BBC Week: Red Dwarf

Greetings you tossers!!!  Hmm still not sure if I am getting the lingo down but nevertheless welcome to BBC Week and I thought it best to kick this shindig into high gear with some Sci-fi Comedy, so don your space suit, prep our bazookoids and get ready to dive into the smeg.  This is Red Dwarf.

My God, it is the product of man and gerbil.

Holly: It was John Paul Satre that said, Hell is being stuck in a room for all eternity with your spoilers.

Lister: Holly, all Satre’s mates were French.

Far out in the reaches of space, a mining ore vessel known as Red Dwarf passes through the known galaxy raiding mineral deposits and taking on precious cargo to the human race making its demands.  To keep this vessel running tip-top it clearly falls on the shoulders of Second Technician Arnold J. Rimmer (Chris Barrie of Spitting Image, The Legends of Treasure Island, The Brittas Empire, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Back in Business) a hapless doofus with a Napoleon complex that feels that one day he will be up the echelons of command and never again have to clap his eyes on the slobbiest entity on the human race David Lister (Craig Charles of Business as Usual, Captain Butler, The Colour of Funny,  Red Dwarf and Doctors) a slacker that never aspired to do well…much of anything other than smoke, eat Indian food and somehow not create flatulence that would cause the entire ship to vacate with or without space suits.   This nitwit gets sent to a stasis chamber (frozen in time but not in space) because he refuses to relinquish a cat that has not been through quarantine.

What do you say, little buddy?

The whole ship is controlled and monitored by the ship’s artificial intelligence Holly (Norman Lovett of Asylum, Red Dwarf, The Criminal, Feedback and The School That Roared) detects an impending radiation surge and attempts to seal the breach before it is too late.  Alas the entire crew is…no more.

Lister wakes from stasis to find Red Dwarf quieter than a tomb full of mimes and no idea what is going on.  Holly explains that massive cadmium radiation obliterated everyone in its path but Lister given he was sealed away and that it has been over 3 million years before he could be released.   Lister has to know come to terms quite possibly that he is the last human being alive.   Holly in his ultimate wisdom to keep Lister sane resurrects Rimmer as a hologram to nag, nitpick and snark at him every turn. 

The two encounter a humanoid that evolved from the domestic housecat.  Three million years of evolution brings us the being they simply call Cat (Danny John Jules of Labyrinth, Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, The Tomorrow People, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels).  Lister demands they return to Earth and get back on with their lives.  Rimmer is not certain of this endeavor but he is still busy being dead and death does have its perks. 

I had a few comments on this series.  BBC’s budget as always has a bit of a stranglehold making writers to come up with creative gags, clever dialogue and interesting stories which most sitcoms cannot muster.  This particular series incorporates Star Trek, Star Wars, Krull and even Hawk the Slayer references so there is something for most of the nerds out there to enjoy.  From a personal note while I love the series and have every episode I do feel it jumped the laser guided space shark around season 3 but that is just one fellow’s opinion.

Dead and still a twit.

Sci-Fi Week: Outland

Welcome back kiddies!  Day 4 of Sci-Fi Week begins and it holds a bit of sentimental value for me.   After leaving the James Bond Franchise in 1971, Most Connery fans were convinced he was past his acting prime and never do better than James Bond.   So suit up in your atmospheric suit, make sure to activate your magnetic clamps and get them boots a walkin’.  This is Outland.

It's only a model.

Spoilers have a flair for the dramatic…

Director/writer Peter Hyams (Capricorn One, The Star Chamber, 2010, The Presidio, Narrow Margin and Timecop) brings us a retelling of Gary Cooper’s High Noon only rather a battered mining town we have a mining colony at Io, a far moon of Jupiter.  Not exactly the best assignment for Marshall O’Neil (Sean Connery of Dr. No, Goldfinger, The Anderson Tapes, Murder on the Orient Express, The Great Train Robbery, Highlander, The Hunt for Red October and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) and his family but orders are orders and he has to lump it.  Before too long it feels like a typical mining operation and he meets with the general manager Mark Sheppard (Peter Boyle of Young Frankenstein, Taxi Driver, Turk 182!, Red Heat and Everyone Loves Raymond) who proceeds to inform the Marshall that most of the workers are good at what they do, they bust their butts and are entitled to play after hours but sometimes folks get a bit rowdy.

Yes I was in Highlander, now concentrate on the job!

Marshall O’Neil sits in with his men finding out the daily logs, his right hand man Sgt. Montone (James Sikking of General Hospital, Hill Street Blues, Doogie Howser,M.D. and The Pelican Brief) tries to point out the good about this town.  The booze isn’t that watered down and the hookers have a heart of gold.  Yeah so a man on duty not being in a pressure suit and exposed himself to a zero-pressure atmosphere only to become the contents of raspberry jam all over the walls.   Later throughout the week a worker that reports and fellow workers call as calm, collective and always well behaved smacks around a prostitute and threatens to slice her to bits.  O’Neil has the locked door disengaged and Montone sneaks through the vents with a shotgun blasting before O’Neil can question him.  Given the sheer size of this colony very little can go on without O’Neil finding out.

 Using the surveillance cameras throughout the colony he discovers the possibility of an amphetamine being smuggled onboard.  Confirmed by Dr. Lazarus (Mary Sternhagen of The Hospital, Another World, Independence Day, Spencer, Golden Years, Cheers, Sex and the City and ER), a wreck of a doctor as she calls herself is stunned rigid on the dosages that are floating in one man’s veins and cannot believe this is happening.  With a bit more investigation with cameras O’Neil links the smuggling to Sheppard and it is sanctioned by Sgt. Montone.   O’Neil follows and captures one of Sheppard’s dealers, tosses the drugs in the toilet and drops him into an isolation chamber leaving him in zero gravity to drift until he feels like being chatty.   Confronting Montone about being bought off, O’Neil tells him how he can help or get the hell out of the way.  His pride and sense of justice blinds him to the point that Sheppard’s partners has set a couple of professional hitmen to kill him but O’Neil patched into outgoing communications and is aware of everything that is coming his way.

Sheesh the caters really need therapy.

Now I understand the comparison to High Noon due to the clock counting down in the same way he is waiting his impeding assassins on arrival.    Will anyone help him or will all turn a blind eye to a man being eliminated?   Most of the film is blue screened, matte painted and scale model shots as well as the decompression explosions but I feel the effects as a whole still stand up to this day and c’mon it’s Sean Connery walloping men 20 years younger than him.   A novelization of said movie was once again like Logan’s Run done by Sci-Fi/Sci-fi Fantasy writer Alan Dean Foster. It is a dark drama with some levity and complicated relationships.  This is an old favorite so not exactly an arm twists to view it again.