Skip to main content

Red Dwarf ran its new special 3-episode series, Back to Earth, and it became available on DVD at the start of this week… in the UK. It was supposed to be a world-wide release according to a posting before the original air date (since modified), but Amazon doesn’t know that quite yet. But that’s OK, because there is more good news! At the Better Than Life Con last weekend in Bedford, Cat, Kochanski, and Kryten all confirmed that the ratings for Dave TV (renamed Lister TV for the event) blew the doors off of the BBC ratings for the same time slot. As a result, an entirely new 6 episode season of Red Dwarf is in negotiations. Anything that gets us new Red Dwarf is a good thing!

At least for this competition, but I have to agree with the majority of results. The poll was put together at Total SciFi, and coming in at number one was the Doctor Who Theme, by Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire. By the first note, there is no doubt in anyone’s mind what the show is; how many theme songs have that power? In second place was the Red Dwarf theme (and did you check out the Terry Pratchett interview about this months Red Dwarf special?), with The X-Files in third. Hot on its heels came Buffy the Vampire Slayer in fourth place, and Star Trek TOS came in at 5. The rest include the 7) Twilight Zone, 8) Battlestar Galactica, 9) Quantum Leap, and 10) The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. I have no clue how Thunderbirds ended up on the list. Here are a few variations on a theme…

And one more, for good measure; see the full version here

And there are a few (or a few thousand) more…

For those lucky enough to be in the UK, tonight was the first segment of the new Red Dwarf special on Dave TV. Robert Llewellyn, who plays the part of Kryten in that series, is being Tweeted to death about it, with a reported over 2,000 received so far tonight. For his last several Car Pool segments (he interviews people while driving them around in his car with web cams, very entertaining) he has had fellow Dwarfers Chris Berrie (Rimmer) and Craig Charles (Lister). He will be interviewing Danny and Holly (Norman, not Hattie) in the next week or two, I haven’t heard if Chloe Annett is going to do one or not. For myself, I will be waiting on the release of the DVD in July to watch it and add it to my collection.

SciFi Wire has released a list of SciFi Folks who Tweet, and a great list it is. I was already following Neil Gaiman, but didn’t know John Scalzi was in there as well. Likewise I was following Wil Wheaton and never knew Robert Llewellyn was tweeting away. There are a lot more on the list (and a lot they missed), so check it all out and add some to your following group. There is also the Twitter Resistance, lead by the most-followed Tweeter of all, Leo Laporte of Call For Help fame.

This was my first Blog entry, back in 2003. I started the site in 1993 as a way to get my bookmarks from any computer with internet access (not all that many, that year), and switched to a blog format a decade later.  As Holley says, I may be slow, but I get there in the end…

The funniest SciFi show of all time, Red Dwarf is a creation of the BBC.

The premise was simple. Our hero made a mistake (involving a kitten he tried to smuggle on board), and he was put in stasis until the ship got back to earth, where he could be cashiered out. But before that happened, another crew mate forgot to tighten down a shielding plate, and the entire crew died of radiation poisoning; the ship drifted into deep space.

As our story opens, it is 3 million years later; Dave Lister is awoken from stasis, and finds out he is the last living human being in the universe. His crew mates on the ship are a demented computer named Holly (started out with an IQ of 12,000; these days, an IQ of 12 is about the best it can manage); A Hologram of the poor sap who caused everyone to die, named Arnie Rimmer; and the descendant of the cat he smuggled on board that got him in trouble, named Kat.

From that simple start, a wonderful reality grows. An American version was tried, with Frasier’s Daphne as Holly and Treks Jadzia Dax as Kat, but no one bought it and tried to release it. Too bad, it would have been fun to watch grow. But the BBC version kept on evolving, and won a world-wide audience.
As I enter this info, 8 seasons of TV are behind us, and their first feature-length movie is in production. Several books have also been released, which expand and enhance the story.

If you don’t already know and love this show, you should check out the web site, and look to your local BBC/PBS station to catch it. My personal favorite is Season VIII, but all of them are good. Here are a few links to get you started…

http://www.reddwarf.co.uk/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/reddwarf/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/