I appreciate what The Beginning was aiming for, I just don't think it gets there.
PLOT
The crew flee into an asteroid field from an attacking Simulant Death Ship, and assign Rimmer to come up with a workable battle plan. Rimmer must finally defeat the spectre of his father to find the necessary courage.
ANALYSIS
In 2012, the tenth series of Red Dwarf wasn't just the tenth series of Red Dwarf. It was very possibly the last-ever Red Dwarf. With that in mind, one can see that it was designed to be a better version of what Back to Earth tried to be: a victory lap for the franchise, bringing the show back to its roots and reminding the audience of the good times before gracefully sailing off into the sunset. It's a credit to its success that this did not happen and we ended up getting even more of the show.
But at the time, The Beginning was set to be a potential finale for the whole thing (the title of course referencing the first episode, The End). For this momentous occasion, Doug pulled out all the stops. Budgetary limitations be damned, we were going to have space battles! Asteroid fields! Simulants! An attack on Red Dwarf itself! Rimmer finally resolving his issues!
It's... a lot. There's a lot going on. And very little of it is well executed. Blue Midget and the Simulant ships frequently seem like digital 2D cutouts. The Simulants themselves are treated as a joke. For some reason, they're cosplaying as the Victorian upper class and have a chancellor (?). They're all broad comedy figures, led by a Graham McTavish knockoff. The crew's reaction to their ship's potential destruction is blase at best - Kryten and Lister even take time to banter (badly) while the air is being sucked out into space! It's shockingly series 8-esque.
Then there's Rimmer. I already discussed in my Trojan review how I felt that Doug Naylor doesn't quite grasp what makes a person like Rimmer tick and has to resort to outside influences - in that case, retconning his brother to be another weakling - to explain it, and also to develop Rimmer. Here, he makes the exact same mistake.
Rather than allowing Rimmer to find his inner hero naturally like we saw in Holoship, Out of Time and even Stoke Me a Clipper (although it's more thrust upon him in the latter, keeping with Doug's style), he has to find out that his father isn't really his father.
And I know the argument could be made that it doesn't negate his upbringing and the effect that had on Rimmer in previous episodes, but it is the catalyst for his newfound confidence here. And it shouldn't be. It's just so... artificial. At least it is to me. I liked that the Cat pointed out how much Rimmer is held back by the ghost of a dead man. Rimmer's decision to ignore his father's wishes and watch that holo-tape were entirely his own. That was enough. That should've been when he threw down the shackles, so to speak. The Darth Vader joke was entirely unnecessary.
Despite all I've just said, there is some fun to be had with this episode. The ambition on display here is a nice change of pace from the mundane atmosphere of the rest of series 10. The resolution to the Simulant threat was clever. I loved seeing Rimmer having to come up with a battle plan, and to convince the others to go along with him. On a nerdier note, I was super happy to see Blue Midget get used so extensively for the first time since series 2. It's like the underdog ship. Only poor White Giant gets less use.
The dialogue was mostly quite poor. As I already said, it was a throwback to series 8 with all those overlong similes and unnecessary goofy gags breaking up the flow of the episode. Hoagy, his mustache and everything else to do with him would fit right in Pete. We're a long way off from the glory days of Denis Lill, Nicholas Ball and Don Henderson. The rest of them are so forgettable and stupid that they don't even bear mentioning.
CHARACTERS
It was slightly amusing, if not frustrating, to be teased with the resolution to series 8's cliffhanger. I guess Doug thinks it's funnier to just leave it as it is, but I think it could still make an interesting story if they addressed it properly (at least what happened to the clone Rimmer, and how Ace returned).
Having the Cat be the one to advise Rimmer about his father was an unexpected stroke of genius. It would have been very easy to write that scene to be between Lister and Rimmer, but using the Cat in this way gives him a whole new dimension without Doug even having to do much work. I love the idea that he's perceptive of other people's feelings. Presumably, it's only come up now because he simply doesn't care most of the time. Here, his life depends on changing Rimmer's mind.
Poor Robert Llewelyn was lumbered with all the worst lines, like the one about tiding Lister's quarters during the attack. And even worse, the one about going on a 'solo mission' to glance out of the window to see who's attacking. Just pure inanity.
By far the best performers of the episode were from the flashback. Philip Labey effortlessly captured 1988 Chris Barrie's energy as Young Rimmer. The girl trying to save him (Wendy, played by Joanne Gale) seemed really sweet and immediately made me wonder what could have been if only Rimmer wasn't such a smeghead. There's a surprising amount of depth there between them despite the total lack of dialogue between them. And finally, Simon Treves proved to be a more than adequate replacement for the departed John Abineri, being perfectly despicable and shameless as Rimmer's father.
Chris Barrie himself seems more at home in a dramatic storyline, toning down the exaggerated style of acting that he's otherwise adopted for this series. The way he mimes 'time and space' in the foreground during Hoagy's scene was a nice series 1 throwback (back when all the actors loved doing funny things to steal the scene from their colleagues).
NOTES
- I adore Rimmer's battle plan timetable. Rimmer composing a revision timetable for his exam is my single favourite chapter of the original novel. It's a wonderful visual gag.
- The words on Lecturer Rimmer's board spell out "DIVORCE".
- Why is Hoagy so friendly towards the crew? Is he so bored that he can't be bothered hating humanity anymore? That'd be kinda funny. Hoagy, incidentally, is lifted from the unused script of the Red Dwarf movie.
- Smart of Lister to steal the "Molly-D" from Hoagy before fleeing the ship. So many times in films and TV, they live useful things behind when they could be valuable later.
- Also... who would call a molecular destabiliser and cargo bay 3 "Molly-D and CB3", respectively? Doug Naylor apparently loves shortening words that don't need to be shortened.
- EPS is another one. I think it means 'emergency power supply' because of the context, but I couldn't tell.
- Why do the Simulants not take possession of Red Dwarf? And why didn't they dodge their rockets at the very end? Those rockets took like five minutes to reach their target.
- Retconning gazpacho soup is a sin against all decency.
- This is the only episode of Red Dwarf to include a mid-credits scene.
- Rimmer's father was last seen in Better than Life.
- Rimmer and Lister talk about Rimmer's death, seen in Me2 (which included rather different final words for Rimmer than are mentioned here).
- The events of Only the Good... are glossed over.
- The Cat plays with string again, like he did in Waiting for God.
- Rimmer quotes Lister's final words in The End.
- The Simulants previously appeared in Justice, Gunmen of the Apocalypse, Rimmerworld, Beyond a Joke and Trojan.
Rimmer pompously declaring himself a working class hero.
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