Science Fiction Sunday 166

Red Dwarf Series 2 debuted in England in September 1988. We saw it in the US a bit later. It ran on PBS here and did rather well. I enjoyed watching them then and just about everyone I knew watched the show. Of course I mostly hung out with science fiction fans. The four regulars are back. Chris Barrie as Rimmer, Craig Charles as Lister, Danny John-Jules as the cat and Norman Lovett as Holly the ships computer. They are still in Red Dwarf, the giant mining ship, that has been slogging through space for three million years. It's really well made I guess. My house isn't going to last that long. The series had six episodes and the first one introduces Kryton. David Ross played the service android who has been serving his dead masters for centuries. There's a picture of him with Lister below, next to a shot of the Red Dwarf. The guys bring him back to reality and take him on board the Red Dwarf. Rimmer wants him to be a servant but Lister puts a rebellious streak in him and he leaves at the end of the episode. When he returns in the 3rd series Kryton would be played by Robert Llewellyn. In episode 2 the guys play a total immersion video game called Better Than Life. Rimmer cocks that up really well and the guys wind up buried in sand, their faces smeared with jam, waiting for the horde of hungry ants to devour them. At least he keeps Lister sane, huh. The guys have memory loss in one episode and go back in time to a point just before the accident that kills everyone. They get theur memory back but they can't change time. When the guy's rag on Holly for being letting a meteor hit the ship he pulls a good jape on them. In the last episode they pass into a parallel universe when gende roles are reversed. On a Red Dwarf in that universe they meet their counterparts and Lister gets pregnant when he sleeps with the female version of himself. Rimmer's female versioon is even worse than him and he refuses to sleep with her. The cat is still unable to get his end away when his counterpart is a flea ridden dog. It's a sad old world on the Red Dwarf, ain't it. The boys get back to their time and space but even then they're still stuck three million years in the future and all alone in space. The episodes are still making me laugh even after seeing them several times over the years. The dvd set has a nice bunch of extras and commentaries for each episode.