The enD

It's typical life aboard Red Dwarf for Dave Lister and Arnold Rimmer; Lister continues to slob about while Rimmer aspires to complete the astro-navigation exam. Rimmer fails the exam once again, while Lister is discovered to have been smuggling a cat named Frankenstein in his quarters, and is sent into eighteen months of stasis as punishment; but when he exits, Holly, the ship's computer, delivers some bad news: the entire crew died of a radiation leak (later revealed to have been caused by Rimmer), and three million years have passed so the radiation could reach a safe level.

In the meantime, Frankenstein had been safely in the hold and breeding for all that time, culminating in a cat-like hominid who is dubbed - of course, the Cat - and the story of Lister and Frankenstein had been treated as a biblical story by the cat people. Despite that, they still have one goal in mind - get back to Earth!

A functional and entertaining first episode. The laughs aren't as frequent as in later series, and admittedly, probably not as much as other series 1 episodes, but given the fact it's got to set the scene for the rest of the series, it still generates some good chuckles. For a first episode, its got a lot on its plate to start with - it's got to establish the simple fact that it's a sci-fi comedy to a casual audience, a combination that would certainly be pretty far-out then.

It has to then explain a variety of sci-fi concepts that would be completely foreign to most casual comedy audiences, but explain them quickly and simply, as it's still got to work in some comedy and storyline into its half-hour runtime.

And amidst the laughs, the drama and the infodumping, it's got to establish the four main characters well enough that we look forward to watching them for several more series; limited casts are a given in TV shows, but when everyone is dead and civilisation may easily have gone extinct, it kind of limits the potential for special guests, doesn't it?

As a first episode, it's got more to demonstrate than just basic character interaction; it has to clarify such alien concepts as holograms, stasis and, uh, how felines can turn into hominids if you leave them long enough, I guess. Someone unfamiliar with those are bound to be thankful for the explanations, since without them they'd essentially be in the dark about how the series' setting is crafted in the first place, but to a sci-fi dweeb like myself, the infodumping is kind of obvious and just plain dull.

Todhunter's explanation of stasis is probably the most bothersome. Captain Hollister at least has potentially-unfamiliar crew members to explain holograms to; all Todhunter's got to work with is Lister, who clearly doesn't give a damn, and the joke afterwards isn't strong enough to negate the obvious vibe of 'science lesson time!'

The second series would improve greatly on its technobabble, presenting a device with an advanced purpose in a simplistic idiot-proof manner (the Holly Hop Drive) or merely using basic terminology to explain it ("What is it?" "It's a hole back into the past." "Oh, a magic door! Well, why didn't you say?").

I'm particularly intrigued with how... simplistic, for lack of a better term, Lister is portrayed early on. Sure, he's a self-proclaimed bum with friends straight from the bottom of the scum barrel, but unlike later on where he seems to lose all ambition in his life (besides stumbling into wacky alien adventures with his chums, of course), Lister talks frequently about his quaint five year plan here, which involves somehow getting hitched with Kochanski, moving to Fiji and starting up a farm and living an easy, carefree life from then on.

The ending song would reference it long, long after that subplot was abandoned, but I always found it to be a cute contrast with Rimmer, who had ambitions far beyond what he could probably ever achieve. Of course, considering the chances of realistically meeting Kochanski again were effectively nil after this series, I think that stripped a bit of Lister's character and forced him to get new goals for later series, such as making Kryten more human. Still, fun while it lasted.

Obviously with Lister getting the main focus in this episode, the others aren't developed quite as well, but Rimmer gets an excellent introduction that essentially puts his entire attitude in a nutshell, and his first act of assholery being cheating in a test is a great way to show it. For some reason I love how he has pens on his sleeve during the exam.

Holly only gets a few opportunities to generate chortles, but given this episode is all about setup, he gets more opportunities afterwards. The Cat, likewise, gets a rather forced introduction but his appearance brings about a great little twist, of the evolution of Lister's cat's offspring and their treating the events of Lister and Frankenstein as a religion.

It's one of my favourite plots in Red Dwarf, and the idea that Lister, the ambition-less guy that he is, ends up being treated as a god despite his complaints always amuses me. It's a pity the plot didn't last terribly long, being taken care of in only a few episodes, but the potential was great, I felt, and the idea of a colony of cats once living in the ship's hold was something I thought could have been explored further.