Easter Sci-Fi Eggstravaganza Part 2

Before we start, if you've not seen the new Red Dwarf yet, there will be spoilers!


It's been about 10 years since Arnold J Rimmer kneed the Grim Reaper in the bollocks declaring "Only the good die young!" cut to 9 years later and Rimmer's a hologram again, Red Dwarf appears to have recovered from that nano-virus that was killing everyone and eating up the ship and Kochanski's dead. Oh, and there's a dimension hopping leviathan in the water tank.

Red Dwarf has never done particularly well when only one of the original writers were involved, and, unfortunately Back to Earth is no exception. Sure there are some good gags, some touching moments and some good (if not far too many) nods to classic sci-fi film, and one of my all-time favourites Blade Runner.

So the "Dwarfers" use the dimension-hopping squid to travel to another dimension so that Lister can find a mate and repopulate the human race. But when they get there they discover they're actually characters in a television show! So far so League of Gentlemens Apocalypse. In fact I'm surprised they didn't have Michael Sheen play Doug Naylor, but they probably didn't have the budget.

Budget, incidentally is one of the main problems with this three part story. Most of the sets incorporate a huge amount of CGI which results in some very bizarre green screen corridor scenes and what I can only assume was a CGI vending machine. I was amazed to hear from a friend earlier on today that the budget for these 3 stories was the same as they had for Series 2 back in 1987! And I was even more stunned to hear that Doug Naylor had to spend his own money on the Smart Car for Carbug. The low budget explains the modern day Earth set plot, and trip to the Coronation St set which elicited much "Where the hell are they going with this?" from me, the sad lonely fanboy. Thankfully, the concluding episode did a pretty good job of tying the various plot strands together and giving the story a satisfying conclusion.

Looking back on it as a whole (And I think Back to Earth is suited more to a 90 minute film format.) it's actually a pretty good set-up for hopefully another series, Lister, much like the show in its last two years felt tired and run-down, with noone to believe in him. His experiences under the influence of the Despair-Squid (Or should it be Joy-Squid?) finally gave him that spark again and a new mission in life. Back to Earth showed a lot of promise, but was lacking a lot of the clever science fiction, charm and the humour that the best episodes of Dwarf display, but it did leave me wanting more.