Is Rory sulking due to lack of lines in this episode?

Personally I’d have been tempted to call this ep Once Upon a Time Vortex in the West. But I am not a scriptwriter for a hugely popular family science fiction show so what do I know?

Having been filmed in the same permanent movie set/village in Spain where classic ‘spaghetti westerns’ have been made in the past, ‘A Town Called Mercy’ was always going to have a perfect look. Toby Whithouse’s script ensured that various other tropes of the western were adhered to. Valiant lawman attempting to protect somebody the other residents were more than ready to hand over to the bad guy to save their skins? Check. Mysterious stranger with a complex past which leads to plenty of soul-searching prior to an ultimate act of self-sacrificial redemption? check. Hero of the piece in danger of succumbing to rage and vengefulness? Check. Comedy moment where an inexperienced person shoots off gun without meaning to? Check.

Actually that last might only be in Annie Get Your Gun and/or Carry On Cowboy so may not count.

From the moment The Doctor, Amy and Rory arrive in Mercy, population 81, it is clear that something is not right. “That’s not right,” says the Timelord, confirming our suspicions and pointing his chunky sonic screwdriver (the larger this device gets the harder it is not to see it as a phallic object) at an anachronistic electric street light. Having done so he mentions his ‘christmas list’ which would be just a throwaway line were it not for the fact that Christmas has been mentioned in all three episodes of the new season thus far. Coincidence? A Moffat teaser nodding towards the nature of Amy and Rory’s departure in a couple of weeks time? Or to the means by which an apparently Dalekified new companion is returned to human form in this December’s special?

Perhaps more pertinently, another repeating trope of Season 7 cropped up again – trouble with lights. This strikes me as highly significant given that the Ponds’ swan song will see them face the Weeping Angels who use darkness to attack their victims. There is also the possibility that we’ve not seen the last of Dalek puppets, as they appeared to mess with lighting in the season opener.

Kryten looks cross because no-one wants anything ironed in the Wild West

Back to the dust and the stetsons, however. The gang quickly discover that there is a scary cyborg stalking the village. He wants to kill the mysterious Kahler Jex, a softly spoken physician who just happens to be an alien. The town marshall is protecting Jex, who cleared up a bad case of cholera on his arrival some time previously, as well as setting up the aforementioned street lights. Jex, however, is not as perfect as he seems and a peek in Jex’s ship plus a confrontation with the cyborg gunslinger enrage The Doctor. On his own planet Jex was one of a team of scientists who experimented on people, turning successful subjects into cyborg killing machines to end a prolonged war. They won the war and decommissioned the cyborgs, all except one who went rogue on the battlefield and determined to take revenge on those who had made a monster of him.

As a follow-up to leaving Solomon to be blown to smithereens by missiles last week, The Doctor frog marches Jex to the outskirts of the town so that the gunslinger can complete his vengeance and Mercy can return to a more normal existence without cyborgs prowling the perimeter or genocidal physicians acting as the local doctor. Cue the comedy gun moment which allows Amy to interject into the Timelord’s rage enough to remind him that he travels with companions because sometimes he does not know when to stop. (I enjoyed this moment as it echoed similar incidents in the 9th and 10th Doctors timelines).

Events are forced by the gunslinger accidentally killing the marshall who was trying to push Jex out of the line of fire. The lawman’s dying act is to make The Doctor marshall, thereby ensuring there can be no more possibility of the timelord allowing personal emotion to cloud his thinking.

Piece Toting Timelord

Obviously there are comparisons to be made between an alien scientist trying to put some of the less savoury acts of his past behind him and The Doctor himself. A barbed conversation between the two within the jailhouse affords a glimpse into the consciences of both men as well as casting a less demonic light on Jex who was shaping up to be the villain of the piece.

In truth there are no villains as such. Jex was a hero on his home planet because his team’s actions ended the protracted war and thus saved countless lives. The gunslinger has suffered terrible psychological as well as physical trauma and yet somehow retains a sense of justice as seen in his refusal to endanger innocents in his search for revenge. The townsfolk who want to hand Jex over to the gunslinger are just frightened humans who fear for the safety of their loved ones. Even the Doctor cuts an ambiguous figure in this episode. Yes he’s a timelord but does that give him a divine right to act on his outrage, does it automatically mean his definition of justice is the right one?

Amy get your gun

The Doctor has been given until high noon to hand Jex over or the cyborg will go over to the dark side and kill anyone who gets in his way. Yee haw! it’s a duel situation. Go for your sonic screwdriver! Also paint fake tattoos on the faces of citizens so they all look a bit like Jex and help confuse the gunslinger. It’s all a bit of sleight of hand (the old ‘doctor flim flam’ as Wilfred Mott might have said) to let Jex reach his ship and fly off.

Except he doesn’t. He utilises the electrics running from his ship to communicate with the cyborg before blowing himself up in a moving attempt at  redemption. The gunslinger is all for going into the desert and self-destructing now that his task is finished. There is no going home for him, not with Frankenstein’s creature shoes and a face that looks like the evil Kryten from series 6 of Red Dwarf. The Doctor persuades him that Mercy needs a marshall so presumably he is still out amongst the tumbleweed and rocks to this day, his massive weapon poised to protect the people of a town which surely has a larger population than 81 these days?

Another top-notch episode, then. Another voice-over introduction, I now realise. Another coincidence? Another teaser? Trying to second guess Moffat is a frustrating business, which is why he makes such a perfect series producer. Some of the questions will be answered in a fortnight. It’s too soon, I say.

There is a lot of debate in the YouTube comments about whether the laughter is genuine from a studio audience or added in post. Personally, I think it’s interesting that they added a laugh track at all considering there wasn’t one in the previous series (partially because so much was filmed on location instead of a studio). Personally, I thought not having a laugh track in season nine ruined the whole series. I’ve also watched versions of previous seasons without the laugh track (you can select to turn it off on the DVD), and it’s significantly less funny. This makes me wonder about the nature of laugh tracks. It’s not that we don’t know it’s funny if people aren’t laughing,  but maybe you’re more open to laugh if other people (even invisible people inside your TV) are laughing? What do you think? Leave thoughts in comments.

To address whether this laughter is genuine, I’d bet that it is genuine because this season was filmed in front of a live audience. I’m not saying they didn’t sweeten it, but as someone who has gone to live shows, I know that they coach the audience and have someone there warming them up so that they laugh louder and more often than they would if they were sitting at home.

Red Dwarf X will be a full season and launches Oct. 4 on Dave (a channel in the UK).

Episode Titles (source)

1 – Trojan
2 – Fathers and Suns
3 – Lemons
4 – Entangled
5 – Dear Dave
6 – The Beginning

As many of you know, when I am not working I am either watching a movie or television, very often this will be a DVD that I have in my vast collection. one such television series that I own is Red Dwarf.

Red Dwarf is a British comedy which primarily comprises eight series (plus a ninth smaller series named Back To Earth) of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and on Dave in 2009 and 2012. It gained cult following, it was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series.

In 2008, a three-episode production was commissioned by the digital channel Dave. These episodes were screened in April 2009 during the Easter weekend and comprised a three-part story titled Red Dwarf: Back to Earth. Unlike the majority of the original BBC episodes, this mini-series was a comedy drama filmed without a studio audience or an added laugh track.

Despite the fact it is a sci-fi comedy the science fiction is only used as a backdrop, Red Dwarf is primarily a character-driven comedy, with off-the-wall, often scatological science fiction elements used as complementary plot devices. In the early episodes, a recurring source of comedy was the “Odd Couple”-style relationship between the two central characters of the show, who have an intense dislike for each other and are trapped together deep in space. The main characters are Dave Lister, the last known human alive, and Arnold Rimmer, a hologram of Lister’s dead bunkmate. The other regular characters are Cat, a lifeform that evolved from the descendants of Lister’s pregnant pet cat Frankenstein; Holly, Red Dwarf’s computer; Kryten, a service mechanoid; and, as of Series VII, Kristine Kochanski, an alternative-reality version of Lister’s long-lost love.

One of the series’ highest accolades came in 1994, when an episode from the sixth series, “Gunmen of the Apocalypse”, won an International Emmy Award in the Popular Arts category, and in the same year the series was also awarded “Best BBC Comedy Series” at the British Comedy Awards. The series attracted its highest ratings, of over eight million viewers, during the eighth series in 1999.

Series X will consist of six episodes, recorded in front of a studio audience in December 2011-January 2012 and will air in Autumn 2012 on Dave and also on Dave HD.

If you havent seen any of this show, then yu have to get you hands on it. Te stories are really good and the use of sets is fantastic. One of the reasons I like it so much is because of the idea that the last reaming human is a slob and lay about yet he still wants to get home and he never loses hope that he will. now for your viewing pleasure I leave you with the Series X trailer.

Related articles

• Red Dwarf: Series 1, Episode 1 “The End” (1988) (anamericanviewofbritishsciencefiction.com)
• Red Dwarf- Timeslides Review (theconsultingdetectivesblog.wordpress.com)
• Is Christian Heaven More Real than any Other? (crossexaminedblog.com)
• Why Can’t Red Dwarf Predict The Future? (shkspr.mobi)
• My diary, by Arnold J. Rimmer (goodfil.ms)
• First Official Photo From Red Dwarf X (techfleece.com)

Timeslides (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Red Dwarf – Timeslides Review

By Will Barber

    Kryten: “Pub.” Ah, yes: a meeting place where people attempt to achieve advanced states of mental incompetence by the repeated consumption of fermented vegetable drinks.

Kryten discovers a way to jump into other times via photographs. Rimmer, the Cat and Lister begin to meddle with time with terrible consequences. Soon Lister is leading a life of luxury, while Rimmer is trapped on Red Dwarf. Can Rimmer change history to his advantage?

Red Dwarf is scheduled to return to the digital channel Dave this year, so it seems like a perfect moment to look back on some of the series’ past glories. This is one of them. Red Dwarf is famous for its time travel episodes; indeed I would go so far as to say that the show deals with time travel sometimes in a much more interesting way than Doctor Who, for example.

Chris Barrie carries the show as Rimmer. With the rest of the cast gone for a good proportion of the story, Barrie manages to keep us interested with the story where a much less skilled comic actor would not. During the scenes with his younger self and the super rich alternative version of Lister, Barrie, like Flashheart in his first appearance in Blackadder, gets all the laughs. From his realisation that Lister is happier than him to his discussion with his younger self, Barrie manages to keep a straight face through very funny circumstances.

This episode, does have its failings though. The main failing is the ending; Rimmer becomes alive again and then gets killed for no reason at all. Many find this a very funny moment, but I don’t. It seems odd that a very good episode should end on a very bad note. No explanation is given why Rimmer becomes alive again nor, why the boxes blow up when he passes and not when a moment earlier the Cat, Lister and Kryton pass. It seems sad that the writers could not come up with a better ending.

With the exception of the bad ending, Timeslides is a very funny, good natured poke at time travel from the Red Dwarf team and a must watch episode for all fans, simply because it is so darn good.

Related articles

• First Official Photo From Red Dwarf X (techfleece.com)
• Why Can’t Red Dwarf Predict The Future? (shkspr.mobi)
• My diary, by Arnold J. Rimmer (goodfil.ms)
• Development Deal: Red Dwarf (spinoff.comicbookresources.com)
• Extending the Habitable Zone for Red Dwarf Stars (spacedaily.com)