Customer Reviews

Red Dwarf: Series III

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

 

 

The Show: Series 3 is one of the all-out funniest Red Dwarf series, without becoming too dumb. Every episode in this series is a classic. I remember seeing Backwards for the first time back in 1996 and not being able to stop laughing. It still cracks me up today. Marooned injects some real character development for Rimmer and Lister, and still manages to be hilarious. Polymorph needs no introduction. Timeslides is possibly my favorite though. The sets are all-new, and COLOR if you can imagine, and two of the episodes even have location shoots.
The DVD: Fan-smegging tastic. Quality has not dropped. The sound and video are just plain awesome, well, at least compared to seeing it on broadcast television. The extras just keep getting better every series. As always, commentaries are great, as are the outtakes. Watching the Backwards episode forwards...well its an interesting idea lol. If not just to hear what the pub owner says (one of the greatest RD in-jokes).
Buy this DVD!

I've been watching the Red Dwarf series in order, which means I'm not getting quite the same effect as if I had viewed the series on television. So I saw Season Three a week after viewing Season Two. I imagine TV series hold up much better when they're not viewed back-to-back.

Season Three is a complete reboot of Red Dwarf, in the same way that Alias reshuffled its characters but kept the show's premise the same. So what happened? You can find out if you slow the DVD down to read the Star Wars-like credits.

We last left Season Two with Dave Lister (Craig Charles) discovering that he had two children. For the first Season Lister figured he met a great bird (to use Brit slang) eventually, even though he was on a massive ship (Red Dwarf) with no other companions except a humanoid cat (Danny John-Jules) and a hologram (Rimmer played by Chris Barrie). Lister was in for a big surprise when it turns out that it was he who got pregnant, by sleeping with a female version of himself in a reverse universe where women impregnate men. So the twins Lister saw in a picture in one of the earlier episodes were indeed his.

Season Three explains that they kids grow to maturity due to the difference in parallel universes and that eventually Lister drops them off in their mother's parallel universe. Poof! No more twins/Lister pregnant plot.

Holly (Normal Lovett), the monotone droning computer who runs Red Dwarf has changed his appearance. Strangely, he changes it to the female computer he encountered in the parallel universe. Why the creators chose to do this is anyone's guess, but we're led to believe it's because Holly really, really liked the other computer. The new Holly (Hattie Hayridge) isn't so much a deadpan genius as a dithering bimbo with a wide-eyed, vacuous stare. No more "is Holly insane?" plot.

The android Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) that was in one episode in Season Two crashes into a planet. The Red Dwarf crew rescues and reconstructs him, which explains why he looks different. Remember how Kryten had gotten over his subservient attitude and drove off in biker leathers? That plot's over too.

In fact, the only characters that remain the same are Rimmer, Lister, and Cat. Rimmer's still annoying, although less antagonistic than before. Lister's still a slob. And Cat's still Prince with fangs.

When Red Dwarf is funny, it's side-splittingly funny. But those moments take a longer build up. In essence, there are better jokes in Season Three, but there aren't as many. A lot of time is spent developing characters and plots.

Unfortunately, there's increasingly less attention paid to any sort of internal logic to the show. There are a myriad of problems with the Backwards episode, where everyone on Earth does everything backwards (but it only sporadically affects the crew). Rimmer, the hologram who cannot physically interact with anything, increasingly seems to be able to touch and smell, get drunk, and run away in fear from a killer android. At one point, Rimmer even points out how badly Lister smells and then claims he can't smell anything in the very next episode.

There's a very significant shift in the show's focus, from just going for laughs to going for character development and popular science fiction movie references. There are better special effects and more obvious plots. Whereas the first two seasons of Red Dwarf were trailblazing forays because the show seemed innocently unaware of the rest of the science fiction genre, the third season is painfully aware of every movie trope, from the Star Wars scrolling text introduction to an alien that looks like an Alien to a big killer android named Hudson.

The show suffers a bit as a result. Red Dwarf simply didn't have the budget to start spoofing Aliens or any other science fiction show for that matter, and I ended up longing for more low-budget comedy rather than low-budget action. Kryten is a great addition to the crew, but at the sacrifice of Holly, who doesn't seem to have much to say.

Perhaps most unbelievable is that the characters violate each other in deeply personal ways that you can't imagine they would forgive: Rimmer takes over Lister's body, abuses it, and when Rimmer takes it back, Lister kidnaps it and abuses it even more. It's nasty stuff, if you think about it, and it makes Rimmer out to be so utterly unlikable that it's difficult to imagine the two trusting each other ever again.

But chances are viewers who watched the show for the first time weren't keeping track from episode to episode. The scriptwriters certainly relied on that fact. There's a price to be paid in the DVD age and attention to detail is one of them.

Funny? Yes. But I can't help but feel that Season Three is a bit of a step down from Season Two, reboot and all.

Red Dwarf is a great comedy series that is a toss up between a sci fi comedy, or a comedy sci fi. For me, it's a comedy set in space, sci fi sounds to geeky to describe this hillarious and long running series.

season 3 is even funnier then season 1 & 2. and has some hillarious and all time great comedy moments. if you cant enjoy Red Dwarf, you must be a smeg head.

- EGGS -

Un-edited Polymorph clip.
On disc 1; Go to the "episode selection" screen. And highlight the `drive room' text. And just wait for about a minute and 20 seconds. You will hear the music change and the polymorph monster will come out and stand in the middle of the menu for a few moments. Press down and you will highlight him. When you highlight him he will turn into a rabbit. Press ok and you will view a scene in polymorph that is en edited. You watch it in its raw form.

Disc 2.
- Animated commentary -
It's not exactly hidden. But, in the Extra feature's menu, Highlight the witches' cone and press down. The display box will show a "?". Click enter and you will be viewing the producers animated commentary that is hidden on each series somewhere.


these seasons keep getting funnier then the previous.

Athough the Series 3 pack has yet to be released, these episodes are available on VHS.

All I can say is that the show gets funnier and funnier, topped, I think, by the new "Kryten."

Kryten rounds out the cast and could probably have starred in his own series! His comedic blurbs are made all the more hilarious by his sometimes misunderstanding of the human psyche.

If you like or love Red Dwarf, this is a "must have!"

Three million years into deep space, the mining ship Red Dwarf continues on its lonely voyage home. With the clearing of the ship's radioactive decks continuing apace, Lister and Rimmer have moved into much nicer officers' quarters and are also now able to use the far superior Starbug-class shuttlecraft, whilst Holly, still besotted with his female counterpart from the parallel universe, has undergone a head-sex change operation. Lister, left pregnant by a liaison with his counterpart from the same parallel universe (different physical laws apply), has given birth to twins but sent them back to their home universe. Finally, the crew have recovered the android Kryten, last seen roaring off into the void on a space-bike, from where he has crashed on an asteroid, and integrated him into the crew.

Pretty much all of the above exposition is crammed into a ten-second, ultra-fast-forwards Star Wars-style text scroll at the start of the third season of Red Dwarf, and is then pretty much forgotten in favour of getting on with some stories. For the third year of the show, creators and writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor came aboard as producers; a new, tighter spending regime was enacted (helped by a modest budget increase) and new effects people, set designers, costume designers and musicians were hired. The character of Kryten was also added to the show permanently, with Robert Llewellyn taking over the role from David Ross, whilst Norman Lovett had departed following dissatisfaction with the length of time it took to get to work every day (he lived in Edinburgh, rehearsals were in London and filming was in Manchester).

In effect, the show had a pretty significant revamp in the third season. The show is somewhat faster-paced, there's more action and special effects and even the more sombre title music (meant to evoke a Silent Running feel to events) has been jazzed up with some guitars and drums. As a statement of intent, it made some old-school fans feel uneasy but at the time it won over a huge new audience and began to take the series to the top of the ratings.

Of course, the fact that the show starts with three sequentially brilliant episodes didn't hurt either. In Backwards Rimmer and Kryten fall through a 'time hole' and crash-land on Earth in the late 20th Century, but a version where time is running backwards. Lister and the Cat arrive to rescue their friends only to find they actually quite like things this way around, despite certain bodily functions being pretty disgusting this way around. Given that the conceptual basis of the episode is pretty straightforward - Naylor and Grant had discovered an editing machine in the BBC which could run tapes backwards, including sound - they make the most of it with some classic gags and some huge laughs. Just don't think too hard about if it makes any sense or not. I also remain convinced that Martin Amis was inspired to write Time's Arrow by this episode. Seriously, at one point Rimmer and Kryten even get into a similar discussion about the morality of WWII going backwards.

Marooned, brought in late in the day to replace another script, is somewhat more modest in scope but is even stronger. It's basically a two-hander, with Lister and Rimmer trapped on Starbug when it crash-lands (this becomes a running gag throughout the series) on an ice planet. Lister has to keep a fire going in order to survive and must also make their meagre food stores (a tube of Bonjella gum ointment, a Pot Noodle, a packet of crisps and a tin of dog food) last as long as possible. It's a brilliantly-written, expertly-acted episode (the two actors have occasionally mused doing it as a stage play) about two people who don't particularly like one another having to help each other survive a difficult situation.

Polymorph is much more overtly bonkers. A genetically-engineered lifeform (GELF) known as a polymorph has gotten loose on the ship. This creature has the ability to take on any shape or form to provoke an emotional reaction in its prey, and can then suck out that emotion to feast on it. Needless to say, the dysfunctional, psychologically dubious and highly erratic crew of Red Dwarf proves a tempting meal. This is another superb episode driven by great performances from the regulars who, heralding the beginning of another recurring trope of the series, have to play alternate versions of themselves when certain emotions are removed. The highlight is a scene where Lister is almost killed by the polymorph disguised as a psychotic kebab. Another classic sequence sees the newly-pacifistic Rimmer declaring the formation of the Committee for the Liberation and Integration of Terrifying Organisms and their Rehabilitation Into Society to deal with the creature, only to run into acronym problems.

After those three episodes, the rest of the season is less overtly brilliant, but still enjoyable. In Bodyswap Lister and Rimmer discover they can swap bodies, providing Rimmer with the first chance since his death to taste, smell and feel. Rimmer's initial plan to borrow Lister's body to get it in shape goes out the window and he ends up porking out, sparking a battle for control of Lister's body. Timeslides ("Tonight's Special Guest Star: Adolf Hitler as Himself,") sees mutated developing fluid allowing the crew to travel into photographs and thus back in time. As a result Lister tries to change his past so he never ends up on Red Dwarf, but this only causes more problems. Finally, in The Last Day Kryten's in-built expiry disc kicks in, triggered by the imminent arrival of his replacement model, Hudzen 10, and the crew have to decide how to deal with the new arrival.

The third season of Red Dwarf is, compared to its two forebears, brighter, more colourful, funnier and more varied. More action takes place off the ship, various story devices are employed to bring in other characters and the special effect and model work is exemplary, and there's a lot more of it (Starbug crash-lands in three separate episodes). There's even some primitive CGI (this season was filmed in 1989) doing the rounds. The episodes are indeed faster-paced, but they don't really sacrifice the two-hander comedy exchanges either as some fans later complained (Marooned is basically nothing other than a 30-minute-long comedy double-act and brilliant for it), although the focus does move away from the Lister/Rimmer relationship and features more scenes of them paired up with other characters.

There are a couple of problems, and they are problems that later episodes also have to deal with. The introduction of Kryten as a regular is a great idea, giving the writers a whole new character to explore, but his role as a mechanoid means that he seems to get all the exposition and explanation-based dialogue that used to go to Holly. The result is a notable drop in material, dialogue and screen time for the new Holly, played excellently by stand-up comic Hattie Hayridge. Introducing the first regular female role on the series and promptly giving her little to do does not send out a great message, although she does get some good material as the series progresses. There just isn't very much of it. This also ties into the second problem, namely that the Cat's role is also slightly reduced to make way for Kryten, and it's quite some time (until Season 6, in fact) until he gets a new role that gives him more to do in the series.

These problems cannot really challenge the sheer quality of the scripts, the hugely-improved production values and the fact that the writers and actors were on top of their game in this season. Red Dwarf: Season III (*****) is one of the series' finest hours, and worth checking out even if earlier episodes didn't do much for you.

A previous reviewer noted that in season 3 Red Dwarf (RD) becomes more about showing and not telling humor. And that showing is done thru parodoxical references and analogies to popular science fiction of mid the 1990's. I agree, but it think this upgrade or "re-boot" as he said works in favor of the show. Had the show not been re-vamped we would've been complaining about tired settings and you could only have so much actionless-Blackadder-like witty dialogue on a sci-fi parody show before you go nuts.

In doing this "re-boot", RD3 shifts away from the BlackAdder style dialogue humor (where characters mulled around in small stage/space and traded witty sentences) to physical humor like the Polymorph episode, one of the funniest RD episodes ever.

Also the setting is upgraded from the prison gray dungeon of the engineer quarters where Lister and Rimmer previously shared to a glowing soft white (much more modern science-fiction like) setting (which I assumed had to with the eventual decontamination of the upper and more posh science officers' decks and Lister finally being able safely to move in, in RD3 you also see more parts of the ship we never seen before which I also figured had to do with the decontamination progress that was mention once by Holly in season 1, episode 1).
This change of scene helps the plots which becomes more science based, it also gives more space for the physical humor to take place.
The addition of Kryten (finally) adds so much to the show, he is the central voice and vehicle for what the show wants to express whenever it parodies and ridicules popular science fiction. Kryten also adds to the physical humor that is now a main part of what makes us now laugh at RD.

During RD3 we also see some more mortality to the situations. Lister almost dies in every episode, Holly is remarked as being senile after 3 million years, the rest ship is obviously getting old. And getting back home is no longer the main goal of any of these episodes.
Its as if the crew has made home in space and lost all hope for returning to earth. This was a subtle digression in RD3. The show abrubtly shifts from this as a goal and now focuses on the little details that keeps our crew busy with dimensions and aliens and keeps us laughing.

A flaw with me was the over abundance of "curry/vindaloo" related jokes. Also Cat's outrageous unpredictable personality that was a very funny part of the show is tamed. Also for some reason Cat's wit and intellegence is somehow absent. During the earlier seasons Cat was ignorant (or rather innocent and oblivious-like a young child), but still cunning enough to do his own thing. Now in RD3 Cat's usual witty dialogue and carefree personality is trimmed down to compliment the physical humor. I wanted more Cat in RD3. :-(

BOTTOM LINE: Another vital DVD for any collector or anyone into sci-fi that wants superior entertainment to anything else on TV today.

Season three of Red Dwarf marked a major change in direction for the show introducing us to Kryten played by Robert Llewellyn and a new Holly played by Hattie Hayridge. Series three is one of my personal favourites, every episode is hilarious, in particular 'Marooned' which finds Lister and Rimmer stranded on Starbug and 'Polymorph' which plays out like a comedy version of aliens. There really is nothing bad i can say about this wonderful series (appart from Seasons 7 & 8 of course) and the DVD's are excelent. The extras on offer here include an Original Documentary 'All Change' which features cast and crew interviews. There are also Deleted Scenes, Raw FX Footage, Trailers and of course the Smeg-Ups. Overall this is another excelent Red Dwarf 2 disc set. Buy it now and if you don't then your a Smeg-Head.

If seasons 1 and 2 of this fantasticly written, orginal series were good, season three is...well, think of a good word for even better and plug it in.
In the orginal first two seasons the gags were based mostly on dialouge. While they were still hysterical, season three can bost more action-based and even funnier gags, such as the killer-kebab.
Plus the dialouge is still up to its old standards, anything but shoddy. The only dissapointing thing about this season is that the actor who plays Holly leaves (I belive he quit because they weren't paying him as much as the others)and is replaced by the actress who
played "Hilly" in the plaralell universe. I'm sorry, but she just doesn't have the same comedic air as the "original Holly".
Other than that, the show only gets better. And the trend continues with Season four.

I have seen all 8 series to date and the high comedic point of Red Dwarf is probably Red Dwarf III, in my opinion, with the most hilarious episode ever, 'Polymorph'. Not a minute of comic potential is wasted. The Cat has one of his finest comic moments, incredulous as Lister attempts to serve him a three course meal from a range of sterilised surgical equipment. The juxtaposition between Rimmer's new-found reasonableness ('Just because it's an armour-plated alien killing machine that salivates unspeakable slobber doesn't mean it's a bad person.' 'Now call it extreme if you like but I propose we hit it hard, and hit it fast, with a major and I mean major, leaflet campaign') and Lister's total lack of fear is brilliant.

'Marooned', to borrow a phrase from Craig Brown about Peter Cook, might have been seen as the equal of Pinter or Beckett, perhaps their superior, if it wasn't quite so funny. Rimmer's face, immobile as he watches Lister pick up his guitar, followed by the shot of Rimmer through the guitar-shaped hole in his priceless trunk, is brilliant.

'Backwards' is one of the few episodes partly based on Earth, this time. However, it raises many unanswered questions. The crew seem to conform to the same backwards laws of causality as everyone else (i.e. Lister starts off with broken ribs that become healed.) However, are the inhabitants of the planet experiencing life just as the crew do- backwards? If so, this means that the consequences of an action happen before the action itself does. This removes free will. Even if the crew have the illusion that they have free will, their decisions will still ultimately end up with Lister's broken ribs being 'unbroken'.

Bodyswap is the episode I remember most of the other three, an excellent example of the antagonism between Rimmer and Lister.
If I was making a top ten list of Red Dwarf episodes, Polymorph and Marooned would certainly be there and I would definitely consider Backwards and Bodyswap.

Big changes in the look of RD have generally happened after every two series, although smaller changes have still happened between each series. Episodes such as 'Polymorph', which seems to be partly a pastiche on Alien, saw RD embrace popular sci-fi as much as high sci-fi concepts. The mood and atmosphere of the show would become increasingly accomplished, particularly from series 5 onwards.

I couldn't purchase these titles anywhere. For some reason they were unavailable and I wanted them for a gift. Fabulous.