Red Dwarf (science fiction series)

Red Dwarf is a science fiction situation comedy originally aired on British television by the BBC in 1988. By the final series in 1999, it had gone from a cult television favourite to mainstream success, spawning several original novelisations and accompanying merchandise. Interest in Red Dwarf remains high, with a loyal fan base and continuing attempts to launch a movie version of the series.

Red Dwarf was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, Manchester-based scriptwriting partners who worked under the pseudonym Grant Naylor. Their partnership began in the late 1970s, and by the early 1980s had contributed to several comedy series. During this time, they were attempting to get a sci-fi 'sitcom' into production, with the central character the last human in the universe. In 1983, this saw the light of day on radio as Dave Hollins: Space Cadet, though Grant and Naylor continued to approach the BBC with a script made for television which expanded upon the basic idea. This script, which was rejected by the BBC for three years, was called Red Dwarf, after the mining ship on which the central character would find himself almost alone.

The BBC rejected the script several times because it was felt that a sitcom with science fiction elements would not work. Grant and Naylor kept submitting basically the same material through producer Paul Jackson, who eventually convinced the corporation to commission six episodes.

The new programme had been considerably changed and expanded upon. Hollins became Dave Lister, a lazy and rather unkempt employee of the Jupiter Mining Corporation, who has the dubious honour of being the lowest-ranked crew member of the JMC's gigantic ship Red Dwarf, a vessel sent through the solar system on a mining expedition. His room-mate is Arnold Rimmer, a deeply competitive, thoroughly nasty incompetent who has reached the dizzying heights of second-lowest rank aboard the ship. Lister is punished for bringing aboard an unquarantined cat by being placed in suspended animation for eighteen months; however, while he and his cat are respectively sealed in stasis and the ship's hold, a radiation leak kills everyone else on board.

Having set up the idea of a near-empty ship the size of a city drifting through space, Grant and Naylor now had Lister almost alone in the universe; three million years passed before Red Dwarf's computer, the artificially-(un)intelligent Holly, was able to release him unharmed. Whereas Dave Hollins had only the ship's computer for company, Dave Lister was given two new companions: a hologram simulation of the long-dead Rimmer, and Cat, apparently the last of a race of feline humanoids that evolved from Lister's pet. With the crew reduced to dust (as Lister discovered, but not before accidentally eating some of their remains), these four characters would find themselves travelling through an empty universe; initially confined to the ship, the series moved towards comedy drama as more money flowed into the production team's coffers and more special effects and location filming was made possible.