Red Dwarf: Skipper

Maybe it's because I went into it with the lowest possible expectations, or maybe they just saved the best for last, but this episode was actually almost decent. There was even a funny bit. It was piggy-backing off one of the funniest things that's ever happened in this show, but it was a good reference and executed, well, acceptably. The rest of the episode's jokes were poor at best, but I didn't hate any of it. My biggest problem with the episode was that its premise was far too good to waste on a single episode and should have been the basis for an entire season.

That folder doesn't seem big enough for the entire crew.

The episode begins with Lister finding the personnel files - which I guess we're supposed to believe they hadn't bothered looking at before in the many years they've been alone on this ship - and Rimmer lamenting the fact that he's a failure in life. This is a weak foundation and the episode suffers for it, but it's better than the rest of the series had and the characters even feel like themselves - rather than facsimiles parroting catch phrases.

How did it get that close before they detected it?

Next the scanners detect an anomaly that wastes about ten minutes of the episode on a bit that goes nowhere and isn't funny. It's not terrible, but given what a missed opportunity this episode represents it's kind of rubbing salt in the wound. The characterisations are still good, but the second half of the episode feels rushed and nothing would have been lost at all if we'd skipped straight to the bit where Kryten suddenly announces that the anomaly is his fault and the result of his attempts to create a device that would allow one to travel between parallel universes.

For reasons obviously fabricated for the writers' convenience, everyone but Rimmer decide they're going to stay in their own universe while he goes off to explore other versions of his life. Imagine if each of these had been an episode! Rather than being stuck with the same four actors playing the same characters that the writers have clearly run out of ideas for we could have had a bunch of actually novel scenarios where they got to play different versions of those characters, and it would have made Rimmer the protagonist, which itself would be a change.

Worse effects than Star Trek had in the '60s and I can't even tell if that's meant to be funny.

First Rimmer arrives in a reality where the radiation leak never happened and the crew are all still alive - except for him, for some reason. This (about half way through the episode) is where the one good joke is but otherwise serves only as a way to cram in a few guest spots for people who used to be on the show. The radiation leak happens soon after Rimmer arrives and so he moves on.

Norman Lovett is still great.

The next universe is the one where we get a glimpse of what this season could have been. It's not good, but I think that's because it's so short. Or rather, it's bad for the same reason that it's so short: the only idea they had for it was "let's make things on this universe wildly different because things being not the same is almost like a joke". If each parallel universe had had to form the basis for an entire episode then they would have had to be developed more (I say, like as though I hadn't watched the rest of this season. It probably would have been bad anyway, but it didn't happen so I'm free to imagine).

In this universe Lister is more like Rimmer.

A couple of trips later and Rimmer arrives in a universe where Lister is, thanks to a combination of luck and extortion, captain of the ship and fabulously wealthy. This is where the squandered potential really shines through, and honestly you could probably get an entire season out of this universe. Especially since there's no reason for Kryten or the Cat to be there, and they're both one-note characters who were played out a long time ago, so that would have been a massive improvement.

Craig Charles is actually good in this bit.

But of course Rimmer returns to the default universe in the end (because he can't live in a universe where Lister is more successful than him) and the episode, and the season, are over. It was bad and it shouldn't exist, and the next season will most likely also be bad and definitely shouldn't exist.

Must maintain the status-quo in this show that blatantly ignores its own continuity.

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