Sunday 12 April 2009

Red Dwarf: Back to Earth (Part 3)

Not the strongest part of the three, thought it confirmed to me that this would be much better viewed as a single 90-minute piece -- the sheer volume of ongoing plot elements, running jokes, quite in depth references back to events of previous parts, and really awkward cliffhangers all suggest this that's how it was meant to be seen. I suppose only the DVD release can reveal that for certain.

In all, it's not the best Red Dwarf has to offer, but it was mostly very cleverly done (too cleverly for some, it seems) and entertained plentifully. There were also a nice number of references to previous episodes -- many of them years and years old -- that only fans were likely to get, but which didn't impede too much on the enjoyment for newbies. It did rather rely on you having seen Blade Runner to fully appreciate it though.

Ratings for Part 1 were strong but dipped for Part 2, though were still great by Dave's standard and was against much stronger competition. Hopefully Part 3's were alright and, factoring everything in (including various repeats and a bumper-bonus single-sitting repeat tomorrow), here's hoping we'll be treated to more RD in the future.

2 comments:

Andrew said...

Personally, I found it insufficiently clever. I tend to like a watertight plot, and the complexity of this episode combined with the lack of Rob Grant left this one with several niggling holes in. I doubt they'll bother many people, but I'm a pedant for plotting.

badblokebob said...

Granted there are some fairly notable holes, but from comments I've read a lot of people struggled with the whole "they're real... but they're fictional... in the real world... but fictional... and can control... themselves..." thing, which I thought was all quite neatly handled myself (if overlong when Lister was at the typewriter).