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Kryten (Red Dwarf episode)
Encyclopedia
"Kryten" is the seventh episode from science fiction
sit-com Red Dwarf
, the first from series two, and was first broadcast on BBC2
on 6 September 1988. Written by Rob Grant
and Doug Naylor
, and directed by Ed Bye
, this episode introduced the mechanoid character Kryten
. The episode was re-mastered, along with the rest of the first three series, in 1998.
(Chris Barrie
) claims this to be aliens. But according to service mechanoid, Kryten
(David Ross
), the ship contains lifeforms of a much less hostile nature — women. The Red Dwarf crew boldly spruce themselves up to respond to the call. However, on arrival the gang are shocked to find Kryten has been looking after, clothing and feeding three skeletons ever since the crash, and have been that way for centuries. Kryten however, takes some convincing. How will he cope now? What will he do? After all, he is programmed to serve on the human race (as he explains, "I serve, therefore I am"). In the end, Lister
(Craig Charles
) takes pity on him and brings Kryten back to Red Dwarf.
Rimmer, not surprisingly, gives Kryten a huge list of chores to do, but Lister, not used to lace curtains and bendable boxers, decides to take Kryten under his wing. With a little help from Marlon Brando
and James Dean
he intends to turn the mechanoid into something of a rebel. It seems Lister's tutoring on rebelling are unsuccessful, until Kryten paints a picture of Rimmer sitting on a toilet in his admiral uniform. He then throws a container of soup onto Rimmer's bunk and insults him. He dresses up in leathers, borrows Lister's space bike and speeds off (though he returns a few months later
).
This is the first appearance of Kryten, who wasn't originally intended to become a main character and is not seen again in Series 2. David Ross played Kryten in this episode, but because of scheduling clashes Robert Llewellyn
played the character when he became a regular from Series III onwards. The writers had resisted using robot characters as they had considered the practice a sci-fi cliché.
Kryten's appearance was of a mechanical-looking butler with an angular head. The head mask had provided the most problems to the make up and effects team. Prosthetic foam originally used for the mask kept falling apart and eventually a latex piece was produced. Initially it had taken David Ross up to eight hours to get into the full Kryten make-up. To make matters worse, Ross suffered from claustrophobia.
Johanna Hargreaves
appeared as the Esperanto teacher and Tony Slattery
voiced an android actor in the Androids television show.
special effects of Red Dwarf and many more visual and audio enhancements. Changes specific to "Kryten" include a new ending with Kryten flying Lister's space bike off into distant space away from Red Dwarf.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
sit-com Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...
, the first from series two, and was first broadcast on BBC2
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
on 6 September 1988. Written by Rob Grant
Rob Grant
Robert Grant is a British comedy writer and television producer, who was born in Salford and studied Psychology at Liverpool University for two years....
and Doug Naylor
Doug Naylor
Douglas R. Naylor is a British comedy writer, science fiction writer, director and television producer.Naylor was born in Manchester, England and studied at the University of Liverpool. In the mid-1980s, Naylor wrote two regular comedy sketch shows for BBC Radio 4 entitled Cliché and Son of Cliché...
, and directed by Ed Bye
Ed Bye
Edward Richard Morrison Bye is a British film and TV producer and director. He is best known for his work with Grant Naylor, Harry Enfield and Jasper Carrott, and has worked with many of British TV's best known comedians and comedy actors...
, this episode introduced the mechanoid character Kryten
Kryten
Kryten is a fictional character in the British science fiction situation comedy Red Dwarf. Kryten's registration code on Red Dwarf is "Kryten additional 001". The name Kryten is a reference to the head butler in the J.M...
. The episode was re-mastered, along with the rest of the first three series, in 1998.
Plot
Red Dwarf receives a distress call from a crashed spaceship, the Nova 5. As usual, RimmerArnold Rimmer
Arnold Judas Rimmer is a fictional character in the science fiction situation comedy Red Dwarf, played by Chris Barrie. He is unpopular with his crew mates, and is often the target of insults or pranks...
(Chris Barrie
Chris Barrie
Chris Barrie is a British actor. He first achieved success as a vocal impressionist, notably in the ITV sketch show Spitting Image...
) claims this to be aliens. But according to service mechanoid, Kryten
Kryten
Kryten is a fictional character in the British science fiction situation comedy Red Dwarf. Kryten's registration code on Red Dwarf is "Kryten additional 001". The name Kryten is a reference to the head butler in the J.M...
(David Ross
David Ross (actor)
David Ross is an English actor who has worked in theatre, cinema, and television.His best-known roles include playing the first appearance of Kryten and the voice of the Talkie Toaster on the science fiction comedy series Red Dwarf, Elgin on the BBC sitcom The Green Green Grass, and as Mr...
), the ship contains lifeforms of a much less hostile nature — women. The Red Dwarf crew boldly spruce themselves up to respond to the call. However, on arrival the gang are shocked to find Kryten has been looking after, clothing and feeding three skeletons ever since the crash, and have been that way for centuries. Kryten however, takes some convincing. How will he cope now? What will he do? After all, he is programmed to serve on the human race (as he explains, "I serve, therefore I am"). In the end, Lister
Dave Lister
David "Dave" Lister, commonly referred to simply as Lister, is a fictional character from the British science fiction situation comedy Red Dwarf, portrayed by Craig Charles...
(Craig Charles
Craig Charles
Craig Joseph Charles is an English actor, stand-up comedian, author, poet, radio and television presenter, best known for playing Dave Lister in the British cult-favourite science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf...
) takes pity on him and brings Kryten back to Red Dwarf.
Rimmer, not surprisingly, gives Kryten a huge list of chores to do, but Lister, not used to lace curtains and bendable boxers, decides to take Kryten under his wing. With a little help from Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando
Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
and James Dean
James Dean
James Byron Dean was an American film actor. He is a cultural icon, best embodied in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause , in which he starred as troubled Los Angeles teenager Jim Stark...
he intends to turn the mechanoid into something of a rebel. It seems Lister's tutoring on rebelling are unsuccessful, until Kryten paints a picture of Rimmer sitting on a toilet in his admiral uniform. He then throws a container of soup onto Rimmer's bunk and insults him. He dresses up in leathers, borrows Lister's space bike and speeds off (though he returns a few months later
Backwards (Red Dwarf episode)
"Backwards" is the first episode of science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf Series III, and the thirteenth in the series run. It premiered on the British television channel BBC2 on 14 November 1989...
).
Production
The writers realised that the huge Red Dwarf ship on its own did not generate enough story material and to accommodate this new direction for the series a small shuttle ship, Blue Midget, was designed to ferry the crew to and from different locations. The new ship was based on an "every day car" that would go from A to B. Miniature crew models were made to fit inside the small ship and filming was added to footage of the Red Dwarf ship.Robert Llewellyn
Robert Llewellyn is an English actor, presenter, and writer. He is best known as the mechanoid Kryten in the hit sitcom Red Dwarf, and for his role as presenter of Scrapheap Challenge.-Early career:...
played the character when he became a regular from Series III onwards. The writers had resisted using robot characters as they had considered the practice a sci-fi cliché.
Kryten's appearance was of a mechanical-looking butler with an angular head. The head mask had provided the most problems to the make up and effects team. Prosthetic foam originally used for the mask kept falling apart and eventually a latex piece was produced. Initially it had taken David Ross up to eight hours to get into the full Kryten make-up. To make matters worse, Ross suffered from claustrophobia.
Johanna Hargreaves
Johanna Hargreaves
Johanna Hargreaves is a British television actress who has been active since 1980, best known for playing "Stella" in the 1983 teenage drama Johnny Jarvis and "Linda Jordan" in the 1992 police drama Between the Lines....
appeared as the Esperanto teacher and Tony Slattery
Tony Slattery
Anthony Declan James "Tony" Slattery is an English actor and comedian who has appeared on British television regularly since the mid 1980s, most notably as a regular on the Channel 4 improvisation show Whose Line Is It Anyway? As a film actor, both comedic and serious, his credits include The...
voiced an android actor in the Androids television show.
Cultural references
- Howard GoodallHoward Goodall210px|thumb|Howard Goodall at St. John the Baptist Church in Devon, United Kingdom, May 2009Howard Lindsay Goodall CBE is a British composer of musicals, choral music and music for television...
wrote the Androids theme tune with the Australian soap opera NeighboursNeighboursNeighbours is an Australian television soap opera first broadcast on the Seven Network on 18 March 1985. It was created by TV executive Reg Watson, who proposed the idea of making a show that focused on realistic stories and portrayed adults and teenagers who talk openly and solve their problems...
in mind. The song, containing similar lyrics and tune, was trimmed down due to time constraints.
- Rimmer is trying to learn the EsperantoEsperantois the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
language and has been for the last eight years. He also appears dressed as an admiral to visit the crashed ship, and is described by Lister as looking like Clive of India. Rimmer describes the dead women as having "less meat on them than a Chicken McNugget". The "Mc" in McNugget is removed on the remastered DVD, although if Rimmer's lips are watched the reference is quite clear.
- Lister insists that Kryten should watch classic rebel films like The Wild OneThe Wild OneThe Wild One is a 1953 outlaw biker film directed by László Benedek and produced by Stanley Kramer. It is famed for Marlon Brando's iconic portrayal of the gang leader Johnny Strabler.-Basis:...
, Rebel Without a CauseRebel Without a CauseRebel Without a Cause is a 1955 American drama film about emotionally confused suburban, middle-class teenagers. Directed by Nicholas Ray, it offered both social commentary and an alternative to previous films depicting delinquents in urban slum environments...
and Easy RiderEasy RiderEasy Rider is a 1969 American road movie written by Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper, and Terry Southern, produced by Fonda and directed by Hopper. It tells the story of two bikers who travel through the American Southwest and South with the aim of achieving freedom...
, hoping that the films, including the Marlon BrandoMarlon BrandoMarlon Brando, Jr. was an American movie star and political activist. "Unchallenged as the most important actor in modern American Cinema" according to the St...
rebel speech, would help the mechanoid break his servile programming. Kryten quotes Marlon Brando in the last line of the episode: Rimmer asks, "What are you rebelling against?" and Kryten replies in an affected voice, "What d'ya got?"
- While preparing for their first contact with the Nova 5 crew, Rimmer asks Lister to call him by names that would make him look good in front of the female survivors, such as his high school nickname. Lister retorts that his nickname was probably "bonehead" and Rimmer reluctantly confirms, but adds that he wished to be called "Ace". The character "Ace Rimmer" would later appear in the series IV episode Dimension Jump and turn out to be a mirror version of Rimmer from an alternative universe in which he became a hero loved by all.
Reception
Originally broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on the 6 September 1988 in the 9:00 pm evening slot, the episode gained average viewing ratings, and received a mixed response from viewers. One reviewer stating that "the six episodes in Red Dwarf Series II are excellent, the only stumbling block is the first episode, Kryten." While another review stated that "the episode would be a brilliant one if Kryten weren't a little too C3PO-ish." The episode also received a mixed response from fans, voting it 22nd in a Red Dwarf Magazine readers' poll with 1.4% of the votes.Remastering
The remastering of Series I to III was carried out during the late 1990s. Changes throughout the series included replacement of the opening credits, giving the picture a colour grade and filmising, computer generatedComputer-generated imagery
Computer-generated imagery is the application of the field of computer graphics or, more specifically, 3D computer graphics to special effects in art, video games, films, television programs, commercials, simulators and simulation generally, and printed media...
special effects of Red Dwarf and many more visual and audio enhancements. Changes specific to "Kryten" include a new ending with Kryten flying Lister's space bike off into distant space away from Red Dwarf.
See also
- Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, the first Red Dwarf novel, features an expanded version of events from this episode and builds on the backstory.
- "BackwardsBackwards (Red Dwarf episode)"Backwards" is the first episode of science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf Series III, and the thirteenth in the series run. It premiered on the British television channel BBC2 on 14 November 1989...
", the Series III episode when Kryten begins appearing as a main character.