Are you sure Sir? It does mean changing the bulb

The leaves at my local leisure centre

I feel like I’m spinning out of control (the spinning class was horrendous by the way, thanks for asking).  It’s Autumn, my favourite time of the year.  The leaves are changing colour, the nights are drawing in, I’ve dug out my favourite jumper and thick bed socks and my fingers are hovering over the thermostat ready to put the heating on. 

It’s also time for all the good television to come on.  New series’ are springing up everywhere; Modern Family, Spy, The Walking Dead (more news coming next week), Cuckoo, Red Dwarf X...

Last night, the second episode of Red Dwarf X aired.  The first episode is nerve wracking, the second episode is only slightly less nerve wracking.  Will it still be funny?  Will all of the effort have been put into the first episode and the other episodes ignored?

The second episode featured time travel, the father and son relationship and a new ships computer.  It was a full bodied episode.

There were fewer laugh out loud moments, in fact I think I only laughed out loud once (the guitar moment was brilliant) but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t enjoy it.

I am delighted to say that I didn’t cringe as much.  Lister still feels a bit forced, as does the dialogue between him and the Cat but this seemed to ease as time went on.  It made me think about the first series and how effortless Dave Lister was back then.  I wondered if our original Lister would ever return but by the end of this episode Lister felt a lot more comfortable.  The issue here is that some of Lister’s characteristics have been muddled, or temporarily lost.  Lister is intelligent, he just chooses not to use it, he’s a good man and quick witted, he’s kind, he enjoys annoying Rimmer and he’s a slob. As Red Dwarf has evolved Lister has become less about the intelligence and frustration and more about the slobbiness.  This episode showed a new insight into that lost intelligence and quick wit.  Welcome back Lister, I hope you’re back to stay.

Rimmer is still my favourite character.  He remains to be the most effortless character and we had a good reminder of his character, his poor technician skills and taste in women.   By the way, does anyone know what that strange noise business at the beginning of the episode was about?

The Cat is still very forced, although I hope he will soften as time goes on.  Kryten, although spending a lot of time with Rimmer in this episode, also has his own storyline with the Cat featuring Chinese Whispers which promised to be very funny.  Sadly this seemed to dissipate into forced and silly gags and was lost in the climax.

In this episode, Kryten and Rimmer install a new computer, Pree, who has predictive powers.  These predictive powers can become very complicated, as with time travel, and here is an episode that features both!  This means that the ending is questionable.  It felt rushed.  I understand that they are near death and in a panic but it felt that the magic was lost because of this.   I found myself waiting for the ‘are you sure sir?  It does mean changing the bulb’ moment but none was forthcoming.  Not only should Pree have known what Lister did before he did it, but even if we ignore that fact his details were not with the medi bot at that time (were they?) so he still didn’t count as a crew member as he had no way of escaping to complete these details.

 

Don’t get me started on the medi bot.  Utterly terrifying!  I miss the old Red Dwarf ship, I miss the scutters and I miss Holly but I don’t miss them enough for it to ruin my enjoyment of the show.  After having a sneak peak of the third episode, I’m really looking forward to it.

So great television has returned to our screens, the day job has gotten very busy as the summer is now definitely over and I have more writing projects on now than ever before.  Something might have to give...