Review for Red Dwarf: Complete Series 8 (3 Discs)

Introduction

Be careful what you wish for they say... I love the earlier series of Red Dwarf, particularly the first two which I’ve often compared to Porridge. You have two people in comparatively close confinement, totally antithetical towards each other, just having to live with each other’s foibles, flaws and neuroses. It’s great fun, and what makes statements like ‘Gazpacho soup’ so funny. That came to be lost as the series progressed, and Red Dwarf began to take advantage of its sci-fi genre. The series opened up beyond the Dwarf, other characters were introduced, and storylines became less about the central pair of Lister and Rimmer. By series 6, Red Dwarf itself had vanished, and with it the ship’s computer Holly. Then after a four year gap, series 7 saw the show drift more towards comedy drama, lose the studio audience, and alter the character dynamic by losing Rimmer, and bringing in Lister’s dream girl, Kristine Kochanski. It wasn’t to my liking, although it did seem to end on a positive note, with the return of the Little Big Red One itself.


Be careful what you wish for indeed. Series 8 made two years after series 7 does see the return of Red Dwarf. It sees the return of the original Holly too, Norman Lovett. It sees the return of Rimmer. It sees the return of the original ship’s crew, as those pesky nanobots were a little too efficient at rebuilding the ship. It even sees the return of the studio audience, so that the actors could refine and work the comedy. Then this series of Red Dwarf even goes as far as taking my comparison to Porridge literally, placing our protagonists in prison for much of the duration. Two antithetical characters in close confinement, winding each other up; this should have been my definition of comedy heaven. However when I watched Red Dwarf Series 8 for the first, and indeed only time, I thought it was the worst Red Dwarf to date. With Series, 7, which I similarly disliked, watching it again after fifteen years let me mellow out to it a little more. I’m finally going to give Series 8 a second chance and hope that it too has more to offer the second time around.


3 million years lost in space, Dave Lister was the last human alive, trying to make his way back to Earth aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf, with a deranged computer, a hologram of his dead bunk mate, and a creature evolved from his cat. They picked up the service android Kryten early on, but then they lost Red Dwarf. Then Rimmer’s hologram left to be all heroic, although in compensation they were joined by Kristine Kochanski, Lister’s dream girl, but from another universe. When they found Red Dwarf again, it had been rebuilt by Kryten’s nanobots, and they had resurrected the original crew in the process, including the original, unreformed spineless weasel, Arnold Rimmer. Lister is most definitely not the last human alive anymore, which you would think is a good thing. Except the resurrected crew all think that he stole Starbug and took it for a joyride, and have put him and the others on trial. And Lister’s relying on Rimmer to help him out for old time’s sake? Deep smeg isn’t deep enough...


Disc 1
1. Back in the Red – Part 1
2. Back in the Red – Part 2
3. Back in the Red – Part 3
It’s not the most triumphant of returns, making it back to Red Dwarf only to be put on trial for stealing Starbug, but the situation is just made worse when Lister’s only chance of acquittal is Arnold Rimmer. That’s the Arnold Rimmer that has just been resurrected by the nanobots, not the Arnold Rimmer that has spent the last seven years with Lister, actually finding some semblance of humanity. This Arnold Rimmer is the same old, self-serving, cowardly, sneaky weasel Arnold Rimmer that Lister used to serve under back in the old days, 3 million years ago. Lister will have to appeal to his gittish side. Meanwhile, Captain Hollister and the rest of the crew have their hands full trying to figure out the Cat, and a deranged android, which from their point of view, is from their future.


Disc 2
4. Cassandra
2 years in prison feels like an eternity, and Holly’s suggestions to speed up the process aren’t helping. Becoming a dog is out of the question, but becoming a Canary isn’t. Lister thinks that the Canaries are a prison music group, and to do everyone a favour he’s signed them all up. They’re not a music group; they’re a volunteer group of the toughest, meanest, and ugliest prisoners, sent forth on missions that no one else is dumb enough to accept. Their first mission leads to an abandoned spaceship with just a prognosticating computer aboard. This computer tells them that they’ll all be dead within the hour, all except for Rimmer who’ll be dead in 20 minutes.


5. Krytie TV
Kryten has been classified as a woman, due to the absence of his groinal attachments. Kryten thus has to serve his sentence in the women’s wing. Kryten has to suffer the indignity of sharing the women’s showers. Kryten is an android, his eyes are cameras, and everything he sees is recorded in his memory. Kryten can be hacked. Lister has put in an appeal, one which will apply to his co-defendants if successful, and Rimmer wants out of prison, which is why they are trying to stay on the straight and narrow until the appeal is heard, when an ethics free Kryten suddenly becomes big droid on the block!


6. Pete – Part 1
7. Pete – Part 2
The ennui of prison existence has Lister and Rimmer resorting to petty pranks against the guards to keep themselves entertained, something which also keeps them regularly visiting the Captain’s office, and assigned to varying degrees of punishment detail. By the time Kochanski, Cat and Kryten are assigned a Canaries mission to a derelict ship, where they find a Time Wand, Lister and Rimmer have been thrown in The Hole. In solitary, they meet the Birdman, whose sole friend is a nine-year-old sparrow named Pete. Kochanski’s come up with an idea to accelerate their prison term to a matter of seconds using the Time Wand, so when Bob the Skutter organises a break out, Lister and Rimmer are surprised to find the rest of the crew frozen in time. It’s a little early to celebrate their imminent freedom though, when Kryten points the Time Wand at Pete, and things get a little... Jurassic Parky.


8. Only the Good...
Things are looking up. The posse are on probation, although for Rimmer that’s a double edged sword, as he’s now personal servant to the Captain, giving him extra opportunity to screw up. But when an escape pod from the Hermes arrives on Red Dwarf, it has more than one passenger. The cute one isn’t the chameleonic microbe that eats through metal, and sets about destroying the ship!

Picture

Red Dwarf Series 8 gets a 4:3 transfer on this disc, and this is the best that Red Dwarf has looked up to this point on DVD. They’ve ditched the filmic look of Series 7, and gone are the moments of moiré and shimmer that came with that. But the production values shoot up yet again, with the quality of the video from back in 1999 on that verge of HD that was beginning to show in television of that era. Everything is clear and sharp, and detail levels are as high as they would ever be. The return of the studio audience doesn’t diminish the set design, which actually looks better than ever. They are doing some funky things with lighting and sets in this series that at times makes it look more filmic than the previous one, even without the snazzy post-production. If there is a drop in quality, it comes in the lack of traditional modelwork in favour of CGI. The new look Red Dwarf looks horrible, like a big red Lego turd, and while planets and moons look spectacular, other ships do not.

Sound

The sole audio track is a DD 2.0 Stereo affair which once again reflects the television of the period. The all-important dialogue is clear throughout, and subtitles are provided for the show if you need them as well as for all the extras on disc 3. Unfortunately there are no subtitles for the audio commentaries.

Extras

Red Dwarf Series 8’s three discs are presented in the much loathed stack pack, only the top disc is easily accessible, and if you want another disc, there is a whole lot of disc juggling and potential for scratching involved. Inside the front of the case, you’ll find a sixteen page collector’s booklet with a list of disc contents, although Easter Eggs are just alluded to, rather than listed in detail. There is an overview of the eighth series, and each episode gets a page worth of making of. There are also items of note and points of trivia, and finally a chapter listing.

Discs 1 and 2 present the episodes with an animated menu.

There are cast commentaries on all eight episodes although not on the feature length edits, as Danny-John Jules, and Chris Barrie get together with Robert Llewellyn and Craig Charles, Chloe Annett, Norman Lovett, and Mac McDonald (Captain Hollister). When the shows get funny, don’t be surprised if they wind up watching the gags with you instead of talking. They are still great fun to listen to, recorded as they are after sufficient time for critical appraisal to sink in, with some less than diplomatic anecdotes, and after five seasons of commentary absence, much ribbing of Norman Lovett.


On Disc 1, you’ll find the Red Dwarf episode from the Comedy Connections series that was broadcast on the BBC in 2004. With interviews with the creators and the cast, it takes us from the genesis of the series all the way to series eight, following the careers of the key participants. There’s a lot of carrot dangling for the non-existent Red Dwarf movie, but it’s an interesting watch. This last 29 minutes and is presented in widescreen.

Disc 1 also offers you the chance to see the feature length re-edit of Back in the Red, created especially for this DVD. It’s a little fiddly to find, go to the episode select screen, and press the discrete little arrow in the bottom left corner, and the captain’s file stand will rotate and bring up the option. It’s actually a little shorter than the episodes at 82 minutes, but it not only shears out the intervening credit sequences, but it also edits out the Captain’s recaps. This leaves room for some extra footage, and several more comic exchanges, mostly extended and alternate scenes. This actually is the preferable way to watch the story.


There’s an Easter Egg on disc 2, and if you find it, you’ll be able to enjoy an Intro2 music video with some familiar guest stars.

Disc 2 also allows you to watch Pete as a feature length episode, although unlike the feature edit of Back in the Red, there’s no extra footage to be gleaned here. It just has the intervening credit sequences and the recap edited out, so it now runs to 52 minutes.

Disc 3’s elusive Easter Egg allows you access to 2½ minutes of interview outtakes.

From the main menu, you’ll find the Documentary: The Tank, and with eight episodes to discuss, this time it runs to 88 minutes, although they’re divided by story, not episode, so there’s an introduction and five chunks. You can play all of course, or you can watch each story bit separately. There are interviews with the cast and the crew, as well as some insight into why Series 8 so drastically altered the format. There’s some really cool behind the scenes stuff too, including the choreography for the Blue Midget dance.


Everything else is in the Bonus Materials.

There are 11 minutes of Smeg Ups, and a whopping 67 minutes of deleted and alternate scenes from all eight episodes, including an alternate ending to the series that I would have liked better than the never to be addressed cliff-hanger that we got.

Raw Effects Footage gathers Model FX (5 mins), and CGI FX (8 mins) in their raw forms, without sound effects or post production, to take a look at the various space ships, vessels, and dinosaurs in the series.

Bill Pearson – Model Maker Video lasts 5 minutes, and is really an image slideshow with voiceover explaining about the models and props made for series 8.

Music Cues for Series 8 comprise the theme tunes and the Blue Midget Dance (original and alternate versions). This is just 3½ minutes in length, which seems pretty measly compared to the 30 or 40 minutes worth of music that came with each of the earlier series.


The Fight Music Featurette offers a montage of action scenes to a little bit of Kung Fu Fighting (Bus Stop remix). This lasts 2½ minutes.

There is an extensive gallery with production shots, behind the scenes images, instant snapshots, designs and covers, and storyboards galore.

The Radio Sketch, Son of Cliché offers 3½ minutes of a rather familiar NORWEB joke.

There’s some good stuff in the trailers, for once rescued from the BBC archives rather than a fan videotape. There are two trailers for the show, including a Phantom Menace parody, and 10 minutes of PBS idents, mini sketches used to promote Series 7 in the US, as well as a 4-minute Children in Need Sketch.

Conclusion

Series 8 of Red Dwarf is hilarious. The writing is good, the characters are great; the actors are at the top of their form, and with the studio audience back, the comedy remains honed to perfection. The production values are excellent as well, and in many ways the studio sets and lighting surpass that which Dave gave us recently in HD widescreen. This is the best that Red Dwarf ever looked, in SD at least. I’ll even admit that watching it again over the last week, I was sat in front of the television, laughing my head off in a way that I just never did for Series 7. This time Red Dwarf works again. And you know what, I still don’t like Series 8, and it remains my least favourite of the BBC series. Taken by itself, it’s funny. If Red Dwarf had started this way from Series 1, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. It’s just that even while I’m wheezing with laughter at Archie’s escape for freedom, even when I’m jazzed at the Blue Midget dance, even when I’m getting that Series 1 and 2 vibe from the Rimmer and Lister bunk scenes, I’m holding the show in context with what has come before, and for me Series 8 just doesn’t fit in with the first seven. I’m perverse and contrary, I know, but I am a sci-fi fan.


It all comes from Red Dwarf’s propensity for changing the format to keep things fresh, and stop the show turning into My Family. That’s a worthy goal, which while it may cause headaches for the creators of the show, it certainly made the first six series some of the best sci-fi comedy around. Adding new characters, changing the cast, widening the show, losing the ship, whether it was mandated from without, or generated from within, it kept the show fresh. But then there is change for the sake of change, and Series 7 was for me a change too far, losing the audience and opting for a filmic look. The departure of Rimmer was out of the creators’ hands, but bringing in Kochanski shifted the show from a Rimmer Lister focus to a Kryten Kochanski focus, with a whole jealousy dynamic that very quickly grew old.


Series 8 fixed that, and the Kryten Kochanski jealousy was thankfully dropped, while Rimmer came back (from the dead) and the moments with Lister and Rimmer are some of the best of all eight series. The filmic look was dropped as well, and the shows returned to pure comedy after an ineffective dalliance with comedy drama. The thing that for me Series 8 did wrong was in drastically altering the format once more, and shifting the show to what seems to me is a dead end. It brought the original crew back to life. It also started dealing with continuity in a way the show hadn’t before. Usually series cliff-hangers are ignored at the start of the next series, but series 8 actually began where series 7 left off, addressing the resurrection of Red Dwarf, and why Starbug was suddenly microscopic. It’s a throwaway gag that doesn’t need addressing, but all of a sudden Red Dwarf is into continuity, and it’s even referencing events all the way from the first series.


This gets the viewer thinking about continuity, which is a mistake, as Red Dwarf was never internally consistent in the first place. It makes you ask why the ship looks so radically different than before, it makes you wonder why the crew is apparently large enough to support a viable prison population, where in series 1 the whole crew was just a few hundred, and it gets me wondering just why there aren’t two Kochanskis on board. The Kochanski that turns up in Starbug is from a parallel universe, while the original Kochanski turned to ash with the rest of the crew in episode 1 series 1. She should have been resurrected with the rest of the crew. It could have been a chance for a gag, having Clare Grogan and Chloe Annett in a scene together with Lister unable to tell the two apart.


The biggest problem is that having the crew of Red Dwarf resurrected winds up distracting from the main cast, even when it is the main cast that take up most of the screen time. You begin to wonder how the rest of the ship is handling the news that they are lost in space, 3 million years into the future. You wonder what the plan is, what they are going to do about it. As it turns it, it seems that they can’t be bothered with it really, and just seem to go about their everyday business, which seems a little unrealistic. Of course the biggest problem of all is that it effectively dead ends the show. Unless you want the format permanently changed, and for Lister, Rimmer, Cat, Kryten and Kochanski to lose their focus in the show, broadening it to becoming the crew of Red Dwarf under Captain Hollister lost in space, when that’s not really what Red Dwarf is about. The only way to solve it is to kill off the crew... again, which goes beyond cruel into just plain sadistic. That is effectively what happens at the end of the show, in both versions, transmitted and deleted. Of course at this point Red Dwarf sodded continuity once more, and we were left scratching our heads.


Other than my tendency to nitpick, Red Dwarf Series 8 is quite funny; especially as Kryten has stopped his incessant Series 7 whining that so put a damper on things. Back in the Red, especially the feature length version serves as a dry run for a Red Dwarf movie, a test bed to see if a story can carry over 90 minutes. It certainly can, although the diversion into AR gets a little too Matrix at times. It does allow for the brilliant Blue Midget Dance, with CGI hoofing that holds up even after this many years.


The subsequent episodes introduce a new sit into the com, a prison setting which I find doesn’t sit all that well in Red Dwarf. It is, and no pun intended, too confining a format, which is no surprise that straight from the first such episode, Cassandra, the characters are taken out of prison, albeit as members of the Canaries, prisoners that volunteer for suicide missions. Krytie TV is the most prison-bound of the episodes, although it’s an entertaining pastiche on reality TV, while Pete makes the best use of a recurring gag. It’s only the final episode which really suffers from a case of trying to do too much in too little a space of time. It all feels crammed in and breathless, leaving far too many loose ends, and lacking a satisfactory resolution.


For me the series feels like a collection of Red Dwarf moments, sharp comedy, great character interactions, and a whole lot of fun, in many ways the best that Red Dwarf has ever been, but placed into a show that feels nothing like Red Dwarf. That explains my love-hate relationship with Series 8, but this second time around, I realise that I like it a lot more than Series 7, which certainly wasn’t the case originally.