This episode does that classic sci-fi thing of criticising a real-world issue through an incredibly ham-fisted and implausible analogy. You know, like Black Mirror. Only Black Mirror takes itself seriously and this is pretending not to take itself seriously. I think Doug Naylor wants to write for Black Mirror. Honestly, make a few minor adjustments to the characters and the pacing and this could be a Black Mirror episode.
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| Black Mirror is also shit. Picture unrelated. |
You'd probably need to fix the beginning though because it follows the pattern of this season by starting the episode with a completely pointless and unrelated skit in which Lister seems to have a heart attack and the Cat ignores him and steals his breakfast. This does lead to him getting a medical device implanted into him, and that does come up again later, but in a way that makes absolutely no sense.
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| I think more effort went into the sets than any other aspect of this production. |
The main plot kicks off with a system update informing the crew that the Jupiter Mining Corporation has been bought by M-Corp. This update also makes it impossible for Lister to see anything that isn't owned by M-Corp, which includes Kryten and Rimmer and for some reason also the Cat. And most of the furniture and objects on the ship. Also a bunch of new M-Corp stuff just appears out of nowhere in order to establish that M-Corp has some kind of teleportation technology.
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| It's neither funny nor important to the plot, but why would it be? |
Lister uses the M-Corp teleportation technology to go to their... planet? Headquarters? Resort? Place. For a free trial weekend. He's immediately strong-armed into spending all his money, at which point he begins spending time instead - that is, he whenever he buys something he immediately gets older.
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| Lister uses invisible objects a bit, but not in a funny way. |
Meanwhile, back on the Red Dwarf, the rest of the crew decide to roll back the update - which will also roll back Rimmer because he's part of the ship. But he's invisible to Lister because he's not M-Corp property. Even though the ship is M-Corp property because they bought JMC. You know what, I reckon Naylor just wrote one draft of this script and then filmed it. It would explain everything.
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| This woman is some kind of robot, I think? |
So they roll back the ship and teleport over to M-Corp to pick up Lister, who is now old because everything at M-Corp is expensive and they escape with him by buying a virus that will disable the M-Corp systems and let them escape (because everything is for sale at M-Corp) and this somehow makes Lister young again. But he still can't see them because it turns out he was updated as well. Somehow.
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| It's funny because he's old now. |
That sounds like it'd be a problem but nope, they just restore him from a backup too. And I'm pretty sure they did that specifically so that they could do another reference to season one - the backup they use is from when he was 23, you see; the age Craig Charles was in season one. Also there's a joke about child molestation and one about how women talk too much in the episode, so that's kind of like a throwback to 1988 as well.
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| Look! It's just like that thing you like! Please laugh now. |
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