Red Dwarf lasted nine seasons. I've only seen a handful of episodes on PBS over the years, it doesn't really seem like a premise that could sustain a decade of shows.
posted by octothorpe at 4:52 AM on October 5, 2012

I've said this before in a MeTa thread wildly unrelated to Red Dwarf, but it bears repeating:

The point of Red Dwarf was to set up an ideal scenario, a rock-solid premise that drama and tension could be built on: An unqualified crewman with intense hopes and dreams becomes the last of his crew, lost and alone among the stars a million years after everyone he knows is dead. He doesn't even know if humanity still exists.

The show then takes that premise, and breaks it for cheap laughs in every single episode. This is what makes it brilliant. That, and every character in it is unlikeable and socially defective.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:57 AM on October 5, 2012 [6 favorites]

Red Dwarf was once one of the funniest shows on TV. It probably peaked during series 5, although series 6 was still pretty good. After that, however, series 7 & 8 were frankly awful garbage that should be consigned to the waste compactor.

It was with some reservation that I sat down last night to watch it. But I have to say it was pretty good. They have clearly recognised that the stuff in S7 & 8 was awful and have pretty much ignored it. They have taken the show back to the good old days with only the original 4 characters, the original jokes and sense of humour.
posted by bap98189 at 5:06 AM on October 5, 2012

It became a very different show when Kryten arrived and took over the role of fourth Musketeer.

The biggest limitation of the original plot is that there are only so many things you can do with a tiny cast in a confined setting. The creators painted themselves into a corner from the start. They got out of it by adding new characters and settings, but that made it a different show-- it wasn't about an Everyman forced to deal with isolation any more, it was about people having adventures in space. I'm not sure when I stopped watching it, but I tended to think of the episodes that I saw after season 2 as a completely different series (in the American sense). That way I could appreciate the daring, original initial premise while reminding myself that you can only draw so many good, varied stories from that.
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:10 AM on October 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

I had no idea that Red Dwarf lasted nine seasons. I've only seen a handful of episodes on PBS over the years, it doesn't really seem like a premise that could sustain a decade of shows.

There were only 6 episodes in most of the seasons, not the usual 22-24 US shows make each year.
posted by bap98189 at 5:13 AM on October 5, 2012

bap98189: "There were only 6 episodes in most of the seasons, not the usual 22-24 US shows make each year."

Oh, I see that, only 56 episodes. So only a little over two season's worth in American terms.
posted by octothorpe at 5:54 AM on October 5, 2012

Quality (shambolic as it was) > Quantity ... probably
posted by panaceanot at 5:56 AM on October 5, 2012

I tapped out after Series 7. Wonder if I need to watch 8 and 9 to "get" 10...
posted by JoanArkham at 6:27 AM on October 5, 2012

Fish!

Today's fish is trout a la creme, enjoy your meal.

Fish!

Today's fish is trout a la creme, enjoy your meal.

Fish!

Today's fish is trout a la creme, enjoy your meal.

Fish!

Today's fish is trout a la creme, enjoy your meal.

Fish!

Today's fish is trout a la creme, enjoy your meal.

I will.
posted by BeeDo at 7:51 AM on October 5, 2012 [5 favorites]

I tended to think of the episodes that I saw after season 2 as a completely different series (in the American sense).

This is how I approach Red Dwarf too. I've tried to explain to my wife what I find so appealing about the pathos of Lister's situation as it's set up in the first episode and how I miss that in later seasons (a fully crewed Red Dwarf?!), but she always says she just enjoys the show's humor. And I do too, so at least we can watch it together.
posted by audi alteram partem at 8:01 AM on October 5, 2012

Watched it last night....hmmmm.....the moose bit was funny.
I'm a bit sad that the characters haven't grown very much.
posted by Gwynarra at 8:17 AM on October 5, 2012

Count on cat to deliver the moose bit...
I'm hopeful for the rest of the season as this episode was much improved over Back to Earth.
posted by fragmede at 8:26 AM on October 5, 2012

Mr. Flibble is very cross.
posted by hot_monster at 9:15 AM on October 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm a bit sad that the characters haven't grown very much.

Oh but that's the best part. We're back to the old Dwarf and the old characters we know so well.

I heard this show was coming, but I hadn't heard about it for like a year. I had no idea it was about to air. Yesterday, I was working at my temp job, scoring standardized exams. But that day, in order to qualify for continuing work, I had to take the exams, and pass them all. And these were calculus exams that nobody passes. I sat there most of the day chewing through calculus equations, occasionally thinking about Rimmer taking his astronav exam again. At the toughest part of the exam, a single thought kept running through my head: gazpacho soup. I passed the exam and I felt like Ace Rimmer. I got home, saw this post, and an hour later, I'm was watching Rimmer trying to pass his astronav exam again. ROFL.
posted by charlie don't surf at 10:00 AM on October 5, 2012 [6 favorites]

Stupid DVD regions, looks like the listed release date is only for 2 and 4. Don't these people know that region 1 is supposed to get everything first and the other regions are just supposed to suck it?
posted by ckape at 10:21 AM on October 5, 2012

Smoke me a kipper skipper, I'll be back for breakfast!
posted by Damienmce at 10:32 AM on October 5, 2012

I only ever was able to see the first four seasons. From what I've heard I was right to stop about there.

Noooo! Both 5 and 6 had lots of great stuff. I've never laughed so hard or so long as during the dinner scene for Legion. Couldn't find a clip but it's the bit where Kryton and Rimmer (in his new hard light drive) are trading bonks on the head with some kind of poles, at the end of this scene (tragically cut off too soon).

Didn't like the girl (season 7+?). Didn't like Lexx.
(But love all the Firefly females and plenty of others.)
posted by Glinn at 10:59 AM on October 5, 2012

Stupid DVD regions, looks like the listed release date is only for 2 and 4.

This is what VLC Media Player or the DVD ripper of your choice is for. I'm certain there are certain crowdsourced online distribution networks you could get it from, too.

just started series 7, stopped halfway through episode 1. What utter garbage. whatever they did totally killed the mood that had worked up till then.
posted by dunkadunc at 11:45 AM on October 5, 2012

The biggest limitation of the original plot is that there are only so many things you can do with a tiny cast in a confined setting.

Like I said above, this isn't true. MST3K did it very well and its cast was only slightly larger. They did have the constant cross-pollination of bad movies, but I don't think any of us are arguing Red Dwarf can't run into aliens or other civilizations. It did have a substantially larger writing staff, though.

In premise at least, MST3K is kind of like Red Dwarf in a lot of ways. I'm sure there's a crossover fanfic waiting to be written. Not by me though.
posted by JHarris at 12:35 PM on October 5, 2012

whatever they did totally killed the mood that had worked up till then.

This is when series co-creator Rob Grant left and Doug Naylor and a handful of others took over the writing.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 12:40 PM on October 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

for completeness's sake, because I forgot to mention him when I was gushing about how great all the original characters were: Holly is funny and smart and completely fucking bonkers. At his best/worst, he's practically GLADoS-esque in his totally rational deadpan insanity. I'm especially thinking of his explanation of why he revived Rimmer instead of, well, anyone else at all. The "I figured you two got along because you had so many conversations with him" bit. He knows he's (genially) torturing Lister and he knows he's never ever going to stop doing it.

and now I'm going to stop thinking about Red Dwarf. It's one of those shows that's both great but so naggingly flawed that it makes me want to try to write something better, and I'm not actually good at writing fiction.

also the hard light thing is so dumb, because what took Rimmer from intolerable to the most intolerable entity possible is the knowledge that you can't even punch the bastard.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:21 PM on October 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Count me as someone who thinks that Red Dwarf shouldn't run into aliens or other civilizations. It's empty out there. Everything there is for humans is on the ship. And the ship sucks.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 1:25 PM on October 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Real nerds read the Red Dwarf books, which were pretty good from what I remember, and retained much more of the bleakness of the original premise (last human alive, etc).
posted by memebake at 1:54 PM on October 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Well if it really IS completely empty then what some of the others have said here carries more weight. You have to have some vehicle to bring in new situations. That's why it's called a situation comedy.

My stance is that Red Dwarf didn't just abandon the premise, they threw it out the airlock. I don't think it's bad to have some visitors to the ship, but they shouldn't offer easy solutions to the crew's problems or offer lasting things that upset the premise too much. If I had my personal way aliens would be quite alien, not really like people because that harms the premise of these are the last humans in the universe.

memebake, I've read one of those, Infinity Rewards Careful Drivers, and it's not bad, although it ends on a down note (which I think is resolved in the next story which I don't have).
posted by JHarris at 2:03 PM on October 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Sigh. I just followed Kevin Street's lead and watched The End. I liked it (especially Lister's interactions with his friends before the disaster, which I had totally forgotten about), but I could see how it managed to turn into the show it became. Oh well. I guess if I want Beckett I should just read Beckett. I'm glad my 13 year old self found Red Dwarf, though.

Memo to self: do not even THINK of going back and rereading Douglas Adams. It's not worth the risk...
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 2:36 PM on October 5, 2012 [1 favorite]

Hitchhiker's holds up I think, at least for the first two books. The third has its moments (like Agrajag), but after that it gets more uneven. I don't think most fans like Mostly Harmless.
posted by JHarris at 2:45 PM on October 5, 2012

I think it's what someone upthread referred to as the overwritten jokes that's distracting for me. I'd have enjoyed The End more this time around if people spoke consistently like people.

That said, there was a lot of gold there (George McIntire's funeral/return party pretty much slayed me, for example... Really, really funny exploration of social attitudes about death after death has stopped meaning quite the thing it means to us). I feel like a total smeghead saying this, but I feel like Grant and Naylor tripped across a premise that was smarter than they were. (sorry, guys! I know I couldn't have done any better with it either...)
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 4:31 PM on October 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

huge red dwarf fan here, and I totally enjoyed the new episode. I don't know about all this discussion of plot and premise you guys are on about. I mean, the whole thing is just the best setup ever for a bunch of guys to sit around and insult the hell out of each other in the most creative ways possible. that's it's genius.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 4:59 PM on October 5, 2012 [2 favorites]

While I agree seasons 1 and 2 are probably the best the rest wasn't impossibly bad (better than most of the dreck that is on TV) and DNA (season 4, episode 2) is one of the funniest things I've ever watched on Television.

The Cat: What was it like, being a hamster?
Lister: Well, it was better than being a chicken.

Human Kryten: Well, I want to know is that normal?
Lister: What? Taking photographs of it and showing it to your mates? No, it's not!

Lister: Kryten, I don't care what model it was. No vacuum cleaner should give a human being a double polaroid.

And the Holoship episode was also excellent:

"Binks to Enlightenment. Have arrived on the derelict. Confirm initial speculation: there is absolutely nothing of any value or interest here. It's one of the old Class II ship-to-surface vessels -- the very model, in fact, that was withdrawn due to major flight design flaws. Crew: three. One Series 4000 mechanoid, almost burnt out. Give it maybe three years. Nothing of salvageable value. Ah, Felix Sapiens -- bred from the domestic house cat, and about half as smart. No value in future study of this species. What have we here? A human being, or a very close approximation. Chronological age: mid-20s. Physical age: 47. Grossly overweight, unnecessarily ugly, otherwise would recommend it for the museum. Apart from that, of no value or interest."

"Lister to Red Dwarf. We have in our midst a complete smegpot. Brains in the anal region. Chin absent, presumed missing. Genitalia small and inoffensive. Of no value or interest."

"Binks to Enlightenment. Evidence of primitive humour. The human has knowledge of irony, satire and imitation. With patient tuition could, maybe, master simple tasks."

"Lister to Red Dwarf. Displays evidence of spoiling for a rumble. Seems unable to grasp simple threats. With careful pummelling could, possibly, be sucking tomorrow's lunch through a straw. "

"Binks to Enlightenment. The human is under the delusion that he is somehow able to bestow physical violence to a hologram."

"Lister to Red Dwarf. The intruder seems to be blissfully unaware that we have a rather sturdy holowhip in the munitions cabinet. Unless he wants his derriere minced like burger meat, he'd better be history in two seconds flat. (eats cigarette, removes his jacket) "

"Binks to Enlightment. Recon mission complete. Transmit. With speed. Enlightment, quickly, please. "

posted by Mitheral at 7:15 PM on October 5, 2012 [4 favorites]

JHarris: as far as HHGTTG goes you could always give the radio series a go.
posted by BishopsLoveScifi at 9:55 PM on October 5, 2012

I have. They're great, especially the first two series (which were the origins of Hitchhiker's).
posted by JHarris at 1:56 AM on October 6, 2012

So watched the first one, and it was actually not terrible. Certainly better than anything in series 7 and 8.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:30 AM on October 7, 2012