User Reviews

Lister wishes he had a different holographic companion and comes up with an idea to try and make it happen.

In contrast to the first two episodes which derived a lot of their humour from some cool sci-fi concepts, Balance of Power focuses on heavily in the characters of Lister and Rimmer to good effect. They are a classic example of the type of comedy duo found in buddy movies; Contrasting personalities who are antagonistic to each other but having important aspects in common, such as being at the bottom of Red Dwarf's command structure and now being stuck on board a virtually empty ship together.

There is a great flashback sequence near the beginning that perfectly sets up the episode. This reveals a lot about both characters and is done in a highly amusing way. Lister is shown to be not particularly ambitious and enjoying the simple pleasures of life like having laugh and a session with his mates. Whilst Rimmer is depicted as a pompous, joyless and with plenty of misplaced ambition.

What follows is Lister doing his best to improve his current situation including one thing that we all know will highly irritate Rimmer, whilst Rimmer does his best to thwart Lister's pans.

This contains some solid banter between the Chris Barrie and Craig Charles, plus some comical drunken shenanigans in the flashback sequence that includes Mark Williams as Peterson and Paul Bradley as Chen. Norman Lovett has a couple of nice deadpan lines and Danny-John Jules as Cat has some moderately funny moments.

With that we have some nice images showing the isolation associated with Lister's situation, particularly the transition from the flashback sequence to the empty mess hall. Also some decent physical comedy involving Rimmer losing control of his holographic body and the Scutters hilarious response to a reprimand.

I'm not saying this is the funniest ever, but out of episodes one, two, and three this one I think just about beats out the others...just. It has plenty more classic moments and continues season one's complete and total perfection!

There are some fans who cheekily refer to the first season as Lister and Rimmer arguing in tan sets, this episode kind of encapsulates that. It's a very character focused episode basically just having Lister and Rimmer go to town against each other. It's charming in a petty schoolboy sort of way and we even get some more character progression with the slightly depressing scene of Lister reminiscing in the dining hall. It does sag in the middle though, they kind of throw in some random Holly jokes and try to keep the momentum going but it isn't really my favorite. The Cat, however, shines in every scene he's in and basically keeps the laughs coming through the more dialogue heavy moments. "Balance Of Power" is a funny episode overall, I still think the actors have enough charisma to carry the script, but there are some bits that feel like Doug and Rob were grasping for straws. Big minus for the Kochanski moment at the end as well, it makes Rimmer's character way too piggy.