|
Lister (Craig Bierko) is the lowest ranking crewmember on the
5000-man-strong intergalactic mining shipt Red Dwarf - but he doesn't mind
much, he never had any high aspirations in life anyways, and he has a
girlfriend on board, Kochanski (Elizabeth Morehead). Then though,
Kochanski breaks up with him, his unquarantined cat is found, and as a
punishment he is sent into suspended animation until the ship returns to
earth. Could have been worse though ... like a radioactive leak wiping out
the ship's entire crew and Lister being brought back to life only 3
million years later, when he's the last human survivor. And to make
matters worse, the holographic companion the ship's psychotic computer
Holly (Jane Leeves) has afforded Lister is none other than Rimmer (Chris
Eigeman), the least likeable guy on the whole ship. And then there's also
a weird robot on board, Kryten (Robert Llewellyn), who has passed the last
3 million years reading the fire exit sign over and over again. And
there's a descendant of Lister's cat, Cat (Hinton Battle), who has evolved
to humanlike form in the last 3 million years. If that wasn't enough,
Lister from the future stops by to warn him of ... well, he doesn't get
any further than to warn him of something, since the temporal link breaks
off way too soon ... Taken by its own merits, Red Dwarf
is a mildly amusing pilot for a series that never got made, except from
the sci-fi setting there is little to distinguish it from a myriard of
other TV sitcoms from that era, but at least some of the jokes are ok. Compared
to the British cult-series of the same name though, this one's a disaster:
Now I'm the first to admit that the British Red Dwarf was
not free of flaws, especially as the series progressed, but it worked as
an ensemble comedy with great characters ... and these characters are
totally lost in this pilot: While the original Lister as played by Craig
Charles is a likeable slob and the most unlikely guy to be the last human
alive, Craig Bierko is essentially the cool laid-back guy who has an aura
of heroism to him. While the original Rimmer as played by Chris Barrie is
an incapable but pedantic wannabe-leader, Chris Eigeman is just somebody
you don't like a lot. And while the Cat played by Danny John-Jules brought
absolutely weird dynamics to his role, Hinton Battle at best seems
slightly odd. To put it another way, the US-version seems to be
streamlined, and in a way that all the elements that made the UK-version
special, suddenly don't gel anymore. And maybe that's why Red Dwarf
in the USA never made it past this pilot ... and another pilot with a
partly replaced cast that botched up the original concept even more.
|
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
amazon.de
eThaiCD.com
