Red Dwarf Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
- ''This article describes the British science fiction comedy television series. For the type of star, see red dwarf.
It parodies most (if not all) of the sub-genres of science fiction but is first and foremost an 'odd couple' type comedy. The first series aired on BBC2 in 1988. Seven further series have so far been produced, and a film is currently in production. The idea was originally developed from the sketches introduced on Grant and Naylor's 1984 BBC Radio 4 show called "Son of Cliché".
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2 Scenario 3 Episode list 4 Characters 5 US version 6 Spin-offs 7 Invented words 8 See also 9 External links |
Production history
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.
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. In practice all that changed were the names, although at the beginning of series IV production moved from the BBC's Manchester studios to Shepperton Studios.
A period of four years elapsed between Series VI and VII. 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.
Scenario
In the show, the Red Dwarf is a gigantic spaceship, belonging to Jupiter Mining Corporation, which, following an on-board radioactive disaster, is left to drift through deep space. Three million years later, after the radiation has dropped to a safe level, the only surviving crew member emerges from stasis (where he'd been placed as punishment, though his stay was intended to be only eighteen months) and is surprised to face this grave reality.
This is the slob anti-hero Dave Lister (played by Craig Charles). Lister speaks with a marked Scouse accent. He craves Indian food such as vindaloo curries and shami kebabs, all of which are in plentiful supply on board the ship (though the mechanics of storing curries for thousands of millennia have not been explored on the show).
Lister enjoys the company of a hologrammatic simulation of a deceased crew member Arnold J. Rimmer (the 'J' stands for Judas), played by Chris Barrie. Rimmer, Lister's room-mate before the disaster, is a humourless and status-obsessed loser, loathed by everybody on board. It was he who actually caused the radioactive disaster by poorly repairing a shielding plate on the power core, although in his defense he would have been able to do a better job if Lister hadn't been imprisoned in stasis. (Technically, the facility for simulating dead crew is reserved for high-ranking and/or essential personnel, but the ship's computer explains in an early episode that it believes company — and specifically 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 that "driving Rimmer nuts is what keeps me going"). The choice of hologram personality was rendered a moot point early in the first season; Lister almost from the start planned to find the computer disk containing the holographic backup of his ex-girlfriend Kristine Kochanski, but soon after he was activated Rimmer realized Lister would try to shut him down (the computer can only generate one hologram at a time) and hid all of the remaining holographic identity disks, somewhere where Lister would never find them. Notwithstanding his desperate desire to not be turned off, the holographic Rimmer bemoans his fate — he's dead, and his current sensibility is just a simulation of how he would feel if he were alive. In later episodes, Rimmer is also manifest as the superheroic character, Ace Rimmer.
Also accompanying Lister on his voyage back to Earth is The Cat (played by Danny John-Jules). The Cat is no ordinary cat, but a member of the species Felis sapiens, descended from a domestic cat which Lister had smuggled aboard three million years prior. The Cat is appears as a typical biped humanoid with slightly elongated canines, he retains a cat-like interest in fish and female cats, a heightened sense of smell, unbridled vanity, and cat-like obsession towards grooming and appearance, with a uniquely feline fashion sense. He also has six nipples.
The other principal character is Holly, the ship's computer with a supposed IQ of 6000 (visible as a disembodied head on the screen and played, for the first two series and in series 8, by Norman Lovett and later by Hattie Hayridge after Holly performed a 'head sex change' upon himself; Lovett is scheduled for the movie version). Holly runs most of Red Dwarf's systems despite now suffering from computer senility.
Among Holly's systems are the service droids known as skutters that clean, perform engineering tasks and function as Rimmer's hands since he cannot touch anything non-holographic.
Later on, the crew are joined by the service android Kryten (most famously played by Robert Llewellyn, but played by David Ross in his first episode) whom Lister encourages to break his altruistic programming and become a lying, cheating human like the rest of us.
Lister's longlasting crush is Kristine Kochanski, played by C. P. (Clare) Grogan. 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 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 is that there are no aliens (much to Rimmer's disappointment). Although there is a large and bizarre mix of intelligent life within the Red Dwarf universe, all of these are in one way or another derived from Earth. Most of the strange creatures the crew encounters are GELFs: Genetically Engineered Life Forms.
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 mixed-race, 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 to dub it 'White Dwarf'.
All four books were published in audiobook format, the first two read by Chris Barrie with Last Human read by Craig Charles and Backwards read by its author Rob Grant.
The song Tongue Tied, originally featured in a dream sequence in the episode Parallel Universe, was released as a single in 1993. It reached number 17 in the UK charts.
A planned Red Dwarf: The Movie has been delayed from its original schedule. According to the official website, it will now enter full production in January 2005, with details of a release date to follow.
The idea of a substitute curseword was borrowed from the BBC sitcom Porridge, which brought the word "Naff" into popular usage.
There are other terminologies invented by Red Dwarf that are not as well-known as "smeg". Given the sarcastic and argumentative nature of the show's plotlines, many of these other new words are derogatory designations including "Goit" (one who is annoying or awkward — perhaps adapted from the word "git") and "Gimboid" (one who is stupid or clumsy — similar in meaning to "moron", and possibly an adaptation of the word "gimp").
The currency in use at the time Red Dwarf left the Solar System was apparently the "dollarpound", divided into one hundred "pennycents".
In one episode, Cat uses the word 'Jozxyqk' in a Scrabble game, claiming it to be a cat word meaning "...the sound you get when you get your sexual organs trapped in something."
Several sets, seen often in the earlier episodes, have the phrase "Level Nivelo" prominently displayed on one wall. "Nivelo" is not an invented word within the series, but rather Esperanto for the English word "level". In the Red Dwarf universe, the constructed language Esperanto is in much wider use than it is today, and Red Dwarf is officially a bilingual vessel. See the first episode in season two, "Kryten," where Rimmer attempts to learn Esperanto.
This is an Article on Red Dwarf. Page Contains Information, Facts Details or Explanation Guide About Red Dwarf Episode list
Characters
Regular cast
Semi-regular characters in series 8
Recurring guest characters
US version
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) for the British; the one exception being Robert Llewellyn, who reprised his role as Kryten. The pilot was unsuccessful.Spin-offs
The franchise has expanded to include four novels, written by the show's creators, Doug Naylor and Robert Grant.
Last Human and Backwards are both (different) sequels to Better Than Life, and are not consistent with each other.Invented words
Red Dwarf is famous for using the word "smeg" in order to remove swearwords from the show and to add to a futuristic terminology. Some examples of the word in context are "smegger", "smeghead", "smeg off", "smeg-for-brains", and "smegging hell". The character of Rimmer famously tells a vending machine in one episode to "...smeg off, you smeggy smegging smegger!" The writers of Red Dwarf have stated that they invented the word and that it has no connection with any similar real words, such as "smegma"; very few fans, however, lend any credence to that claim.See also
External links