Red Dwarf Series 7 appeared in 1997 which was 4 years after the last series had aired. Rob Grant left the series and Doug Naylor wrote or co-wrote the 8 episodes with some other writers. Ed Bye, who had directed the first four series, returns to direct this series. Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules and Robert Llewellyn all return. They are still in the Starbug. They'd been killed by their future selves and since that destroyed the time machine they were alive again. Back to normal they return to looking for the Red Dwarf. In the first episode they travel back in time and screw up Oswald's assassination of President Kennedy. Since the Pres isn't killed the world goes to hell. The guys go back in time once again and get JFK to shoot himself from the grassy knowl. It had to be the world needed savin'. Ace Rimmer returns to our universe. He's been shot and his life is nearly over. He recruits Rimmer to take over being Ace Rimmer and Chris Barrie leaves the series. He'll return for another episode this series and appear in series 8 and Back To Earth.
In episode 3 the guys meet up with a parallel universe version of Lister's old girlfriend Kristine Kochanski. Chloe Annet plays Kochanski and she is the second person to play that part. She's hooked up with the Lister of her universe but he's a hologram. Kochanski was the one in the statis chamber when the crew was killed by the faulty drive. Kochanski gets left in our universe and asks Lister for some sperm. No sex, just the juice. She has the baby and we find out it's Lister. What the hell? Movin' on, the ships power generator goes out in show 4 and everyone has to spend some time in the ducts of the Starbug. Kryten is jealous of Kochanski but they work that out. That Kryten is such a big baby. Lister is missing Rimmer so Kryten puts him in a the virtual reality machine and shows him some flashbacks of Rimmer in action. The highlight of the show is the Rimmer song. That cures him. He never wants to see Rimmer again. Kryten meets his brother only to lose him; then Lister gets a virsus and loses his arm. In the last episode Kryten uses nanobots to build Lister a new arm. Then they get the nanobots to rebuild the Red Dwarf. They do but it's not the right size. They'll get it right next series. That won't appear for a couple more years but thanks to the magic of digital media we can travel forward that two years in just a weeks time.
Mostly still making me laugh. I wasn't ever a big fan of the Kochanski subplot. The dvd set is now three discs and there's the usual commentaries and featurettes. There are a couple of fan films but they aren't that good. There's a 9th episode that was written but never produced. Chris Barrie reads the script over the storyboards. He does all the voices. It's an episode where the cat needs to get laid or die. He finally gets his end away and they don't make that episiode because of the expense. Poor cat.
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