||SPOILERS|| Smeg. Doug Naylor scratches a particularly irritating Blade Runner itch (references to which may be lost on younger fans), then restages the twist ending to Series V's "Back To Reality". The clue was there: he only changed one word in the title.While I'm glad the meta-comedy was rightly flushed away (no matter how self-cannibalizing the resolution), this was still a pretty tragic episode that took us through a range of emotions: tedium, embarrassment, bewilderment, disappointment, and finally annoyance. Laughter was never really on the agenda, as the characters went through predictably awful situations in Coronation Street (the "northern accents" in The Kabin; Kryten mistaking a postbox for a droid), they met the real Craig Charles in the Rovers Return (passable, but unfunny), then the whole thing went nuts with the Blade Runner allusions as their Creator (living in a futuristic London skyscraper with boggleheaded Rimmer slaves!) was revealed to be closely modelled on the same from Ridley Scott's masterpiece...
After a bit of unfunny japery once The Creator had been beaten, leaving Lister in control of their destiny on a typewriter, they sudden twigged that the whole metaphysical crisis was just the result of the watery leviathan from Part 1 – revealed to be a female "despair squid" that incapacitates its prey by giving them happy hallucinations, unlike the male of the species. Only, y'know, there wasn't actually much to be happy about when you discover you're a fictional TV character...
Krysten, Cat and Rimmer make a choice to return to normal reality, but Lister decides to stay behind to be with an imaginery Kochanski (Chloe Annett, making a surprise return), before the words of those schoolkids on the bus gives Lister the resolve to face reality back aboard Red Dwarf. If a Series IX is forthcoming, Lister will be chasing his girlfriend Kochanski across space in similar fashion to how the crew chased the stolen Red Dwarf back in Series VI.
So, quite a mess, it has to be said. The resolution would have been more palatable if it hadn't been a retread of one of Red Dwarf's finest hours, the Blade Runner tomfoolery just got tiring, and there was even less laughs in Part 3 than the preceding installments put together. I guess some will chalk these Easter specials up as frivolous nonsense to be taken lightly, as its merrily referenced past Red Dwarf glories (Rimmerworld, Rachel and the puncture repair kit, "I'm gonna eat you little fishie..."), but it could have been a great deal more. They had the budget, they had the time, they had the cast, they had fan goodwill, they had a channel's support... they just didn't have a funny script.
12 April 2009
Dave, 9pm
Writer & Director: Doug Naylor
Cast: Craig Charles (Lister), Chris Barrie (Rimmer), Robert Llewellyn (Kryten), Danny John-Jules (Cat), Richard O'Callaghan (The Creator) & Chloe Annett (Kochanski)
