I really will need to let Red Dwarf XI sink in a bit, and I think this first episode "Twentica" is hard to review.
I did manage to watch it this evening, on my TV screen, via a far-less-convoluted-than-expected use of a VPN service, an Android app, and an MHL cable.
Comedy-wise, I think the episode was about on par with Series X. They're kind of easing back into it.
Plotwise, it was really similar to Backwards, in a way, although not nearly as clever of a premise. But in the same way as Backwards wasn't quite consistent with what "the universe is backwards" actually meant, the premise of this world they traveled to was just a bunch of setups for mismatched jokes.
That is not really a criticism though, because it goes back to the roots of it being a sitcom first, sci-fi second.
Still, a fairly contrived way to have a larger cast of "humans" than the 4 of them.
And they (likely deliberately) avoided any attempt at trying to deal with continuity. We may still never know what "actually happened" after Series 8.
Also, the crew seemed much more comfortable with technobabble, and less surprised by "whirly things in space", but then again, they've been together for hundreds of in-universe years, or at least 30, and they've seen it all.
In 2012 when I was going through Series X I picked up on a lot of subtleties (some of which weren't actually there, but I willed them into existence), and did some overanalysis. This is just a harder episode for that. Series X started out with Trojan and Fathers and Suns, which were "character pieces" while this one was a "situation piece", more like the Lemons episode.
So I'm reserving my overanalysis for a little later.
But all other things being equal? This episode wasn't terrible. Hard to give it a number of Rs on the good old GRR scale, but let's start out with a solid 3.
GRRR for Twentica.
(subject to change in retrospect)
I did manage to watch it this evening, on my TV screen, via a far-less-convoluted-than-expected use of a VPN service, an Android app, and an MHL cable.
Comedy-wise, I think the episode was about on par with Series X. They're kind of easing back into it.
Plotwise, it was really similar to Backwards, in a way, although not nearly as clever of a premise. But in the same way as Backwards wasn't quite consistent with what "the universe is backwards" actually meant, the premise of this world they traveled to was just a bunch of setups for mismatched jokes.
That is not really a criticism though, because it goes back to the roots of it being a sitcom first, sci-fi second.
Still, a fairly contrived way to have a larger cast of "humans" than the 4 of them.
And they (likely deliberately) avoided any attempt at trying to deal with continuity. We may still never know what "actually happened" after Series 8.
Also, the crew seemed much more comfortable with technobabble, and less surprised by "whirly things in space", but then again, they've been together for hundreds of in-universe years, or at least 30, and they've seen it all.
In 2012 when I was going through Series X I picked up on a lot of subtleties (some of which weren't actually there, but I willed them into existence), and did some overanalysis. This is just a harder episode for that. Series X started out with Trojan and Fathers and Suns, which were "character pieces" while this one was a "situation piece", more like the Lemons episode.
So I'm reserving my overanalysis for a little later.
But all other things being equal? This episode wasn't terrible. Hard to give it a number of Rs on the good old GRR scale, but let's start out with a solid 3.
GRRR for Twentica.
(subject to change in retrospect)
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