Red Dwarf X: The Beginning

'I challenge you to a duel across time and space!'

This series has ended on a real high, the kind of high that makes you hope that Dave commissions Red Dwarf XI immediately. Thankfully episode 6, The Beginning, was just as strong, funny and consistent as the previous week's Dear Dave.

OK, so we're back in Blade Runner territory, dealing with rogue simulants, but like last week's mail pod this is an acceptable recurrence: we know they occupy the area of space Red Dwarf is travelling through - so the series set itself up a long time ago for repeat confrontations. Here the rogue simulants are humorously a bit crap and camp, and less psychotic - which adds interest to them. We'd get bored if they were the same each time, after all. My only criticism (and this is probably just personal taste) was that I felt Gary Cady's Dominator Zlurth was slightly under-played and he could have cranked and camped it up a notch.

I loved the Star Wars homages - they weren't the 'nod to camera' heavy-handed references like you get in The Simpsons or Family Guy (not including their Star Wars Specials, of course!), they were there if you wanted them and they didn't make or break any scenes. I doubt you can do a spaceship hiding in an asteroid or a hologrammatic personal message these days without a large section of the audience thinking of Star Wars, so it's best to just embrace it. But it was difficult to tell if the laughter accompanying the line 'I'm not your father' was more for the sentiment or for the inversion of the Star Wars quote.

Possibly the best aspect of the episode, though, was Hogey the Roguey. What a guy, and what a performance from Richard O'Callaghan - miles away from Bertram Muffet, his clumsy romantic lead in Carry On Loving years ago.
In many ways Hogey is such an obvious comedy sci-fi character that it's amazing he's not appeared here before. And the gags worked so much better with us not being privy to the back story (unlike, I feel, the poker game with the BEGGs in Entangled). A crap, annoying, Hispanic cyborg with a ridiculous comb-over who is desperate to ease the boredom of his existence with honourable challenges is the perfect accompaniment to the Red Dwarf crew. Now we've met him, of course, and he's worked really well I fully expect him to appear again - only hopefully not as much as the over-used Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibbley crowd-pleasers of earlier series.

Will Rimmer's parentage situation change him in the future if the series returns? I doubt it. Nor should it. The dynamic is settled and works as it is. Was the Cat's psychoanalysis of Rimmer shoe-horned in? Possibly, but he occasionally shows moments of insight anyway, so it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination here. Plus he was playing the string on a stick game at the same time and that was a nice moment of Cat charm.

On the whole there's been little to compromise the visual impact of the series. I thought the BEGGs looked awful and Red Dwarf's drive room is a bit cramped, but otherwise everything's been fine. Maybe too much of the budget had to go on the space battle here, because the crew descending through the floor with Hogey's molecular destabiliser gun and the missiles passing through Blue Midget's bridge were less than convincing, which was a shame. Blue Midget's bridge was very similar to the Dwarf's drive room (same set redressed? Would make sense!) so again you had the crew tapping away on small keyboards at an awkward angle (they'd never be DDA compliant!) - seemingly for the Cat so that he didn't mask the camera's view of the rear of the cockpit. Bit of bad design planning there, methinks...

Overall, though, I think what marked out this episode, like last week's, was that there was just enough going on for it to have pace and energy throughout, but not so much that it had to compromise itself or cut corners. It had time for poignancy, humour and character. It could develop the villains sufficiently and most importantly there were some great gags along the way.

I'm also filled with hope for a further series because they didn't end on a cliff hanger where they could, if need be, end the series. If it did end here you'd know that they were just going to carry on as they have been, with wacky adventures. I hope, though, that we get to join them on those.

I was unsure before the series started. Back To Earth in 2009 was not an auspicious continuation of the original series, and if that was the template for things to come then I would struggle to remain a fan of the show. Also Dave (and the other UK Gold-type channels) tend to over-hype their own programmes and I get worried I've already heard all the best gags in something when I've seen the same trailer umpteen times. I think Red Dwarf X has overcome all this and it's been a solid series on the whole - not perfect by any means, but enjoyable and with some classic moments along the way. Personally I don't think we should demand any more than that. Get the basics right and anything extra special is a bonus in my view.

P.S. all the way through this series I've avoided the question of Rimmer's continuity. Is he the same Rimmer that went off to be Ace Rimmer in Series VII? He seems to be the same. In Series VIII he was human again. I know all the crew had died again at the end of that series though. I think it's best not to ponder on that. Red Dwarf, like many TV sitcoms, is not a series that rewards scrutiny of continuity. I'm happy to just watch it and love it for what it is...