Review for Red Dwarf X

Introduction

I loved Red Dwarf when I was a kid. God! That’s a sign of just how long this show has been running that I can type that opening sentence. I was still in school when the first series of this sci-fi comedy appeared on our screens, and now, 24 years later, it’s still going strong, although unfortunately that doesn’t means that there are 24 series. It is a BBC show after all. For me, that first series was perfect, Porridge in space, with a healthy bit of class war thrown in, Rimmer, Lister, Cat and Holly, inmates in a space borne lunatic asylum. Subsequent seasons mixed things up, played with more sci-fi concepts, introduced Kryten the android, and it was all great fun. Somewhere around season 7 though, the fun began to ebb. The writing gestalt Grant Naylor got a divorce, leaving Doug Naylor with the writing duties, and the stories wandered ever further from the original brief in order to try and keep things fresh. I could handle losing Red Dwarf from the picture, but when season 7 came along and the character of Kochanski was introduced, it was akin to Scully and Mulder sleeping together in the X-Files, the reality could never live up to the mystique.


Season 8 brought back the Dwarf, and its crew, and I could barely bear to watch it. Understandably Red Dwarf took a break from our screens, during which time rumours of feature films kept cropping up, and possible new shows (the less said about the US pilots the better). Then in 2009, Red Dwarf came back... on Dave. It was no longer on the BBC, and it had adverts! The sacrilege! This didn’t disappoint me, the story did. It was a three part special called Back to Earth, which did what it said on the tin, had our anti-heroes visiting the present day to take part in an adventure that was part remake of classic episode Back to Reality, and part Blade Runner Clone. It was more serious than comic and wound up lost in its own concept. For me it was a bigger disappointment than season 8. So when Dave announced this year that there would be a brand new series of Red Dwarf, six more episodes, I didn’t get all that excited. In fact I forgot it was on completely and had to catch the first episode the next day on Dave’s website. So there I was, without any anticipation or hope, sat in front of a low res video stream...


“Moose!”

... and Red Dwarf is back! I have to admit that watching it on Dave’s rather weedy Freeview channel isn’t much more enlightening than their online videostream, so when the opportunity to review the forthcoming Blu-ray release of Red Dwarf X came up, I pounced like an Emohawk disguised as a pair of y-fronts. This 2 disc collection from 2 Entertain contains the six episodes on one disc, and is packed to the gills with extras on the other.


1. Trojan
A distress call from another ship presages a family reunion for Rimmer, and a little bit of familial resentment.

2. Fathers & Suns
It’s Father’s Day, and Dave’s writing a card for his son, a little something to surprise him with. That’s going to be a little hard given that he’s his own dad.

3. Lemons
In which the immortal line, “Have you given Jesus a vindaloo?” is uttered following an accident with some Swedish flatpack furniture.


4. Entangled
Poker is all fun and games, until you gamble away the spaceship, the hologram, and wind up with a time bomb strapped to your groin.

5. Dear Dave
Just when the reality of being the last human in existence begins to weigh, a few letters from home arrive to perk Lister up.

6. The Beginning
The fate of Dave Lister, the fate of Cat and Kryten, indeed the fate of Red Dwarf itself lies in the hands of one Arnold J. Rimmer when simulants attack. They’re smegged!

Picture

I could tell you how gorgeous Red Dwarf looks in 1080i 50Hz 1.78:1 widescreen on this Blu-ray. I could marvel at the beauty of the star-scapes, the detail in the Red Dwarf model, the clarity of the image, the depth of the colours, the retinal burns inflicted by Cat’s wardrobe, and the signs of age creeping up on the principal actors. But I’ll just say this. “WE UNDERSTAND THAT PERSONAL SPACE IS A PRIORITY AND APOLOGISE FOR DESIGNING SUCH A SMALL ELEVATOR”. In episode 4, when the boys go aboard the ERRA space station and try to figure out how to work the lifts, there’s this sign behind Lister’s head. When the camera pulls back to a four-shot, Lister steps aside revealing all the text. There’s no way that you can read it on the SDTV broadcast or the DVDs and I doubt it’s legible on the compressed HD broadcasts either. You can read it on this Blu-ray, that’s how sharp and detailed this transfer is!

Sound

You get the audio in DTS-HD MA 5.1 Surround format, with optional English subtitles. The dialogue is clear throughout, which is the important thing. It’s mostly a front focussed affair, with the odd bit of sound effect being thrown around the soundstage a tad. Mostly the surround speakers are used to convey the live studio audience reactions.

Extras

You get a whole second Blu-ray full of extras, with the sort of attention that Red Dwarf releases in the past have received. It’s all presented with a nice animated menu.

The big extra is the We’re Smegged: The Making Of: feature documentary. It lasts just shy of two hours and is an in-depth look at the creation of series 10 from genesis to post-production, with input from all sides, including the cast, writer/director Doug Naylor, and the producers. It’s a warts and all documentary that offers looks behind the scenes and candid interviews, and reveals the difficulties Red Dwarf X had in getting to the screen. As always, said difficulties boil down to time and budget, but it’s useful to see how tight the resulting show is because of a need to improvise and work around budget limitations. It’s also gladdening to see that the creators put their collective foot down in two areas, the studio audience and the miniature photography. Red Dwarf works best when there’s an audience to bounce off, and the space ship effects shots are so good in these episodes that I was half convinced they were CGI. Incidentally, this documentary reveals that the BBC haven’t learnt a damned thing from Doctor Who. Doug Naylor went to the BBC to see if they had the original elements for the model shots in the earlier seasons, as they had been shot on film and would work just as well in high definition. The BBC had lost the footage!


You get the Deleted Scenes, 28 minutes in total, divided up by episode, and it all concludes with an alternate end sequence. Grant Naylor provides an optional audio commentary explaining why they were deleted, although in most cases the reasons are self evident. The dialogue from the deleted scenes is subtitled, the audio commentary is not.

Finally no Red Dwarf release would be complete without the Smeg Ups, and you get 12 minutes worth of goofs, cock-ups, and defensive Kenneth Williams impersonations here.

It’s a comprehensive set of extras, with the peach of the selection the feature length making of. All that’s missing is a cast commentary or two for the episodes.

Conclusion

I laughed! I laughed like I haven’t laughed since Red Dwarf VI. In some episodes I was laughing just as much as I did in seasons 1 and 2. Red Dwarf is most definitely back in style, and if you’re a lapsed Dwarfer like me, prepare to unlapse, as Season 10 is most definitely firing on all thrusters. Getting the studio audience back in was a key decision in getting Red Dwarf working as it once used to, and it’s as if the creators have finally remembered that Red Dwarf is a comedy first and foremost. The story arc of season 8 is a distant memory, as is its unresolved cliff-hanger. Also the tendency for dramatic elements and sci-fi concepts to overpower the chuckles has been forgotten, and Red Dwarf Season 10 is comedy, pure and simple. It’s got the set-up and gag format, it’s got the characters, it’s gone back to its sitcom roots, and it’s all the better for it.


The characters have altered in some ways, and remain comfortably familiar in others. The passage of time does tell, and the initial mutual loathing of Lister and Rimmer has by now become the resigned tolerant antagonism of a long married couple. They used to be the best of enemies, now they are the worst of friends, constantly rubbing each other the wrong way, but they’d probably be lost without each other. Kryten is still the lovable android that we all know, but it’s Cat that’s had the most radical overhaul. By the end of the BBC run, he’d become a walking wisecrack, with a fashion based simile always on the tip of his tongue. This series takes Cat back to his roots, zany, vain, and obsessed with just food and sex. He’s the Cat from seasons 1 and 2, with just a little more experience to his character, and it’s great to see that Cat return.


The episodes are a nice blend of classic Red Dwarf comedy as well, with most of the jokes hitting the chuckle muscle with accuracy. The series is bookended with the classic Rimmer inferiority complex, as he faces members of his family, his brother and his father, both of which cause him to re-evaluate his existence to differing outcomes. There are a couple of concept episodes, with a bit of time travel leading to the boys meeting the son of God, or a close facsimile, and then meeting a de-evolved scientist who’s the last chance in the universe to get into Dave Lister’s pants. Then there are two bottle shows, harking back to the earliest of seasons before the Red Dwarf producers had the budget to go gallivanting around the universe. These episodes are set aboard Red Dwarf itself, are basically about the crew interacting with each other, and nothing else. They are sitcom in the purest sense, and it’s no surprise that Dear Dave is my favourite episode of this run. On second thought it is a surprise given just how tortured a road that episode had to the screen, as revealed in the documentary.


The one problem, a small problem that I had with Red Dwarf X is that as well as revisiting the style of the earlier series, a good thing, it also makes a fair few continuity references, and also revisits some earlier story ideas again. I think the most obvious is in Father and Suns, when they install a new computer on Red Dwarf, and Pree winds up being just as much of a disaster as Queeg was. B.E.G.G.S are just another version of G.E.L.F.S, and the talking vending machines put me in mind of the Talkie Toaster. If there is any justice in this world, there will be a Red Dwarf XI, and hopefully, with the nods to continuity in this series done and dusted, with the audience reminded of what the show is all about, we can get stories that go in different directions.


Red Dwarf X is the best comedy show that I have seen in recent years, although given the competition that’s probably faint praise. Actually, wait for the next series of The Big Bang Theory. If Sheldon et al reference Red Dwarf X in their show; we’ll know for sure it’s a success. Until then, comfort yourself with this Blu-ray release, six episodes of Red Dwarf funny and a whole disc worth of extra features.