Duct Soup is crushingly boring. It's a real shame, because I think the concept itself is very good. It's just the execution which is misjudged.
PLOT
Seeing Lister prepare a bath for Kochanski, Kryten panics and engineers a situation that forces the crew to spend the night in the ship's ventilation system where the chances of a romantic entanglement are minimal.
ANALYSIS
I'll start by talking about what works. The attempt to harken back to the show's more dialogue-heavy days (specifically the episode Marooned) is a welcome refresher after four episodes of time travel and parallel universes. Similarly, the punchline that Kryten is responsible for everything is close to the phenomenal ending of Queeg, at least in theory.
The idea of the crew being stuck together in a confined space (even better, a confined space that is occasionally harassed by gushing water and massive gusts of wind) should be a goldmine for character development. There's some sweet moments between Lister and Kochanski, and even the Cat gets a few great lines. I don't hate jealous Kryten either, although my patience for that gag is far thinner than it was on my original watchthrough of the series.
This is where the good stuff ends. As I was watching it and trying not to suffocate myself with a rubber ducky, I wondered what exactly was so different from Marooned. I never loved Marooned, mind you, but it's a perfectly decent 25 minutes of television while Duct Soup - despite following the same formula - is not.
I arrived at the answer during a brief scene where the Cat keeps driving Lister bonkers by talking about his claustrophobia. I cracked a smile during that bit, and knew at once what was missing. Conflict. There's so little of it with Kochanski. Cat and Lister both like her, and she's too kind to really roast them beyond basic "you're horny male idiots" lines. The only person to pick a fight with her is Kryten, and that's almost one-sided because he's delusionally jealous. Whereas Rimmer usually had legitimate barbs or complaints to throw at people, or had his own insults thrown back at him causing him to stew, which is also funny. These dialogue scenes are not dynamic, because there's no back and forth going on. At least when Lister and the Cat are alone, there's something happening. Lister's claustrophobia flares up and the Cat is being vain and ignorant. That's enough for some sparks. Maybe if we had more of them on their own and maybe a few more unexpected encounters in the vents (maybe with space weevils?), the episode could've been saved.
CHARACTERS
Kochanski is given a whole new princessy background, merged quite cleverly with the Clare Grogan incarnation with a line about her being from a "trendy part of Glasgow". The point of it seems to be to contrast more heavily with the working class crew. But it doesn't work, because it makes her less relatable, because it makes her femininity too much of a punchline and also because Doug can't go far enough with it.
If you're going for a snooty princess who evolves to become one of the gang, then she should be really snooty, like 'murdering someone over a broken nail' level of snooty. Totally insulated and near-feral at the idea of being robbed from her rightful life. That would be funny, and seeing her slowly see the merits of the slovenly crew could be good development. But Kochanski is a sane and rational person, and doesn't really have anywhere to evolve.
Lister went from being a total slacker to (relatively) responsible. Rimmer went from a total mess to someone heroic. Kryten went from a total slave to a beloved friend. The Cat is static by design, but he's not really highlighted much anyway. His purpose is to bounce jokes off of others.
Kochanski... starts out being professional, accomplished and slightly full of herself. She's sheltered and likes to be comfortable, but aside from some grumbling, it doesn't really affect anything. At one point, Kryten jokingly calls her "Princess Leia", which I guess is the sort of person Doug is going for, but it's not like Kochanski has an empire to fight against or the allure of a Han Solo to deal with. Comedically, she doesn't add anything to a crew that's already started to gel a little too well to be funny. Chloe Annett, to her credit, commits totally and her exasperation and bafflement is amusing at times. She's also very good in the dramatic moments and I like how sweet and clever she is with Lister when he's got claustrophobia. They have some good moments there.
I've got to give some credit to Danny John-Jules, for I do it so rarely. I really liked seeing the Cat regain some of his self-absorbed attitude. His speech about the universe revolving around him and his belief that nothing exists when he's not nearby was absolutely amazing, and some of the most cat-like behaviour we've seen out of him in ages.
Kryten is still hovering around tolerable for me. His imagined scenario of Kochanski and Lister dumping him was really funny for how absurd it was. For some reason, the reveal that he put the entire crew through that situation to make sure Kochanski couldn't take a bath doesn't quite land. It's a good idea for a punchline as I've already said, but the execution is weak. I think maybe because they split it up into two scenes, one for the revelation itself and one for the reveal that Kryten could have opened the doors all along. If it all happened in the very last scene, it might have been a lot funnier. Instead, we find out he did it when they're still in the vents and so everything that happens afterwards is quite perfunctory.
NOTES
- "To pee or not to pee" is pretty relatable, but doesn't translate well into an on-screen joke.
- The zoom-in on Kryten's face had me in hysterics the first time I saw it. One of the rare pleasures of the episode.
- I was disappointed to see Lister still trying to get into Kochanski's pants. Him preparing the bath for her was a really lovely thing to do. I wish it just stayed at that.
- Craig does a good job portraying claustrophobia.
- How does Kochanski know that our Lister is claustrophobic if the other version is not?
- Lister and the Cat amusing themselves by watching the dryer feels so entrenched in the 20th century somehow. It's just such an intrinsically pre-internet activity.
- Why is there a scene of Lister being injected with something that helps his phobia? It doesn't really affect the plot in any way (since he was already improving) and just wastes screentime. There's no jokes there.
- The Kinitawowi tribe seen in Emohawk (and briefly in Ouroboros) have a cameo in Kryten's daydream.
- Todhunter was apparently gay, at least in Kochanski's dimension.
- Lister talks about the time he worked as a part-time trolley-parker in MegaMart, which was mentioned previously in Balance of Power.
- Kryten jokes about cooking a person, having done just that in Tikka to Ride.
FUNNIEST MOMENT
CAT: "So how do you get to be claustrophobic? Are you born that way, or is it because you're kind of sissy?"
LISTER: "... sissy."
SMEG OFF!
All the business with the pipes.
CONCLUSION
Feels like being inside a sensory deprivation tank.
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