Samsara started out as a compelling mystery, but failed to stick the landing.
PLOT
The crew discover the sunken ship S. S. Samsara, where the entire crew died in mysterious circumstances. Suddenly, the ship comes to life and separates Lister and the Cat from Kryten and Rimmer, forcing the duos to work out what's happening.
ANALYSIS
The really annoying thing about Samsara is that it's one draft away from being fantastic. Red Dwarf had never done a murder mystery type thing before. The flashback storyline woven in-between the present day investigation is an inspired choice. The clues are well-crafted. Even the solution makes perfect sense, and ties back to the show's past in a satisfying way.
So why is the second half of the episode so crap?? There's an entire section with Lister and the Cat rambling about nothing that just eats up valuable time. When the time comes for the denouement, Doug stops trusting the audience and feels the need to have the crew point out the explanation for every single clue in detail. As if we couldn't have guessed that the karma drive caused Lister to lose his hair or for the Cat to get stabbed!
I get that you need an explanation for the Mine-opoly scene at the start, but not every little thing separately.
And the one thing that actually matters - the Samsara crew's deaths - doesn't really go answered either. We can assume the karma drive wiped them out, but why? It's clear that they eventually figured out what was happening and started behaving unethically to compensate. So why would the drive kill them? And why couldn't Barker simply have reversed the program again?
Our heroes themselves do not actually solve the mystery. We as the audience get the answers in the flashbacks, but Kryten just pulls them out of his ass. He has absolutely zero reason to suspect that Green and Barker were responsible for tampering with the drive unless he read some report in the ship's computer, but we never see this. He just says "it appears that-" as if it were self-evident.
It really is a shame, because I was very impressed. I love the dystopian nature of the karma drive, and how it's a natural evolution from Justice World. Even though the episode (misguidedly) plays it for laughs, there's a real 1984 vibe to Barker and Green's romance being penalized, and their every decision being rated by a computer. This could have been a truly terrifying episode in series 5.
I wouldn't have noticed this if the script hadn't driven off a cliff, but there really aren't a lot of laughs after the early Mine-opoly scenes, which are absolute gold, by the way. I loved seeing Rimmer and Lister's downtime together and how comfortable they've become in each other's company. That section on its own is just pure classic Red Dwarf, with every line producing a good laugh.
CHARACTERS
I appreciate that Doug Naylor did not cast stereotypically pretty actors to play Barker and Green. Not that Maggie Service and Dan Tetsell are unattractive in any way, but they're not your everyday lean and pointy up-and-comers that you forget as soon as they're off-screen. It's a refreshing change to see a love story between people that you can imagine actually meeting in real life.
Samsara more than any other episode shows why the Cat only works in small doses. I felt Lister's pain as he was trapped there. It also occurred to me how much they've changed. I recently rewatched Backwards, and the dynamic between Lister and the Cat was so different back then. They were thick as thieves! Now the Cat is like that one guy who never moved on while Lister's had a whole life. I know he's still a bum, but emotionally speaking at least. They're not nearly as close now and it's kinda sad.
I know I've said this before, but I can't tell whether Craig has decided to play Lister differently now that he's older, or if Lister's shift in personality is just a consequence of Craig himself being more gentle and sophisticated now.
NOTES
- Apparently the production couldn't manage to record proper video footage of Barker's SOS, because it's just footage recycled from later in the episode.
- I love that Lister's new vest has pictures of the crew. He must have made that himself. It's very sweet.
- The underwater miniature work is very nice, very old-school.
- How is the karma drive still functioning after three million years under the sea?
- Doug seems to be experimenting with a 'modern' wobbly camera look for the show. Not a fan.
- The Cat has learned what a 'one-armed bandit' is since Nanarchy.
- I was ready to cheer Doug for shooting the scenes in the dark really nicely - you see Danny and Craig's silhouettes well enough, but it's not so ridiculously bright that it loses believability. Then one cut later, the set is suddenly much brighter for no reason. Sigh.
- "Your conscience... FOREVEEEER!" is such a great line delivery from Craig. It's so naturalistic, could almost be ad-libbed.
- Why are there glowsticks in the Samsara's mess hall?
- Rimmer has his 'vending machine maintenance man of the month' certificate (from Back to Earth) and his battle plan (from The Beginning) hanging on the wall on the side of his bed.
- The Red Dwarf crew's death and Lister's survival in The End are discussed.
- Rimmer briefly suspects the crew's garbled logs were written in GELF, which is infamously incomprehensible for humans.
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