[.ca] Red Dwarf: Series 1

From Amazon.com:
Notoriously, and entirely appropriately, the original outline for Doug Naylor and Rob Grant's comedy sci-fi series Red Dwarf was sketched on the back of a beer mat. When it finally appeared on British television in 1988, the show had clearly stayed true to its roots, mixing jokes about excessive curry consumption with affectionate parodies of classic sci-fi. Indeed, one of the show's most endearing and enduring features is its obvious respect for genre conventions, even as it gleefully subverts them. The scenario owes something to Douglas Adams's satirical Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, something to The Odd Couple, and a lot more to the slacker sci-fi of John Carpenter's Dark Star. Behind the crew's constant bickering there lurks an impending sense that life, the universe, and everything are all someone's idea of a terrible joke. Later seasons broadened the show's horizons until at last its premise was so diluted as to be unrecognizable, but in the six episodes of the first season, the comedy is witty and intimate, focusing on characters and not special effects. Slob Dave Lister (Craig Charles) is the last human alive after a radiation leak wipes out the crew of the vast mining vessel Red Dwarf (Episode 1, "The End"). He bums around the spaceship with the perpetually uptight and annoyed hologram of his dead bunkmate, Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie, the show's greatest comedy asset), and a creature evolved from a cat (dapper Danny John Jules). They are guided rather haphazardly by Holly, the worryingly thick main computer (lugubrious Norman Lovett). --Mark Walker

Smeg! Red Dwarf is now on DVD!:
I have been a fan of the sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf for many years, in fact let's put it this way, I've been watching it since it first came out "cough-cough" years ago! So I am more than happy it is now on DVD, especially as two a year seem to be coming out and we are already on Season 4 so roll on Season, 6, 7 and 8 is all I can say! This is a great DVD. You get all the first series on one Disc plus loads of other extras on another disc. And who can forget the first series when we were introduced to the grungiest man in the universe, Lister, the most cowardly man ever (and now a hologram) Rimmer, an ever so slightly insane computer called Holly, and the last descendent of Lister's cat, known only as Cat and eventually Kryten the neurotic but lovable Mechanoid. This is British humour at its best, and over the years it has improved like a good mellow wine. I am not going to give an in depth account of each episode, just and overview of the ongoing storyline which is that the Red Dwarf is a deep space mining ship with a crew of thousands. However due to the ineptitude of Second Technician Arnold Judas Rimmer, that crew has been wiped in a massive radiation leak and the ship left to drift in space for millions of years whilst the radiation dies down. The only survivor is Dave Lister who was in cryogenic suspension after being punished by the Ship's Captain for bringing a cat on board, Arnold Rimmer's, now a Hologram (that means he's dead but resurrected in the form of a computer simulation but he can't touch anything) and ex-room mate of Lister's and a very human looking descendant of Lister's cat, who has all the vanity and habits of a feline that has evolved over millions of years. We are treated to a variety of hilarious moments as Dave Lister comes to terms with being the only man left alive on the Space Ship and in the universe, and his reluctant friendship with Rimmer (who he hates and loves in the same breath) his relationship with Cat and eventually the Android (called Mecanoid in the series) Kryten who joins them in one episode in Series 2 and then becomes a permanent feature by Series 3. There is also Holly, the ship's slightly mad computer, after all he has been alone for a VERY long time and two Scutters (repair robots) who have also become a little demented over the years, they both belong to a John Wayne fan club! This is well worth watching, and if you don't become addicted after the first ten minutes I'll be very surprised and you'll be a Smeghead! You also get the full six episodes on one disc, a collector's booklet and another disc full of extras such as cast commentary, deleted scenes, isolated music cuts, photo gallery and a lot, lot more!

The earliest, and arguably the best, Red Dwarf series:
The Show: The early episodes, i.e. the first two seasons, of Red Dwarf hold a special place for fans. Before any real money was thrown at the series, and even before Kryten joined the crew on a permanent basis, the first series concentrated on characters and comedy. This series sets up the characters and the relationships that will carry the show through 8 series. One of, if not the best, series of Red Dwarf and one of my personal favorites. Th DVD: Having seen (and taped) most of the show off of PBS, I'm glad to finally have this on DVD. The picture and sound is great, and the disc easily navigable. Though not as many as the later series (II, III, IV) there are a good amount of outtakes, deleted scenes, trailers, etc. But the true gem as far extras is the cast commentary on all 6 episodes. Chris, Craig, Danny and Norman share stories of the early years, behind the scenes, etc. Very cool for diehard fans like myself. In short, if you're a fan you NEED this, if you're new to RD this is probably the best place to start.

Hilariously tasteless!:
Most of us grew up on Sci-Fi films and televison of the Star Trek/Star Wars, tradition, with starships full of pure hearts and high ideals in the pursuit of galactic knowledge. Of course, I've always thought that if you filled a starship with the people I've gone to school and worked you'd get something quite different. Remember that kid who was always crashing his bike, setting the chem lab on fire, or dropping delicate devices...? What if he was, say, in charge of safety on an intergalectic starship? He'd get everyone killed. Which is exactly how Red Dwarf begins. An overrreaching and extremely annoying cliber by the name of Rimmer (one of a great many absolutely tasteless references) has managed to kill off the entire population of a ship except for one man left in suspended animation. A few millions years later when the radiation had died down, he's taken out of suspension by a computer who has gone quite mad in the interim, and finds that his only companions are a holographic projection of the most annoying man on the ship- yes, the one who's killed everyone off- and the last descendant of his cat. Season one sets up the basic premise, introduces the characters, and explores the ship. Along the way much beer and curry is eaten and sprayed about as thousands of crude insults are tossed about and our hero tries to figure out how to keep from going mad himself. And it just keeps getting better from there.

The Start of Something Great:
In Britain a TV show like Red Dwarf gets only six episodes a season, compared to the 20-plus common in the US. The good news is that, with all their efforts bent toward a mere six eps, they can make those the best six episodes possible. Red Dwarf is the name of a mining spaceship. The first episode in the series - called, paradoxically and charmingly, "The End" - introduces us to Dave Lister (Craig Charles), uber-slacker and lowest ranking person on Red Dwarf, and Arnold J. Rimmer (Chris Barrie), stupid, rude, officious control freak and second lowest ranking person on Red Dwarf. (Obviously AJR is destined to become the series' most popular character.) Since Lister is the only person he outranks, AJR of course dedicates most of his waking hours to making Lister's life hell. This would work if Lister gave a damn about anything Rimmer might say or do. Instead he regards Rimmer with the total contempt usually reserved for a high school stoner contemplating a junior ROTC cadet who takes himself WAY too seriously. A horrible accident kills the entire crew except Lister, who emerges from suspended animation millions of years in the future to find himself a long, long, long, LONG way from Earth, his only companions the computer personality Holly - I have to point out the obvious play on 2001's HAL (played as slightly dense by the wonderfully deadpan Norman Lovett); a humanoid cat (Danny John-Jules) whose main occupations are eating, sleeping and admiring himself; and his old pal Rimmer, generated by the ship's computers as an intangible but visible hologram, surviving to badger Lister millions of years after AJR's own death. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving. In this first season, the lack of a serious budget shows. The sets are drab in a Blake 7 kind of way. In one scene, showing much of the crew of Red Dwarf at a banquet, jackets are thrown over seat backs both to add a bit of color and hide the fact these are all modern, cheap cafeteria chairs. Almost all the budget went into building the sets; the Red Dwarf mock-up; and robotic "scutters," cute as hell, small janitorial robots (which never worked well, an ongoing source of irritation for everyone making Red Dwarf). Every episode takes place on the ship, simply because there was no money for location shooting. Series creators and writers Doug Naylor and Rob Grant had very little power to control the show during this first year. Otherwise they would've done things differently regards set decoration, direction and character development. For all that, even in these early episodes Red Dwarf has SOMETHING. The "something," of course, being the relationship between Lister and Rimmer, the Odd Couple of outer space. Over the years this relationship would be expanded upon, and modified somewhat, but its rock solid appeal was there from the very start. I'd been told for years before watching this DVD that Red Dwarf was a "very confusing series, hard to get into, but stick with it, it's worth it." For years after its introduction, because every Power That Was considered the first season so inferior to what came later, the episodes on this DVD were never rebroadcast, either in Britain or the US. I can see where this would be a confusing series to jump into in the middle, not knowing the backstory, why Lister is stranded on Red Dwarf, that Rimmer is a hologram, etc. Since my first exposure to Red Dwarf, by contrast, was watching Series 1 on DVD, to me it made perfect sense. This two-disk DVD set was obviously a labor of love for the people putting it together. It's been given top drawer treatment all the way around. The quality of video transfer is excellent, the colors (such as there are) crisp, the audio clear. The second disk is chockful of amusing "extras." The only negative, to my mind, is that the enclosed Red Dwarf booklet, while very well-done, reveals secrets from later seasons. While I'm sure this is all old news to longtime series fans, as a new fan whose first exposure to Red Dwarf was this DVD, I found it a bit irritating. Buy this DVD, it's the perfect introduction to one of the most imaginative, funniest television shows ever. If you have any liking for science fiction, or any sense of humor at all, you will love it.

Madcap trek through deepest space.:
This is the first, and, in my opinion, the best Red Dwarf series. I remember watching this when it first aired on BBC2. I hadn't intended to watch it, it just happened to be on and I remember thinking it would be rubbish. Shows how wrong I was. Ignore the low budget sets and old fashioned `special' effects and ignore the fact that the cast comprises unknown (at that time) actors. None of that matters with such a wickedly funny script played in a wonderfully over the top manner by its stars. The Red Dwarf is a mining ship millions of miles from home. Dave Lister (Craig Charles) is about the lowest ranked member of crew possible, senior only to the tiny robotic Scutters. Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie) is only one step above him but is highly ambitious and opinionated (as well as totally deluded about his abilities), and just loves to pull rank over Dave. The two despise each other and swap insults with unfailing regularity. When Dave is found to have smuggled a cat on board he is threatened with stasis for the remainder of the journey if he doesn't hand the creature over for extermination. Dave opts for stasis and this is where the saga of Red dwarf really starts. When he comes out of stasis he finds that something has wiped out the entire crew of the ship and he has been in stasis for 3 million years. His only company is the ships computer Holly, a holograph of his deceased, neurotic, room mate come enemy, Rimmer, and a self obsessed, humanoid creature, simply called Cat, who has evolved from Frankenstein, Lister's smuggled cat. The humour mainly focuses on the banter and sarcastic comments between Lister and Rimmer, two people who loathe each other but are forced together for company. Holly and Cat, in this first season, play low key parts but have some brilliant one liners. This two disc set not only contains the entire first series but also a myriad of extras including deleted scenes, `smeg-ups' and commentaries by the cast. You don't have to be a sci-fi fan to enjoy Red Dwarf, just a fan of quirky, `off the wall' comedy.