• About
• News
• Articles
• Downloads
• Forum
• Contact

The Series II DVD contained a featurette that was very similar to the Drunk featurette on the Series I DVD. This new featurette was much more pleasant than the last one, due to it actually being set to a good song - Little Green Bag by The George Baker Selection. However, while you cannot deny that in the first featurette the clips were all of people drinking, the Alternate Personalities featurette is another matter.

A lot of the clips are not of alternate personalities. Whilst some could be considered alternate if you are very lenient, many are just of the normal crew in funny clothes. Below is a table detailing each clip, and beneath that is a brief note for each clip, explaining whether or not it should count as an alternate personality.

Alternate, or not?

1. Caption
   It’s a caption.
2. Crew as Dibbley
   These are not alternate personalities in the slightest. They are merely Cat, Kochanski, Kryten and Lister dressed up as other characters. You might as well include Hollister dressed up as a chicken in Stasis Leak.
3. Queeg
   Yes, Queeg is Holly’s alternate personality. Although it’s worth noting that the clip comes from a point in the episode just before the audience finds out that Queeg is not real.
4. Future Rimmer (Stasis Leak)
   I’ll give them this one. This Rimmer has a different appearance from ours, and has used a strange space phenomenon to be part of the programme. Characters who do this are generally considered alternate.
5. Crew in the Texas Book Depository
   These are not alternate versions, although the clip was included purely for Cat’s line about the crew being copied. There was no suggestion that this crew were alternative versions.
6. Carole Brown
   Not sure about this one. An alternate body perhaps, but the character is Carole Brown, who is not an alternate personality of one of the crew.
7. Naked Rimmer and Lister
   Not in the slightest. If I were to shave my head and take all my clothes off, I’d be a bit silly, but I wouldn’t be an alternate version of myself.
8. Cat, Lister and Kochanski as Dibbley
   Still not alternate personalities, just a very crap disguise.
9. Gold Kryten
   This is simply Kryten in a different costume. If this is an alternate personality, than so is Rimmer in his admiral’s outfit from Series I and II.
10. Brett Riverboat
    All AR characters are deemed to be alternate versions of the crew - the character’s body with another person’s characteristics.
11. ‘Dangerous’ Dan McGrew
    Well, yes.
12. High Cat
    Extrapa-what-a-lated? Clearly an alternate version of the Cat.
13. Intelligent Holly
    Tough one to call. Holly’s appearance changes, but the personality doesn’t. I’d be inclined to say that his isn’t an alternate personality, although it is borderline.
14. The Dog
    As with all parallel universe counterparts, The Dog is clearly an alternate version of an existing crew member.
15. Cat and Kochanski as GELFs
    This is simply wrong. Cat and Kochanski wear GELF costumes, and although they are incredibly realistic (they were used for proper GELFs in Duct Soup), the crew do not become GELFs in any way.
16. Emotionless crew
    Another borderline case, but I’ll allow it because the characters change dramatically as a product of a strange space phenomenon.
17. Future Rimmer (Out of Time)
    This is a version of Rimmer that is not the one from ‘our crew’; therefore it is indeed an alternate personality.
18. Original Kryten
    This isn’t an alternate version for just that reason; he’s the original Kryten. If anything, the Series III onwards version is alternative.
19. Alternate Lister (The Inquisitor)
    Well, the name says it all really. Shot from the same gun barrel as our Lister, but very much different.
20. Debs Lister and Arlene Rimmer
    Another set of characters from an alternate dimension, so they count.
21. Lister of Smeg
    I don’t want to include this as an alternative personality, but the rules state that an AR character counts as an alternate version. If I excluded this, I’d have to exclude all the Gumshoe and Laredo characters.
22. Professor Cat
    As close to Jerry Lee Lewis as The Cat has ever been, this version comes from a mirror universe, so he counts.
23. Legion
    Legion is a gestalt entity, composed in this incarnation of elements from the crew of Starbug. However, he is an entirely separate character from any of our crew, so he shouldn’t be in this featurette.
24. Future Kryten (Out of Time)
    If you freeze-frame this clip, you get a very funny shot of Future Kryten, eyebrows and all. Like the Future Rimmer, he counts as an alternate personality.
25. Duane Dibbley (Back to Reality)
    Ah, the original and the best. An alter ego brought out by a hallucination. The most obvious alternate personality yet.
26. Data Doctor
    Just because Robert Llewellyn plays him, it doesn’t make him an alternate version of Kryten. You wouldn’t say that Jim Reaper or Able were alternate personalities, would you?
27. Rimmer’s head
    A baffling choice. The perfectly normal Rimmer travels back in time and sticks his head through a table. Where’s the alternate personality there?
28. Ace Rimmer (Stoke Me A Clipper)
    What a guy! (Sorry) A great character from another dimension, so clearly an alternate personality.
29. The Dog
    See: The Dog.
30. Low Kryten
    Another bit of freeze-frame fun to be had here, and another genuine alternate personality.
31. 70s Cat and Kochanski
    Obviously, a 1970s revival is to take place at some point in the 22^nd century. Still, it doesn’t alter the fact that this clip doesn’t contain any alternate personalities.
32. Sebastian Doyle and Jake Bullet
    Section Chief of CGI and a member of the Cybernautics Division of the Police Department who has a rather silly macho name. As with the original Duane, these are great alternate versions.
33. Kryten as Jeremy Beadle
    A false beard does not constitute an alter ego.
34. The Riviera Kid
    An ace gunslinger who is yet another AI character, ergo an alternate personality.
35. The Skutters as Dibbley
    I mean, for fuck’s sake.
36. Ace Rimmer and the Alligator
    Well, I’m not sure about the alligator, but Ace is definitely an alternate version.
37. Self Respect
    This one counts as it is a part of Rimmer’s psyche personified. He is a version of Rimmer who bares little resemblance to our Rimmer.
38. Ace Rimmer and the Alligator
    See: Ace Rimmer and the Alligator
39. Two Rimmers
    Rimmer’s Double is not so much an alternate version as Rimmer, more an exact duplicate of Rimmer. There’s very little alternative about him, so he doesn’t count.
40. Lister in new body (Nanarchy)
    As with the intelligent version of Holly, the personality doesn’t actually change at all.
41. Naked Kryten
    This is just silly. I mean, you might as well include the naked Lister and Rimmer from Pete (Part One)! Oh…
42. Pride and Prejudice Land
    As much as I despise this section, I have to concede that they are vaguely alternate versions of the crew.
43. Rimmer Foot Soldiers
    They may be mere clones of Rimmer, but unlike the double in Me², these versions have different personalities and appearances to our Rimmer, so they count.
44. Fearless Lister (Polymorph)
    He’ll nut the smegger to oblivion, and he counts as an alternate personality.
45. Low Rimmer
    Strangely, this clip is a speeded-up version of Low Rimmer coming down the stairs, revealing his full Rocky Horror glory. Play it in ¼ speed to see the original, slow walk fans! Anyway, he’s an alternate version.
46. Duane Dibbley (Emohawk)
    The two attacks by the Emohawk make two genuinely different personalities, Duane and Ace, who is not featured in this compilation. The key difference between the Polymorph and the Emohawk is that the Polymorph feeds on emotions (fear, vanity, guilt, anger) and the Emohawk removes characteristics (cool, bitterness). Therefore, the characters in Emohawk are much more alternative personalities than the ones in Polymorph were.
47. A perfectly normal Holly (Pete Part One)
    As with the Tikka to Ride clip earlier, this has no pretence of being an alternate personality, and is included for the benefit of a (quite crap) joke.
48. Low Cat
    Those teeth aren’t very realistic, but he is an alternate personality.
49. Billy Doyle
    The yak-latrine version of Rimmer.
50. Super Lister
    Well, the personality doesn’t really change, but it is definitely an alternate version of Lister. If the focus of this featurette had changed to “Alternate Versions” instead of Alternate Personalities, it would have been filled much more easily.
51. Young Lister
    Seeing as future versions of the crew are included, it’s only fair to include past versions.
52. Mindless Lister
    As with Carole Brown, it’s just Lister’s body here. Nothing particularly alternative about it.
53. Rimmer in Lister’s Body
    As there is no sound on this clip, it’s pretty pointless. To the casual observer, it’s just Lister dressed like Captain Emerald. Even if the sound was included, I still wouldn’t class it as alternate, for the same reasons as the other clips from Body Swap.
54. Cat as a nurse
    There’s a difference between alternate personalities and transvestites.
55. Fearless Lister (Polymorph)
    See: Fearless Lister (Polymorph)
56. Arlene raping Arnie
    She may be maladjusted, but she is an alternate personality.
57. Jake Bullet
    He’s clearly an alternate personality, and if those pen pushers up at City Hall don’t like it, they can park their overpaid fat asses on this mid-digit.
58. Rimmer Concubine
    Disturbing? Yes. An alternate personality? Yes again.
59. Crew in 60s America clothes
    Come on. This is simply ludicrous. Every time a character changes his clothes, he is a new person? Bollocks. I could scream.
60. Sammy the Squib
    He may be just Kryten with a moustache, but all AR characters are considered alternate versions.
61. Alternate Crew (Ouroboros)
    Well, I think the word ‘alternate’ is the clue here.
62. Low Lister
    Terrible teeth, but definitely an alternate personality.
63. Ace Rimmer and Bongo
    More definite alternate versions. Would our Kryten ever offer to cover himself in taramasalata? It would invalidate his warranty for a start.
64. Low Rimmer
    He’s not a very nice person, but he is an alternate version.
65. Cat as Dibbley
    Oh, piss off. We get the fucking picture. People dressed up vaguely like Duane Dibbley in order to escape from prison. It wasn’t funny the first time it was used, much less the third.
66. Old Lister (Future Echoes)
    Aged 171 and with a built-in bottle opener, this is a future echo of Lister, so obviously an alternate version.
67. Human Kryten
    Despite the change in physical form, Kryten’s personality doesn’t change, which is why he gets a double-polaroid over electrical appliances. Nevertheless, as with Super Lister I am forced to accept it.
68. Duane Dibbley (Back to Reality)
    It’s a good job Dibbley is so funny in this episode, otherwise his lacklustre ‘appearances’ in Can’t Smeg Won’t Smeg and Back in the Red would make Back to Reality unwatchable. He’s still an alternate personality, by the way.
69. Low Crew
    One of the best camera shots of all time - Lister’s POV as the Low Crew (all of which are alternate versions) crowd round him, just as he is about to black out. Brilliant.
70. Padre
    If it wasn’t for the BBC’s over-sensitivity about negative stereotyping, the alternate version of The Cat in this episode would have been much better. But I still like the way he says “Ah, welcome home, san!”
71. Human Kryten
    He is an alternate version, but he lost his looks.
72. Kochanski in Pride & Prejudice Land
    Another AR version that I begrudgingly award ‘alternate personality’ status to. Incidentally, if any intellectual types know which Pride and Prejudice characters are represented by each Red Dwarf character, let us know.
73. Super Lister
    Another one that’s an alternate version on a technicality.
74. The name ‘Red Dwarf’ on the side of the ship
    As seen in the opening titles of the first eleven episodes. Not an alternate personality, but a nice ending to the piece. Anyone who says the model shots looked crap in the early days of the show is clearly a fool.

Tags: dvd | extras
login or register to post comments