Red Dwarf X: Cat and Kryten Synchronise

There’s a countdown going on the Dave website to mark the confirmation start date of Red Dwarf X (according to Rob Lewellyn it’ll likely be the end of September. There’s a bit of a buzz on this one (more so than the last 3). The live audiences are back, giving the show it’s homely, old school, theatrical feel that was lost back in Series… um… VII.

I love Red Dwarf, so far ahead of it’s time it’s cheerful and apocalyptic at the same time. It’s capacity to just be damn silly sets it miles apart from anything else. I started watching as a teenager, when I was bought the videos of Red Dwarf I and II, having asked for any Red Dwarf video that could be found after watching 10 minutes of Polymorph in Red Dwarf III before my Nan switched it off. From The End, through to Confidence and Paranoia and Better Than Life, it wasn’t what I remembered but it was awesome none the less. Absorbing all of the books that inspired it the only thing I haven’t heard is the audio book.

Firmly trapped in the era of the Crystal Maze, Knightmare and Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor Who this was a time when Sci-fi didn’t take itself too seriously (alla Battlestar, Star Wars and Star Trek) and I loved it twice as much for that. I even drew most avidly a comic strip called Star Nutters, lifting pretty much directly art and ideas from Red Dwarf, Val Semeiks’ Lobo and Hitchhikers (with a few ideas of my own thrown in).

I lived Dwarf for years and steadily, as I’ve got older, I kind of left it behind. But I’d love the idea of going back to then and watching I-VI back to back one last time. Maybe one day I’ll be able to do I-X.

Red Dwarf Movie Trailer

Red Dwarf’s been going since 1988. Dave Lister, Arnold Rimmer and Cat found themselves locked on a mining ship 3 million years in the future with a deranged computer navigating. In that time a fair few things have changed but the the basic premise of fish out water or slob out of oxygen has held it together for all of those 24 years.

If it’s time to give up on the Dwarfers nobody’s told them – the tenth series is arriving on Dave very soon – and frankly the inexorable nature of the series kind of fits the idea. Dave is old now, and whether he’s staying an unwashed space bum remains to be seen – you’d think he’d’ve pulled it together a little in the last quarter decade.

But the constant, hopefully, will be the manic non-aliens (Gelphs, Simulants, Psirens, Polymorphs et al), the Bazookoid blasting, explosions and rampant ineptitude so often found by a group of idiots left womanless for three full millenia. With no real focus to cause them to up their game, Rimmer, Lister, Kryten and Cat will continue to wander aimlessly along the space lanes in search of curry and Pete Trance’s sister.

This trailer pretty much nails the outer limits of anarchy and testosterone fuelled hyper violence that Red Dwarf has represented for a good chunk of a century… loadsa fun…

The 1st Red Dwarf X Trailer – Return to the Dwarf

Even following the gaps and uneven nature of recent series of the Dwarf, we are, here at Bunker HQ, absolute Dwarf fans. During filming of the second Moon film we were lucky enough to catch episodes of the last outing of the Dwarfers. This trailer shows a very real move back towards the cheerful, more immediate laddishness and humour of Red Dwarf V AND VI, hopefully with a dash of the production values of VII, VIII, IX. While they’re looking older (with the exception of Llewelyn’s Kryten) we here at the Bunker will no doubt be tuning in to see Rimmer get lost in a card game.