Red Dwarf Series X: The Beginning Review

So, here we are, the bittersweet ending to the tenth series of Red Dwarf. Fittingly (if you know your history) the last episode is called The Beginning, a massive throwback to the very first episode of Red Dwarf, which was titled The End.

Whilst we believe that this is a brilliant idea, we’re also a little scared. The title of this episode could most definitely indicate that it’s a resolution to Red Dwarf as a whole; this link to the first episode could signal that this is the very last episode.

We really hope not, we’ve had massive fun with the revived series and the soon-to-be-released box-set of Red Dwarf X will be a worthy addition to our Blu-Ray collection.

On the whole, we’ve enjoyed every single episode. Obviously some of them have been better than others, and a few plot-holes or inconsistencies have miffed us off a little; nothing worth getting worried about though. Series ten has been a blast from the past and, who knows, maybe this could lead to the feature film finally being made.

The Beginning is a strange episode, one which concerns the rogue simulants and their bloodthirsty ways. The crew of Red Dwarf must escape in Blue Midget and take shelter on an asteroid.

The episode opens with a young Rimmer back on Io, one of the moons of Jupiter. The actor portraying young Rimmer managed to effectively mimic some of Chris Barrie’s mannerisms perfectly and this was a great opening – one which set up the ending rather well.

The antagonistic rogue simulants share some great moments throughout this episode; including a particularly funny exchange regarding a sword and harakiri (or seppuku). It’s unfortunate, however, that one of the funniest lines from Kryten was revealed in the adverts for Red Dwarf X over the past few weeks.

Thankfully, a whole slew of brilliant dialogue remained unheard by TekGabber ears during the run-up. So we managed to pretty much laugh our way through this episode unscathed by spoilers. The crew share some amazing moments in The Beginning and Rimmer truly steals the show (with some surprising revelations throughout), although to be fair everyone has some great lines this episode.

The soundtrack has been rather good this series and The Beginning was no different – some excellent scores all of the way through, particularly during the last half of the episode.

It’s a shame that series ten is over so soon, and without us getting a glimpse of some old faces we were hoping would show up – we’re going to miss the boys from the Dwarf. If this is the last we see of them then at least it ended with a worthy finale and one that we’ll remember fondly. Yeah, we might have welled up a little… And?

“JIUJITSU STYLE!”

All of our love to the cast and crew of Red Dwarf, you bunch of smegheads, the slime is coming home.

To round off this article let’s see a classic scene involving the rogue simulants:

As always, I’m Jake Higginson – you can smoke me a kipper, as I’ll be back for breakfast; or you can follow my personal Twitter here.