SPOILERS
Very disappointing. Very, very disappointing. To the point of infuriating. Where do I begin?
Firstly, I am a huge fan of the Red Dwarf franchise, with all the series on DVD from series one to series eight. When I heard news of it returning to British television after a hiatus of ten years I was thrilled. No other show would benefit from the advances in computer technology than the pioneering combination of science-fiction situation comedy. As was shown with the revival of Doctor Who in 2005, the cult programs of old were ready to return to public consciousness with fancy CGI whizz and digital whatnot. Alas, Back to Earth failed in every department, like the one where it teased fans with fantastic locations and creatures the likes that the series had never been able to create before and then never used them.
Take another popular comedy series with the BBC stamp on it: The League of Gentlemen. It is a common belief that as a programme based on sketches carries on it gets less and less unique, every week we expect a different interpretation of the same joke, see: Little Britain, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Catherine Tate. When the third series of the League and Gentleman came and went, the team had left the sketch format dead and buried and after the brief flirtation with the sitcom format seen in series three, the series left television forever. In 2005 the feature film was released. The basic plot is that all the characters within the world of Royston Vasey become aware of their existence as fiction, of the real world and thus of their creators (all playing themselves as themselves, but not quite as themselves, understand?). The whole fourth wall plot complimented the League perfectly. The sketches had gone through all the motions and so had the characters so to make them self aware was the next logical step. The self-refrentialism was perfect because the series and the characters had nowhere else to go so they could take out all the stops. This is where Red Dwarf is different. It had somewhere to go, and characters to develop. The space setting meant literally infinite possibilities, story lines, jokes and situations could occur for a good five or even eight more series. Instead the Dwarf mythology is stopped dead in its track and the fans are subjected to ninety minutes of unutterable sights (the Dwarfers visit the set of Coronation Street! Coronation Street! Not to mention the visual of the crew driving a Starbug-esquire car down contemporary Britain. A joke that reduces the show's humour from television to YouTube quality). The uncomfortable climax where the all realities crash into one another as the crew re-write scripts that haven't been written yet to change their course in time to another point where they hadn't *BLEURGH*. The Blade Runner references are used without reason the characters are so out of place in the realm of another film. Yes, the original series parodied pop-culture with varying success, but to set the action IN another film's set would be like having the fifth Indiana Jones film set on the Death Star. Can you imagine it, Han Solo meets himself as Indy and they find George Lucas writing more scripts for *BLEURGH*. You get my point? I imagined this special would redefine the word EPIC. Red Dwarf in the 21st century! The smart humour! The distinct memorable characters! The exciting science-fiction setting! With today's super fast computer technology able to produce amazing worlds and sweeping cosmic vistas? Sign me up! It was working up to be quite possibly the most important television event in 2009. And what do we get? A lazy middle-finger to one of the most established and devoted fan bases in recent history.
Very disappointing. Very, very disappointing. To the point of infuriating. Where do I begin?
Firstly, I am a huge fan of the Red Dwarf franchise, with all the series on DVD from series one to series eight. When I heard news of it returning to British television after a hiatus of ten years I was thrilled. No other show would benefit from the advances in computer technology than the pioneering combination of science-fiction situation comedy. As was shown with the revival of Doctor Who in 2005, the cult programs of old were ready to return to public consciousness with fancy CGI whizz and digital whatnot. Alas, Back to Earth failed in every department, like the one where it teased fans with fantastic locations and creatures the likes that the series had never been able to create before and then never used them.
Take another popular comedy series with the BBC stamp on it: The League of Gentlemen. It is a common belief that as a programme based on sketches carries on it gets less and less unique, every week we expect a different interpretation of the same joke, see: Little Britain, Monty Python's Flying Circus, and Catherine Tate. When the third series of the League and Gentleman came and went, the team had left the sketch format dead and buried and after the brief flirtation with the sitcom format seen in series three, the series left television forever. In 2005 the feature film was released. The basic plot is that all the characters within the world of Royston Vasey become aware of their existence as fiction, of the real world and thus of their creators (all playing themselves as themselves, but not quite as themselves, understand?). The whole fourth wall plot complimented the League perfectly. The sketches had gone through all the motions and so had the characters so to make them self aware was the next logical step. The self-refrentialism was perfect because the series and the characters had nowhere else to go so they could take out all the stops. This is where Red Dwarf is different. It had somewhere to go, and characters to develop. The space setting meant literally infinite possibilities, story lines, jokes and situations could occur for a good five or even eight more series. Instead the Dwarf mythology is stopped dead in its track and the fans are subjected to ninety minutes of unutterable sights (the Dwarfers visit the set of Coronation Street! Coronation Street! Not to mention the visual of the crew driving a Starbug-esquire car down contemporary Britain. A joke that reduces the show's humour from television to YouTube quality). The uncomfortable climax where the all realities crash into one another as the crew re-write scripts that haven't been written yet to change their course in time to another point where they hadn't *BLEURGH*. The Blade Runner references are used without reason the characters are so out of place in the realm of another film. Yes, the original series parodied pop-culture with varying success, but to set the action IN another film's set would be like having the fifth Indiana Jones film set on the Death Star. Can you imagine it, Han Solo meets himself as Indy and they find George Lucas writing more scripts for *BLEURGH*. You get my point? I imagined this special would redefine the word EPIC. Red Dwarf in the 21st century! The smart humour! The distinct memorable characters! The exciting science-fiction setting! With today's super fast computer technology able to produce amazing worlds and sweeping cosmic vistas? Sign me up! It was working up to be quite possibly the most important television event in 2009. And what do we get? A lazy middle-finger to one of the most established and devoted fan bases in recent history.