Red Dwarf Review: Series VI, Episode 6: "Out of Time"

Airdate: 11 November, 1993

Synopsis: The situation on Starbug appears to have crossed an event horizon of horridness. There is no trace of Red Dwarf. Rimmer's "morale meetings" simply serve the purpose of insulting the rest of the crew. There is no variety. Supplies are low. When the ship is attacked, Lister is knocked out. As Kryten is operating on Lister, he realises that he is a droid... although it turns out that Lister was hallucinating, thanks to unreality pockets, planted by the Space Corps for defence purposes. The crew decide to enter deep sleep to avoid the effects of other pockets...

...and come across a time drive in a derelict.

While it serves no immediate purpose, the crew realise that once a faster-than-light drive is obtained, they can wind up back at Earth. At the same time, they are intercepted by a JMC vessel.... which consist of their future selves. The future crew were looking for themselves to gain components from the present's time drive in order to gain access to the past. The makeup of the future crew is not only strange (Lister's condition drives Kryten to mourning, for example), but the connections that said crew made turn the present crew ill, causing them to slowly contemplate essential suicide.

Review (SPOILERS! RUN IF YOU HATE THEM!): This episode is sort of the anti-"Rimmerworld". That episode was funny at first, yes. By the end, however, I was sickened by how thin the plot and character was. THIS episode was weak on the humour... but when it came to character development, it is a behemoth.

For starters, we finally see Kryten's relationship with Lister (and, to a less of an extent, the rest of the crew) solidify. While Kryten may just come off as a maid at first, we see that he takes over as a true parental figure for the crew of Starbug. Think about it (this info is according to earlier episodes, as well as the novels and future episodes: I apologise for spoilers)

• Lister never knew his real parents, and his adoptive father died when Lister was six. His grandmother took him in, died off 7 years later, and Lister went around as an orphan until the JMC took him up.
• Rimmer's father took out his own failures on his sons, to the point of abuse. His mother dealt with the loveless marriage by sleeping around.
• The Cat doesn't even care about what happened to his folks.

We see him become very protective and defensive of the crew, wanting to see them achieve the seemingly unattainable. While the makeup of the current crew might not warrant that, this shows that, really, he is the creme of the crop when it comes to the crew. His neurosis, while tragically underexplored in this series, just adds more depth to the character. The same works with Lister: he finds a parent he thinks is overacting, yet when he sees what happens to him, he realises that Kryten is not too far off the mark in his reaction.

The theme of this episode is clearly "power corrupts", along with "richness corrupts". And by god, does it corrupt! Our future "heroes" get to live in the lap of luxury in exchange for meeting the most corrupt/evil figures ever. The crew, composed of two working-class men, a service robot, and a cat who pays no attention to anything else, have become overtaken by power. While I was not a fan of how little attention was paid to their actual transformation, I don't think that was entirely unintentional... or a bad thing after all.

People complain about the costuming, whining that they look far too old. I don't see any reason to complain, except for continuity purposes. (Rimmer didn't age a bit over 600 years in jail. Then again, it's understandable; they spent a lot of time with the worst of humanity, putting on pounds (or in Lister's case, losing a few).

The humour isn't fantastic, but it's still decent enough to pass through the episode. Personal favourites of mine include:

•  "Herman Goerig is a bit dodgy?" 
• "We have to keep our heads straight!" Cue them in obvious masks. Ah, BBC budgeting department; never change!
• The entire morale meeting.
• Cat's reaction to learning what he turns out to be in the future.

Yet, now we reach the best part of the episode. That is Rimmer. If "Rimmerworld" showed him at his worst, this episode shows him at his best. The future crew's transgressions and insanity finally gel with Rimmer. Meeting himself from the future shows just how bad his behaviour has turned himself into: a fat slob who has not escaped from his hell. It's here where he finally realises that, if it came between him dying and becoming corrupt, he'll die.

It's a bit ambiguous. One one hand, It's probably selfish; future Rimmer is not physically attractive, being fat and grey. Rimmer thinks of himself as a handsome leader. On the other hand, he's so disgusted by his behaviour, by the fact that gaining power has trampled over people like he was way back when, that he might have seen the dark side of what he wanted to be. Seeing a reflection of himself years on in the future might have scared him, whether due to future Rimmer's behaviour, or due to future Rimmer's looks. Nonetheless, once Rimmer says...

"Better dead than smeg!"

 ...you know that he's willing to lay his life on the line, and become Ace... maybe... sort of. The end result is a cliffhanger that would torture fans for three years.

All in all, this wild season ends with an episode that, though dry on laughs, is one of the most powerful episodes in the show.

Tidbits:

• OK, I will admit that they went a bit too far with the ageing of the future crew.
• Rimmer remarks that learning about the future crew might kill any of them. Coming from the dead man's mouth, lads!
• The obvious should be mentioned; this episode was made up on the set. Entire lines of dialogue were replaced whilst the camera was rolling, or typed up on autocue. Grant/Naylor actually never finished the script.
• The ending was not supposed to end on a cliffhanger. The BBC apparently wanted a cliffhanger... but circumstances caused the next series to be pushed back three years.
• Last, but not least, this is the very last episode produced by Rob Grant. Creative differences and a desire to diversify his output caused him to leave the Small Rouge One. From here on out, Doug is at the helm. Thank you for 6 series of fantastic comedy, Rob. You did a great job.

Favourite Scene: Let's face it: the last 3 minutes are just epic.

Least Favourite Scene: The first three minutes are relatively unnecessary.

Score: 8.