Hogan Reviews

Red Dwarf’s seventh series is an odd one for me, and indeed for the show in general. Rob Grant left the writing team leaving Doug Naylor as the sole writer and his vision of the show was a lot more… cinematic and leaned heavier on the sci-fi than previous series. In terms of Series VII it works more than it doesn’t but I can’t say the same for the next two… Also VII was the first series I watched as it aired rather than through repeats / VHS tapes, so it also holds a special place in my heart for the reason… Overall though it’s a mixed bag, so let’s take a look!

The opener of Series VII is still, in my opinion, the best of the series. Admittedly it completely disregards continuity but as I’ve been saying I’m far more forgiving for a comedy show to do that than a lot of things. Basically the Starbug has mysteriously become larger after the timeline reset from the end of the previous series but Lister (Craig Charles) finds out to his horror that the curry supply has reached its end. He comes up with a plan to use the Time Drive to pop back in time, order a bunch of currys and only then stop using it. This makes no sense for two reasons: one the Time Drive doesn’t transport them to Earth only moves them in time, that was the whole gag, and secondly destroying it is what stopped their future selves from killing them, the fact they have a working one means that Rimmer (Chris Barrie) somehow didn’t blow it up but their future selves vanished anyway? Plus why don’t they use the Time Drive to go back to Earth a few days ago, or three million years ago and the whole point of the show is sorted… Of all the little mistakes Mr. Naylor could’ve made this was a pretty big one (but yeah, comedy show, so…)

*Gasp!* The boys from the Dwarf in a modern building?! Very weird.

Anyway, the episode is still a good laugh despite not making any sense as the Red Dwarf crew of Lister, Rimmer, Cat (Danny John-Jules) and Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) end up using the Drive (due to Lister swapping Kryten’s head with one without guilt) and end up getting caught in the events of President Kennedy’s assassination and cause an alternate timeline where he survived but ended up causing something of a societal collapse. There are lots of laughs here, I can only recommend you watch the original version however, there is an extended version that made the odd decision to remove the laughter track leaving characters saying jokes and then awkwardly pausing for laughter and applause but because it’s not there it really stands out as … weird. Speaking of weird the next episode writes Rimmer out of the show entirely as Mr. Barrie wanted to move on with his career now he made it big in Hollywood with his role in the Tomb Raider films (… Yeah, that lasted!) and the way Grant Naylor thought to do this was to have Ace Rimmer return, reveal he isn’t the Ace Rimmer they’d met before but that “Ace Rimmer” is a multiverse-spanning hero that gets replaced by a different Rimmer from a different timeline each time one dies and now it was this Rimmer’s turn. How this came to mind as an idea I have no clue, but that’s what he went with! So yes the cowardly and backstabbing Rimmer from this timeline ends up as Ace, though one that is clearly less heroic than his other selves…

At this point I want to mention the frankly shockingly bad CG that is used throughout the series. Yikes! Even at the time it looked bad, I remember a scene with countless Ace Rimmer caskets floating in space being awkwardly bad looking when it aired, to say it “hasn’t aged well” is an understatement. They should’ve kept to the lovely model work of the previous series…

Look at those clearly real floating caskets… *ahem*.

It doesn’t take long for a new fourth member to be found however as the next episode “Ouroboros” sees the remaining three crew members find a tear in the fabric of space-time and come across an alternate version of themselves where Kochanski (now played by the decidedly not Scottish Chloë Annett) is the one who ended up in stasis and survived and it was Lister who was brought back as a hologram, but due to a series of events this alternate Kochanski ends up on this side of the time rift and despite their best efforts the two timelines separate. It has some good gags and the revelation that the parents that left Lister under a pool table was actually Lister and Kochanski, and that by being his own father Lister has created an Ouroboros loop insuring humanity will always be around, or something. *shrugs* Good for a laugh! I will say though that Kochanski being a bit snobby but otherwise helpful kills the central antagonistic relationship at the heart of the show and therefore while they have some fun ideas the next bunch of episodes do fall far short of the classic six series that came before it.

“Duct Soup” sees the crew have to crawl through some vents to put the ship back on course after it breaks down and allows Kochanski to get to know this Lister and Kryten, but it’s only okay. Some good gags but not great (though I don’t quite get the hate it gets from some ends of the fandom); “Blue” sees Lister actually missing have Rimmer around and has some fun flashbacks and an infamous musical number that sets Lister back straight on hating him again; and “Beyond a Joke” sees Kryten’s head explode from anger (literally) and the crew end up encountering a rogue Simulant who repairs the mechanoid thanks to his own Kryten in the form of Able so he can resell him but Able ends up befriending Kryten and helps him get back to the Red Dwarf crew.

I’m not sure how Kochanski being the one to survive via Stasis means Cat and Kryten are dressed more stylishly, but hey-ho.

The two-part finale of “Epideme” and “Nanarchy” sees the crew come across a ship called the Leviathan that had been frozen, including one living crew member called Caroline Carmen. Sadly for the Dwarfers Carmen ends up being a zombie that after a still disgusting-to-look-at scene where she makes out with Lister ends up transferring a virus called Epideme that has gained sentience but still wishes for nothing more than to spread from host to host, killing everyone. They manage to get rid of it but Lister ends up losing an arm in the process and that leads to the finale where they search for Kryten’s nanomachines that had left him long ago in the hopes they could rebuild him an arm. The search leads them to a planet that is revealed to be a re-jigged Red Dwarf itself, complete with the original male version of Holly (). It’s a fun reveal and there’s a good cliffhanger too… shame it leads to Series VIII really…

Overall Thoughts:

Rimmer gets a big musical send off! … Until he reappears next series and never leaves again… Hooray!

Series VII seems to be better than I remember each time I end up re-watching it, with the first episode, “Tikka to Ride” still being a favourite. That being said I still find a good chunk of the series to be quite flat without the quips and arguments surrounding Rimmer, though his return in the next series is some serious monkey’s paw wish corruption given the state of it…

Episode 1 “Tikka to Ride”:

Episodes 2 – 8:

Not much to put here, given its an episodic comedy, but I will mention that the end of “Tikka to Ride”, where Lister goes back in time, recruits President Kennedy and has him assassinate himself “which will drive the conspiracy nuts crazy for years” is still a great gag.

Ending the review with a kiss. Classy.

Plus the finale sees the Nanomachines found and not only do they rebuild Lister’s body (a bit too well…) but they also rebuild the whole of Red Dwarf itself, but the ship is many time too large and the Starbug is the size of a literal bug as it reaches the ship. It’s a funny cliffhanger that does at least get nicely resolved in the opening episode of Series VIII… again though, it’s all downhill from there sadly…