by Morgan Drake Eckstein

Created on: May 28, 2009

Red Dwarf: Back to Earth is a three part Red Dwarf story (special) that was produced for the television station Dave in 2009. Red Dwarf was a long running science fiction comedy series on the BBC which has been off the air for nine years, and this new extended story does not match the quality of the BBC series.

Four of the main characters are back: Dave Lister (played by Craig Charles), the last surviving human in the universe; Arnold J. Rimmer (Chris Barrie), his "solid light" holographic shipmate; Cat (Danny John-Jules), a being descended from a cat that Lister snuck on board the mining ship, Red Dwarf; and Kryten (Robert Llewellyn), a service robot. Missing is the character of the ship's senile computer, Holly, whose presence is sorely missed in this story.

This story starts out slow. A lot of time is spent establishing that nine years have passed, and why Kochanski, Dave's love interest, and Holly are not present. Both Rimmer and Cat seemed to have regressed to earlier versions of themselves. Missing from the special is the familiar laugh track; after listening to a version with a laugh track added by a fan of the series, I can say the addition of a laugh track makes absolutely no difference; this story is not that funny.

In fact, there are only a couple of places where this story succeeds in its humor. I am not sure if the actors are trying too hard, or if there are too many in-jokes, or if it is the sheer amount of padding that this story has.

There is a lot of padding in this story. And this story is not unique; it is actually a reworking of a previous story. I suspect that the producer, director and the writer, (all Doug Naylor, his partner is nowhere to be seen in this production) got told they had an hour and a half to be filled, and chose to stretch one story out rather than interweave and link three stories together; needless to say, it suffers as a result.

The story has Lister and his companions traveling to the earth of our dimension and discovering that they are characters in a television show. While this is an opportunity to poke fun at fandom, it does not work. There are also a lot of references to other shows, most which I did not get (not being a steady watcher of British television), and to the film Bladerunner. The references added nothing to the story.

So in the end, Red Dwarf: Back to Earth is a long one story, self-indulgent and utterly not worth watching. I can only give this one out of five stars, and even that feels like it is giving too much credit to this special.

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