TV Show of the Week: Red Dwarf – Season 11 – Episode 2: Samsara

Red Dwarf came to an end in 1999. Dave Lister (Craig Charles) the only known human left in the universe, along with the rest of the crew, a robot, Kryton (Robert Llewellyn), a half-human half-cat hybrid, The Cat (Danny John-Jules) and Officer Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie) who is a hologram. The series followed their adventures through space, which don’t always go as planned. Over the course of its 8 seasons, it had built up a large fan base that continued after the final episode.

Skip ahead to 2009, to celebrate the 21^st anniversary of the show, Dave commissioned 3 specials called Back to Earth, where the characters discover that they are fictional and that the writer is planning on continuing with their adventures meaning they would cease to exist. There was a lot of anticipation ahead of the specials. The fans of the show had high expectations. Before the special aired, I watched a good few episodes of the original run and highly enjoyed it. Every story was unique, funny, and left me wanting more. Being on the BBC, they were able to use every minute of the half-hour slot to pack the episode full with story, jokes, development, and whilst I hadn’t watched every episode before the 3 part special came on TV, I had a good feel for the show so I was able to enjoy it and understand it. Being with Dave, there would be at least a couple of minutes of adverts, which would cut the run time down, but instead of judging it beforehand, I gave it a chance and unfortunately, I didn’t like it at all. There wasn’t a laughter track, which immediately lost its inclusion and atmosphere that the previous episodes had, and the story over the course of three episodes felt incredibly rushed and underdeveloped. The characters were a joy to see on screen fumbling about in the real world, but that’s about it, which is why I was strongly hesitant about watching Season 10 when it was announced.

It has been noted that when a show has been brought back for another season, it’s only half as good as it was, or even worse, and fans are disappointed. It is a huge risk and one that needs to be done perfectly to win over dedicated fans. However, from what I saw of the trailers, the live studio audience had been put back and it actually looked like it was before, so I did give it a chance and I was pleased to discover that they had actually done a brilliant job. Being 22 years of age, I was five years old when the final season ended, and so my only experience with new episodes is with season 10, but I had watched enough episodes beforehand to know what I would like to see, and I was happy that I saw exactly what I had seen before. The simplistic nature of the show isn’t hard to get wrong. They had cleverly incorporated the ad break in between, and it didn’t ruin the show at all. Even with those couple of minutes cut out, they were still able to create a solid storyline from beginning to end, adding a lot of depth and development throughout, and the jokes were clever and I didn’t stop laughing until the credits, certainly making me wanting more.

The fans of the original show and the newcomers agreed and Dave commissioned two new seasons to be filmed back to back. Season 11 and season 12. Season 11 has just finished airing over in the UK, and I have to say that it was the strongest season to date, but for a reason I wasn’t expecting to conclude on. Every episode in season 11 had the same feel as the episodes in season 1-8, and the fact that they were able to do that without any blips, and successfully incorporate the adverts, made me feel like that season was one of the best ones they’ve done.

The title of this article specifically identifies episode 2, and my reason for doing that is because I believe it is one of the best episodes they’ve done throughout their entire run. The Episode starts with an unknown ship crashing into an ocean of an alien planet. Then it suddenly jumps ahead four million years and we see Rimmer and Lister playing a board game and the episode’s story starts there. They discover the crashed ship and start exploring. As they are exploring, a mystery pops up which is explained via flashbacks and exposition from Kryton in the present day, creating a lot of depth that your imagination can run away with, adding so much more to the episode. Once the mystery has been solved and the story of the crashed ship explained enough, the episode ends, and you know exactly what happens next: The climb aboard their ship and fly away.

After watching the rest of the series and it’s keeping the same format it had throughout its original run, made me realise just how many TV shows are giving you everything instead of only what you need, so you can run away with it. The latest six episodes of Red Dwarf packed more into each episode than some programs that are 45 minutes long. If they were to stretch the episode’s storyline by an extra 20 minutes, it would ruin the show completely. After doing some research, I have discovered that there are more shows that are 45 minutes long than there are shows that are 25 – 30 minutes, and I think we need to have more of the latter because Red Dwarf proves that it’s possible to do so much with less time, even with adverts in the middle.

Season 12 will air next year, and I am looking forward for it, because they have built up people’s confidence that the show will be the same as it has always been. If they had changed the format, such as they did with season 9, it would have been disastrous to say the least.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)