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Day 19: Favourite Kristine Quote/Moment
Kristine VS The Pipes
~ [The pipes suddenly issue forth such a hideous, unearthly screech it could almost be believed that some kind of immense alien monster is dying within them. Like a striking cobra, KOCHANSKI smashes her spanner into the offending ironwork, sending three loud clangs reverberating throughout the ship]. Duct Soup (Series VII, Episode IV).
White Hole vs. Duct Soup
White Hole
Duct Soup
White Hole: After repairing Talkie Toaster, Kryten has the idea to restore Holly's 6,000 IQ at the cost of reducing her lifespan but she instead gains an IQ of 12,000. Meanwhile the Red Dwarf hurtles towards a white hole, the opposite of a black hole.
Duct Soup: Kryten thinks Lister likes Kochanski better than him and is making a fuss about it. When the primary power goes off and they all get stuck in a room they have no choice but to climb into the ventilation ducts and try to escape. While inside the ducts they discover Lister is claustrophobic...
Photo IDs by @what--the-helliot (also in the reblogs)
Have you ever listened to those clapped-out old pipes? 'Nureek'ing and 'retut'ing, and just when you expect them to 'nureek' again, they 'squrlookal'! It's enough to make a perfectly sane person crazy!
Duct Soup - Red Dwarf blog
(SPOILER WARNING: The following is an in-depth critical analysis. If you haven’t seen this episode yet, you may want to before reading this review)
In a Red Dwarf poll in 2009, this was voted the worst episode of all time. (No idea where it stands now, but I can’t imagine opinion has changed that much). Now to be fair, I don’t think it’s the worst episode of all time. I can think of a couple of others that are worse than this. Demons & Angels, Rimmerworld, Tikka To Ride and the majority of Series 8. But still, Duct Soup is pretty bad.
What’s the premise?
Because that’s the big joke really isn’t it? Duct Soup doesn’t actually have a premise. Not really. I mean what happens? Kochanski can’t sleep, something happens to the generators, they all go crawling around the vents for a bit and then cue the end credits. It’s a complete non-entity.
Believe it or not, things do start out okay. Not great, but it could have gone somewhere. Kochanski is feeling depressed about her situation so Lister tries to cheer her up. It’s quite sweet and is one of the few scenes I liked. Kryten too is making an effort to accommodate her. He’s doing her laundry, he tries to comfort her when she’s crying (albeit with the Heimlich Manoeuvre, but it’s the thought that counts) and even offers a glass of drinking chocolate. However when he sees that Lister has run her a bath, his irrational jealousy and fear of isolation comes to the forefront again.
Now if the entire episode was about Lister trying to help Kochanski through her depression and Kryten’s desperate attempts to put a spanner in the works, then I’m pretty sure I would have liked Duct Soup. But then the generators overload and the Dwarfers are forced to crawl through the vents to get to the backup generators, and that’s when the episode comes to a screeching halt.
It very quickly becomes apparent that what Doug Naylor is trying to do is recapture the same lightening in a bottle that was Series 3′s Marooned, but in the process he completely forgets what made Marooned such a great episode to begin with. Marooned was about two characters that absolutely despise each other being trapped in a life or death situation. Four people aimlessly crawling through vents doesn’t quite have the same appeal. (Sure, there’s an attempt to add some danger later in the episode when they discover that Starbug is flying toward a sun, but by that point it’s too little too late).
What also made Marooned such a good episode was that it gave us a greater insight into the characters. We learned significant things about Rimmer and Lister and it was very funny. Not so with Duct Soup. We learn that Lister is claustrophobic, but that doesn’t really go anywhere. We learn that Kochanski went to a cyber-school and that all of her friends were computer generated, which could have been used to explore how out of touch she is with the real world and why she has difficulty interacting with the other characters, but again they don’t really take it anywhere. And Kryten’s feud with Kochanski is exactly the same feud we saw in Ouroboros with no change or progression other than this time it’s not funny.
In fact the comedy in Duct Soup is very thin on the ground. Very rarely do I sit through a Red Dwarf episode and not laugh. Even in Red Dwarf’s worst episodes there’s usually something to titter at. There’s nothing in Duct Soup. It’s just really, really dull. Not to mention there are one or two moments that begin to cross the line a little bit, like when Lister rather aggressively denies being gay in an alternate dimension. I wouldn’t go as far to say that it’s offensive (I mean Duct Soup is so rubbish it can’t even do that properly), but speaking as a proud member of the LGBT+ community, it did make me feel a bit uncomfortable. The way it’s worded as though the idea of being gay somehow threatens Lister’s masculinity does border on stereotyping, and I really could have done without that.
(On a side note, in Dimension Jump Lister criticised Rimmer for looking down on Ace and being so selfish because his life didn’t turn out like that. So it’s interesting how when confronted with a similar scenario with Hologram Lister, who is in a loving and successful relationship with Kochanski and has matured fully, Lister behaves in a similar manner to Rimmer. Just thought I’d mention it).
Finally let’s talk about Kryten’s behaviour. Like I said in my previous review, I actually really like the idea of Kryten being jealous because there is a lot of comedy mileage and narrative potential there. (@allsortsofsmeg did suggest that they could have made it that Kryten was excited to be serving a woman again since the Nova 5, and I suppose that would have been interesting and fun to watch, but my main criticism would be that it’s just more of the same we’ve seen before. Kryten being nurturing and caring. Kryten being jealous on the other hand gets my attention because it’s a side of the character we’ve never seen before. Speaking as a writer, that immediately makes me sit up and take notice). But we have to draw the line somewhere. Kryten deliberately overloading the generators and potentially risking the lives of the crew just to stop Kochanski from having a bath?... No. I’m sorry, I can’t accept that. Kryten wouldn’t do that. It’s like Rimmer leaving the others for dead in Rimmerworld or Lister reprogramming Kryten in Tikka To Ride. It feels totally out of character. Have Kryten be jealous, sure. Have him become very petty, catty and vindictive, absolutely. But don’t compromise who he is at his core. A protector. A mother hen figure. That’s the root of his character. Having him endanger the lives of the others (albeit unintentionally) completely contradicts this. (The reveal that he excluded the doors from the shutdown protocol doesn’t improve matters neither. Not to mention showing just how pointless this entire episode is).
Apparently Duct Soup served as a replacement for another episode called Identity Within, which would have explored the Cat’s character and species further, but was rejected due to it being too expensive to film. I would pay good money to watch that episode rather than this one.
Slash Watch: Nothing slashy happens in this episode, but I just want to explain something real quick. I’ve always found it very odd how some have criticised slash writers for making Rimmer and Lister gay when Red Dwarf is actually the perfect franchise to do that with. I mean think about it. This isn’t a Red Dwarf universe. This is a Red Dwarf multiverse. The show frequently goes to alternate dimensions and explores different versions of the characters. While Kochanski’s Lister might not be gay, and our Lister is adamant he’s not gay (we’ll get to that), there could very well be a Lister from an alternate universe who is gay. So you remember that next time some hardcore Red Dwarf fan gives you grief about your homoerotic fanfic. Because of the franchise’s established multiverse, there is, somewhere out there, a canonically gay Lister and Rimmer who are in a relationship and no doubt bonking each other senseless. And if that hardcore Red Dwarf fan is a true hardcore Red Dwarf fan, they have to accept that as a distinct possibility.
UNLEASH THE GAY!
I’ve been trying to think if there is any scene from Duct Soup that is worth gif'ing up and I’m coming up blank. All the gratuitous packet shots are probably the best part of Duct Soup, but those work much better as stills. Anyone have any suggestions or Duct Soup scenes you want to see gif’ed?
Q
Craig says in the VII documentary to watch for a dubbed-over word he says in Duct Soup. Wikipedia has the following unsourced claim: “Series 7’s bonus features, Craig Charles mentions one word has been dubbed over in the scene where he tells his story about him developing claustrophobia, as it turns out this word was left un-dubbed on the first VHS release of Series 7 and is, in fact, ‘Fuck’.” I’ve watched the scene many times and I can’t find any sign of dubbing, let alone anything that looks like ‘fuck’. Am I missing something?
Kryten with a C
My husband and I might be the only two people in the world who count Kryten's vision of the future among their favourite RD moments. I think it's the vengeful "Thank you with a capital R!" that seals it.
