Red Dwarf

Its easy to see why this show has such a lasting appeal.  Where Star Trek, and shows like Star Trek, are populated by the absolute best and brightest of humanity, the pinnacle of intellectual and physical prowess...

...Red Dwarf shows us the rest of humanity.

The slobs, the failures, the neurotics, the morons.  Red Dwarf celebrates the losers of Star Trek and other idealized sci-fi exploration shows like Lost in Space or Seaquest.  It's the perfect mirror to parody science fiction norms.  We don't hear about Janitor Joe Bob on the Starship Enterprise, but this show points out that he was always there, in the background, and he couldn't give two smegs about the prime directive or the final frontier.





Rob Grant and Doug Naylor's love letter to sci-fi hokeyness centres on Dave Lister (Craig Charles), the lowest ranking crew member of the Jupiter Mining Corporation vessel Red Dwarf.  Lister smuggles a cat onboard, leading to his solitary confinement in stasis.  This sets in motion a chain of events whereby the crew is completely wiped out (except the cat), and Lister is revived from stasis three million years later.

To keep Lister sane, the ship's onboard computer, Holly (Norman Lovett, and later Hattie Hayridge) reanimates Lister's antagonistic roommate and fellow swabbie Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie).  They are joined by a the anthropomorphic Cat (Gary John-Jules) who evolved from Lister's pet.


A lot of the comedy comes from the characters' personality disorders bouncing off each other.  Lister and Rimmer make for a great odd couple:  the sincere and honest slob rooming with the fastidious and orderly pathological failure.  Red Dwarf really took off in the third series with the addition of Kryten (Robert Llewellyn), a neurotic service android.  Kryten added another dimension of dysfunctionality that only made their misadventures even more pronounced.

What made the show more than just another everyday buddy comedy (or anti-buddies, in this case) was that it wholly embraced the setting and celebrated the absurdity of science fiction gobbledeegook.  At its very best, Red Dwarf was not only capable of generating side-splitting humour, but also thought provoking problems and plotlines.  This success is evident in one of the series' highest honours, an international Emmy award for the episode "Gunmen of the Apocalypse," which featured a wonderfully crafted plot of cybernetic killing machines, virtual reality and computer viruses...all in a THIRTY MINUTE TIME SLOT.



It was always impressive to me just how much creativity the writers of Red Dwarf could cram into such a narrow space of time.  Sadly, Grant/Naylor dissolved their partnership after Series 6, leading to some changes that felt out of place:  it was no longer filmed live, which meant the laughter was recorded.  Rimmer was replaced with Chloe Annett's Kochanski in Series VII, and though this added a new feminine dynamic Kochanski was too...functional.  She felt out of place simply by reason of being successful.  To be sure, there were increased production values, more on-location shoots and better sets, but the writing felt more stilted and the jokes more forced.

Rumour has it that there will be a new series released in the near future, and we'll see if they're able to recapture the balance of Series III-VI.  If nothing else, it'll be good to see the chaps back in fine form, slinging insults at one another and trekking across the universe.

Whether or not this newest adventure succeeds, Red Dwarf remains a cherished memory of science fiction, daring to show us the grimy underdogs of the glorious space epic.  Smegging marvelous.