I am – Hercules!!

Gabba-UK says:

Hi Herc,

Thought I'd send you a few thoughts about the magnificent return of Red Dwarf, courtasy of the Dave Channel in the UK.

But as it wasn't all that magnificent....

That's not to say it was a total loss. It was great to see the guys back but it was just a little dull.

9 years later. Lister is grieving for the loss of Kochalski. He spends hours thinking and executing plans to wind up Rimmer. A giant inter-dimensional squid...... yeah I thought that too, appears in the last water tank on board, threatening the long term survival of Lister and the Cat.

Hilarity ensues......

Not really. Mild amusement at best and a plotline stretched to breaking point in order to get the guys Back To Earth for tommorrows episode which is where fun hopefully starts...

The plus points:

Red Dwarf is back. The SFX are very good.

The minus points:

It's not very funny.

Still, will be watching it tomorrow night. If this reserection proves popular, a full new series is likely. If such an event should happen my advice to Doug Naylor is to get a new writing partner. You need some fresh ideas....

Supertoyslast says:

Nine years after Red Dwarf VIII, and the non-appearance of a movie version in the meantime, we finally get a new 3-part story courtesy of the small digital channel Dave. A basic outline of the storyline of Back To Earth Part 1 is as follows:

The mining vessel Red Dwarf. Nine Years Later. Lister's main hobby is inventing schemes to annoy Rimmer. Kryten is taking a holiday in a store cupboard on V Deck. When the Cat reports a sighting of a huge creature in the ship's main water tank, the boys must investigate in order to preserve their water supply. After a brief encounter with the creature in a diving bell, a hologram in the form of the beautiful Katerina Bartikovsky suddenly appears...

The main spoilers for Part 1 are:

***SPOILERS***

- Kochanski is dead, as revealed in a visit to a memorial by Lister. There is no indication of how she died.

- There is no resolution of the cliffhanger at the end of Red Dwarf VIII.

- Rimmer is a hard light hologram. There is no explanation of why he is a hologram again.

- Holly is offline, thanks to Lister having left a bath running and flooding Holly's systems.

***END SPOILERS***

I was worried that this new 3-parter would turn out to be a huge mistake. The good news is that this still has the 'feel' of Red Dwarf. Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten are the same characters that we know and love. The actors turn in good performances, true to their characters as we remember them. (The weakest in this regard was Danny John-Jules, whose Cat seemed just slightly 'off' without a studio audience).

The CG effects range from poor (some strange CG corridors) to pretty good (the memorial in the glass dome jutting out of the side of the ship). And the traditional music cues help to make this feel like 'proper' Red Dwarf.

Unfortunately, the thin budget results in a pretty thin story. Not much at all happens in this first part. There's a creature in the water tank and the boys go and see what it is. Then a new hologram appears with very little explanation, marking a too-sudden shift in the story. That's pretty much it, apart from a sorta-cliffhanger to set up Part 2.

Humour is quite thin on the ground, too. Although I did quite enjoy the diving bell sequence. Characters oblivious to something dramatic behind them is funny, more often than not. Aside from that sequence, the episode plays like an ok installment of Red Dwarf without many jokes. But I will leave you with my favourite of the few which were available:

"In my country, we have a word for people like you."

"In my country, we have several."

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