I think that Christmas has come early for me this year, finally after such a long wait both Red Dwarf and Babylon 5 were announced on DVD, and the release times were almost simultaneous. I’d been looking forward to this release ever since I read the original disk spec on the official Red Dwarf website. I was also glad to hear that they would be using the original series 1 episodes rather than the re-mastered and cut versions that came out a few years ago.
Personally, I think series 1 and 2 (series 2 in particular) were the best of all the Red Dwarf series. I love the low budget sets, the excessive stupidity and vanity of the cat and the real sense of loathing between Lister and Rimmer. While I enjoyed them all I just think that the series got gradually weaker with each new season. I also think Norman Lovett made the best Holly and the programme really lost something when he left.
If you’re not familiar with Red Dwarf or the first season I’ll just give a brief synopsis of each episode below:
The End
Dave Lister is 3rd Technician on the mining ship Red Dwarf reporting to Arnold Rimmer 2nd Technician. He is forced to go into stasis (a form of suspended animation) for the remainder of the trip as he’s smuggled a cat aboard the ship and refuses to give it up. Three Million years later Dave is woken by Holly the ships computer and informed that all the crew are dead. His only companions now are Arnold Rimmer brought back as a hologram and a creature that’s evolved from the ships cat.
Future Echoes
In order to start the long journey back to Earth, Red Dwarf will need to break light speed. Unfortunately the ship breaks the light barrier twenty-two hours early and Holly’s bottle has gone. A side effect of travelling faster than light is that they start to see things that will happen in the future. Somehow Lister is going to end up with two children. He doesn’t know how but he’s sure it’s going to be fun finding out.
Balance of Power
Lister wants to bring back Christine Kotchanski as hologram, but as highest-ranking officer on the ship Rimmer refuses. Lister decides to take the chefs exam in order to become higher ranking than Lister. Rimmer has a plan however to stop him taking the exam.
Waiting for God
When Lister starts to read some of the cats’ books, he discovers that their whole religious structure is based on the belief that Kloister the stupid would deliver the cats to Fuschal the Promised Land. Meanwhile Rimmer has found a pod that he’s convinced contains an alien race from the planet Quagaar (a name he made up).
Confidence & Paranoia
Lister goes mooching around the Officers deck before it’s been decontaminated properly. He picks up a cold that has mutated beyond anything ever seen before. As a side effect two new beings appear on the ship. One is Lister confidence and the other is his paranoia. With the help of his confidence, Lister works out a way to bring Kotchanski back, or does he.
Me 2
Lister’s attempt to bring back Kotchanski has resulted in two Rimmer holograms on board. As Rimmer says, ‘You think you had it bad before Lister, now you’ve got it in stereo baby’. Unfortunately Rimmer soon discovers that he absolutely hates himself and one of him will have to go. Just as soon as Lister finds out what Gespacho soup day is.
Video / Audio
It would be very easy for me to say here that the video and audio quality is pretty poor on this release. However it has to be remembered that this was a very low budget TV series that first aired in 1988. The images itself is free from scratches, dirt, grain etc. It is however extremely soft and digital artefact's are occasionally apparent. It’s probably best to say that it looks as good as it probably ever will and certainly much better than my old VHS tapes.
The soundtrack is in Dolby Digital Stereo and is again functional more than anything else. Dialogue on the whole is perfectly clear but certain occasional scenes have quite a lot of background hiss. The show was recorded in front of a studio audience so there is a laughter track throughout the series.
Extras
Disk 1
The commentary track from Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules and Norman Lovett is a real scream. The commentary runs through all six episodes and flows fairly smoothly through them all. They do spend a lot of the time taking the mickey out of each other and their performances, but they also give a lot of information on what it was like to work on this early series. The commentary is so good in fact, that I happily sat through four episodes in a row with it on and I only stopped as I really had to go to bed.
On the episode selection menu of disk 1 there is also an additional commentary track for the first episode. This commentary is from Director Ed Bye and Writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. This is an excellent little commentary; they talk light-heartedly about the history of where Red Dwarf came from. The influences of films like Dark Star and the problems they had getting the BBC interested in the series. To be honest though this could just have been a featurette, as they don’t really pay any attention to the episode that is running in the background.
Disk 2
Launching Red Dwarf is a 25 minture featurette that gives a good background story of how Red Dwarf actually made it onto TV. The featurette contains interview clips with, Paul Jackson, Doug Naylor, The main cast and Peter Risdale Scott of BBC Manchester. This is a very nice, informative feature.
Japanese Episode is the pilot episode unsurprisingly in Japanese. It’s not really something you’d want to sit through unless you speak Japanese, but it is interesting to hear see the different music, special effects etc that they use. Drunk Featurette, is a montage of clips from all the Red Dwarf series, that show the crew either drinking alcohol, drunk or suffering from hangovers. The clips are accompanied by a suitable music track (you’ll know what I mean when you see it).
There’s a selection of thirteen deleted and extended scenes. Some were cut for the sake of timing while others were cut for other reasons. One particular scene show Lister having a funeral for all the crew and an alternative first entrance for the cat. While the funeral is quite good, the alternative cat into is pretty awful and you can see why it was cut. Audio Book Clips is a selection of two sample clips from the audio book “Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers” narrated by Chris Barrie. It’s worth listening to just to hear his great impersonations of Craig Charles and Norman Lovett. The Outtakes are around three and a half minutes long and I believe they are a selection of the ones that you can find on the Smeg-Ups video tape.
Model Shots is a selection of raw footage of the eight foot Red Dwarf model that was used for all the external shots. This also contains some footage of the dust storm from Confidence and Paranioa. There are also a Photo Gallery and a BBC Trailer. The disk pack itself contains a nice little ten-page booklet that gives a little history on each of the episodes. It also gives a summary of some inconsistencies to look out for in the series and a selection of favourite quotes.
Each episode is broken into six chapters and subtitles are available in English. The menus are nicely animated and each menu is represented as a 3D representation of different rooms in the ship. There are also a few hidden extras that you can find details of on this site.
Overall
Overall this release is just about everything a Red Dwarf fan could ask for. Unusually for a BBC release there is a wealth of extras and I think this shows an understanding of the loyal fan base that is out there. The audio commentary from the cast is one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever heard and I really hope they decide to do one for each series. The commentary suggests to me that the cast are as fond of Red Dwarf as we the viewers are.
The video and audio quality are I think the best that we can ever expect them to be. If you’re a fan then the question of whether to buy it or not is a bit of a no brainer. If your new to the program but you like the humour to be found in most British Comedy’s then I’d say go for it, I’d be very surprised if you end up disappointed with your purchase.