I enjoyed it a lot. It was one of my favourites. I didn't find the scene with Rimmer and Kochanski icky at all. I thought it was nice how they had two different opinions of it. This, in my opinion, was one of the best of Season 8. One of the other things I liked in it was how, after they knew Rimmer was going to die, they shielded him and prevented it from happening. That's what friends are for, even if that friend is Rimmer. Even Cat has his moment when he states that he doesn't want to see Rimmer die. Probably because it was solemn for him in Stoke Me a Clipper when the other Rimmer (actually Ace) died. Another reference to Future Echoes made in this is when Lister is told he will die at the age of 181. In Future Echoes, he appears to himself and Rimmer aged 171, so it is possible that we know that Lister lives a long life. Cassandra: Excellent episode.
This was the first episode of Red Dwarf I ever saw. I was flipping through the channels late one Saturday night (since we didn't have cable and only got local stations) and happened to come across it on PBS halfway through the episode. I thought it was so hilarious I decided to try and watch it every week. My parents eventually got me the complete series box set (which at the time was only seasons I-VIII) and I got to see the entire series at once instead of having to wait week to week.
This episode is why locking them up was a bad idea. Seeing as it's now the entire crew of Red Dwarf lost in deep space with no clue of what's around them or how to deal with it, it's now only Lister, Cat, Kochanski and their Holly that know anything about what's around them and how to deal with it. Could have easily made this their regular job, checking out what's around them in a better equipped and more official capacity; Captain could have also gotten Rimmer out of his hair and away from him by simply transferring him to under Lister's command on these scouting missions. Lister could have hung out with his buddies and we could have gotten some commentary on how Lister has changed over the past seven seasons. And now I wonder if this is why they destroyed Starbug, can probably assume the time and space drives were destroyed as well and that's why they didn't just bring everyone back to Earth and end the series (originally) on a high note. Could have still ended it that way by having them find them in the wreckage since I don't think they ere expecting to make "Back to Earth" back then. But now that I'm thinking about it, why did they even have to have the nanites? Once they figured out where they lost it, why not figure out it was them who "stole" Red Dwarf by using the Time and Space drives to take them to it and just fly off with it? Could have still brought Rimmer back (albeit as a hologram) that way, too, since they'd have access to fresh light bees (or whatever they were called).
I think this concept could've gone better it was just written with way too much smut and not enough about the actual situation they were stuck in, also there's virtually no mention of who Cat gets stuck with when he isn't with the team, we know Rimmer and Lister are bunk mates and Kryten is with Kochanski so who the hell is Cat with then and how is he coping not being able to wear anything but what he's issued? Too much neglect of the character even though he always does get neglected this ends up having too many spare wheel characters with nothing to do same goes for Holly. The core cast had become too large by this point.
I'm guessing they thought that making the crew part of some special team went against the idea that these guys are the average joes of a sci-fi future. But they also needed a justification for them to go on away missions. So the canaries were an attempt to do both. That probably wasn't necessary, though. An officer taking low-ranking but experienced personnel with them on special missions their experience is relevant to is perfectly plausible. Though, honestly, "Cassandra" shows the premise can work. They just didn't make good use of it in the rest of the season.
3:00 - And these days he's a main character in the long-running UK soap opera "Eastenders". I mean the actor is, not Killcrazy. Although believe me that would be *awesome*. Also Cassandra is played an award-winning stage actress most famous on TV for playing the Agatha Christie detective Miss Marple. So she's played a character who has deduced things that have already happened and another character who has predicted things that will happen in the future :)
8:03 Technically Cassandra's prediction isn't 100%, not all of the other Canaries die cos Kill Crazy is still in the diving bell here and he's not dead just knocked out from earlier, I'm trying to remember but i think this scene starts with him stirring a bit.
Kill Crazy actor ends up being Max Branning in East Ender's. A pretty serious character. However because I saw him as Kill Crazy first I just always laugh at every scene he does in East Ender's for years. 😃
the thing i really don't like about this episode is how contrived the ending is. have we ever seen lister chewing gum in the entire series before? but now all of a sudden he is chewing gum while on a death mission from a prison camp. and then to dispose of it he just happens to decide to stick it on the wall causing the fatal accident for cassandra who, of course, only needed to ask him not to do it in the first place to avoid her own demise.
As someone else already said, that is indeed Geraldine McEwan as Cassandra (better known for playing Agatha Christie heroine Miss Marple). She was known for her comic timing and "syrupy voice". I can't help but wonder if Hexadecimal's voice was based on hers?
Cassandra calls Rimmer by his first name Arnold when both first meet, and later she also calls the canary wearing Rimmers vest Arnold and correctly predicts his death, followed later by the rest of the canaries, including the real Arnold Rimmer. That would suggest that she knew who everyone was despite Rimmer's attempt at deception, and was merely toying with Rimmer just like with Lister; although that they didn't notice that she initially called Rimmer by his first name when planning their deception suggests a writer's error.
Another inconsistency in this episode is Cassandra's attempt at punishing Lister because she knows he's going to kill her, if she can predict the future then why did she bother punishing him if she knew her revenge plan was going to fail?
@@KRPTV Late response but the punishing Lister led him to ultimately killing her. So it wasn't so much a revenge plan as it was to make sure the future of her death came true.
@@zombieshoot4318 Ha, dont worry about that, a few months back I had a UA-cam reply from a comment I made over a decade ago so three years is nothing in comparison! 😄😄😄
The guy playing Kill Crazy is a brilliant actor named Jake Wood unfortunately for the past 15 or so years he's been in the Soap Eastenders, which while being a nice monthly paycheque doesn't exactly push his acting abilities.
Season 8 has some really awful misogyny, from the sexual magnetism virus to the gross stuff that happens in the next episode.There are shows that handle this much better, Porridge for instance had plenty of jokes about sexual frustration in prison but it never went into the creepy territory that RD8 did. Not to say it was perfect, Porridge still had its share of racist and homophobic jibes but it came across as prisoners giving each other shit.
Yeah, I end up talking about it more in the Krytie TV video. I remembered that Season 8 had stuff like that, but I didn't realize just how much of it was concentrated into the first half of the season until I got to that one.
i really don't think the writers had any idea how to write a female character and once they had made kochanski a central character everything became warped by that inability. i think that also shows in the earlier episode when the crew meet their female selves.
In my headcanon the Kochanski from their universe looks like Claire Grogan while the parallel Kochanski looks like Chloe Annette, hence the differences in Kochanski’s appearance and personality between series 6 and 7.
Spoilers for the episode "Only the Good..." - - - - - Makes you wonder though, why was that woman Captain Hollister met at the start of that episode from the escape pod brought back to life? Surely Holly's nanobots were never programmed to bring her back either.
I actually do wonder if Kochanski was brought back but the Captain and people involved in the trial didn't notice until after Back in the Red and decided it was pointless letting the 5 prisoners know about it.
hmmm. Season 8 seems to be better than I remember it being. I was a super-crazy-super-fan back in the day and I remember teh crushing disappointment of season 8 that felt like such a betrayal. Is it possible that I was too harsh back then?
@Helen I think everyone was really harsh on seasons 7 and 8 because there was so much change, season 7 Rimmer's departure and Season 8 resurrected crew plotline. If you can separate yourself from this, the episodes actually weren't that bad. I liked the new Kochanski character. Season 8 format I wasn't crazy about, it but I still found myself laughing minus Krytie Tv which put me to sleep. From Seasons 9 onward is when the show truly became shit. I think series 10 was probably the worst. I tried to watch the latest episodes, and I just couldn't. I feel like the stories never feel quite complete or something.
@simon I don't see how anyone could like season 10. I thought the set was WAY too bright for Red Dwarf. I also felt like they had a lot of magical GELFs that came out of nowhere in that season. Most of series X, it seemed like they just sat around and tried to make jokes. They pretty much abandoned the sci-fi adventure aspect of the show which made 3-6 so good. It was bland. At least series XII tried to capture the feel of seasons 3 through 6.
@Simon Simon Hmmm, try to rewatch season 10. I bet it won't be as good as you remembered it. But the rest I agree for the most part. I still don't think 7 and 8 were that bad but definitely a huge shift in format in 8. Back to Earth I could barely get through it.
My is the same as Lister, he doesn't believe in Fate, well how he calls it "So-called word Fate isn't real." the same thing but Joe and Lister are right.
I'm just going to point out that because you haven't seen a tv show called "Beadles About" you are not going to understand why Kryten suddenly has a beard in Krytie TV
Yeah, Jeremy Beadle was basically king of prank TV in the UK for the 80s, 90s and a bit of the 00s. Candid Camera sort of stuff - people thinking they've had their car crushed or knocked over a load of expensive stuff in a shop. Very famous one where this middle-aged woman is convinced she's had aliens land in her bank garden (and we're talking aliens made of tin foil and smoke machines here) and she starts singing to them. It was always good natured unlike the mean spirited "social experiments" you get on YT.
I would say Season 8 was much worse than 11. 11 was not anything good, but it was not insultingly and offensively bad... unlike Season 8, which was somehow more sexist and aged much worse than many of the older series!
So much yellow! I don't hate season 8. It's definitely flawed but there's plenty to enjoy as well. If I remember right, Krytie TV is my least favourite because the basic premise never sat well with me.
Have you ever thought about doing reviews of the various episodes of Fawlty Towers? it's not really the type pf stuff that you comment on, but, You might enjoy the humor.
I love the way Kill Crazy looks directly at the camera for a split second, get's me every time!
I enjoyed it a lot. It was one of my favourites. I didn't find the scene with Rimmer and Kochanski icky at all. I thought it was nice how they had two different opinions of it. This, in my opinion, was one of the best of Season 8. One of the other things I liked in it was how, after they knew Rimmer was going to die, they shielded him and prevented it from happening. That's what friends are for, even if that friend is Rimmer. Even Cat has his moment when he states that he doesn't want to see Rimmer die. Probably because it was solemn for him in Stoke Me a Clipper when the other Rimmer (actually Ace) died.
Another reference to Future Echoes made in this is when Lister is told he will die at the age of 181. In Future Echoes, he appears to himself and Rimmer aged 171, so it is possible that we know that Lister lives a long life.
Cassandra: Excellent episode.
Yes, this is when New Rimmer starts to bond with the Boys.
I think most, if not all the bad things about Season 8 could have been avoided if the prison setting had been removed.
This was the first episode of Red Dwarf I ever saw. I was flipping through the channels late one Saturday night (since we didn't have cable and only got local stations) and happened to come across it on PBS halfway through the episode. I thought it was so hilarious I decided to try and watch it every week. My parents eventually got me the complete series box set (which at the time was only seasons I-VIII) and I got to see the entire series at once instead of having to wait week to week.
Try Blakes 7 if you like your sci fi, extremely popular 70s British science fantasy show, not allot of Americans know it but ones that do love it.
This episode is why locking them up was a bad idea. Seeing as it's now the entire crew of Red Dwarf lost in deep space with no clue of what's around them or how to deal with it, it's now only Lister, Cat, Kochanski and their Holly that know anything about what's around them and how to deal with it. Could have easily made this their regular job, checking out what's around them in a better equipped and more official capacity; Captain could have also gotten Rimmer out of his hair and away from him by simply transferring him to under Lister's command on these scouting missions. Lister could have hung out with his buddies and we could have gotten some commentary on how Lister has changed over the past seven seasons.
And now I wonder if this is why they destroyed Starbug, can probably assume the time and space drives were destroyed as well and that's why they didn't just bring everyone back to Earth and end the series (originally) on a high note. Could have still ended it that way by having them find them in the wreckage since I don't think they ere expecting to make "Back to Earth" back then. But now that I'm thinking about it, why did they even have to have the nanites? Once they figured out where they lost it, why not figure out it was them who "stole" Red Dwarf by using the Time and Space drives to take them to it and just fly off with it? Could have still brought Rimmer back (albeit as a hologram) that way, too, since they'd have access to fresh light bees (or whatever they were called).
I think this concept could've gone better it was just written with way too much smut and not enough about the actual situation they were stuck in, also there's virtually no mention of who Cat gets stuck with when he isn't with the team, we know Rimmer and Lister are bunk mates and Kryten is with Kochanski so who the hell is Cat with then and how is he coping not being able to wear anything but what he's issued? Too much neglect of the character even though he always does get neglected this ends up having too many spare wheel characters with nothing to do same goes for Holly. The core cast had become too large by this point.
I'm guessing they thought that making the crew part of some special team went against the idea that these guys are the average joes of a sci-fi future. But they also needed a justification for them to go on away missions. So the canaries were an attempt to do both. That probably wasn't necessary, though. An officer taking low-ranking but experienced personnel with them on special missions their experience is relevant to is perfectly plausible.
Though, honestly, "Cassandra" shows the premise can work. They just didn't make good use of it in the rest of the season.
It's Miss Marple!!
This felt quite weird, but... yes, I highly appreciate the Cassandra reference :)
"Giving it rizz" is something I never expected Rimmer to say, that's for sure.
3:00 - And these days he's a main character in the long-running UK soap opera "Eastenders".
I mean the actor is, not Killcrazy. Although believe me that would be *awesome*.
Also Cassandra is played an award-winning stage actress most famous on TV for playing the Agatha Christie detective Miss Marple. So she's played a character who has deduced things that have already happened and another character who has predicted things that will happen in the future :)
Yaaay, new RD vlog! I recently subscribed for your Red Dwarf content and have been thoroughly enjoying it.
Awesome, glad you like it ^.^
8:03 Technically Cassandra's prediction isn't 100%, not all of the other Canaries die cos Kill Crazy is still in the diving bell here and he's not dead just knocked out from earlier, I'm trying to remember but i think this scene starts with him stirring a bit.
3:38 - Ooh, is that a reference to the "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeextraordinary" running joke from the smeg-ups? ;)
Crytie TV episode next so place your bets for how many times Dena will say "icky" :P
icky is easily the best word for that episode. in my opinion its the worst of series 8 and the show as a whole!!! What the smeg were they thinking
I'm going to need some large number notation from mathematics for this bet.
So there's this thing called Knuth's up-arrow notation...
Kill Crazy actor ends up being Max Branning in East Ender's. A pretty serious character. However because I saw him as Kill Crazy first I just always laugh at every scene he does in East Ender's for years. 😃
Weird theme of series 8 is the main characters getting undressed.
Good point XD
Series 8 can be summed up even simpler than that, smut is the word.
the thing i really don't like about this episode is how contrived the ending is. have we ever seen lister chewing gum in the entire series before? but now all of a sudden he is chewing gum while on a death mission from a prison camp. and then to dispose of it he just happens to decide to stick it on the wall causing the fatal accident for cassandra who, of course, only needed to ask him not to do it in the first place to avoid her own demise.
Sticking it on the wall, as opposed to between his toes for later, is very un-Listerlike.
Jake Wood who plays kill crazy plays Max in a UK soap called Eastender's, Ricky Grove was also in it along with the tall blonde medical officer
As someone else already said, that is indeed Geraldine McEwan as Cassandra (better known for playing Agatha Christie heroine Miss Marple). She was known for her comic timing and "syrupy voice". I can't help but wonder if Hexadecimal's voice was based on hers?
Loved you commentary. It is a bit clunky, but Rimmer flipping off Cassandra was hilarious.
Cassandra calls Rimmer by his first name Arnold when both first meet, and later she also calls the canary wearing Rimmers vest Arnold and correctly predicts his death, followed later by the rest of the canaries, including the real Arnold Rimmer. That would suggest that she knew who everyone was despite Rimmer's attempt at deception, and was merely toying with Rimmer just like with Lister; although that they didn't notice that she initially called Rimmer by his first name when planning their deception suggests a writer's error.
Another inconsistency in this episode is Cassandra's attempt at punishing Lister because she knows he's going to kill her, if she can predict the future then why did she bother punishing him if she knew her revenge plan was going to fail?
@@KRPTV Late response but the punishing Lister led him to ultimately killing her. So it wasn't so much a revenge plan as it was to make sure the future of her death came true.
@@zombieshoot4318 Ha, dont worry about that, a few months back I had a UA-cam reply from a comment I made over a decade ago so three years is nothing in comparison! 😄😄😄
The guy playing Kill Crazy is a brilliant actor named Jake Wood unfortunately for the past 15 or so years he's been in the Soap Eastenders, which while being a nice monthly paycheque doesn't exactly push his acting abilities.
I didn't know it yet when I did these videos, but he also does the voice of The GEICO Gecko in the U.S.
He was in a few things in the tail end of the 90s but you don't see him now really.
@@Cyborcat I did not know that!
Also introduces my favourite Series VIII character in Warden Ackerman aka Dwalin from The Hobbit.
I didn't know Ackerman played one of the dwarves (only saw the first Hobbit movie once). That's awesome XD
Yes finally it feels like I've been waiting forever. Can't wait for the next one!
Season 8 has some really awful misogyny, from the sexual magnetism virus to the gross stuff that happens in the next episode.There are shows that handle this much better, Porridge for instance had plenty of jokes about sexual frustration in prison but it never went into the creepy territory that RD8 did. Not to say it was perfect, Porridge still had its share of racist and homophobic jibes but it came across as prisoners giving each other shit.
Yeah, I end up talking about it more in the Krytie TV video. I remembered that Season 8 had stuff like that, but I didn't realize just how much of it was concentrated into the first half of the season until I got to that one.
i really don't think the writers had any idea how to write a female character and once they had made kochanski a central character everything became warped by that inability. i think that also shows in the earlier episode when the crew meet their female selves.
This episode is the best of the series.
Kill Crazy is a actor in Eastenders "Max Branning"
He's also the voice of the Geico Gecko in America, which I *really* wish I knew when I made these videos.
@@Cyborcat Hi stay safe, never knew that.... big fan of Red Dwarf :D
You too ^.^
So why didn’t their universe’s Kochanski get brought back?
Probably because there was already a version of Kochanski around, Holly probably thought it would be redundant to have two of them.
In my headcanon the Kochanski from their universe looks like Claire Grogan while the parallel Kochanski looks like Chloe Annette, hence the differences in Kochanski’s appearance and personality between series 6 and 7.
Spoilers for the episode "Only the Good..."
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Makes you wonder though, why was that woman Captain Hollister met at the start of that episode from the escape pod brought back to life? Surely Holly's nanobots were never programmed to bring her back either.
I actually do wonder if Kochanski was brought back but the Captain and people involved in the trial didn't notice until after Back in the Red and decided it was pointless letting the 5 prisoners know about it.
hmmm. Season 8 seems to be better than I remember it being. I was a super-crazy-super-fan back in the day and I remember teh crushing disappointment of season 8 that felt like such a betrayal. Is it possible that I was too harsh back then?
Cassandra is the peak of the season and Back in the Red is better than most of the second half.
@Helen I think everyone was really harsh on seasons 7 and 8 because there was so much change, season 7 Rimmer's departure and Season 8 resurrected crew plotline. If you can separate yourself from this, the episodes actually weren't that bad. I liked the new Kochanski character. Season 8 format I wasn't crazy about, it but I still found myself laughing minus Krytie Tv which put me to sleep. From Seasons 9 onward is when the show truly became shit. I think series 10 was probably the worst. I tried to watch the latest episodes, and I just couldn't. I feel like the stories never feel quite complete or something.
I was thinking just that myself last night. Rob Grant seemed to be a crucial part of the series.
@simon I don't see how anyone could like season 10. I thought the set was WAY too bright for Red Dwarf. I also felt like they had a lot of magical GELFs that came out of nowhere in that season. Most of series X, it seemed like they just sat around and tried to make jokes. They pretty much abandoned the sci-fi adventure aspect of the show which made 3-6 so good. It was bland. At least series XII tried to capture the feel of seasons 3 through 6.
@Simon Simon Hmmm, try to rewatch season 10. I bet it won't be as good as you remembered it. But the rest I agree for the most part. I still don't think 7 and 8 were that bad but definitely a huge shift in format in 8. Back to Earth I could barely get through it.
I would say Kill Crazy isn’t so much one of the best things about Season 8 as he is one of the few good things about that season.
This is honestly the best Season 8 episode in my opinion. No other episode gets this hilarious.
I do think one of the lines from an upcoming episode will always be my favourite of this season if not the whole show... "I'M ONLY HALF-LOVELY!"
It's weird seeing Lister in uniform.
Imagine if that was Holly's sister!
My is the same as Lister, he doesn't believe in Fate, well how he calls it "So-called word Fate isn't real." the same thing but Joe and Lister are right.
I'm just going to point out that because you haven't seen a tv show called "Beadles About" you are not going to understand why Kryten suddenly has a beard in Krytie TV
Eh, I figured it was an intentionally bad disguise because sometimes disguises were involved in those prank shows.
Yeah, Jeremy Beadle was basically king of prank TV in the UK for the 80s, 90s and a bit of the 00s. Candid Camera sort of stuff - people thinking they've had their car crushed or knocked over a load of expensive stuff in a shop.
Very famous one where this middle-aged woman is convinced she's had aliens land in her bank garden (and we're talking aliens made of tin foil and smoke machines here) and she starts singing to them.
It was always good natured unlike the mean spirited "social experiments" you get on YT.
loved this show as a kid I thought it was the balls didn't care for season 8
Best season 8 episode by far.
Great recap. *gives it a thumbs up*
Kill crazy is amazing I wish he had been in more episodes!
Just curious, how would you rank the seasons from worst to best?
Good question. I'd have to think about it, but either this one or Season 11 would be worst with Season 6 being best.
Cyborcat
What was so bad about 11?
did you not enjoy series 11? its not the best but i think its better than 8 by a long shot
I don't remember, since I've only seen it once so far. It just didn't click with me for some reason.
I would say Season 8 was much worse than 11. 11 was not anything good, but it was not insultingly and offensively bad... unlike Season 8, which was somehow more sexist and aged much worse than many of the older series!
So much yellow!
I don't hate season 8. It's definitely flawed but there's plenty to enjoy as well. If I remember right, Krytie TV is my least favourite because the basic premise never sat well with me.
"So much yellow!"
Yeah, Rimmer has a lot of screen time in this episode.
Zing!
Just watched some x11.What a letdown.Think i'll stick with the old stuff and preserve the memory.
Have you ever thought about doing reviews of the various episodes of Fawlty Towers? it's not really the type pf stuff that you comment on, but, You might enjoy the humor.
I look forward to these reviews. Uh oh, Krytie TV next! I cringe to think about that one!
No way you'd get away with saying "Retarded" on British TV this side of the 90s. Political correctness be dammed.
Its great kill crazy amazing
Rimmer is correct:Cunnilingus is important.
Indeed.
Eww