Doug Naylor and Rob Grant take over production of the show and with Red Dwarf series 3 they change things up a bit. Chris Barrie, Craig Charles and Danny John-Jules are back as Rimmer, Lister and the Cat. Norman Lovett is gone and replaced with Hattie Hayridge as Hily. Kryten is found broken on an astroid. After he's repaired he becomes a regular on the show. The actor who played Kryton in the second series was busy so the part went to Robert Llewellyn. It's all explained in a text crawl that appears before the first episode. It also tells us that Lister's had his babies and sent them to live with their mother in the parallel universe. The first episode has the guys go back to Earth via a time rip. They wind up in 1993 but time runs backward so they can't stay there. Plenty of reverse filming in that one. It's kind of a goofy show but funny. Hilly screws up in episode two and Lister and Rimmer get stranded on an ice planet. You'd think they might die but it's only the second episode of the season so you know that's not going to happen. It's got one of my favorite gags. Rimmer comments on Lister's bum. "Big? It's like two badly parked Volkswagen's". The guys are pretty cruel to each other but none of them don't deserve their pain. In real life Chris and Craig came to dislike each other for several years. Someone, I can't remember who, commented in one of the interview segments that it made the tension between the characters more real. They worked it out over time.
A polymorph gets on board the ship in the 3rd episode and it sucks emotions out of the crew. Don't worry they'll be back to normal in time for episode 4 where Lister and Rimmer swap bodies. More meanness and selfishness make me think I would only want to watch these guys, not hang with them. Mutated developer makes photos come to life in episode 5 giving Lister a chance for a tussel with Hitler and Rimmer a chance to his life be meddling with the past. In the last episode Kryten's replacement is coming and Kryten is told to de-activate. They have a big party and everyone gets really drunk. Kryten decides he wants more life and when the replacement comes he tricks it into shutting down by lying that there is no robot heaven. There's a lot of goofy stuff in the show and I enjoyed watching this series as much as the previous ones. It helps not to have seem them for a few years. It's fresher in my mind and even though I often remember some of the gags quite clearly I couldn't have told you which episodes they were in without seeing them. There are commentaries on each episode. They were recorded for the 2004 dvd release. Like the other dvd sets the episodes are on one disc and the other is all extras. This series has a nice interview documentary and the usual bits and pieces. Certainly no good science fiction televison library would be complete without this series on the shelf.
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