Pete is Red Dwarf with the fewest fucks to give.
PLOT
After repeatedly irritating Captain Hollister, Rimmer and Lister are thrown into the Hole aka not-so-solitary confinement. The skutters help them - and an eccentric prisoner nicknamed 'Birdman' - to escape. Meanwhile, Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat gain access to a tool known as the Time Wand, which does pretty much whatever Doug Naylor wants it to. The old crew is united, only for the Time Wand to accidentally turn Birdman's bird into a dinosaur. Oh, and there's a basketball game at some point, with Hollister handing out drinks for... some reason.
ANALYSIS
Absolutely nothing matters in this story. There is no story! The script is just a vehicle for increasingly elaborate and nonsensical gags. No structure, no cohesion, no thematic throughline. It's a cartoon where anything goes. And to think I used to criticise episodes for not 'making sense'! Just about the only throughline that's remotely grounded in reality is the visits to the captain's office, which are unsurprisingly also the funniest bits by far.
Apparently a lot of it was cobbled together from footage of previous episodes (most noticeably in the flashback scene to the crew's arrival to the Tank, but also the entire Archie subplot). You can scarcely tell because it's such a random mess. Oh, there's a new plotline? Well, come this way, every other stupid idea buzzing in Doug's brain is already having dinner. The bizarreness of making Pete a two-parter also suggests the production was totally imploding by this point and was becoming very desperate to fill time.
With that in mind, Pete basically defies criticism because it doesn't even look to be a proper finished product. It's a desperate squealing abortion of a TV episode held together by sticky tape, with crayon drawings standing in for missing pieces. What use is there in talking about how the Time Wand's existence and usage makes no sense, or criticising Hollister's decision to let Lister and Rimmer have it, or questioning the existence of "carrots the size of tree trunks"? Everything that happens is all gobbledegook anyway.
The one and only positive I'll throw in its way is that it does at least have a cartoon energy to go along with the cartoon logic. I was more baffled than bored, which would have been the worst crime. Watching both episodes in one go also helps massively, because you can at least vaguely keep track of what's happening (the same is true of Back in the Red, which was even more convoluted).
CHARACTERS
Rimmer and Lister have become cozy friends-to-the-end, which is rather peculiar given that Rimmer is meant to be his series one self robbed of a career. And the fact that it's, well, Rimmer and Lister. I think the idea of them turning into a prankster duo is very cute though, so I'm not too bothered by it. If they'd done this idea with the original Rimmer, it'd be downright wholesome.
I have to give a special acknowledgment to Mac McDonald, who carries the entire two-parter on his shoulders. It's taken me longer than with the rest of the cast to really appreciate Mac's skills as a comedian. But now I've seen the light and I'm very glad we got to have him for such a lengthy amount of time in series 8. He's pretty much the only person who's consistently funny.
Graham McTavish gets some flack for his extra camp performance as warden Ackerman, but I don't know, I quite enjoy it. I think because Graham started out with a very menacing take early on and also plays Dwalin in the Hobbit (who's quite rough and tough), I am consistently a little intimidated by him and that helps to offset the campness. "I am NOT!" and the way he runs up and down the stairs lives in my head rent-free.
NOTES
- Why was Birdman in the Hole anyway? He seemed to be harmless. Is he secretly a serial killer or something?
- This is the second time that someone's mentioned to have sex in their Batman outfit (first was Lister in Epideme). Doug, is there something you want to tell us?
- The basketball scene is completely ridiculous, but I do get enjoyment out of it. The people holding the score cards are particularly fabulous.
- See you in ten minutes?
- Why would Baxter and his cronies care if the crew lost a basketball match? They're not even playing. Is there a bet going on? Also, why not a gag about Holly's TV set playing basketball with robot arms or something?
- I probably should've asked this before, but why are the prison jumpsuits a garish purple colour?
- I love Lister's friendship with the married skutters.
- See you in ten minutes?
- The "programmable viruses" and the Time Wand are the worst examples of Doug ex Machinas.
- First Lister knew the Cat language, then he knew Esperanto, now he knows 'skutter Morse code'. Lister's true destiny is clearly in linguistics.
- One of the time-frozen Canaries very obviously blinks.
- See you in ten minutes?
- Why do they still have the Holly watch? You'd think Holly would be integrated with his egghead nanobot self or something.
- Bob whistling the Great Escape theme is a shameless reuse of the same gag from Queeg.
- Amongst my many questions during the dinosaur scene were "why doesn't Kryten just use the sodding Time Wand again" and "can't Holly flush it out into space/suffocate it?"
- See you in ten minutes?
- I am extremely irritated that the punchline to "You're finished" "What's the short version?" was 'Bye' and not 'Fin'. It was right there!
- Why don't Lister and Rimmer report Baxter and Kill Crazy for stealing the Time Wand?
- See you in ten minutes?
- We get to see an extended scene from Back in the Red.
- Pete was originally meant to air between Cassandra and Krytie TV, as evidenced by the fact that Kryten is inexplicably back in the Women's Wing here. And his reference to 'time being frozen again!' in the latter episode.
- Bob the skutter previously appeared in The Last Day and Back in the Red.
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