Red Dwarf X: Trojan

So, Doctor Who has taken a break and Dave has given us new Red Dwarf to help fill the gap.

I used to love Red Dwarf back in the day. I caught it from the middle of the first series (a school friend nagged me to watch it) and I fell in love with it straight away. It was pretty much only that and Blackadder on TV at the time that could make me laugh so hard it hurt, except re-runs of Monty Python. Alas, unlike Blackadder and Monty Python I don't think Red Dwarf has aged at all well. I don't know if it's the production or the humour or the delivery, but I need to be in the right mood to swallow it's crass smugness these days.

When Dave brought the show back in 2009 for the Back To Earth mini-series I watched it out of faithfulness to the original. Alas, it was dreadful - but I think that was as much the style of the production as anything. I caught it again recently and didn't hate it quite so much, but it suffers in the way Series VII did: the programme needs a live audience, it works best when it is obviously staged and performed for laughs. Blackadder was the same - which is why Blackadder Back and Forth in 2000 didn't work either.
For that reason alone I'm glad the long-awaited Red Dwarf film came to nothing in the end, and there are many 1970s sitcoms which transferred to the big screen that would support that viewpoint.

I think the production crew realise this too, because the new Series X has returned to a studio audience format. That's its first big win.

I'll admit I wasn't keen the first time I watched Trojan. I didn't laugh once. But I wasn't sure why and it was clearly miles better than Back To Earth. I could see that it was funny, and not in too dissimilar a way to the old series for it to be a different beast. I don't feel my expectations were unnecessarily high either. I think in retrospect it was because the cast are so much older and I found it distracting, which is quite an unsophisticated and unfair criticism. They're all comfortable, competent performers - even if they look and sound 25 years older than they used to. I think once I'd stopped focusing on this and gave it another chance the second time I watched it I enjoyed it a lot more. I still didn't laugh much, but I smiled a lot and there were a lot of gags and humorous moments. My biggest 'smile' moments were Kryten deleting information, Rimmer's frustration at everyone else knowing the Swedish moose story and the gurning pauses - which is always a crowd-pleaser if done well as here.

This was very much a Rimmer episode and Chris Barrie applied himself very well. Lister, Cat and Kryten had plenty to do, but they were very much in supporting roles. I don't think it offered anything new though. The crew meet another vessel which turns out to have a survivor and a psychotic female aboard. Surprise surprise. It was a fun twist that Rimmer's brother was just as much a failure as him but in the grand scheme of things this episode was just re-treading the kind of ground Series IV & V had walked years ago.

I'd like to know what's happened to Holly. He/she/it wasn't in Back To Earth either. The character had become a bit stale and limited by Series V, as the same gags were rolled out week on week, but if used properly the ship's computer should be a useful and amusing tool at least.

One aspect that surprised me was the duration. Being made by Dave, as a commercial channel, I expected it to comprise the standard two twelve minute parts for a half hour slot with ad breaks. But no, it comes in at a standard BBC half hour, running to 40 minutes with adverts. Nice one Dave!

It was a solid, if not overwhelming start. If it's the best the series has to offer then it won't be great, but if it's started off firing at mid-range and gets better then there'll be plenty of happy fans out there I'm sure. I'll be watching again next week.