Characters and the small rouge one
Posted on Apr 14 2006 | Tagged as: Culture, TV, Comedy
It’s probably too small to see on the picture, but the really wee text at the bottom says: “Over 4 hours of deleted scenes, outtakes, interviews and extras”.
Kerr-ist.
Given how thoroughly awful the material that actually aired was I can’t imagine how dreadful the deleted scenes must be.
It went wrong long before then, with the downward spiral - the shark-jumping, if you like- beginning in series 7. It’s not hard, if you take the time to think about it, to see why.
There is a simple formula: comedy = truth + pain. For so long, through six series, that truth and pain were displayed by Lister and Rimmer’s mutual loathing. Even when an episode ostensibly centred around Kryten or the Cat, the majority of the jokes were based on Lister and Rimmer’s disagreements on how to handle the particular issue. When, during the second episode of series 7, Rimmer left to save the Universe as his alter ego Ace Rimmer - a man who would make the lovechild of James Bond and Joan of Arc look like a weenie - there is no conflict, and thus no source of gags. Attempts to replace Lister’s friction with Rimmer with his unrequited love for Kochanski were futile: any ‘conflict’ was almost entirely one-way.
The most popular episode from all eight series was, according to a fan poll, Back to Reality from series 5. It found the characters experiencing an hallucination which caused them to believe that their lives aboard Red Dwarf were an elaborate virtual reality computer simulation, and, more importantly, that their personalities were very different to what they believed. It was character comedy at its best, hence its popularity; it’s a shame that the writers failed to learn that lesson for later.
And that characterisation is key is a lesson that all comedy writers would benefit from, too. Look at any comedy series, and whatever other comedy techniques are employed, the ones with strongest characters are funniest.
Discuss.
on 15 Apr 2006 at 10:59 am 1 Matt said …
I think my opinion on Red Dwarf has always been one of benign indifference anyway. But anyway, people say often that comedy sci-fi is the hardest to write - and I disagree entirely. I think that penning any kind of comedy is stupidly tough, yet if you’ve got characters strong enough to write themselves then putting them in context is easy enough.
This is where I’d imagine RD fell down. Identity is typically THE sci-fi theme, and when you’re Craig Charles and don’t seem to have much of one, it leaves the poor scriptwriters gasping for inventive ways to invert what the audience already knows about a … well, crap character.
However, I now know that it’s much much harder to write a character that:
a) has a sincere depth - not just some perceived history or overbearing backstory (hence why I’d never EVER write one of those ‘WHAT IS MY CHARACTER LIKE’ lists before writing one - they should remain organic and therefore pliable and furthermore, enigmatic. Dialogue says much more about a character than THE MAN WITH THE BIG BOOBIES WAS BORN ON, AND HAD AFFAIRS WITH, AND LOST HIS PARENTS WHEN, AND DOESN’T LIKE SEAWEED AT ALL type thing.
b) Isn’t logically consistent with the world they inhabit; that is that they are the cultural/social outsider. (It’s easier to have a character confused instead of mystified too.)
c) doesn’t conflict with another character.
d) is American. Writing an American character is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. Not least an American GI time-holed onto a pirate ship with a megaphone, shouting ‘AVAST, ye Cantonese spy,’ at my heroine.
e) is on their own. A character bumbling about on their own is the hardest thing to write ever. The amount of times a lonesome character has to look in a mirror to show an audience just how unbelievably SEETHING they are is beyond me. Which is possibly why I was faintly relieved when a new character turned up; gave me the opportunity to pit two personalities against eachother.
Is that even relevant? I don’t know.
on 15 Apr 2006 at 12:50 pm 2 Christopher White said …
“Dialogue says much more about a character than THE MAN WITH THE BIG BOOBIES WAS BORN ON, AND HAD AFFAIRS WITH, AND LOST HIS PARENTS WHEN, AND DOESN’T LIKE SEAWEED AT ALL type thing.”
Absolutely: it’s more natural. That’s how real people discover each other’s character traits - might as well let a reader do the same thing with fictional personalities.
I guess your points (b) and (d) are kind of linked. You don’t get much less logically consistent than a GI on a pirate ship in the wrong period of history.
As for (b) I guess for me it would depend on the precise nature of the not fitting-in: a straight character in an odd world (Benjamin in League of Gentlemen, por ejemplo) would perhaps be easier than a bizarre character in a straight world (eg Mork of Mork and Mindy). But that’s just me. And I’ve not even tried writing anything fictional since GCSE English.
on 15 Apr 2006 at 1:02 pm 3 Matt said …
Bizarre characters in straight worlds are probably the best way to examine the ‘human condition’ - as you say, like Mork and Mindy, 3rd Rock… et al.
Boff!
on 16 Apr 2006 at 4:53 pm 4 Gary said …
Hmmm.
I think they should have quit at Series Five and stuck to writing books at that point, although I don’t think series 7 was anywhere near as bad as people made out.
I quite liked the early shows when they had no budget and had to really focus on the dialogue, although Series 3 was probably the best IMHO.
You’re so right about series six. I gave up watching halfway through - Rimmer was the lynchpin of the show and without him it just wasn’t funny. You could have got rid of Kryten, Cat or even Lister and replaced them with Kochanski and it would have probably worked because Rimmer is such a brilliantly written character.
Anybody remember the Brittas Empire?