Out of Time is a bit confused scriptwise, but brings series 6 to a neat conclusion in terms of the overarching themes.
PLOT
The crew penetrate a well-defended area of space to discover a time machine, giving them the oppurtunity to go anywhere, anywhen. Shortly after, a second Starbug arrives from the future and it is revealed that mastery of time will inevitably turn the crew into indulgent degenerates.
ANALYSIS
Red Dwarf has a love for subverting itself. You see it in Back to Reality, when all of the crew are shown as their opposites. Rimmer's traits are turned inside and out more often than a perpetually crusty sock. Here in Out of Time, the show's central premise receives the same treatment. We go from a crew that's trapped at the end of time feeding on the leftovers of humanity (particularly in this series) to a crew with no limitations whatsoever. The final space battle between the two crews has a particularly climactic feel to it, for a number of reasons. Not only does the future crew represent everything our heroes despise, but also the end of the show and the nature of the Red Dwarf universe.
The time drive is a borderline metafictional plot device that can eliminate the very nature of the world inhabited by our main characters, the fundamental setup of them being trapped in deep space all alone. By destroying it, there's a sense of reclamation and acceptance. As if the crew are saying "yes, this is who we are and we embrace it". It's a bit sentimental for me to say so, but they belong in deep space, they belong with each other. And here after all this time, they accept that they're not going home. Because they know that if they had had the oppurtunity to go home, they wouldn't have done so anyway. It makes sense. After all, what does Earth mean to Lister, Cat, Kryten and Rimmer? Lister had no family, Cat doesn't care, Kryten is programmed to serve and Rimmer hated everyone. If they finally made it, they'd just shrug their shoulders and be disappointed. With that being said, this is not the final episode of Red Dwarf. I just wanted to point out that it offers a sense of closure as well as a possible explanation for why they never take advantage of the many possibilities to return (particularly in a few upcoming episodes).
Much like Rimmerworld, it feels like they could've wrung two episodes out of this, as the show doesn't get to the meat of the story until there's ten minutes left on the runtime. The opening sequence where the crew go through unreality bubbles is fine, but it's just setting things up for later and doesn't tie in much. I understand that the scriptwriting for this episode was particularly chaotic and last-minute (with dialogue being written on the day of recording, even as the actors were delivering lines!) and it definitely shows. They don't explain why the time drive is three million years into deep space. Did it have a faster-than-light engine? Based on the events of the next episode, it kinda had to, but it's never mentioned. I assume that's how the future Starbug was able to return to Earth?
The future selves themselves are extremely broad and only Rimmer leaves an impression (mostly because of Barrie's performance). I think Future Lister is the most disappointing one. Not because he's in a jar but because he's almost completely absent from the conversations. Which, given the moral underpinnings of the conflict, you'd think he'd be a vital part of (Present Lister is the main driving force in making the future crew leave the ship).
CHARACTERS
It's impossible to talk about Out of Time without addressing the elephant in the room - Rimmer's sudden bout of heroism at the end there. Given that the crew had a very easy out from the situation (just surrender the time drive components), "better dead than smeg" is undeniably a personal choice. And it makes sense. Rimmer is something of a dreamer. He wants to become an officer, he wants to improve himself. All of these things that he wants can only happen in the future. So when he discovers that his future self is even worse, Rimmer chooses to die rather than live knowing he's doomed to succumb to his foibles. An act of ultimate self-loathing (suicide) or spiteful defiance of his own darker self? You decide.
I really enjoyed Barrie as Future Rimmer. It seemed like he was the only one really having any fun with the concept. Kryten's just more tetchy/pompous than he already is, Cat is only changed physically and Lister barely gets a look in. So it's up to Rimmer to really convey the full evil. Which he does brilliantly, with just a mustache, a monotone and the slightest German affectation to his accent.
Much of the comedic side of the script is carried by Llewelyn, who stars in a hilarious subplot where Kryten becomes convinced that Lister's a mechanoid, and starts treating him as an underling. He's so wonderfully stern and snooty in these scenes (Charles matches his energy by being appropriately submissive), and the reaction he has upon realising his mistake is one of his finest moments.
NOTES
- They never explain why Rimmer's hologram ages, although the mustache might be based on his father.
- The yellow coat actually suits Barrie quite well.
- The throwaway line about the crew spending Christmas fighting the 'Pan-Dimensional Liquid Beast' is fantastic.
- Those triangular sandwiches that Lister makes is probably not too far off from what I would make. I'm not great with coordination.
- One would think that Lister would have a harder time accepting that he's a robot.
- I liked the moment where the Cat discovers the crew have forgotten him. It's one of the few occasions where Danny is allowed to inject some real sincere emotion into the character (because the Cat clearly cares about being known).
- Time travel was invented in the 28th century, yet somehow humanity still died out.
- The time drive is hidden behind a veil of unreality bubbles, yet all it takes is for the crew to enter stasis to ignore them? How come nobody else thought of that? Stasis seemed to be a fairly common piece of tech.
- Why do the crew dismiss the time drive as useless without a hyper drive? They could use it to get out of any tough situation!
- How exactly did the future crew explain themselves to all those celebrity figures in history without hopelessly contaminating the timeline?
- Rimmer's future self has a mustache, as he did in Stasis Leak. And the future Lister of that episode mentioned that in five years' time, he'd find a way to travel back and marry Kochanski. This never happens, so I can only assume the timeline depicted in that story is the same timeline as here, and it's erased. Who knows what happened with future Kochanski? Maybe she lost interest in Lister when he became corrupt. Or when he became a brain.
- Kryten mentions that he's been with the crew for 4 years from his perspective.
- Lister apparently has a tattoo, courtesy of a drunken Petersen.
- Lister re-iterates that he was found underneath a pool table as a baby. He told this story before in The Last Day.
CONCLUSION
It wasn't all that much when I was watching, but the more I think about it, the more I like it.
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