Give and Take – After encountering a mad medical droid aboard a doomed space station, Lister is left short some vital organs. With Lister’s life now hanging by a thread, the Dwarfers need to find an organ donor for the last human being alive.... how hard could it be?
Despite the first half'sStarbug mission to the space station, this is the most self-contained episode of the season to date, boiling down into a more static comedy scenario aboard the ship. That said, the space station venture packs a hell of a lot into its brief scenes helped enormously by a brilliant if fleeting character in the insane Asclepius (the Greek God of medicine) medical droid. He comes across like some reanimated contraption form a mechanical amusement, like a carnival ghost train, with his slow and jerky limb movement. Plus, who doesn’t like a good old mad doctor (apart from their patients)? It’s almost a shame he’s in and out of the episode so soon but for the purposes of the story writing him out made sense to make the sole threat Lister’s mortality after his case of surgical mal practice. This keeps the story simple and the events easier to follow as the episode takes a turn for the crazy towards the end. Although it’s more subtle than last week’s Justice reboot, things do develop into a something of a nod to a certain older episode but saying more than that is a spoiler.
The comedy is a little odd this episode in that there are fewer big laugh moments but a more consistent rate of good and creative smaller laughs. The opening Rimmer Vs lift sequence is a prime example. Showing Rimmer annoyed at waiting is obvious humour but turning the whole matter into a ship HR issue is much more unexpected and hilarious as a result (even more so as the episode’s events progress). But this week’s comedy MVP award goes to the guest starring Snacky. Right from his first appearance as a switch-up on expectations, he gets some great laughs and the whole running routine of mistaking him for the state of the art medical droid just gets better and better the deeper it goes. He even provides what will have to be the best meta joke of the season in calling his antenna out for being a spatula: a loving nod to the show’s long standing tradition of bodging its props from cheap household objects (Meltdown’s Matter Paddle was 4 hair dryers stuck together). It’s another episode that’s well-divided among the 4 cast regulars. Although Lister becomes the later subject matter, everyone multiple moments to shine from Rimmer’s therapy to Kryten’s memory dump.
Like last week, I’d still rate this below Twentica in terms of quality, and overall it does come across as a more forgettable episode in a series; you’ll enjoy if you end up watching it but you’re unlikely to single it out for one-off viewing. It’s still solid Dwarf though and the series continues to be an enjoyable affair.