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02 What is Red Dwarf?




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This article is from the Red Dwarf FAQ, by Patrick M. Berry pat@interpath.com with numerous contributions by others.

02 What is Red Dwarf?

Red Dwarf is a British TV show that has been airing on the BBC since 1988.
It's a half-hour science fiction comedy that tells the story of the last
living human being and his nonhuman companions in the distant future. The
premise of the show is best summed up in the opening narration (by Holly,
the ship's computer) used in the first series:

This is an S.O.S. distress call from the mining ship Red Dwarf.
The crew are dead, killed by a radiation leak. The only survivors
are Dave Lister, who was in suspended animation during the
disaster, and his pregnant cat, who was safely sealed in the
hold. Revived three million years later, Lister's only companions
are a life-form who evolved from his cat, and Arnold Rimmer, a
hologram simulation of one of the dead crew.

Accompanied by the Cat, Rimmer, Holly, and an android named Kryten, Lister
pursues his dream of returning to Earth and settling down with his
long-lost girlfriend. Along the way, he encounters parallel universes, time
warps, genetic mutants, holes in space, and a moon shaped like Felicity
Kendal's bottom.

The regular cast of the series is:

  Dave Lister        Craig Charles
  Arnold Rimmer      Chris Barrie
  
  Holly              Norman Lovett (Series 1, 2, 7, 8)
                     Hattie Hayridge (Series 3-5)
  The Cat            Danny John-Jules
  Kryten             Robert Llewellyn (Series 3-8)
  Kristine Kochanski Chloe Annett (Series 7-8)

Red Dwarf is also a series of novels based on the TV show. The novels
greatly expand on, and are greatly different from, the show. Many of the
same ideas appear in the novels, but these ideas are put together in new
and interesting ways. Four novels have been published so far:

Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
by Grant Naylor
ISBN 0-14-012437-3
Penguin, 1989

Red Dwarf: Better Than Life
by Grant Naylor
ISBN 0-14-012438-1
Penguin, 1990

Red Dwarf: Last Human
by Doug Naylor
ISBN 0-67-085255-4
Penguin, 1995

Red Dwarf: Backwards
by Robert Grant
ISBN 0-670-84574-4
Penguin, 1996

The first two novels have been reprinted in a single volume:

Red Dwarf Omnibus
by Grant Naylor
ISBN 0-14-017466-4
Penguin, 1991

This combined rerelease also contains the script for "Dave Hollins, Space
Cadet" (one of the Son of Clich=E9 sketches that started it all), a
reproduction of the beer mat on which the idea for Red Dwarf was allegedly
first written, and the original script for "The End" (the first episode of
the series).

 

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