Science Fiction Sunday 170

The BBC was hungry for more episodes of Red Dwarf and series 6 appeared 7 months after the end of the previous one. Rob Grant and Doug Naylor are back writing the series. Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules and Robert Llewellyn all return but Hatty Heyridge doesn't. There's no Holly as the guys start the series in the Starbug. That's the little green spaceship they use to go planet side. They wake from suspended animation and have no idea where the Red Dwarf is. They detect a trail that could be from the engines and follow that only to run into sirens in an asteroid belt. The guys nearly get their brains sucked out by the shape shifting aliens. They haven't got much to loose, they need to be more careful. After that they run into a space station with a strange guy in a mask. He's an experimental lifeform that gives Rimmer an upgraded hologram projector, one that makes him solid and able to interact with his surroundings. He helps the other guys out and the space station seems like a nice place. Of course it turns out their host is crazy and they're on their way. There's a funny hitting Rimmer scene that makes me laugh. Episode 3 has a virus get on board the Starbug. Kryten fights in the virus in a cyberspace that looks like an American movie western. Kryten plays the pathetic sheriff who has to rise to the occasion and defeat the bad guys. That show won an International Emmy. It's pretty silly. Lister has to marry a Gelf woman in order to get a part for the Starbug. Gelf's are big hairy apelike humanoids. Lister doesn't stay to consummate the marriage. Rimmer gets sucked into a timehole and has to wait 600 years for the guys to catch up. He screws that up. He's managed to make clones of himself and they tossed his ass in jail for nearly the whole 600 years. No much good happens to that guy but he is a git. I enjoy his pain. They end the series with a cliffhanger. The guys hit a pocket of space fog that creates unrealities. For a while Lister is a cyborg. The show ends with the guys fighting older versions of themselves in the Starbug. The shows are still making me laugh for the most part but then again I've seen them several times and I like the characters. The commentaries have bits and pieces of entertaining banter and the interview featurettes are good. They add a nice background to the series.