Gunmen of the Apocalypse just feels good, man.
PLOT
Starbug is infected with a computer virus from a vicious Simulant ship, sending it on a collision course to a volcanic moon. Kryten is forced to absorb the virus in order to find an antidote. To assist him, the rest of the crew use virtual reality headsets to materialise in his subconscious, where Kryten is a bullied sheriff in an Old West town.
ANALYSIS
Similarly to my thoughts on Back to Reality, I've always been a little bemused by the universal success of this episode. And Gunmen of the Apocalypse is even more shallow. I mean, it's literally just the Red Dwarf crew in a goofy western, with absolutely nothing else going on. Don't most shows have a one-off western episode?
The answer is yes and yes. It is just the crew in a goofy western, and most shows do have such an episode. So what makes this one stand out? My answer would be that it's the love of the genre. Although this type of story is an indulgence, it doesn't really feel like it here. It's more like the cast & crew just wanted to tap into the particular feel-good pulp vibes of the classic Wild West stories, complete with the "yee-haw!" and riding off into the horizon. Much like how Holoship successfully parodies yet also emulates the romance film genre, Gunmen is wonderful at mocking specific tropes yet also being earnest about what it's making fun of. When the crew gallop into town to save a down-on-his-luck sheriff from bullies, it's not something to be mocked. It's celebrated.
It's worth noting that aside from a bit of banter early on (primarily on the topic of Lister's overuse of virtual reality sex), there's almost none of the customary in-fighting. The crew are all on the same page and having fun together. How rare is that? It's like a warm embrace for everything the Wild West stories stand for: freedom, love of guns and daring-do, the underdog standing up to defeat the bad guys (and Denis Lill makes a hell of a bad guy).
CHARACTERS
I know Lill primarily from his role as Charles Vaughan on Survivors. He pretty much exclusively carried that show by its third season, so you can imagine how happy I am to see his talents featured in Red Dwarf. It's only a shame that it's such a brief appearance. But he does wonderfully as both the sour-faced Simulant and the yankee evil cowboy.
The crew's video game personalities are all a lot of fun, but who really stood out to me acting-wise was Robert Llewelyn as the miserable sheriff. Llewelyn commits to making him a whole different person from Kryten and even though we know nothing much about his fake life, he's so pitiable yet well-meaning that you can't help loving him and wanting him to crawl out of alcoholism even outside the context of getting Kryten his memories back.
NOTES
- Series 6 is continuing a theme of establishing actual landmarks in space, such as the 'rogue Simulant hunting zone' and the Psirens' ship graveyard.
- Given that Rimmer has only just recently gained hard light mode, you'd think he'd be the one humping away in the VR machine.
- Amusingly, it's never explained why Kryten's subconscious is depicted in a Wild West dream. It just is.
- Kryten remembering Rimmer only as "smeee heee" is a callback to Camille and Quarantine.
- A Simulant previously appeared in Justice.
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