Red Dwarf

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Red Dwarf is a British science fiction comedy, created and originally written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. It tells the story of Dave Lister, the last human being alive, and takes place on a space ship three million years in the future. A pastiche of science fiction in general, Red Dwarf is first and foremost an 'odd couple' type situation comedy.

In the show, the Red Dwarf is a spaceship the size of a city belonging to the Jupiter Mining Corporation. An on-board radiation leak kills everyone except for Dave Lister, who was in suspended animation at the time. Three million years later, Lister emerges from stasis as the last human being alive.

Lister is the lowest ranking employee on the ship. He is the slob anti-hero with a marked Scouse accent and an obsession with Indian food, such as vindaloo, curries, and shami kebabs, all of which are in plentiful supply on board the ship. He also enjoys a type of music called "Rastabilly Skank," playing the guitar, and singing -- much to the detriment of those around him. His primary desire is to return to Earth.

Lister endures a hologramatic simulation of a deceased crew member Arnold J. Rimmer. Rimmer, Lister's room-mate before the disaster, is a smug, self-serving, mean-spirited, status-obsessed, neurotic, guilt-ridden loser, loathed by everybody on board. Despite fourteen years aboard the ship and an overriding ambition to become an officer, Rimmer has sat and failed his astro-navigation exam on no less than 13 occasions. On one occasion he even wrote 'i am a fish' 500 times, did a funny little dance and fainted, and on another he copied entire textbooks onto his arm to cheat, but to his horror his nervous sweat had smeared the ink. Even after all this, Rimmer remains a chicken soup-machine repairman, the second lowest ranking job aboard the ship. It was he who actually (unintentionally) caused the radiation leak by poorly repairing a drive plate on the power core, though he claims he would have been able to do a better job if Lister had not been imprisoned in stasis.

The facility for simulating dead crew members is so resource-intensive that only one such simulation can be maintained at a time. It is therefore reserved for high-ranking and/or essential personnel, but the ship's computer explains in an early episode that it believes Rimmer's company to be essential to Lister's mental health. Lister expresses incredulity, but later implicitly admits that the computer was right, telling another character, Kryten the mechanoid, that "driving Rimmer nuts is what keeps me going".

As the show progresses, Rimmer acquires a tangible physical form for brief periods of time due to various astronomical phenomena, and eventually acquires a "hard-light drive", giving him an effectively real -- albeit almost indestructible -- physical presence. In other episodes, Rimmer is also manifested as the superheroic character, Ace Rimmer, who hails from a parallel universe where a pivotal humiliation led Rimmer to develop into a James Bond-like persona.

Also accompanying Lister on his voyage back to Earth is The Cat. Cat is of the species Felis sapiens, evolved from a domestic cat which Lister had smuggled aboard the ship three million years prior, the crime which Lister was imprisoned in stasis for committing. The Cat appears as a typical biped humanoid with slightly elongated feline teeth; he retains a cat-like features including a craving for fish and females, a heightened sense of smell, unbridled vanity, the requirement to nap multiple times a day, an obsession towards grooming and appearance, and six nipples. Multiple jokes in the show involve his "cool" nature, including an incident in which it is revealed that his heartbeat is actually a catchy bassline, and the recurring anti-Cat role of Dwayne Dibley.

The other principal character is Holly, the ship's computer with a supposed IQ of 6000 (visible as a disembodied head on the screens dotted around the ship). Holly runs most of the ship's systems despite now suffering from computer senility. Among Holly's systems are the semi-autonomous service droids known as the skutters that clean, perform engineering tasks, and function as Rimmer's hands since he initially cannot touch anything non-holographic; the skutters are also slightly computer senile and have developed personality quirks such as an affinity for John Wayne movies.

The crew are also joined by the service mechanoid Kryten after rescuing him from a crashed vessel, the Nova 5. Kryten immediately takes over custodial duties on Red Dwarf. While Rimmer basks in subjugating Kryten, Lister befriends Kryten and encourages him to break his altruistic programming to lie, cheat, and steal in an effort to become more human. Kryten at one time did in fact break his programming, "borrowed" Lister's space-bike and left the ship. He was found smashed against an asteroid some light-years away, and was rebuilt with a new personality and altered appearance. Kryten offers encyclopedic knowledge in all areas and is generally Red Dwarf's voice of reason; however, he can become hilariously unpredictable when Lister swaps Kryten's head for one of the eager, jealous "spare heads" or removes Kryten's morality chip.

Lister's longlasting crush is Kristine Kochanski, played by C. P. (Clare) Grogan (formerly of 1980s band Altered Images). She was killed along with the rest of the crew in the first episode, and several subsequent episodes revolve around Lister attempting to bring her back, either through time travel or as a computer-generated simulation like Rimmer. In various TV series and book incarnations, Lister has either admired Kochanski from afar or dated her for over a month. The discontinuity is never touched upon. In the seventh season, an alternative Kochanski from a parallel universe (played by Chloë Annett) joined the series as a regular character.

One interesting aspect of the Red Dwarf universe that differentiates it from standard science fiction is that there are no sentient aliens; instead, every part of the large and bizarre mix of intelligent life within the Red Dwarf universe is in one way or another derived from Earth, a result of developments in robotics and/or genetic engineering during the millions of years the ship has been isolated.

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The first series aired on BBC2 in 1988. Seven further series have so far been produced, and a film is currently in pre-production. The idea was originally developed from the Dave Hollins: Space Cadet sketches introduced on Grant and Naylor's 1984 BBC Radio 4 show Son of Cliché.

Rob Grant and Doug Naylor wrote the first six series together, before Grant left in 1996 leaving Naylor to write the next two with a series of new and less well-known writers, notably Paul Alexander.

For the most part, Ed Bye produced and directed the series. He left before Series V, and Juliet May took over as director, but she was dismissed partway through the season and replaced by Grant and Naylor. Series VI was directed by Andy DeEmmony, with Bye returning for the final two series.

Series I and II were BBC productions, series III was made by Paul Jackson Productions, and all subsequent series were made by Grant Naylor Productions; all eight series were broadcast by the BBC. At the beginning of series IV production moved from the BBC's Manchester studios to Shepperton.

The theme tune and incidental music were written by Howard Goodall and performed by Jenna Russell. Goodall also provided the musical accompaniment for the chart hit 'Tongue Tied', which was written by Danny John-Jules. Craig Charles wrote, performed and sung 'He's got Cash' from the episode 'Timeslides'.

A period of four years elapsed between Series VI and VII. The show was apparently not expected to last beyond five series, indicated by the closure of major plot elements and continuity during the first two series. However, Grant and Naylor were contractually obliged to make eight series for the BBC. When the series returned, it was filmized and no longer in front of a live audience. Although critics praised the higher production values for Series VII, when the show returned two years later for Series VIII, it had dropped use of the filmizing process.

In 1998, on the tenth anniversary of the show's first airing (between the releases of Series VII and VIII), the first three series of Red Dwarf were remastered. The remastering included reformatting the series in widescreen, applying film grain techniques and more critically replaced model shots with computer graphics, cut small pieces of dialog and changed music and sound effects. Red Dwarf Remastered was met with a generally poor fan reaction, no further series were remastered and the later DVD release reverted to the original versions.


Red Dwarf
The main ship after which the show is named. Red Dwarf is five miles long, not including the scoop at the front, and can hold over a thousand crew members. It also holds a complement of Starbug and Blue Midget shuttlecrafts. The "scoop" at the front of the ship collects trace hydrogen gases from space and converts them into fuel: the ship, therefore, could theoretically keep on travelling forever. As a mining vessel, the Red dwarf has massive bays which apparently holds large asteroids in place for mining. Currently the ship is holding onto one such asteroid, though this does not appear to affect the ship's integrity.

Red Dwarf was redesigned for the remastered series, making it even longer and more streamlined, with multiple smaller engines at the rear, as opposed to the singular long engine used on previous models. This design did not stick but was re-used in Series 8, after Red Dwarf's reconstruction by the nanobots, complete with Karaoke deck.


Blue Midget is a type of shuttle that Red Dwarf carries, and was the primary craft in series 2 before being replaced by Starbug. It is built to resemble a truck or tank, with caterpillar tracks and a bumper sticker.

Blue Midget was redesigned in the remastered series to resemble a bubble car with retractable legs for "walking", and this design was also used for Series 8 (for the original episodes continuity, it is feasible that when Red Dwarf was reconstructed slightly differently the same thing happened to the Blue Midgets aboard the ship).


The JMC transport vehicle Starbug is the model of a small shuttle craft, green in colour. It has three bulbous sections; the cockpit, mid-section and engine rooms, somewhat resembling a bug from the exterior. Starbug replaced Blue Midget as the crew's primary choice of shuttle in series 3 and became the show's primary vehicle thoughout series 6 and 7.

Series 6 takes place a full 200 years after the final episodes of series 5. During this time it is presumed that Kryten remodelled Starbug to better suit the crews needs, being the only one not in deep-sleep. Starbug's remodelling, along with a time-dilation effect, expanded the ship's interior dimensions and produced an additional sleeping quarters, engine deck and hangar bay. Starbug was finally armed with laser cannons by rogue simulants.

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A pilot episode for an American version was produced for NBC in 1992, though never broadcast. The show followed essentially the same story as the original UK pilot, substituting American actors (including Craig Bierko as Lister, Chris Eigeman as Rimmer, and Hinton Battle as the Cat) for the British; exceptions being Robert Llewellyn, who reprised his role as Kryten and the British actress Jane Leeves who took the part of Holly. The pilot was unsuccessful.

A later pilot consisting of scenes from the first pilot edited in with new footage (and featuring Terry Farrell as a female Cat) was also unsuccessful.

However, the comparison between the UK and US shows is interesting: the anti-hero, slobby pantheist Lister was replaced with a muscular hunk when he is translated for American TV. When Lister learns that three million years have passed in the UK show, he says "I've still got that library book..."; in the American version he says "My baseball cards must be worth a fortune!"

It is also interesting to note that the multi-ethnic cast of the British original (John-Jules is black, Charles bi-racial, and Barrie and Llewelyn white) was replaced by an entirely Caucasian one for the second US pilot (the first pilot still had a black Cat), leading John-Jules and Charles to dub it 'White Dwarf'.

Clips from the first pilot can be found on the DVD of Series 5 in the featurette Dwarfing USA, along with interviews with the British cast and Doug Naylor. Bootlegs of the pilots are widely circulated among Red Dwarf fans, and sold at conventions.

In the season three episode "Backwards", there are several segments of reversed dialogue. Some of these are simply reversed recordings of the subtitled dialogue (a few with rather more "robust" language than the subtitled version), others are actors attempting (quite successfully) to speak backwards. An example of this is seen at the bar in the pub, where Lister discovers he has to order "Erskib" - played backwards, this really does sound like "Bitter".

The longest backwards dialogue, however, is rather different. When the nightclub owner bursts in to sack Rimmer and Kryten, because of a fight (which hasn't happened yet, of course), Arthur Smith isn't actually saying what Kryten is translating. What he is really saying is: "You are a stupid, square-headed, bald git, aren't you? Eh? I'm pointing at you, I'm pointing at you. But I'm not actually addressing you. I'm addressing the one prat in the country who's bothered to get hold of this recording, turn it round, and actually work out the rubbish that I'm saying. What a poor sad life he's got."