With soon-to-be ten series spread over its 24 year run, Red Dwarf is wildly inconsistent in tone. To me, series 1 and 2 (1988) are classic Red Dwarf--these are the ones with the lowest production values and highest incidence of long, talky, bored-guys-in-space dialogue scenes. With increases in budget, the series became increasingly focused on sci-fi adventures of the week, and in season 7, the introduction of a not-terribly-well-realized girl character, obviously for romantic tension purposes, turned it into something of a soap opera.
Key Episodes
As a fan of the earlier versions of the series, I'll focus my attention on them, especially since they introduce many of the mythos elements that became famous among fans. While later episodes introduced game-changing plot elements at a fairly high rate, I consider season 7+ "for diehards only."
1.1 "The End": The pilot easily sets up the plot which sounds rather convoluted to explain. After a nuclear accident kills everyone on board the mining ship Red Dwarf, the only survivor is ultimate slob Dave Lister (Craig Charles), currently in stasis as punishment for smuggling a cat on board. The ship's computer Holly (Norman Lovett) releases Lister only after it's safe to emerge, 3 million years later; he is likely the last human alive, and as the kind of guy who paints in the holes in his pants and can't find a shirt without curry stains, he's a poor example of the species. Keeping him company is a hologram representation of his irritating bunkmate Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie), chosen by Holly because he is the person who Lister exchanged the most words with (all of them quibbling); and the Cat (Danny John-Jules), a humanoid creature evolved from Lister's cat. Lister is depressed that his five-year plan--marrying his crush, the engineer Kristine Kochanski (C.P. Grogan), starting a farm, and having twin boys--is probably not going to happen now, since she is dead and so is everyone else. But he's cheered up to discover the Cat's religion is based on him, and he decides to turn the ship around and head back to Earth, even though it will take 3 million years and who knows what he will find there.
2.2 "Better Than Life": The crew plays a "total immersion" virtual reality game in which anything they wish for comes true, but Rimmer's imagination is so self-destructive that he only creates horribleness. This is a fun insight into the psyches of the characters. The VR game concept appears in future episodes, and a more complex story about the game is told in one of the RD novelizations, also called Better Than Life.
3.2 "Marooned": In one of my favorite, even-more-than-usual bottle episodes, Lister and Rimmer crash-land on an ice planet on the away ship and must wait for help. Rimmer, as a hologram, is unaffected by the conditions, but Lister is slowly freezing and starving, and their conversations as Rimmer tries to distract Lister and keep him sane are both ridiculous and somehow poignant.
Focusing on the series-fundamental Lister and Rimmer relationship, this is a great, boiled-down essence of what Red Dwarf is, at its best: two guys who both hate and, in a weird kind of grudging way, love each other, chatting and bickering and purposely ignoring the immensely crushing obstacles around them. Includes the stories of how both Rimmer and Lister lost their virginities.
4.5 "Dimension Jump": Red Dwarf is visited by Ace Rimmer (still Chris Barrie, of course, having a lot of fun in a Tom Cruise wig), a super-cool parallel-universe-hopping version of Rimmer, who is more utterly confused than disappointed with the priggish and incapable version of himself that he encounters. This is a key episode not just because it reveals a lot about Rimmer (and the show's mythos surrounding parallel universes), but because Ace is such a great, fan-favorite character.
5.6 "Back to Reality": The crew discovers that they have been playing a VR game called "Red Dwarf" all this time and their real identities are not at all what they'd expect--particularly the Cat, who is a bowl-cutted dork called Duane Dibley (also a quick fan favorite.) This episode is notable not just for Duane's introduction, but the way it uses a number of previously established RD plot and character elements together to build to a cool twist.
Bonus Episodes
1.2 "Future Echoes": As Holly pushes the ship past the speed of light, the crew experiences weirdness with the timeline, and see versions of themselves from the future, including Lister's twin baby sons Jim and Bexley. But how...?
1.3 "Balance of Power": Lister takes the chef's exam in order to technically outrank Rimmer, and we learn why Lister can't just switch the hologram tapes and have Kochanski instead of Rimmer.
1.4 "Waiting for God": Lister explore the Cat's religion and tries to convince Cat that he is his Jesus. We learn what happened to the other cats.
2.1 "Kryten": This episode introduces a new character who will join the main cast in series 3 (here, he's played by David Ross; in future episodes, he'll be Robert Llewellyn). The crew finds another drifting ship, but the only survivor is the pathetic service hologram Kryten (David Ross), who has been tending to his now-skeletal crew for the last 3 million years. Rimmer is delighted to take advantage of the situation, but Lister teaches Kryten how to rebel.
2.5 "Queeg": After another mishap, Holly is shut down and replaced by Queeg, a computer personality who is competent but mean. The guys wish they had their old useless Holly back.
2.6 "Parallel Universe": The crew accidentally transports into a parallel universe where they find female versions of themselves. While the idea that female is opposite is inherently sexist, the episode mostly makes fun of Rimmer's sexism, and the actresses Angela Bruce and Suzanne Bertish do a great job of nailing Craig Charles and Chris Barrie's character mannerisms, respectively. The episode ends with a shocker when Lister sleeps with his counterpart and discovers that, as he was in the parallel universe at the time, he is now pregnant. (A super-fast crawl before 3.1 explains that the twins went to the parallel universe to live with their father(?), the female Lister, so they don't appear in future episodes, but their existence is canon.) This episode contains the amazing music video "Tongue Tied."
3.3 "Polymorph": The crew accidentally rescues a genetically engineered lifeform--a monster, basically--which can take the form of any object and which survives by drawing out, and feeding on, negative emotions. The moral of this episode--that people need their worst traits--is interesting, and it's fun and character-revealing to see the creature drawing out whatever negative emotion comes most easily to each crew member, leaving him without that trait. Therefore, we get an out-of-control, fearless version of Lister; a dirty, prideless version of Cat; a calculating, guiltless Kryten; and most entertaining of all, an anger-free, hippie version of Rimmer, calling town meetings to discuss strategy, treating everyone's insane ideas with kindness and respect, and outlining his own plan for a leaflet campaign.
4.1 "Camille": In another sci-fi contrivance designed specifically to draw out character, the crew encounters another genetically engineered lifeform, this one a "pleasure GELF" designed to appear as the perfect mate to whoever looks at it.
4.3 "Justice": In yet another sci-fi contrivance designed specifically to draw out character (I'm not complaining, I like those: these are my choice episodes!), the crew is trapped on an old prison colony where the sentencing and punishment is automatically decided based on the subject's own feelings of guilt and shame.
5.1 "Holoship": A great Rimmer episode. Rimmer is intrigued by a ship manned entirely by holograms. It's a complete meritocracy based on intelligence, which is both Rimmer's perfect dream and his worst nightmare. After cheating his way onto the ship, Rimmer is driven by love and a rare flash of honor to do the right thing.
6.2 "Legion": The crew visits a space station inhabited only by the apparently awesome creature Legion, who seems to share all their interests and to be able to cater to their every desire, but who seems to become increasingly unstable. This episode also has some character-revealing elements, and is notable for leaving Rimmer as a "hard light" hologram, finally able to touch things and experience pleasure and pain. I guess they were sick of paying lip service to him being incorporeal.
7.2 "Stoke Me a Clipper": Chris Barrie's exit from the show (temporary as it turned out to be) was regrettable--the show really suffered when it lost the Lister/Rimmer love/hate friendship that grounded even the most ridiculous scenes with a solid level of normal Earth humor and the occasional real character moment. Still, the way he left was oddly tender and inspiring, one of the most genuinely emotional accomplishments of the show: when Ace Rimmer returns, dying, it's up to our Arnold, the most cowardly and ill-equipped person imaginable, to take on his heroic legacy. And yet, as Ace reminds him, they are the same person, so a hero is lurking even in him.
7.3 "Ourobouros": Lister and the others meet another parallel version of the ship where the sole survivor of the human race is not Lister but Kochanski (Chloe Annett). This episode is undoubtedly important, but it's not actually good, relying on a version of time travel and universe-hopping that makes much less sense than the rules established in previous episodes. I'm also not a fan of the Kochanski character reboot, which seems to introduce her as a humorless mom type character come to keep the boys from getting up to any fun, but I guess I'm not really here to editorialize.
7.5 "Blue": Lister misses Rimmer, prompting Holly to create him a theme park called the "Arnold Rimmer Experience." An episode notable for its tenderhearted nod to the solid Lister and Rimmer friendship, as well as the slashiest scene in RD history.
8.1 "Back in the Red Part 1": This episode establishes the series 8 semi-reboot--rogue nanobots have created the original Red Dwarf to exact specifications, including its crew. Lister is shunted back into his season 1 role as bottom of the totem pole, working under an annoying Rimmer. That's right, Chris Barrie is back, and it's the old Rimmer, the really annoying one, before he became kind of cool. If I could pick one word to describe season 8, it would be "hijinks", as the new/old populated ship, chain of command, power structures and consequences for insubordination create new opportunities for crazy mishaps.
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