Red Dwarf Minirecaps: Series 5-8

I've been a fan of Red Dwarf since before I could spell--I remember making crayon drawings labelled 'CAT AND CRITEN'. I have the early episodes memorized forever, down to cadence, such that I can't laugh at the jokes, because to me, the lines are not funny or not-funny, but simply Are, always and forever, a bedrock of my universe. The episodes from season 5 on I know far less well, having only seen them a handful of times each, so I'm more able to judge them objectively. I'm willing to cut the show a lot of slack for being a comedy first and a sci-fi show second (possibly third or fourth), but the sins against internal consistency and common sense really get out of hand in these later seasons--so much so that I'm compelled to document them in some way. Hence, minicaps!

Quick Jump To: Series 5 | Series 6 | Series 7 | Series 8

 

Series 5

Follows the season 4 trajectory, prioritizing wacky plots and effects over dialogue scenes. Lots of time away from Red Dwarf on the away shuttle, Starbug, and at new locations--planets, bases, other ships. Very little Holly. Red Dwarf seems to be positioning itself less as a character-based comedy and more as a sci-fi parody.

5x1 Holoship

The gang finds a ship (itself hologrammatic) crewed entirely by overachieving supergenius holograms. It's Rimmer's dream job (despite the fact that he's entirely unqualified). But the ship has as many holograms as it can support, and the only way onto the crew is to get a member of the existing crew turned off by proving yourself smarter in an exam. Rimmer wins after he gets Kryten to help give him a "mind patch" to provide him with the knowledge and expertise of a dead Dwarfer. However, he soon discovers that the holoship crewmember he's bumped is a woman he's fallen for. Despite scoffing at the concept of love earlier in the episode, Rimmer finds himself turning down the job to save the girl.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: If they have "mind patch" technology, why don't they just use it all the time? Do they not think they could use some senior crewmembers' expertise in any of their scrapes?

Rating: 5/5. One of the best for showing Rimmer's rare honorable side (and we also get plenty of the smeghead side we know and love).

5x2 The Inquisitor

The gang runs into "The Inquisitor," a crazed superpowerful mechanoid who moves through space and time judging everyone and deleting them from history if they're not worthy. For reasons which I can't remember, the judgment process involves each character arguing for his own worth with himself. The the Cat adores his own ass and Rimmer convinces himself that he never had a chance, but Lister and Kryten fail to convince themselves that they couldn't have done better with their lives.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: Minor time travel.

Rating: 2/5. While the characters' conversations with themselves are amusing, the humor and unfairness inherent in judging oneself has already been done, and done better in "Justice." In that episode, Rimmer was the only one who really judged himself unworthy, which seems more true to character. Rimmer's insecurities run deep, but I think, deep down, he really would judge himself unworthy. And Lister and Kryten both seem to think, deep down, that they are really good people, even if they've screwed up a bit. I see no other evidence that Lister really believes himself to have untapped potential. The episode quickly devolves into a boring action sequence, and even Lister's clever-clever final fight with the big bad feels like a less satisfying rehashing of the final fight in "Justice."

5x3 Terrorform

Kryten and Rimmer crash-land on what turns out to be a "psi-moon," which transforms its own landscape into a horrifying hellscape representative of Rimmer's internal world. Kryten brings Lister and the Cat back to rescue Rimmer, and his joy at the unexpected loyalty of the crew makes the escape easy... until the others begin berating him back on board Starbug, and a creature attacks the ship. Kryten figures out that the only way to escape is to make Rimmer feel good and loved and wanted, so he and Lister take turns telling Rimmer how much they like him, putting their hands on his knee, etc., while the Cat stands around uncomfortably. When it works, Rimmer catches on and asks Lister if he meant all that, and Lister says no.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: Leaving aside why anyone would want a psi-moon, how does it choose which inhabitant to transform itself to? Also, nonholograms put their hands on Rimmer's knee.

Rating: 4/5. The psi-moon has a lot of comic potential, and while I think they could have done more with it, any episode where Rimmer is stripped, oiled, and tortured (while nervously wisecracking, naturally) and where the sci-fi problem has a character-based solution (particularly an overtly slashy one) is OK in my book.

5x4 Quarantine

Rimmer becomes fed up with Kryten quoting Space Corps directives (and correcting his own misquoting), and refuses to join the others on an away mission where they end up fighting a homocidal hologrammatic scientist who contracted one of the viruses she was studying, making her insane. Rimmer petulantly forces the crew to go into quarantine upon their return. He does his best to make the quarantine unpleasant and cramped, and although Lister, the Cat, and Kryten agree to get along so as not to give him any satisfaction, they inevitably get into bitter, petty arguments. Their differences seem unimportant, however, when they discover Rimmer has contracted the crazymaking virus. Kryten gets the idea to infect Lister with a "positive virus"--Luck--which enables him to guess the passcode to the door and stumble upon all the supplies they need to disable Rimmer and regain control of the ship. They then put Rimmer in quarantine.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: The hologram virus grants its sufferers the power of telekinesis.

Rating: 3/5. In any other show the quarantine episode would be almost guaranteed to the be among the best. Forcing the characters to hang out in close quarters with nothing to do generally leads to good TV. But that's what Red Dwarf is. It is not necessary to force a quarantine to make that happen here. As is common with season 5+ episodes, there's too many action/special effects sequences and not enough time spent on simple character interaction and dialogue jokes, which should be the heart of this episode--and which used to be the heart of this show.

5x5 Demons and Angels

Kryten modifies the transporter paddle in an attempt to make a replicator, but his test on a strawberry reveals a defect: while the paddle does create two new strawberries, one is perfect--succulent, juicy, better than the original--and one is awful--rotted, worm-eaten, moldy. Trying to reverse the process, they accidentally turn the field outward and create a good and evil copy of the Dwarf. Hijinks ensue, in which the evil crew kills the good and attempts to force Lister to kill his crewmates.

Rating: 2/5. The usual crew of actors playing super-good and super-evil is fun to watch (and was probably fun to play), but the good and evil versions are so generic and generally the same as each other: all the goods are angelic monks in identical white robes; all the bads are maniacal laughing sadists with blacked-out teeth (with the exception of Bad Rimmer, who's wearing a black corset and stockings). The episode set-up provides a perfect chance to make two interesting statements about each of the characters, but that chance is altogether wasted (with the possible exception of Bad Rimmer).

5x6 Back to Reality

While investigating a derelict that has been attacked by a giant squid with poisonous ink, the crew is killed. They wake up in a suite of machines and discover that this whole time they have been playing the Total Immersion video game "Red Dwarf." (They scored a record low; the maintenance man laughs at Lister for failing to win Kochanski and at Rimmer for playing the whole game on "prat mode.") It turns out Kryten is really a corrupt cop, Lister is a local crime boss, Rimmer is his unsuccessful brother, and the Cat is an uncoordinated, fashionless loser called Duane Dibley. As the episode progresses with the boys figuring out their real identities and getting into trouble on a dystopian Earth, we eventually discover that they are having a group hallucination from the squid ink. Holly finally manages to get through to Kryten and break the illusion.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: Group hallucination.

Rating: 5/5. This finale is easily the best episode of the season, bringing an interesting twist on the Total Immersion gaming technology introduced in "Better Than Life." Each character's alter ego is character-rooted and character-illuminated, representing what they would least like to be. Duane Dibley, with his buck teeth, bowl cut, anorak, and thermos, gets some of the funniest lines, as the writers plumb new depths of dorkiness.

 

Series 6

The team spends this entire season on the Starbug, separated from the Red Dwarf for reasons which I'm still not entirely clear about. Away missions and adventures, parodyable-sci-fi-plot-contrivance-of-the-week style, continue to make up the bulk of the episodes. No Holly at all.

6x1 Psirens

A brain-sucking monster takes attractive forms to lure the boys.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: Any of the technobabble about how or why they have lost Red Dwarf. Suffice to say this season will take place exclusively on Starbug. It's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure why they bother--they don't need to put them in close quarters; they already were. In general, the away ship setting makes the show more "sci fi" in the traditional sense, with a lot of sitting in cockpits and detecting things. This doesn't work terribly well for Red Dwarf. Since when are any of these people any use in a cockpit? Since when is the Cat a crack pilot with a sense of smell so finely tuned he can tell astronomical phenomena before the sensors do? I'm not opposed to the characters learning and thing or two and becoming more capable because they need to be, but it all seems so sudden.

Rating: 2/5. A pale imitation of Polymorph, but there's some good non-plot stuff at the beginning with Lister having temporary amnesia and a decent running gag about how bad Lister is at guitar.

6x2 Legion

The crew finds a space station manned by a single, startingly pleasant hologrammatic entity, Legion. Legion makes each of them at home, providing them with gifts--nice quarters, good food, and most importantly, a "hard light" drive for Rimmer, which gives him a physical presence and allows him to touch. Legion suddenly becomes cross when the gang tries to leave, and they discover he is an artifical entity automatically created from an amalgamation of whoever is on the station--so he'll cease to be once they leave. Kryten defeats him by (with their permission) knocking out all the others so he only has to face himself. Back on Starbug with some technogizmo from Legion (who was once an amalgamation of many great minds), Kryten gives a rousing speech about how the whole of the crew is greater than the sum of its parts, which is undercut when they break the gizmo.

Rating: 3/5. Legion is interesting (and I'm glad Rimmer finally got a body, of sorts, since they really couldn't be bothered to remember the limitations of his hologrammatic form half the time anyway), but again, there could have been more interesting character stuff to do with an entity that is supposed to be all of them. He didn't seem like any of them. Kryten hangs a lantern on that somewhat at the end, which is a step in the right direction, but not enough.

6x3 Gunmen of the Apocalypse

To fight a computer disease of some kind, Kryten puts himself in a dream state which takes the form of a Western (Kryten is the beleaguered sheriff). Lister, Rimmer and the Cat enter his fantasy world through the VR gaming system to help him.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: What's the VR gaming system doing on Starbug?

Rating: 2/5. Not horrendous, but there's really no reason for this to be a Red Dwarf episode. Why must every show make a random Western episode?

6x4 Emohawk (Polymorph II)

In a run-in with a baby Polymorph (or Emohawk), the Cat loses his cool and becomes Duane Dibley, and Rimmer loses his general smegginess and becomes Ace Rimmer. Then I guess there are some hijinks.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: Doesn't the Polymorph suck out flaws one at a time? Isn't that the whole point of the original Polymorph episode--that (1) characters are defined by their flaws and (2) flaws are useful? Not only does this episode lack the original's moral and character interest, it's inconsistent with the universe rules. "Cool" is not a flaw, nor does it seem possible that a Polymorph could feast in one sitting on...oh... every aspect of Rimmer's personality (and imbue him with some new ones).

Rating: 1/5. This episode exemplifies everything that's wrong seasons 5 and 6: they're full of shoddy rehashes attempting to capitalize on previous episodes' successes instead of creating anything new or interesting. (It's not a universal flaw, of course; season 5's "Back to Reality" not only provided an excellent example of how to build well on a previous episode's groundwork, and also provided the popular Duane Dibley character this episode is shamelessly trotting out for easy laughs.)

6x5 Rimmerworld

The crew goes to check out a "seeding ship," laden with potentially useful terraforming supplies, but have a run-in with a crazy evil artificial creature of some kind whom they've met before (? maybe the scientist from Quarantine? not sure). Cowardly Rimmer abandons his friends, but ends up getting lost through a wormhole. By the time the others find him a few hours later, six hundred years have passed for him. In that time, he has used the technology on the escape ship to create a verdant Eden and clone an entire race of Rimmers; but he has spent over 500 of those years in jail, betrayed by his own kind.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: Rimmer's... a hologram.

Rating: 1/5. Now that I write out the summary, I can see that the episode had a theme, of sorts, but it was hard to follow in practice. There was a subplot about Rimmer having a stress-related disease which distracted from the general "bastardry bites you in the ass" message I think they were going for. Also, the implications of him having been in jail for 500 years are are really poorly dealt with in that there are none. There's also some random irrelevant time travel, which is always a mess.

6x6 Out of Time

After going through a field of "unreality mines," the crew finds a time machine. They're disappointed to find that the time machine doesn't move through space, so they can't use it to go back to Earth, but jaunting forward they run into their future selves, who have come to meet them after their own time machine breaks, rendering them only able to go forward. The future selves are degenerate and amoral, talking about how they enjoy the finer things in life by partying with Louis XVI and the Hitlers. Lister kicks them off Starbug, threatening to open fire, and they get into a spacefight. Lister, the Cat, and Kryten are killed in console explosions (as happens), with Kryten's dying words being "There may be a..." Rimmer begs him to finish the sentence, but he's gone. Rimmer suddenly seems to have an idea and runs off. We get a wide shot of Starbug, and it explodes.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: The "unreality mines" don't bear thinking about (nor are they particularly well-used), nor does the rest of the episode. First of all, time machines are stupid. Introduce time machines to your fictional world and watch it fall apart. They're too limitless. Second, since they've found plenty of limited, one-time ways to travel through time in the past, having a time machine doesn't even seem like that big of a deal. Third, it isn't explained how the future selves manage to move in space as well as time. Fourth, the future selves just make no damn character sense.

Rating: 1/5. It seems less like an exciting cliffhanger and more like they ran "out of time" (!!) to finish the episode.

 

Series 7

A sudden and intense increase in film quality marks the first noticeable change; within the first three episodes, there are also major cast changes, as the crew loses Rimmer and gains a parallel universe Kochanski (played by new English actress Chloe Annett--sorry, fans of Clare Grogan and her cute Scottish accent).

7x1 Tikka to Ride

After some confusing and insane exposition about how they didn't really die because of the time paradox caused by their future selves killing them, Lister gets the horrifying news that all of the Indian food stores have been destroyed. He wants to use the time machine to go back to 22nd century London and order more, but Kryten refuses. A desperate Lister secretly swaps Kryten's head with a tampered, guilt-chip-free Spare Head 2, and the mission proceeds--but due to Spare Head 2's unfamiliarity with the time machine controls, they end up in Dallas, 1963, where they accidentally prevent the assassination of Kennedy. For some reason this has disastrous consequences for history. Lister uses the time machine to recruit a future version of Kennedy to assassinate his past self and save the world.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: Leaving aside everything that's said in the first five minutes of desperate jumbled exposition, and everything that's improbable about the revised American history timeline, it was very explicitly stated in the previous episode that the time machine does not move in space. If they have the ability to move in space AND time, why go back for Indian food and then come back to deep space? Why not just stay in 22nd century England forever? Why not prevent the original destruction of the Red Dwarf? Why not find Kochanski? A handy rule of thumb for writing fiction: granting characters the ability to move through space and time at will is about the worst thing a writer can do. Granting characters the ability to move through space and time at will when the fact that they're trapped in deep space three million years in the future and the human race is probably extinct so all they've got is each other is the central conflict and entire concept of the story? WORSE.

Rating: 1/5. There is no part of this episode you can think about without your brain exploding. While the moment when Kennedy kills himself is kind of cool and almost affecting, it's not enough to save the rest of this disaster of an episode, which is full of some very unRed Dwarflike fawning over Kennedy and anvilicious discussion of 20th century American history. Also, Kennedy has a stupid accent.

7x2 Stoke Me A Clipper

Ace Rimmer returns for a visit, to the delight of Lister, the Cat and Kryten and the disgust of Rimmer. Then Ace confides to Rimmer that he is dying. He, too, is a hard-light hologram, and he has some kind of hologram disease. He wants Rimmer to take his place as hero of the universe. He is not the first Dread Pirate Ace Rimmer, and he doesn't want to be the last. After some goading from Lister (Ace also confides in him, but not the others; probably this is because they are so in love), Rimmer agrees to be trained, but it's tough going as he lacks self-confidence, courage, and skill. Finally, though, Rimmer manages to best a knight escaped from the VR machine (which turns out to be Lister in disguise). He excitedly runs to tell Ace, who smiles, "Smoke me a kipper--I'll be back for," and dies. After the funeral, Rimmer, now Ace, sets off for adventure.

Rating: 5/5. If Rimmer has to go, this is the best send-off he could get. Building nicely on "Dimension Jump," this episode really develops the character of Rimmer--abruptly, sure, but inspiringly. The inveterate cowardly weasel Rimmer becoming a suave and amazing hero Ace is the kind of unbelievable you want to believe in. Some highlights of the episode include a parody James Bond sequence in which Ace escapes from Nazis by surfing on an alligator; Ace's funeral (which the Cat and Kryten believe is Rimmer's), at which Lister really rather sweetly eulogizes the old pre-Ace Arnold Rimmer; the touching if ridiculous final pan where Ace's light bee joins its fellows, and we see that the light bees of the Aces that have lived and died are so vast and numerous as to form the ring around a planet.

7x3 Ouroboros

Lister, the Cat, and Kryten find a temporary pathway to a parallel dimension where they meet an alternate version of the group: Lister is a hard-light hologram and Kochanski is the one surviving human (this is explained in a flashback where Kochanski confiscates Frankenstein, but doesn't have the heart to kill her). The pathway is attacked, though, and Kochanski ends up with our heroes.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: Lister realizes that he is his own father. Kochanski is totally erratic: after getting a chance to go back to her own universe, she suddenly announces "I've decided to stay!", and risks her life to go back to the crew she doesn't like as much and who don't like her as much and who are clearly worse. And then she spends the rest of the series moping about how much she misses her universe and her Dave. Also, Lister realizes he is his own father. In this episode, Lister realizes he is his own father. The only way I can deal with this is by assuming that Lister is just an idiot and now there are two babies with Lister DNA under pool tables in Liverpool.

Rating: 2/5. The good parts of this episode are pretty good (through a series of grooming mishaps, Lister meets Alternate Kochanski wearing a pink ruffly dressing gown with dental floss glued to his mouth; Kryten shrilly weeps that Lister is going to like Kochanski better than him; Kochanski and Kryten bicker but bond over their shared desire to get her back home). The episode actually seems like it will be good--up until the second time they establish the pathway, and then everything goes to immediate hell (see above).

7x4 Duct Soup

Starbug is overheating and everyone's uncomfortable, particularly Kochanski, who's upset with squeaky pipes in her room, no baths, and no fat-free yogurt. Lister tries to help, but Kryten--feeling threatened once again by the seeming inevitableness of Lister/Kochanski--secretly sabotages the generator to prevent Kochanski from taking a bath in Lister's room. Emergency protocols seal the doors, and the crew has to spend the night crawling through the ducts.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: While there are many things for Kochanski to be upset about in this situation--missing her boyfriend and her companions, trying to make friends with their weirdly familiar but definitely different parallel-universe equivalents--it seems odd that she doesn't mention any of those things and instead focuses on the lack of creature comforts and the depressing dead-endness of life in deep space. Kochanski has presumably lived the last few years in her universe under the same conditions as Lister has lived his life in this one, so you'd assume she'd have dealt with that angst around season 3.

Rating: 4/5. This is the classic sort of episode that provides a lot of character and relationship development and fun conversations, and this episode doesn't disappoint (although it feels a bit "Perfunctory Cookie-Cutter Character Development Episode #4", especially when Kryten hangs a lantern on it at the end). Highlights include Lister sleepily debating laziness vs. the need to pee and Kochanski trying to take Lister's mind off his claustrophobia in the vents by misinforming him that her Dave Lister is gay.

7x4 Blue

After accidentally calling the Cat "Rimmer" and then reminiscing about good times back on the Dwarf, Lister has a confusing dream where he kisses Rimmer. Kochanski commiserates with him about missing someone you love, and helps him understand that he feels guilty for making Rimmer miserable when Rimmer was keeping him sane. Competitively, Kryten devises his own cure for Lister's blues, creating a VR theme park ride "The Rimmer Experience" which so effectively highlights Rimmer's obnoxiousness that it is impossible to think fondly of him.

Don't Think About It Or Your Head Will Explode: It only just now occurred to me to wonder this, but can't they just generate a new Rimmer hologram (or any other dead crewmember, for that matter)? (Of course, even in "Me2" at the end of season 1, Rimmer had been so improved by his life after death that everyone found a new hologram freshly generated from the Rimmer personality disk insufferable, but still.)

Rating: 5/5. You really felt Rimmer's absence in the last two episodes, so having it addressed directly is extremely satisfying. The "Rimmer Experience" is also delightful, especially the song. In a special bonus for me personally, Lister's dream reads completely like schmoopy, OOC slash fiction. I would have preferred a comedically lengthy kiss (they cut away immediately), but you can't have everything.

7x5 Beyond a Joke

Kryten becomes so upset when the others miss dinner to play Jane Austen VR that his head explodes. During a battle with a space scavenger type who owns another 3000 series mechanoid, Kryten is captures and repaired, but learns the awful truth about himself: his whole series is a joke, designed to be needy and whiny to make fun of the creator's ex. Lister assures him he has evolved "beyond a joke" (!!)

Rating: 2/5. A reasonably coherent character arc, but most of the episode is taken up with pretty boring guest characters and action. Even the Jane Austen VR experience disappoints, as it's a promising set-up (especially for a fan like me) but I am pretty sure they fail to make a single joke. Perhaps they have evolved beyond them.

7x6 Epideme

After the crew revives a body in an ice planet, Lister is infected with what is essentially a zombie virus: it kills the host, then imbues the corpse with life (movement, anyway) long enough to pass to someone else by snogging and/or biting. (Yes, once again, Lister is molested by an evil space creature.) Kryten and Kochanski try to get rid of it by trapping it Lister's arm and then cutting off the arm, but after the amputation, Lister is still infected. Kochanski finally saves the day by doing the old stop-the-infected-guy's-heart-so-the-virus-jumps-to-her-and-then-cut-her-own-arm-off-but-oh-wait-it's-a-fake-arm trick.

Rating: 3/5. Not bad, but gets very plotty and fast-paced toward the end, and not in an exciting way so much as a "I'll just fill in this scene later, oh wait, we're already over time" sort of way.

7x7 Nanarchy

Lister is having trouble coping to life with one arm. Kochanski wonders if Kryten can use his nanobots, tiny repair droids, to rebuild one out of organic material. Kryten says the nanos deserted him shortly before they lost Red Dwarf. They return to sector where they lost both the ship and the nanos, and discover a planetoid which the nanos have built from the Dwarf. There they recover Holly (original male version), but the scanners find no nanos. Holly points out that the scanners only scan outside, and they turn the scan inward and find that the nanos have been exploring Lister's dirty laundry all this time. Kryten reprimands the nanos like a Dutch uncle, and they duly rebuild both Lister and the Dwarf.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: Oh, yeah, the nanobots that can make anything out of anything else. How come we didn't think of them before? On a more minor note, why does Starbug have three stasis booths if the whole of the Dwarf only has two?

Rating: 3/5. The first half of the episode, which is mostly about Lister coping with only having one arm, is pretty interesting, but in general it's another overly plot-packed, underly developed episode. The ending shot of Red Dwarf over the season 1 music was almost affecting, but it was too quick, and the special effects quickly became silly.

 

Series 8

A season which reverses everything you know about Red Dwarf: the ship is now crewed, Rimmer is alive, Lister and Rimmer mostly get along. The only catch: the gang spends the entire series in prison!

8x1 Back in the Red Part 1

The gang crashes Starbug in the new Red Dwarf. To their surprise, they find themselves rescued by Chen, Selby, and some other old Dwarf crew members: the nanobots rebuilt the entire crew from before the radiation leak. Captain Hollister puts Lister and Kochanski under arrest for stealing and destroying Starbug 1 and bringing two stowaways on board. While awaiting trial, Lister meets up with Rimmer, and promises to help make him an officer if Rimmer helps him escape. Following his instructions, Rimmer checks out the wreck of Starbug for confidential information about the crew and ship, and stumbles on the Luck and Sexual Magnetism viruses.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: Why didn't the nanos rebuild a pre-leak Lister and Kochanski and Starbug 1? Also Lister (and Kochanski, for that matter) had free run of the ship for how many years, and they didn't know there was a deck 13 with a secret penal colony on it? Even if Lister was too lazy/homebodyish to actually explore the whole of the ship, you would think there would be some mention of that in all the top-secret info he bragged to Rimmer about reading.

Rating: 3/5. Getting the Dwarf back, along with all the minor characters from episode 1, is a cool idea, but again the episode prioritizes plotty, perfunctory scenes over character stuff. There is some pretty good Lister/Rimmer interaction, though, as the episode opens with a lengthy, totally unnecessary preview-of-things-to-come type scene where Lister annoys Rimmer into speaking to him. I'm also inordinately fond of the moment when Rimmer is first reintroduced; he comes up behind Lister, interrupting his fretting with a quip. Lister looks up, smiling, "It's you!" Then Rimmer says something bastardy and Lister goes, "It's you how you used to be," and makes a disgusted face.

8x2 Back in the Red Part 2

Lister, Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat agree to a trial involving mindscan. Rimmer uses the scientific and personal info from Starbug's logs to impress the captain, and then, having gotten what he wanted, reneges on his agreement with Lister. The others hasten to escape on their own while Rimmer attends the captain's dinner and, between sexing up all the girls, learns that the prisoners only think they're escaping: really, they're undergoing a mindscan, in which the computer gives them hypotheticals and records how they react to determine guilt. Worried that Lister will reveal the deal, Rimmer excuses himself.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: A lot of the more ridiculous things in this episode can be partially excused because they occur during the "hypothetical" brainscan portion, such as Kryten being restored to his factory settings but then spontaneously returning to his normal personality all at once, but I still don't understand why the gang thought it would be a good idea to try to escape by dressing as the Dibley family with false teeth and obvious mophead wigs. And "fanservice" is not sufficient reason.

Rating: 2/5. I'm sensing an increasing reliance on physical humor, which tends to be great where Rimmer is concerned (his extended dress salute is amazing) but cringeworthy when it comes to Kryten (there is an extended sequence where he is getting a medical exam, and there's a lot of props).

8x3 Back in the Red Part 3

Lister, Kryten, Kochanski, the Cat, and Rimmer (whom they convince to join them) figure out that they're in mindscan during their escape. While everything they've done corroborates their story, they've committed new crimes in the process, so they are still sent to the prison floor for the same sentence.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: Probably lots of things, but I wasn't paying close attention. It does seem to me, though, that things you did in mindscan shouldn't count against you.

Rating: 2/5. Overall, "Back in the Red" is tedious. It easily could have been 2 parts; a 3-parter with so much middle and so little beginning or end doesn't really work. There's a fair amount of plot to establish, but they could have tried to do it while giving each episode an individual theme or something. It seems like a lot of rigmarole to go through just to end up exactly where we were toward the beginning of the first part, and they don't end up focusing on the interesting parts of the scenario the gang finds themselves in. Lister and Kochanski seem so eager to just escape and go back out into deep space and resume the status quo of the previous seasons; but, but, there's a new Red Dwarf! Everyone's back to life! Don't they have any feelings about that?

8x4 Cassandra

Lister signs the team up for "the Canaries," a prison group which gets lots of extra privileges, thinking it's an a capella singing group, but it's actually a volunteer scout team that gets sent into dangerous situations to check if it's safe for others. On a scuttled vessel, they meet Cassandra, a computer that can tell the future. Everything Cassandra says comes true--so Rimmer is understandably concerned when she says he'll die. And intrigued when she tells him that Lister will harpoon him after he sleeps with Kochanski. Circumstances indeed throw Rimmer and Kochanski together, and they've almost succumbed to determinism--Rimmer joyfully, Kochanski reluctantly--when Lister figures out that Cassandra said it would happen only in order to make it happen and get revenge on Lister, whom she knew would kill her.

Rating: 3/5. It's just a sub-par "Future Echoes", but at least they acknowledge "Future Echoes", and the Rimmer/Kochanski stuff is sort of fun.

8x5 Krytie TV

When they find out that Kryten showers with the women (he's been classified as a woman, remember), some of the male prisoners jump him and reprogram him so that he'll agree to bring a camera and show them the footage. Kryten becomes a television tycoon. Meanwhile, Lister gets a letter saying he's being considered for an appeal, and Rimmer helps him appear like a model prisoner in order to help his case. He's chagrined when it turned out Lister wasn't appealing his incarceration, but the confiscation of his guitar.

Rating: 1/5. Kryten is horrible in this episode and there's very little redeeming about it, with the possible exception of how well Lister and Rimmer get along these days.

8x6 Pete, Part 1

Lister and Rimmer are continually brought to the captain to explain their wacky hinjinks, and are punished with kitchen duty and the hold. Meanwhile, on Canary duty, Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat check out an abandoned lab and find a device which affects time. They plan to use the device to make the two years of their sentence fly by. First, they freeze everyone and break Lister and Rimmer out of the hold. In a compassionate attempt to bring back to life a prisoner's pet bird (Pete), they accidentally create a ridiculous CG dinosaur.

Rating: 2/5. Lister and Rimmer are even chummier here--Rimmer seems to have gotten a lot less authority-respecting while in prison, and while the pranks that he and Lister coscheme are stupid, their alliance is charming. They also have a pretty good conversation about airplanes. Too bad most of the rest of the series has lost that chatting-about-nothing charm. Also, they live in space, so it kind of makes no sense.

8x7 Pete, Part 2

The team runs around after various creatures, including the dinosaur, the dinosaur's offspring, and Kryten's homemade penis.

Rating: 1/5. The episode starts with an unnecessarily gross-out recount of the dinosaur's bad behavior by the captain, and doesn't really get redeemed from there.

8x8 Only the Good...

See if you can follow this train of plot. Lister gives Kryten bad advice about how to interact with Kochanski when she's on her period, so to get back at him, Kryten and Kochanski sneak a bully's stash of hooch into Lister and Rimmer's cell before cell inspection, so Lister and Rimmer drink it all to keep it from being found by the guards, so the bully tells Kryten and Kochanski he's going to kill them, so Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat sneak into the medibay where Lister and Rimmer have gotten their stomachs pumped to warn them, so they all decide to escape, but on their way they find a corrosive agent which is eating through the ship, so they go back to warn everyone, so the rest of the crew abandons ship leaving them behind, so they decide to go to a mirror universe to find the antidote to the corrosive agent, so Rimmer goes to a mirror universe where he is captain, but by the time he gets back the others have all gone through to the mirror universe to escape (not sure why that was not their plan from the start) and the ship is in flames. Death comes for Rimmer, but he kicks him in the nuts. 'The end' flashes the title card.

Don't Think About It Or Your Brain Will Explode: What.

Highlights: Costume changes for the Cat: we see him dressed as a professor and a female nurse in this episode.

Rating: 2/5. There are some cute moments, like Rimmer getting his dream and getting to be captain for a day, but they don't do much with what could be a good premise, and I don't like this weird trend of ending the series for an indefinite number of years in the middle of a cliffhanger they clearly haven't thought of an ending for. Which. Of.