#oneaday Day 826: No Kind of Atmosphere

I’ve been watching Red Dwarf on Netflix recently. In the process I’ve discovered that there’s actually a hell of a lot of that series that I’d never seen before, so I’ve been delighted to (re)discover it.

Red Dwarf was one of those series that That One Guy At University Who Endlessly Quoted Things endlessly quoted. Well, perhaps not endlessly — sometimes he was quoting Blackadder. I’m only just now, some ten years later, coming around to the idea that I can actually watch those shows again without hearing That One Guy At University Who Endlessly Quoted Things’ voice in my head.

That’s beside the point though. And the point is that Red Dwarf is still an excellent series, for more reasons than one.

First up, it’s quite simply an excellent comedy series. The small cast of exaggerated characters makes for some excellent comic situations. The fact that all of the characters have at least one major flaw in their personalities is what makes them entertaining, too — Lister is arguably the closest we get to a “straight man” in the show, but even he’s flawed; he’s gross, he’s selfish and his reliance on curry as his primary form of sustenance doubtless makes him rather unpleasant to live with. Rimmer, meanwhile, is by turns arrogant and crippled by self-doubt; The Cat is vain to a fault; and Kryten has difficulty with acting independently when it conflicts with his programming. Put these dysfunctional characters together and you have a recipe for plenty of comic conflict.

The less-considered side of the show is that it’s actually a surprisingly decent sci-fi show, too. While it doesn’t have anywhere near the budget of what we might be used to from more recent titles — or even shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation, which ran at a similar time — it manages to convey a convincing feeling of what Life Is Like In The Future. The show doesn’t batter the audience over the head with lengthy descriptions of what things do or how they work; rather, it simply drops things into conversation that make it clear that we’re absolutely not on 21st century Earth any more.

Part of this comes from the show’s use of language. Its use of terms like “smeg”, “gimboid”, “goit” and numerous other faux-expletives was initially to get around the fact that it wasn’t okay to say certain things on television, but over time these words became part of the show’s identity. Numerous other shows have taken a similar approach since — Firefly features Chinese swearing, for example, while Battlestar Galactica features the multi-purpose invective “frak” at regular intervals. (It’s not clear how much Red Dwarf’s use of fake swear words influenced these titles, if at all.) Initially, the presence of these words is jarring as you wonder what they mean and why they’re not simply using regular expletives. But over time, as you become invested in the worlds created by the writers, you begin to let these words wash over you and enter your vocabulary even though, in most cases, they’re completely made up, portmanteau words or “loan words” from another language.

Ultimately, Red Dwarf succeeds due to the fact it never tries to get ideas above its station. It knows that it’s a low-budget sci-fi comedy with a small cast, and rarely attempts to deviate too much from that formula. Some may argue that the later seasons do deviate from this formula and are consequently weaker as a result, but having not (re)watched them yet, I’m not going to comment on that right now. One thing the show doesn’t do, however, is rest on its laurels; each season has its own distinctive identity, and it’s quite fascinating to see the changes it goes through as the years pass by and the budget increases.

It’s still great, then, in short, and if you’ve never had the pleasure of watching it, then you should check it out. It’s all on Netflix (in the UK, anyway), so be sure to check it out if you’re a member.

An Open Goodbye

The blogosphere is undoubtedly chock-full of posts like the one I’m about to make but that doesn’t make any of them less meaningful to the people involved. While the words that the writer commits to “paper” (for want of a better word) may mean nothing to casual readers or people just “passing through”, the writer themself can feel better simply by the act of getting them out in the open. Yes, it is completely and utterly self-indulgent, but that’s what I feel as I begin to write this, and I hope you, the reader, will understand that. Normal service will resume shortly and I’ll get back to enthusing about games, using bad words and ranting about the state of the country. But for now, this.

Yesterday I received the sad news that our family’s cat, who lived with my parents, died after being run over. The full meaning of these words didn’t really hit me until late in the evening, and more so today when I found myself unable to face even contemplating speaking to anyone else for a good proportion of the day. I’d like to take a moment to share a few thoughts and memories in the absence of a “funeral”. Some may wonder at the amount of attention being given to “just a cat”, but if you think that, you’ve probably never owned a beloved family pet and lost them. A family pet who is loved as much as Kitty was is absolutely a member of the family, and never “just a pet”.

There have been two cats in my life. The first, Penny, was, according to my parents, my nursemaid when I was very young. If I was ill, she’d sit outside my bedroom door “on guard”. If I cried, she’d come and “tell” my folks. She was part of the family, right down to sitting at the table to have Christmas dinner with us – because if there was one thing she loved, it was human food.

Penny died of old age one night about eleven years ago. She knew it was going to happen. She sat down in front of our heating vent in the hallway of our house and stayed there for the evening. We said goodnight to her and went to bed, leaving her some water and food where she was. When we came down in the morning, she had passed away quietly. We said our goodbyes and buried her in the garden beneath a cat statue, where she sleeps now.

The house was quiet for a while without a cat. Very quickly, our family decided that we didn’t want to be without a cat – it was just too quiet after so many years of having Penny – so we took a ride up to the local animal sanctuary to meet the candidates.

Kitty (who already knew her name, so there was no hope of ever changing that!) was a tiny little thing who was very nervous when we met her. She was cute and friendly, despite her nerves, however, so we chose her and took her home. It took time for her to come out of her shell – for the longest time, she was afraid even to go outside. Apparently, her previous home had had dogs who had terrorised the poor thing into submission. As time went on, however, she grew more confident and also grew physically from the tiny cat we had picked up from Wood Green animal shelter into a rather larger one!

She was a very friendly cat. She made an effort to make people like her – even self-professed “cat-haters”. She would simply jump in their lap when they came to visit, sit there and purr until even they admitted that she wasn’t that bad, after all. She would also jump in your lap for a cuddle at the most inopportune times – having dinner, attempting to write an email, reading a book… If you were in a chair and you had a lap, you were fair game.

It’s a fair bet that wherever she is now (I have it on good authority that while all dogs go to heaven, all cats go to Valhalla) she’s jumping in the lap of someone, rolling over and purring contentedly. I can just see her lying in a Valkyrie’s lap with a big silly grin on her face.

And so this post is to say a very public goodbye to Kitty Davison. You will be missed sorely by all who knew you and loved you, and I hope Penny takes good care of you.

Rest in peace.