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Hi and WELCOME to the introduction to my Red Dwarf page :). I have been a "Dwarfer" ever since 1989 when I saw the first Red Dwarf episode. It's actually quite fluky how I started watching and got hooked on RD. I was surfing around the tele this one night and came across this bizarre character named "Cat". As I continued to watch it and saw the rest of the characters, I started laughing hysterically!! I thought, what masterminds Grant/Naylor are! This is hilarious!! Ever since that night I have never missed an episode and the Red Dwarf Marathon's on KCTS(PBS) Channel 9 Seattle. I have seen and taped every episode, Series 1 through 8 and there is a soon to be a Red Dwarf movie which begins filming in October 2000 and a Series 9 soon to follow. Keep checking out my page cause I will be doing updates to new Red Dwarf stuff. Since 1989, I have seen Red Dwarf go from just fans in England to 1999 where there are fans and a following all over the world.
On the mining vessel Red Dwarf, a radiation leak kills almost the entire crew. The only survivors are the last human being alive Dave Lister, who was in suspended animation during the disaster (sentenced to 18 months for smuggling aboard a unquarantined cat), and his pregnant cat, Frankenstein, who was safely sealed in the ship's hold. Revived 3,000,000 years later by Holly, the dim-witted but indestructible ship's computer. Lister is dismayed to find his only companions are a narcissistic lifeform who evolved from his cat and Arnold J. Rimmer, a hologram simulation of his dead bunkmate and a total "SmegHead".
Here are some words from Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, the creators of Red Dwarf, of how Red Dwarf came to be.
GENESIS
The Eight year-old boy with the leaky-pen mouth knocked timidly and entered the Sixth Form common room. In his hand he clutched a twelve page punishment essay entitled 'Knocking Over Sixth Formers' Coffee Mugs'. After ignoring him for a suitably humiliating amount of time, the perfect in the brown Hush Puppies and the black barathea blazer turned and took the essay. "So you've done it, have you?" he said. "How long did it take?" "I was up till nearly midnight," the boy whimpered. Without even glancing at the pages, the perfect tore the essay into eight and dropped it into the bin. The rest of the Sixth Form howled with derision and pelted the perfect with rugby boots, books and rubbers. The perfect's name was Rimmer. Two Sixth Formers sat in the corner, playing their fifth game of chess of the day. They had perhaps 20 minutes before lunch break ended and double history began. 20 minutes before they would be forced to skive off to their favourite coffee bar and spend the afternoon smoking No.6 and finalising their thoughts on the meaning of life. The one with the non-regulation flared trousers and Peter Wyngarde sideburns was called Grant. The one with the plastic Chelsea boots and the Man from UNCLE polo neck was called Naylor. They didn't know it but something significant had just taken place. Neither of them would mention the incident again for twelve years.
Fade out.
Fade in.
It's two o'clock in the morning. In eight hours' time, we are going to start rehearsals for a radio sketch show called Son of Cliche`. Half the show remains unwritten. In less than sixteen hours', 400 people are going to show up at the Paris Theatre in London to watch the recording of a show that, as yet, only half exists. There is a feeling beyond panic, beyond fear, where your emotions run full circle and you actually start to feel euphoric.This is happening to us.
We begin to giggle hysterically. Almost certainly our career is over and it's all our fault. Three cast memebers, a musical director, a producer and his PA and eight technicians are sleeping soundly in the knowledge that the script will be delivered, since we've been assuring them all for a week that it's simply a question of dotting a few 'i's and crossing the odd 't'.
We've been lying.
We've just spent the last three months working seven days a week on a TV series for Jasper Carrott, and then had to segue straight into a two-show-a-week commitment for a radio sketch series written entirely by us. It's and absurb schedule and more assertive people than us would probably have been able to get out of it. But, not wanting to disappoint anyone, somehow we've agreed to do it. And the last amusing sketch in the universe has been written. There are no more funny ideas to be had. Then, suddenly, out of this emotional cocktail of panic, hysteria, exhaustion and terror, we write a sketch called 'Dave Hollins - Space Cadet'. It concerns the plight of a lone space traveller and his computer, the rest of the crew having been wiped out by a strange, chameleonic alien. At last, we've up and running. We finish the rest of the show and turn up with the script, having creased and folded it to make it look like it's at least a week old, apart from the occasional dotted 'i' and crossed 't'. And the only half clue that we've been up all night is that, on separate occassions, we both walk off the edge of the stage and crash into the orchestra pit. The audience arrive. The show begins. And, as is sometimes the way the way with these things, the show is actually better than some of those we've spent weeks and weeks writing and rewriting. They laugh at everything. But far and away the hit of the show is a sketch called 'Dave Hollins - Space Cadet'.
Fade out.
Fade in.
We sit across the table from Jimmy Gilbert, the Head of Light Entertainment, BBC TV. We tell him we've got an idea for a situation comedy. It's about four students sharing a house together. He's a nice man and sounds genuinely interested. He says, however, the BBC have just made a situation comedy which sounds a bit like that, called The Youngs One. We say we're sure it'll be nothing like ours. We want ours to star this weird stand-up comic we've seen called Nigel Planer.
Any other ideas, he prompts.
Well, there's this project we've been working on which we think could be very, very funny indeed. It's called POW and it's set in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. It'll be absolutely real, with integrity; no funny tortures. Sort of King Rat, with laughs. He gently suggests we write something from our own experiences. Something we know about. We leave and spend the next two years writing for TV sketch shows and thinking about it. We return with a situation comedy, set on a space ship based on a certain sketch from Son of Cliche`, about two ordinary guys trapped together in a boring job, of which we have vast experience. Jimmy Gilbert reads the script and likes it very much indeed. Unfortunately, by this time he has left the BBC, and his replacement hates it very much indeed.
Fade out.
Fade in.
Three years later, Paul Jackson called us on his new mobile phone from a Manchester-London train:
"Hi guys, it's...kkktktkttttttttttk static, crackle kkkkkktttttttkk..."
"Hello?"
"I'm calling from a kkktktkttttttttk more static, crackle kkkttttttkk...train."
"Paul? Is that you?"
"I'll phone you kktktkttttk...back...kkktttttkk...OK?"
The phone rang again.
"Is that better?"
"Much better."
"I've just been to BBC Manchester and they've read the script."
"Yes?"
"And they haven't said no."
"They haven't said no?"
"Yes."
"Is that good?"
"Oh yes. That's how these things work."
"They havent't said yes, then?"
"No, but they haven't said no, and if they continue not to say no, we're in."
And he was right. We were in. Three years after Red Dwarf was rejected by the BBC, the same script was accepted and commissioned by BBC Manchester. Of ALL the shows we've worked on in television, Red Dwarf is the most complex, logistically and technically, to realise. In comparision, normal sitcoms are a total doddle. It's easy enough to write three Listers and three Rimmers appearing together in the same scene from different timezones, or scenes where Kryten's disembodied hand goes for a stroll, or Starbug crashes into an arctic moon: it's another matter altogether making it possible. With a tight budget and an even tighter schedule, there is only one way to make it work, and that's to have the best production team around. Fortunately, we've got it. From the very bottom of our rehydration units, we thank them all. The one key person who isn't interviewed in this book is Ed Bye, who directed the first four series. Without him, it would never have worked or been half the success it has. Which isn't to say we're not glad to see the back of him - good riddance to the old bastard. He was too tall anyway.
Rob Grant and Doug Naylor,
Nodnol 2991.
That's how Red Dwarf was born and the rest is history :)
RED DWARF PERSONNEL FILES - SUBJECT NO 1:
NAME: David Lister
TYPE: Human
RANK: Third technician
LIKES: Kippers and vindaloos(curry meal)
DISLIKES: Arnold Judas Rimmer(bunk mate)
FIRST LOVE:Christine Kochanski
SKILLS: Able to belch 'Yankee Doodle Dandy'
Dave Lister was not cut out for space travel. The street smart gimboid's academic career reached the giddy heights of 97 minutes at art college. Lister quit when he found out that the lectures started first thing in the afternoon. After 3,000,000 years in statis, work is still considered a four letter word to him. For Lister, life on the Red Dwarf Mining Ship is spent salvaging space wrecks, playing poker and eating lots of curries without much salvaging. Lister hates Rimmer, but driving the self centered hologram nuts is what keeps him sane. Over the years, Lister has emerged as the good guy of Red Dwarf. Then again, he is the only human being still alive. Perhaps that's why he has ceased to worry about his appearance. As the ship has travelled deeper into space, Lister's original issued fatigues have been superseded by the scuzziest sartorial off-cuts in the universe. On important occasions Lister wears his special T-shirt - the one with only two curry stains and boxer-shorts that actually bend. Despite a tendency towards melancholia, Lister has become resigned to his galactic fate. He no longer dreams of setting up a farm on Fiji and he finally seems to have gotten over his cosmic crush on Chrissie Kochanski. If it wasn't for Arnold Rimmer always getting in the way, Lister could almost be content bumming around the universe for all eternity.
Thin Line Between Actor & Character
Rob Grant illustrates the thin line between actor and character. "We were having breakfast in the BBC canteen. Craig Charles joined us and said he was worried about the people thinking he really was Lister. While he was talking, he took a sausage off Danny's plate, squirted some ketchup straight onto the table, dipped the sausage in the ketchup and ate it. 'I mean, he chewed, 'I'm nothing like him, really.' Danny laughed so hard he almost choked to death." The unreal thing was is that Dave Lister, er Craig Charles, didn't realize he was doing it. If there's one risk about starring in a long running successful series, it's that your alter ego can sometimes take over you. As Craig Charles recalls, he might not have gotten the part of Lister at all, " I'd done SNL* with Paul Jackson, and one day Paul lent me a Red Dwarf script. He wasn't offering me a part, he just wanted me to tell him if I thought the Cat was racist. I said I didn't think so, and I wouldn't mind auditioning for Lister.
As Ace would say, "Smoke Me a Kipper, I will be back for breakfast!"
As Rimmer would say, "Smoke me a Clipper, I will be back for Christmas!"
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