Red Dwarf VIII

Due to a bit of a cock-up in the nanotechnology department, the missing mining ship Red Dwarf has been recreated, along with its thousand plus crew. Lister, the Cat, Kryten and Kochanski find themselves locked up for misuse of classified information and are joined in the slammer by the ship's own version of Arnold Rimmer, restored along with the rest of the crew. Lister and the team have to work out how survive life inside and work out how to escape, or if they even want to.

The history of British science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf is pretty well-known at this point. A patchy but promising first season was followed by a tightly-written and brilliantly funny second season which overcame ropey production values. The third, fourth and fifth seasons saw steadily increasing production values and ever-more-clever science fiction ideas merging with eye-wateringly hilarious scripts and just a touch of character pathos, to create an "imperial period" most TV shows can only dream about. The sixth season was almost as good, but behind-the-scenes tensions between writers Doug Naylor and Rob Grant made it a difficult season to write and shoot, and a growing overreliance on running gags and returning characters and references. A four-year break, due to some of the actors having other commitments or legal problems, and the writing team divorcing for good, was followed by the weakest season yet.

Red Dwarf VII was, with the best will in the world, something of a creative misfire, with Doug Naylor both overstretched in writing or co-writing the entire season with less-experienced writing partners (the idea to lighten the load on him was undercut by him having to rewrite the scripts by those less-experienced teammates, negating the advantages in the first place). The departure of Chris Barrie as Rimmer was a blow, but the addition of Chloe Annett to the cast as Kochanski worked much better than expected. However, the season-long subplot of Kryten being jealous of Kochanski was horrendous and kept dragging down even the better episodes of the season, and the overreliance on running gags and returning concepts was an even bigger problem than in the sixth season.

Red Dwarf VIII starts with Naylor completely revamping the premise of the show, a bold move which was probably necessary for the purposes of trying to find some fresh ideas. The season opens with our regular heroes' ship, the redoubtable Starbug which they've been living in since the end of Season 5, being blown into a million pieces as it crash-lands on Red Dwarf in one of the show's more spectacular set pieces. The return of the recurring cast of Season 1 is initially a great thing, giving our heroes more characters to bounce off, and the idea they've been wasting time and screwing around quite irresponsibly and have to answer for this is interesting, for the five seconds the show spends on it before instead dumping the characters in jail for the rest of the season on decidedly spurious grounds.

The "Red Dwarf crew in the slammer" concept is good but not, I fear, good enough to fill eight episodes. Pacing this season is completely out the window with each episode relying on a few Rimmer & Lister bunk scenes to make them work. This was one of the stronger elements of the first few seasons, eventually phased out due to Craig Charles and Chris Barrie getting on one another's nerves, and here returns because Charles and Barrie had reconnected on the convention circuit and found themselves in a better place. To be fair, these conversations are quite amusing and, though not a patch on the imperial period's exchanges (especially the episode-long laugh-fest that was Marooned in Season 3), are often the highlight of their episodes.

The limitation of the concept is rapidly exposed by the fact that although this season has eight episodes, it only has five stories. The opening episode is split into three parts and a later episode in two, with only three stand-alone episodes resulting, and these struggle to move beyond standard prison cliches. All the gags you'd expect from a lesser series about not picking up the soap, being desperate for any hint of female company etc are here, no cliche is overturned and no long-hanging fruit is left unpicked. The question of why Red Dwarf would do a prison season when it didn't have even a tenth of the wit or charm as say, dedicated prison sitcom Porridge arises, and is left unanswered.

The season suffers hugely from wasted potential. Captain Hollister (Mac McDonald) was a fine comic character in the first two seasons and he gets by on his charisma here, but he is the butt of far too many fat jokes. Fair enough that apparently McDonald himself relished making the jokes far harsher than they had been in the original scripts, but one episode of non-stop fat jokes is maybe pushing it, and by the end of eight you'll have tuned right out of them. Most of the other original cast were unavailable (Selby and Chen get one scene and then never reappear) and Kochanski has been back for a season already (though recast) so the benefit of reuniting our main crewmembers with the OG crew is pretty much lost after the first episode. The return of the original Holly (Norman Lovett) is initially welcome and he gets a few good laughs, but quickly the same problem that caused Holly's departure in the first place reasserts itself: with Kryten around, Holly's standard role as a font of exposition is no longer necessary, and with the addition of Kryten and Kochanski and the returning ship full of characters, it's a struggle for Holly to get any screentime, let alone lines. The fact there are also two Hollies around (the original, left powered down when Red Dwarf was stolen, and a new version rebuilt by Kryten's nanodroids) is an interesting idea thrown up in the first story and instantly forgotten.

There's also little or no interest by Hollister or the other crewmembers in what Lister and co. have been up to for the prior two centuries, which beggars belief. In fact, basic plot logic, already under severe strain in Season 7, goes out the window completely here. Naylor didn't seem to consider that having just four characters stuck in a tiny ship constantly scavenging for supplies was a source of tension, but having (at least) a thousand characters on a voluminous and newly-rebuilt-and-repaired five-mile-long ship is a massive advantage that can overcome almost all threats instantly. The idea of having our regulars joining the suicide squad of the prisoners, going head-first into danger in return for some prison privileges, is great, but ceases being a major plot point pretty quickly.

In terms of the episodes, Back in the Red starts off quite well but by its third part has become almost unwatchable. Cassandra is a potential classic, and easily the strongest episode of the season, with the introduction of an AI that can predict the future with 100% accuracy causing havoc as Rimmer tries to out-logic her. Krytie TV is simply the worst episode of the first eight seasons of Red Dwarf and a strong contender for the worst one ever. The inexplicably extended two-parter Pete has some good ideas (the recurring gag of Rimmer and Lister being dragged repeatedly before the Captain for increasingly insane reasons can actually be quite funny) but mostly appalling execution, with too much toilet humour - albeit of the dinosaur variety - and some vfx calls the show is only barely able to answer.

The season finale, Only the Good..., is promising with Rimmer travelling to a mirror universe where everything is reversed and he gets everything he ever wanted, with the inevitable comedown being quite crushing. However, the cliffhanger ending is inexplicable and weird, and this time the audience had to wait even longer for the resolution (technically they still are, since it has never been answered).

Red Dwarf VIII (**½) starts strong with a lot of potential, but generally fails to execute. The much-improved production values and at-last decent CGI seem to have come at the expense of characterisation, laughs and pathos, with lowest-common-denominator humour and predictable plot twists. The season is helped by a strong guest cast, including Geraldine McEwan and a young Graham McTavish, and Cassandra and Only the Good... at least have some good ideas.

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