Customer Reviews

Red Dwarf: Series II

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

After watching the first season of Red Dwarf, I wasn't expecting very much from the second season. I figured it'd be more of the same...cheap sets, the slob and the neat freak, and some crazy cross between James Brown and a feline bouncing around on screen.

I was right...it's all that and more. But I was wrong to think it would be boring. The show actually takes the time to explore the characters and really get into their heads. In season 2, the show hits its stride.

David Lister (Craig Charles) is still Lister, but he's more subdued. Someone finally realized that watching a slob be a slob is funny in small doses. Which is good, because Lister got on my nerves after awhile. More screen time is given to Arnold Judas Rimmer (Chris Barrie), the real star of the show. It's easy to figure out why Lister is a pig, but the uptight Rimmer is much more intriguing. We delve into his neuroses as well as his past. And Cat (Danny John-Jules) exists primarily as Lister's foil. His quieter screen presence helps let the show be funny rather than distracting.

It is in this season that we first meet Kryten the android (David Ross), a manservant who isn't too good at determining the liveliness of his hosts. We learn about Lister's love life, the death of Rimmer's father (a touching scene that's played straight even though everyone's long dead anyway), watch the blokes play in a virtual reality game, mess with time travel, and enter a parallel universe where women rule.

I can't harp on this point enough: a lot of other science fiction shows ripped off Red Dwarf. Lister gets pregnant by a female, just like Charles Tucker in "Unexpected" on Star Trek: Enterprise. The holographic game is just like the movie eXistenz, right down to the "are we still in the game" twist. And don't even get me started on the time travel plot.

Red Dwarf isn't afraid to mess with its characters something serious. Lister feels bad for Rimmer's lack of a love life, so he transplants a few months of his own romance into the hologram's memory. What a mind-screw that is! Speaking of messing with their minds, Holly at one point decides to play the meanest practical joke in history. Only Red Dwarf has the courage to pull off entire episodes that are fake or inconclusive.

Indeed, Red Dwarf often ends without any solid conclusion. Characters wander off into the bowels of the city (where the heck DID that android go?) and storylines are dropped, only to be picked up in later episodes. Having been exposed the first two seasons of Red Dwarf for the first time ever, I'm looking forward to the show's evolution.

It may be wacky, it may sometimes not make sense, but Red Dwarf's influence on science fiction should not be underestimated. All that, and it's really funny too.

...and its about time. Join the continuing adventures of the crew of the Red Dwarf; Dave Lister (the ship screwball and slacker and the last human being alive), "Holly" (the ships computer), Arnold J. Rimmer(a holographic representation of Lister's deceased bunkmate), and "Cat" ( a humanoid who has 'evolved' from Lister's cat while he was in stasis for 3 million years) as they meet "Kryten", an android who will join the ship as a regular crewmember in season 3, survive a stasis leak, and travel to an alternate universe!!

Seasons 1 and 2 are available Feb 25th 2003, and two seasons will be released every ensuing February until all eight seasons have been released.

This is the funniest television program ever made in my opinion, and I am sure you will enjoy it!!!

I had been hearing incredible things about RED DWARF for years and was dearly disappointed watching Season One. I found the production to be really low quality, the cast to be far too male-dominated, and the writing to be less than splendid.

In Season Two the cast remained a bit too all-male for my taste, but the production improved through an obviously improved budget, and the writing seems to find its groove somewhat. The interaction between the main characters improved, with the change in dynamic between Rimmer and Lister improving markedly. In Season One every episode was highlighted by their unmasked dislike of each other. That got old quick. In Season Two they aren't exactly bosom buddies, but the constantly negativity lessened.

I haven't given up on the series yet. I've asked around on several boards and everyone assures me that the series gets a lot better after Season Two. I hope so. I started watching this in part because of a need to watch all major TV series with a robotic character. We saw him for one episode in Season Two and I know that he comes on board full time in Season Three. But I also wanted to see it because I'm interested in quality TV. Hopefully it will get better in Season Three, but that won't retroactively make the first two seasons better. But it is improving. If we could do fractions, I would have given Season One a 2.5 rating while Season Two a 3.2. Hopefully Season Three will get a 4.0.

For budget reasons, the first season was limited to events on the ship. Now that the Red Dwarf model is built, money can be spent on other things like planet shots and adding color to the ship's set. The plots are still like a sitcom, but the scripts are a little more developed this time. There will be radical changes in the next season so don't get used to this as it is.

This DVD has one of the best commentaries I've ever heard. I love hearing the actors comment on the show.

This set also has the best extras, included on a second DVD. It has some of the same type of things the first one had like smeg-ups (bloopers), deleted scenes, and photos. It has the complete Tongue-Tied performance. The A-Z Documentary is interesting and has some great moments. I'm not sure why the Daleks appear, but you do hear comments from various actors and well-known people - Patrick Stewart, Stephen Hawking. The "Smeghead" segment is great!!! ...especially when a young fan is heard asking what "smeg" means. The word remains undefined although most of us can probably guess the meaning.

The A-Z Documentary and Alternative Personalities offers some insight into what to expect in the future seasons.

The follow up season to Red Dwarf. Still very strong, though oddly, I seem to prefer the stuff that the writers didn't like about Series 1 and 2, as I love the emphasis on Red Dwarf.

Stasis Leak - great episodes about time, and you can tell the difference in British TV with the man's bum clearly shown in the shower scene. Never would have happened in the US! A good storyline abandoned in the future.

Making Queeg - a real Holly stand-out episode. This one shows why I missed Norman Lovett with the Holly change later.

Kryten - actually one of my least favorite episodes. I like the character much more when he returns later.

The finale is wonderful,with a wonderful cliff hanger - another good storyline sadly abandoned for Series 3.

The crew of the Red Dwarf are back. Dave Lister last man alive. Arnold Rimmer ships hologram and all around smeg head. The Cat and with the universe largest wardrobe known to mankind. And Holly ships computer and just a little bit insanse as well.
This time around the encounter the cleaning mechanoid Kryten and save it from a downed ship whose crew have been deal of hundreds of years. The crew gets an unexpcted mail pod with all sorts of letters and a game inside called "Better then Life" and they get to enjoy everything it has to offer. Its Rimmers death day an to celebrate the crew parties hard only to wake up the next day and not recall what they did. A strange termporal event allows the crew to travel back three million years before the disaster and change thier future. Holly is totally losing it and the backup A.I. Queeg has taken over. Holly has created the first ever parrelle device and tests it out while the crew gets in touch with thier feminie side. All this plus much more laughter and hijinks for those on board. So check out Series Two today.

It's one of the classics a combination of the best bits of the Classic 1st series and the Brilliant 5th series. If its not the best series it's one of the best. The characters are brilliant and at there best and it is worth having a laugh at the 1st ever Kryton, he's not as funny as there one we all know and love but he is still funny and his head is great.
Brilliant series from a brilliant programme

Picking up where the first season left off, the mining ship Red Dwarf is lost in space, three million years from Earth, the crew killed in a radiation leak. The only survivor of the crew is Dave Lister, who was in suspended animation during the incident. He fellow crewmembers are a creature that evolved from the ship's cat, the Red Dwarf's increasingly eccentric AI Holly, and a computer-generated holographic representation of Lister's dead bunk-mate, Arnold Rimmer.

After an uneven first season, Red Dwarf returned for its second just a few months later in 1988, and it feels almost like a different show. The writers and actors are all much more confident and relaxed, there are more effects shots and some location shooting and the show's characterisation really kicks in this year with a more thorough exploration of the characters and what makes them tick then we saw in the first year. There's also a subtle widening of the series' scope, with the introduction of the idea that there are other wrecked spacecraft out there they can loot and also the first appearance of several key ideas, such as parallel universes and advanced virtual reality systems, all of which allows for other characters to appear without violating the core concept at the heart of the show (four guys marooned in deep space).

The first episode, Kryten, sets the scene for this new era in style. The crew receive a distress call from the Nova 5, which has crashed on a nearby moon leaving only three injured female crewmembers and their service mechanoid, Kryten. The crew manfully come to the rescue only to find that Kryten is a bit loopy and hadn't realised that the 'injured' female crewmembers were actually dead. They rescue the distressed robot and Rimmer sets him to work, to Lister's annoyance and the latter sets about teaching Kryten how to rebel (mostly by making him watch Marlon Brando movies). This is a great episode with some genuinely brilliant moments of comedy and a sterling guest performance by David Ross as Kryten. Fan reaction to Kryten was so positive that he was brought back as a regular, with a change of actor, the following year.

Better Than Life sees the crew receive a mail pod from Earth (three million years being about the average delivery time for second-class post) including various movies, letters and video games. Rimmer learns that his father is dead - well, he already knew that, but getting a letter about it brings it home - and the crew decide to check out the VR game 'Better Than Life', which makes all your deepest fantasies and desires come true. The only problem is that it's not really meant to be played by someone with as many emotional insecurities and hang-ups as Rimmer. Hilarity results.

Thanks for the Memory is one of the show's most underrated episodes. The crew wake up to discover the last four days have gone missing, and they have no memory of how Lister and the Cat broke their legs or what has happened to the ship's black box. This sets up a clever mystery which leads to a surprisingly emotional resolution. This and the preceding episode do a fantastic job of exploring Rimmer's character and bringing some much-needed depth and sympathy to his role. They're also early examples of episodes which feel exhausting, as the writers cram so many ideas and so much plot into the episodes that they feel much longer than their 30-minute run time.

Stasis Leak is a bit of an oddity. The premise that the crew have found a rent in space/time which allows them to travel back to three weeks before the accident is solid, but oddly no-one suggests trying to avert the accident or even just using the rent to return to their original time, lay low for three weeks, and then return home to Earth once the events of the series have been set in motion (thus preserving continuity). Instead we just get a storyline in which Lister tries to get Kochanski to evade accident and Rimmer tries to save himself. There are some funny elements to the episode and some great lines, but it's an episode where the ideas don't quite gel together satisfyingly (not to mention the sins it commits against the series' timeline, but seriously, that's not something you should be worrying about as a viewer of Red Dwarf).

Queeg is a rare episode (one of only two in the whole series) that focuses on Holly. Holly's increasingly erratic behaviour sees him replaced by Red Dwarf's hitherto unknown emergency backup computer, Queeg 500. Queeg rules the ship with an iron fist, forcing Cat and Lister to work for food and almost killing Rimmer by sending him for marathons around the ship. Eventually, Holly (relegated to a job as night watchman) attempts to retake power, with unexpected results. It's a strong episode that plays on Norman Lovett's under-utilised comic talents.

Parallel Universe sees the Dwarf accidentally teleported into a neighbouring universe which is exactly the same as ours except it is more 'female-oriented' (although this is apparently not quite accurate since the masculinist movement of the 1960s, spearheaded by Jeremy Greer's The Male Eunuch and men burning their jockstraps). Cue some rather obvious gags, but there's a great moment when Rimmer's hitherto disgraceful attitude towards women is turned against him. In a great continuity nod, there's a cliffhanger ending that also addresses the question from Season I about how Lister is supposed to have children in the future with no women on board.

Season II represents a significant improvement in quality over the first year. Performances are stronger, production values (whilst still not great) are much-improved and the scope of the show is opening up. The strongest moments, though, are probably the discussions between Lister and Rimmer about such things as Rimmer's father, Lister's ex-girlfriend and the perils of tax evasion and the dangers of AI-controlled shoes. However, the sets are still a bit cardboard and unconvincing, and the quality of the guest stars is a bit mixed.

Red Dwarf: Season II (****½) is vastly improved over the first season and sees the series becoming a genuinely funny and entertaining show with moments of real drama and pathos as well. It is available now on DVD in the UK and USA.

Red Dwarf: Series 2
Just as funny as Series I. It's slightly different than the version on VCR tape, so even if you have that you'll find things you've never seen before.

The last season/series is nearly the best. If you like British silly sci-fi comedy, you will love this series! The early and the later seasons were the best. Some of the middle seasons had good episodes, but not all of episodes were good. I own all of the series and can't wait for the movie.