Take 4: The Eternity that is Red Dwarf

Wow. This one took forever.

First off, the series below took up six DVDs, each about three hours long. Secondly, Netflix accidentally sent me the third DVD in place of the fifth DVD, so more time was wasted there. So my apologies for the delay. Hope the AltMedia Reviews were a decent substitute.

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Red Dwarf: Seasons One through Six (1988-???)

In the Beginning: Dave Lister, third-rank technician and lowest ranking crew member on the mining spaceship Red Dwarf, is put into stasis for the trip back to Earth as punishment for smuggling a cat on board.

The Plot Thickens: While in stasis, the entire crew is killed by a radioactive leak. Three million years later, Lister is awoken, with his only company a lifeform that evolved from his pregnant cat (which was safe in an airlock during the radiation leak), the ship's somewhat intelligent computer, and a holographic image of his former bunkmate and nemesis, Arnold Rimmer. Oh, yeah...this is a comedy, if you couldn't tell, by now.

I Know Them!: Well, this is ironic. The guy who plays Rimmer (Chris Barrie) also plays Lara Croft's manservant, Hillary, in both of the Tomb Raider movies. Wouldn't have recognized him if I wasn't researching this series and the cast on the Internet Movie Database.

Favorite Character: Arnold Rimmer. What a (as the British would call him) prat. If Lister was the bottom-ranking person on Red Dwarf, Rimmer couldn't have been much more than a notch or two above him. While Lister is just lazy and kind of a mess, Rimmer spends all his energy looking for loopholes, shortcuts, and ways to advance himself at the expense of others (although, to be fair, there aren't that many others at this point).

Random Trivia: The sets for Red Dwarf are mainly made out of plastic and balsa wood. This causes problems. In "Inquisitor" there is a lot of running up and down the corridors of Red Dwarf so to make it sound metallic sound supervisor Keith Mayes re-recorded every footstep by walking on a metal grate in time to the actors on screen then added an echo.

Great Quotes: Rimmer: "After intensive investigation, comma, of the markings on the alien pod, comma, it has become clear, comma, to me, comma, that we are dealing, comma, with a species of awesome intellect, colon." Holly: "Good. Perhaps they might be able to give you a hand with your punctuation."

Curt's Take: "Worth Considering," for a single episode, "Not a Priority" for any given entire season, and "Don't Bother" for watching all six seasons in a row, like I did. To be fair, British TV tends to have seasons that only last six episodes, so it wasn't THAT bad. It would have been more interesting, though, if there had been a building of plot of story through the episodes. This is done in some minor instances, but not in any grand, earth-shaking way. No...36 episodes that all just build off the premise of a human, a human-like cat, a hologram and a ship's computer lost in space. Season Three did update the look of things a little: the set began to migrate away from looking something a high school drama club assembled(but not by much), they added an android to the cast, and the ship's computer personality switched from male to female. But it was still very episodic...if that's the word to describe an entire story mostly being contained in a single-episode. For example, in one of the episodes of Season Four, the crew finds a DNA Transmogrifier and the ship android becomes human. At the end of the episode, he's still human, but in the following episode he's back to being an android. So, take if for what it's worth, catch an episode if can, but don't sit through all the seasons.

A ray of hope came through in Season Six, though, and had the crew chasing down the missing Red Dwarf ship using a smaller transport vessel, and Rimmer (the hologram) gained a "hard light" body which enabled him to interact with his surroundings. In addition, there was more of a continuing story, callbacks to previous shows and even a season-ending cliffhanger. So...looks like they did finally learn a bit about how to make the show more engaging.

Side Note: Currently, only the first six seasons are available on DVD, but as of the summer of 2003, eight seasons had been produced. Still, the Internet Movie Database lists the series as not having come to a halt, and production of a Red Dwarf movie is, in fact, wrapping up production this year.