This particular Red Dwarf ended not with a bang but a whimper. The gags were few and thin and the plot was a grotesque amalgam of what has appeared in the previous eight series. Handled well this may have been a loving pastiche of the show. Instead it was a two pound mild madras curry made from yesterday's leftovers.
Part one follows the standard 'monster of the week'. This time, Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten, find a squid lurking in their water tanks when a bedraggled Cat turns up to tell them after he was attacked. Lister, Cat and Kryten descend in a diving bell while Rimmer remains above to monitor. In fact, he dances to his beloved Hammond organ music in a moment which was more forced than funny. It's the sort of thing a fan and not the series creator would write. Rimmer is distracted from the music just in time to bring the diving bell up as the crew are attacked by the squid and so save them. Outside the water tank and with two of the creatures severed tentacles, Kryten works out that the creature is some type of dimension jumping squid - obviously - then it starts to get really weird. A second hologram, science officer Katerina Bartikovsky, suddenly appears and announces that she is there to find a woman for Lister so that the human race can be rejuvenated. Her presence of course means that Rimmer will have to be switched off. That Lister is the last human being alive, after the death of fellow crew member Kochanski, isn't an impediment. She will use the blood from the dimension squid to cut a hole between their reality and another - obviously. So with the best special effects I've ever seen on the show, a swirly vortex is opened and the dwarfers are sucked into another dimension.
This sets part two up as another favourite story line - the alternative reality. The crew have entered a 'female oriented' version of their world, encountered an alternative Rimmer who was brave, handsome and smug and even gained Kochanski from a tear in the space time fabric. This time they enter a world in which they discover that their existence is fiction and they are merely characters in a TV series. Self-reflexivity the oldest cop out in story telling. When a writer doesn't know how to end a story he just tells the audience, oh it was just a story. Admittedly, having the crew appear on modern day earth allowed the Grant Naylor (now the sole writer) to explain how come Red Dwarf's 22nd century technology was sometimes less sophisticated than ours today. For example, the crew are perplexed when they find a DVD because on board they still use videos. Kryten explains that DVDs were once incredibly popular until manufacturers discovered a minor but crucial flaw. People were incapable of return DVDs to their cases and so trillions of DVDs went missing. It was a class Red Dwarf gag and about the only decent one in the episode. Not even the scene in the sci-fi shop worked. The actors all seemed stiff and at times even scornful. But it did provide them with an important lead to find their creator and so extend their life.
Their mission takes them to Coronation Street for the final instalment, in which Craig Charles also stars. In this very post-modern (yawn) moment of Lister encountering the actor who plays him, the crew discover that they are in the final episode of the show. Another actor, Simon Gregson, tells them where they can find their creator. Now, the set is from "Blade Runner", and their creator is reminiscent of Tyrell. Like the simulants, the crew beg for more life only to learn that they will be killed. Lister manages to overcome their creator only to discover that by killing him they've doomed themselves because there's no one else to write the show. That is until Lister decides to rewrite the ending but no before getting the rest of the crew to step on rakes or slam their groins into the corner of a desk. They realize soon that the type-writer doesn't control reality. It's in fact the squid which they encountered in the water tank. Like the despair squid, this one produces a hallucinogenic ink, though this ink induces joy. Rimmer, Kryten and the Cat realize this and wake up. Lister deices to stay because in his hallucinations he can be with Kochanski. Cut to one final soppy scene with Kochanski when he tells his hallucination that he does have a chance with her and he wakes up, thus completing the triumvirate of Red Dwarf plot devices - virtual reality. All the events of the episode only happened in their mind and with just enough time for Kryten to tie up the science, Rimmer to flare his nostrils, Lister to add some of his homely everyman wisdom and the Cat to reveal that he was the one who brought the squid on board when it was baby. He had planned to eat it.
Even three million years alone in deep space wouldn't make this series return worthwhile. I can only hope that if the rumours of another series are true that Naylor can come up with something that doesn't just salvage the past.
Series Five Minute Preview:
Repairs completed. I originally wrote '23rd century technology'. The series starts around the end of the 22nd.