Red Dwarf: Back To Earth

It's been twenty-two years since Red Dwarf first lazily made its way across our screens, at the time being repainted by its slobby only-living crew member Dave Lister, and nine years since the substantial former-hologram Arnold Rimmer kneed Death in the balls to make an escape from the Reaper. Since that time, Red Dwarf fans (myself included) have hoped for a return from the team, and our hopes were constantly kept up by "The Movie" - a movie with a script, a cast, but with no funding.

Now Back To Earth brings the crew back for three episodes (half a season no less). Sadly, there is something less than satisfying about this particular outing.

It really comes down to the fact that Back To Earth is essentially a "best of" collection of the original series. Three episodes without, sadly, an original idea in sight.
The first episode has the crew bored out of their brains (hello Backwards) while Kryten is on holiday, but on his return they discover there is something on board the ship (hello Polymorph) and it is in the water supply. Kryten, Lister and Cat go to investigate, leaving Rimmer to man the sonar (hello Back To Reality). When they destroy the squid in the water (Back To Reality again) a new hologram arrives giving Rimmer a day to get his affairs in order (err...Me^2) and then sends the entire crew into a new dimension.

I won't bother detailing the final two episodes, which essentially revolve around the crew discovering they are fictional characters of a television show called Red Dwarf, and they need to find their creator, a la Blade Runner. Finally, they discover that they are recycling the actual plot of Back To Reality.

The first episode takes about ten minutes for the actors to get their act together and remember how they played their parts, and at that point the squid fight takes place which is quite entertaining - primarily because Rimmer dances to elevator music as the fight gets out of control on the screens behind him. It's very slapstick, but it's the highlight of the episode. Indeed, it's the highlight of the first two episodes. If the first episode was a slow news day on the Dwarf, the second episode is positively static. The concept of the crew discovering that they are fictional characters was extremely clever and very funny in Back To Reality, primarily because it allowed the cast to play an alternative group of characters who were quite far removed from their regular characters. Sadly, although the plot of Back To Reality is recycled here, the alternative characters don't actually appear and so as a consequence there is little to actually laugh at.

Part Three is probably the funniest of the three episodes, and strangely enough the appearance of Kochanski actually lightens the episode. Craig Charles got the opportunity to have a rather emotional moment in Part One, but in Part Three the ending is Charles best acting in the entire nine series. Part Three also contains the other funny moment in the story as Krtyen, Rimmer and Cat attempt to inveigle themselves into Coronation St.

Sadly Part Three also contains more recycling than the rest of the episode, including obvious jokes from The Simpsons and plot from Blade Runner. Even worse, the Blade Runner and Red Dwarf plot points are actually highlighted when the characters remind the audience of the episode they came from.

Tim McInnerny said that he would never do another series of Blackadder because people didn't want to see the cast fat and bald; they wanted to remember the series as it was. Red Dwarf is proof positive that it is better to travel in hope than it is to arrive as after waiting nine years for Red Dwarf to return, the result is nothing short of a waste of talent.