Krysis is a most welcome throwback to the show's early years.
PLOT
Kryten develops a mid-life crisis, so Lister uses recovered technology from the Nova 5 to locate another mechanoid in order to show Kryten how much he's evolved since becoming a Red Dwarf crewmember. To their surprise, however, the other mechanoid proves to be infinitely more capable than Kryten.
ANALYSIS
A tight script where everything ties together at the end. A focus on one of the crewmembers. Audience laughter leading into the credits. A single guest star on a downed ship. So is this 1989 or what? Krysis caught me offguard, because it genuinely feels like a script written in the show's older days, lacking the idiosyncratic traits of the Dave era. It's slower, less frenetic, lacking in filler and even dips its toes into being about something truly meaningful. It feels like home.
Developing Kryten has been long overdue. The last story based on his character was series 7's Beyond a Joke, which I like better than most fans do, but it's not particularly good. The revelation that Kryten was created to be a pompous fool because his creator was a woman scorn'd is neither interesting nor does it contribute meaningfully to who he is as a person. If anything, it actually took away from his development because it suggested that his faults were built-in, rather than flaws that he developed himself as a result of breaking his programming.
Of course, this is not an ideal expansion of Kryten either. Pondering over the meaning of all existence is a little too broad to be a Kryten-specific issue, and the answer he arrives to is peculiarly sentimental for a show that once talked about a "godless, meaningless universe". But at least it's a relatable problem for him to overcome, handled in an inventive and original way through the spectacularly flamboyant plot device of having him literally speak with the Universe. Completely bonkers, but also delightfully ambitious for a show this old. And I absolutely loved how they handled the Universe, making him both dignified yet somewhat fallible at the same time.
CHARACTERS
In series 4-5, it was a defining feature of Red Dwarf that the way the crew approached the problem of the episode would bring out the unique aspects of their personalities. Take DNA for example - Lister was absolutely certain that Kryten cannot become a human on a psychological level, revealing his prejudice towards machines. Rimmer, despite being a more antagonistic person, was perfectly happy to let Kryten explore his identity. So even though the episode was technically all about Kryten, it brought the other crew into the matter.
Krysis does something similar, showing how the Cat is completely confused by the concept of a mid-life crisis (in a terrifically funny scene played to the hilt by Danny John-Jules). Lister is supportive enough to track down the Nova-3, but also flippant. He claims it's because of his northern roots, but we've seen Lister deeply depressed plenty of times, so he's more likely to be suppressing his own problems. And Rimmer? Well, Rimmer has spent his entire life living in a mid-life crisis, hasn't he? Much like the Cat, he gets one awesome scene where he talks about how he feels about his youth, specifically the delight he takes in any classmate that did worse than him in life. "Working in a sewage treatment plant in the Falkland Islands. And they say there is no God."
Dominic Coleman gives one of the more sober guest performances in recent Red Dwarf, playing Butler. Kryten's equivalent to Ace Rimmer. Despite Ace's fame and charisma, I must admit that Butler being a much more understated and irritating person makes him funnier.
NOTES
- Apparently all the Blackberry phones burn in Silicon Hell. RIP.
- Kryten claims to have been created 2 976 000 years ago, which would mean that he was built 24 000 years after Lister went into stasis. That can't be right.
- How can Kryten possibly be made to last six million years? He was going to be replaced by Hudzen after only a few centuries at most!
- Rimmer brings up the fact that Kryten only broke his programming to help Lister, which I think was suggested once previously in The Inquisitor. Yet again, they don't really go anywhere with it, which is a shame because I think that idea could hold an episode of its own.
- Finding another Nova ship with a functioning mechanoid is so extremely unlikely. How long did they have to wait in stasis? Another three million years?
- Apparently, the Nova 5 was not the name of the ship, but its class. And there were multiple Nova 3's and 5's. So we have no actual idea what Kryten's ship was called.
- I know the idea is that Butler accidentally damaged Starbug, but why does it need to land when it's in space? Why do they talk about it crashing? Crashing where??
- The crew visit the Nova 3, having previously visited the Nova 5 in Kryten.
- Rimmer's battleplan timetable from The Beginning is still hanging over his bunk bed.
- This episode marks the fifth appearance of the GELFs (not counting the BEGGs, which might be a variation). They previously appeared in Camille, Emohawk, Ouroboros and Beyond a Joke. The Kinitawowi tribe are also mentioned.
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