Okay, time for season 2 of Red Dwarf. Admittedly, it was another silly series, but overall was pretty good. And we can get to the series without me having to bog this down with the character summaries. So, with that, let’s get to the show.
This series begins with “Kryten”. The episode begins with the group receiving a distress call from a ship, the Nova 5, which is crashed, and are promised 3 women who haven’t seen a man in years. However, their service droid, the titular Kryten, has been in denial of their death for years and they are nothing but bones in wigs. They take Kryten back to the ship where Lister aids him in breaking his programming and he leaves on Lister’s space bike. He’ll return next season though. The episode is overall, pretty good. It’s one of Series II’s best.
The next episode is “Better Than Life”. The episode begins with the mailpod arriving and Rimmer learning that he owes taxes and that his father is dead. Rimmer is sad despite the fact that everyone has been dead for 3 million years. They find a VR game in the pod, the titular “Better Than Life” and they play it, living out their wildest fantasies. Rimmer’s diseased brain breaks it when Cat makes Rimmer’s Dad call him a smeghead. The episode ends with them escaping the game, and yell at Rimmer for breaking the game, but they haven’t escaped and Rimmer gets his hand smashed by tax collectors. This one is good, although after reading the novels it gets sort of scarier, knowing what the novel’s version of the game did to you.
The next episode is “Thanks for the Memory”. I warn you, this is not a strong episode. Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Holly awake to discover that they have lost four years of memories, so they search out the black box and watch the past 4 days as it happened. Rimmer laments that he has never had a love, so Lister gives him the memory of one of Lister’s old girlfriends. That causes them to erase the memory of the past 4 days because Rimmer can’t stand knowing that the woman “he” loved, actually loved Lister. So they erase their memories. And the episode comes to a close.
Next is “Stasis Leak” which is one of my personal favorites of this season. They find a rip in time and discover that they can use it to go back and make sure that one person gets in the spare stasis booth to save their life. Rimmer insists that it be him, but Lister wants is to be Kochanski. They go back and by coincidence end up right after Rimmer had recovered from a hallucinogenic, so he won’t believe Hologram Rimmer. Lister finds a picture of Kochanski marrying Lister, but he learns that it is a future version of him. They learn that future Lister is a dick, and Past-Rimmer ends up yelling at Past Lister, Future Lister and Rimmer and also our Lister and Rimmer.
Next up is Queeg, Holly starts to botch things, which leads to an amusing scene where Chris Barrie’s talents an impressionist can be put to work and Holly is soon replaced by Queeg, the backup computer. However, Queeg starts to make them work for food and over-exerts them. They beg Holly to come back, and Queeg agrees to a game of chess, winner take all, loser gets deleted. Queeg wins and the Dwarfers are sad, but then realize that Queeg was just Holly in disguise and he considers it to be his best prank since the Norweb Federation joke back in Me² .
Finally we get to “Parallel Universe”. In the beginning, we see the greatest song ever produced from Red Dwarf aside from the opening and closing themes, “Tongue Tied”. The rest of the episode is Holly making a device that can bring them home faster, however it causes them to travel to a parallel universe where the genders are reversed. They party and Lister becomes pregnant with twins, because in that reality, men get pregnant. The episode ends with Rimmer laughing at Lister because he had said back in “Future Echoes” that it would be fun finding out how they get twins without a woman on board.
So, that was Red Dwarf Series 2. Most of the episodes were just okay, like “Thanks for the Memory” and “Parallel Universe”, and then some were awesome, like “Kryten”, “Better than Life”, “Stasis” Leak and “Queeg”. So, overall it was a good series, but it can only get better from here. Next time, we look at Season 3, or something else, if I feel like taking a break from this. I’m Michael and these were my random thoughts.
RT Gomer Productions 