 The Dwarfin' ROSSMANSpace....... The final frontier.... FOR HILARITY!
Whoo hoo!!!!! Yay space!!!!!
Sorry, but Red Dwarf tends to
make me a bit giddy like a schoolgirl sometimes. It's just
the perfect combination of Dr. Who and Monty
Python with some
heavy similarities to Hitchhiker's Guide.
In my opinion, it is the best Britcom ever made. Faulty
Towers,
you ask? Well, it was funny, but way too annoying for me. You
know,
like it was painful to watch all
that shit happen to Cleese, not humorous. The
Young Ones... This one's pretty close to RD
quality wise, but there were only like 12 episodes total for
Vivian and company,
whereas
Red Dwarf had over 50. Quantity and quality
rule. Father Ted, quite hilarious, but I can't
really show it to my friends
'cause
it's
really
Catholic biased
in its humour. I showed it to Carl once and had to explain
pretty much every joke. Nope, nothing compares to the Dwarf.
Sure, RD has a few episodes that aren't
up to snuff (like 1/2 of Series VII), but even those low eps
are infinitely better
than any of the crappy American sitcoms on the tube today.
Capice? If you're not prepared to read me verbally sucking Red
Dwarf's British dong for a dozen or so paragraphs,
just leave this review right now.
The Dwarf has it all: Great
characters, great scripts, great situations and a brilliant
concept. What be
this "genius concept" you ask?... Not "genius",
shittard, I said "brilliant". What makes it brilliant
is that they kill off the entire crew of the mining spaceship,
Red Dwarf, in
the opening episode. We start out with several thousand crew
members, but
we mainly focus on David Lister, Arnold Rimmer, Holly the
ship's computer, and Frankenstein, Lister's new pet cat. We
meet the love of Lister's
life, Kristine
Kochanski, Lister and Rimmer's commanding officer, Captain
Hollister, and a bunch of Lister's drinking buddies and pals...
Unfortunately for all those involved, every living thing on
board the 5 mile long ship was killed due to a radiation leak
from a damaged drive plate. Well, every living thing except
David Lister and his stowaway pregnant cat. See, Lister was
placed
in suspended
animation
by Hollister
because he smuggled Frankenstein onboard the ship (The Jupiter
Mining Corporation has very strict rules and regs
on its vessels), and while he was there the radiation leak
swept through the Red Dwarf and wiped out the entire crew
in seconds (like how I always dream the Democrat and Republican
National Committees would get erased at the same time). Holly
kept Lister in the suspended animation tube until the radiation
had fallen
to
a level that
he could
survive
in,
which
only took 3 million years. During this time the ship was still
shooting straight ahead through space at light speed, and in
the giant city-sized cargo hold Frankenstein's descendents
had evolved into bipedal humanoid creatures who only care about
dressing nice, looking sharp, and wearing fine clothes.
Lister's, of course, kind of blue about the whole
thing (understandably). His dream girl is a pile of dust, all
his buddies are long deceased, and Holly has gone mental over
the past few thousand millennia with nobody to talk to. But
the worst of the worst news is that Holly brings Arnold J.
Rimmer back as a hologram in order to keep Lister company and
to keep him from going mad himself, despite the fact that Rimmer
(his old bunkmate) is the person Lister least wanted brought
back (like when I didn't want that exchange asshole student
from Spain to be my roommate again sophmore year, and I even
wrote on the roommate request sheet "ANYBODY but Israel SantaDomingo!
Please GOD, not Izzy!"... So of course the fuckers in charge
lumped us together). While Lister's trying to deal with his
new lot
in
life as being
the
probably
last
human in the universe, the small crew meets the Cat. Well,
technically he's a cat, just three million years evolved from
what we know
cats to be today. Cat is still a vain creature who cares about
nobody else but himself, but he can talk, dance, strut and
primp himself
better
than any human I know. Cat is the last of his species that
remained on the Red Dwarf (the rest were either killed in a
bloody civil war over the color of the hats that their god
[aka Lister] planned to wear for his dream job on Fiji when
he quit the Space Corp., or left the ship in search of their
god when he never returned to them like he promised to). It's
all very deep... Actually, it's not. It's not very deep at
all, and that's what I love about it! It's got a lot of smart
jokes to go along with the fart jokes (kind of like Frasier mixed
with the Kimmel/Corrola Man Show), but it's
neither artistic nor juvenile. It's just the right perfect
blend of high-lariousness.
Let me take you on a quickie little tour, season
by season through all things Dwarfy (each season being only
6-8 episodes long, so this won't take too much time).
Series I (1987)
Everything starts and the shit hits the fan before the end
of the first episode. Lister becomes the last known human
in the universe, Rimmer's a hologram, Holly's bonkers and
the Cat's a klepto who yells "that's mine," and
snatches anything he wants. And now they're all forced
to live together
as they try to get back to whatever's left of Earth.
During the course of these first 6 episodes
Lister finds out his future
self has twins somehow (with no female aboard), his
space-fever causes his paranoia and confidence to take physical
form, Rimmer clones his own hologram, and Lister finds out
he's the god of the cat people of which the crew's Cat is
the last living member on board the ship. All in all,
a pretty damn good start. Much better than Cheers' or
Night Court's first season (and if you know
me at all you'd know that I worship both those shows for
the "Entertainment of the Gods" that they truly are... Except
for Night Court's final two seasons. They're
"Entertainment for the Damned").
Series II (1988)
Lister, Rimmer and the Cat are still stuck aboard the giant
ship heading back to whatever's left of their home planet.
Rimmer's still a dick, Lister's still lazy and sometimes
disgusting,
and the Cat's still a cat. Despite a few false alarms,
it seems to be proving true that the only intelligent life
in the entire universe is from Earth.
During Season II we meet the mechanoid Kryten
for the first time, get to play the fantasy ultra-reality
game "Better Than Life", travel back in time with the Red
Dwarf crew to see their past and future selves, get pushed
around by Holly's replacement program, Queeg 500, and watch
in horror as Lister's alternate-reality female version gets
him preggers. A much stronger season than the first, which
is saying a lot
Series III (1989)
The third season of Red Dwarf was a pretty
big departure from what we had previously seen, and 90% of
the changes were
for the best. The sets got bigger and brighter, the costumes
got more interesting and personal for the characters, Kryten,
the mechanoid, came back, the Dwarfers actually traveled
outside of the ship on occasion, Hitler made his first
cameo appearance
and Holly gave himself a head-sex change and took on the
visual
form
of his female-self from the alternate dimension of the previous
season. Really, the only thing that bugged me was the fact
that the actor for Holly changed. And that's mostly because
the original Holly looked almost exactly like my buddy Angus.
That was a hoot!
During Season III we really get to know the
mechanoid Kryten inside and out. As the newest crew member
we get to see him adjust to life with the Dwarfers as he
tries to break his prime directives in order to finally tell
Rimmer what a smeghead he truly is. We also watch as the
gang visits a backwards Earth (where time flows backwards
and you NEVER want to take a shit), meets a military-created
shapeshifting alien that feasts on negative emotions (like
vanity, fear
and guilt), travels back in time through photographs in order
to change their predicament in the future, and watch as Rimmer
talks Lister into letting him take control of his body for
a few weeks in order to get it back into shape for him, but
instead adds 20 lbs and almost kills it on several occasions
(like an "anti-Jared"). All good times for the Dwarfers and
we
the
viewers.
Series IV (1991)
 Red
Dwarf was really hitting its stride by the fourth season.
It took the strong changes made for the third season and
made them even stronger. The gang got out of the claustrophobic
main set piece more, met Ace Rimmer, hero of the galaxy
(what a guy!), ran into a bunch more "Earth-made" creatures
and spaceships, and almost died almost weekly. The writing
was even more fast and furious now and the jokes were hitting
their mark almost 100% of the time. That's good numbers
for a genre where you only have a 50/50 chance of even
chuckling at most of the lame shit that we're forced to
watch under penalty of boredom.
Season IV introduced us to the previously
mentioned "Ace" Rimmer, Hero of all Mankind. Ace
is actually just the Arnold J. Rimmer that we already know,
but from
an alternate reality where he was held back a year in primary
school, thereby forcing himself to gain some major self confidence
and grow up to be liked by everyone and not such a total
asshole. This season we also get to see Kryten become human
and take pictures of his pecker, Lister get the space mumps
and have his head swell up to disgusting proportions, Holly
get her intelligence back and become a super-computer with
an IQ of 12,000, but with only a 2 minute lifespan, and we
meet the second Hitler of the show's history, this time in
the form of an evil waxdroid determined on conquering Pythagoras
and Elvis on the planet known as Waxworld. Sergeant Elvis
being the second coolest character ever to appear in RD,
only behind Ace himself.
Series V (1992)
Although we didn't know it at the time, Season V was the last
season aboard the Red Dwarf that we had come to know and
love. But I'll get to that later. Season V was probably
the
best
of
them all. The comedy was top notch, the plots were very imaginative,
and the cast was at its prime. Everything gelled perfectly,
and all was right with the world. The episodes "The
Inquisitor"
and "Quarantine" are the best this (or any comedy)
show has ever done, especially with the miniscule resources
that
they had
at their disposal (seriously, their budget for an entire
season was like 1/10th of what it costs to make just one
episode of Friends... Urgh, that's not something you want
to think about for too long).
We meet the incredible Mr. Duane Dibbley in
the sixth episode of Season V (a face and name that will
pop up again on occasion). We are also introduced to the
furious Mr. Flibbles and the time-terrorist, the Inquisitor.
The Inquisitor is some whacked out robot who took it upon
himself to travel throughout the space of known time in order
to weed out the pathetic and useless and replace them with
"another sperm" at their own conception. The Red
Dwarf crew are his last victims ever. I don't remember a
time I laughed any
harder than at the shenanigans that went on in this episode.
It was just perfect. But, things (perfection especially)
were about to change.
Series VI (1993)
 For
reasons beyond all my fathomable comprehension, the writers
actually took away the ship that the show is named after
in Season
VI. Yes, friends, the Red Dwarf is missing (thought to
be stolen by something) as the season opens. It's just
Kryten, the Cat, Lister and Rimmer aboard the Starbug minicraft
while in pursuit of the hijacked uber-ship. That right
there is what ticked me off about VI right from the start;
the claustrophobic feel of the whole thing. Instead of having
Lister able to wander around a 5-mile long title ship, and
take a shuttle over to a guest starring planet or space station,
we were cramped into the same tiny quarters with four men
(well, one dead man, one Cat, one mechanoid and one man).
And Holly was gone too. Was that some kind of contract dispute?
Scheduling conflict? What.. The... Fuck?!
There were some great episodes in Season VI,
don't get me wrong. It was still a barrel full of ice skating
space monkeys, but it just felt... odd. The whole season
had such a different feel from previous seasons (even more
so than the changes between II and III. But, in the end it
was still Red Dwarf (in spirit at least), so it was still
good.
Some of the classic moments in this season
are when the crew enters Kryten's messed up mindscape and
become cowboys in order to kill the computer virus that invaded
him and took on the form of old west gunslingers, Rimmer
leaves the rest of his comrades high and dry after fleeing
potential danger in the only escape pod and then is forced
to live on a world filled with nothing but his own clones
until help arrives (a few hundred years later), and when
the Dwarfers come face to face with their own future (evil,
pricky) selves and they're forced to commit suicide in order
to not die. It really makes perfect sense in context.
Series VII (1997)
There was a loooooong break between Season VI and VII. And
it wasn't for quality control. Now while Season
VI had a change in the tone and feel from previous seasons,
Season
VII just fucked up the whole concept of what was great
about Red Dwarf in the first place. First
of all, it wasn't filmed before a live studio audience
anymore. It was shot on actual
film
and
then only later showed to people for a laugh track. And
it just felt like it was canned. You know, like when you
watch some old Hanna Barbera crappy cartoon like the
Flintstones and there's incomprehensible
laughter in order to tell the retarded audience what it
should find
funny. Mistake number 1. On top of
that, Rob Grant (co-creator and co-writer of RD) left the
show and Doug Naylor (the other half of everything) was
left to do what he could to keep the series running. Doug
thought it was for the best to bring other writers in on
the show in order to give RD a fresher look and to shit
on the hearts of a worldwide fanbase. Mistake number 2.
Then, the most unforgivable mistake happened, they allowed
Rimmer to leave. Arnold J. Rimmer (aka Chris Barrie) had
expressed his displeasure at the scheduling and calendar
shoot of Season VI, and only wanted to do half of the 8
episodes of Season VII. They wrote him out in a most sucky
way and then brought in a Kristine Kochanski (remember
her?) from another dimension in order to fill in the void.
Not that Kristine was bad or anything (honestly, it was
nice to have a cute female character in the mix), just
that she had some enormously smegginly huge shoes to fill.
So, the Dwarfers are still stuck on Starbug
throughout Season VII, but by this time I was growing used
to their predicament. There were some pretty good episodes
this time round, but the "laugh out loud" factor
had dropped pretty low what with the eclectic group of new
writers and
the new style of filming. Other than that though, there were
some memorable moments such as when the Dwarfers interfere
with President Kennedy's assassination and then have to re-kill
him in order to put history back on track, Ace Rimmer shows
up again (that there is enough to salvage even the crappiest
of seasons), we find out who Lister's father is ala Fry and
his grandfather in Futurama, and we finally
find out what happened to the mining ship Red Dwarf and Holly.
And not
just female Holly, but good old original "Angus-y" Holly.
Season VII did finally make up for a lot of its subparness
by bringing back what the fans truly wanted (even if it was
only in the
last few minutes of the final episode).
Series VIII (1999)
 Back to the basics. Thank Satan for that! Doug Naylor (though
still alone) committed to writing pretty much the whole
season himself, and it was good. The Red Dwarf was back,
along with its entire crew from before the radiation leak
that killed them all 3 million + years in the past. Captain
Hollinger, the original Rimmer, and even the original Holly
(so that gave us two Holly's this season to make
up for two seasons with no Holly). Right off the
bat though, the Dwarfers are thrown into the brig for crimes
against
the Space Corps, and then Lister volunteers the whole group
for the dangerous missions prison-army known as the "Canaries"
thinking it was an easy choir assignment. The humour and
laughs were back (as was a live audience), and the world
sighed a big sigh of big relief. The only bad thing about
Season VIII was that it was the last season of Red
Dwarf.
Sure, they started planning a movie soon afterwards (which
as of this writing still hasn't even started filming some
five odd years later), but the movie is supposed to be
a retelling of the whole RD phenom, and that just won't
make up for us never knowing what happens after Rimmer
kicks Death in the jimmy and runs away like a little girl.
That blows.
There are so many absolutely fabulous moments
in Season VIII that it will be very hard to just pick just
a few in order to define the final eight episodes with. There's
the time
that Rimmer uses the leftover sexual magnetism virus from
a previous season and is forced into making sweet sweet love
to four of his commanding
officers and then forced into shooting his groin up with
Novocain in order to stop himself from humping on (in which
he tests the effect of the Novocain by repeatedly whacking
the shit out of his crotch with a hammer), Archie, Kryten's
penis, running free around the brig, and of course the aforementioned
Rimmer confronting Death scene. Even though it was such an
open doored ending, it was one hell of a way to end such
a fuckingly fantastic show. What a capper.
So there you have it. A pretty short and kinda
spoiler free rundown of the totality of all Dwarfiness. Granted,
there might eventually be more Series to add to this review,
but don't count on it. At least not in our lifetime. Though,
to be quite honest, I would give my left pinky finger in order
to have them make one more season after the cliffhanger ending
of Series VIII, in order to get Lister, the Cat, Rimmer, Kryten
and Kochanski back to Earth (maybe even with the original ending
that they planned for Series VIII in which the five-some (along
with Holly) are the only ones who didn't abandon the Red Dwarf,
and they eventually make it back home only to crash through
every landmark on the planet and emerge from the destroyed
ship in order to exchange insurance information with the few
humans left alive. *Sigh*... I guess I'll only be able to view
that masterpiece in my mind. Which sucks, 'cause my mind's
already pretty crowded and lots of already made up stuff is
starting to merge with others. Like my ideal plot for the
G.I. Joe Movie (which doesn't even acknowledge "Cobra
La")
is starting to merge with my fantasy of banging 10 clones of
the Olsen twins (so that's 20 Olsens!) in one fucked up mental
mix of a metaphysical mess. Just picturing Sgt. Slaughter assfucking
Mary-Kate 7 while Ashley 5 bops him back with a strap-on from
the rear shaped like Golobulous is miiiiiighty
disgusting.
What did
I think of Red Dwarf? All in all it
was a stupendulous ride. Even though he doesn't bathe that
much and his underwear is considered a new lifeform, David
Lister is my idol. Except for a minor hiccup (known as Series
VII), the whole of the 52 episodes of Red Dwarf's
lifespan is a work of comedic art. God bless those wacky Brits
and their
6-8 episode seasons. They really cram the best of the best
jokes into their short broadcastable lives. Two smegging
thumbs up!
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