Red Dwarf - Series 2

Three million years from earth, and the remaining crew of the monolithic mining ship Red Dwarf - the most unlikely group of space adventurers ever to inhabit a science fiction series - have turned their vessel for home. Ineptly going where no man has gone before, Dave Lister (Craig Charles), the last human being alive, Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie), a hologrammatic simulation of the world’s most annoying bastard, and Cat (Danny John-Jules), a humanoid descendent of Lister’s pregnant moggy, just have to get through each day without killing themselves or each other. Not an easy task it seems, given their collective IQ is less than that of a can of spam.

Kryten
“I’m so excited, all six of my nipples are tingling!�
Answering a distress beacon from crashed ship the Nova 5, our intrepid space bums prepare for a little booty call. For the ship’s only survivors seem to be three female crew members (that’s female as in soft and squidgy) and their faithful domestic mechanoid Kryten. But as fate would have it, these three hot space babes are well past their expiry date, and the boys befriend only the neurotic droid.

Better Than Life
“I’m going to eat you little fishy...�
Now that Red Dwarf has turned around and is heading for home, a mail pod that has been tracking them for three million years finally catches them up. Hidden amongst the assorted goodies is a ‘total immersion video game’ called Better Than Life. Able to detect a player’s wildest fantasies and then satisfy them, Better Than Life is a dream come true and the boys jack in. For a while, the game more than lives up to its name, but soon Rimmer’s psychotic brain begins to rebel…

Thanks for the Memory
“Right smeg-brain, prepare to die!�
It’s the anniversary of Rimmer’s death and the boys hold a killer party on a nearby planet. Heavily inebriated, they head back to the big red one to sleep it off. On awakening, however, they find that both Lister and the Cat have broken legs, and they’ve all lost the last four days of their memory. Even the ship's black box is missing! Is it aliens as Rimmer suggests? Or is there a more sensible explanation…?

Status Leak
“With respect sir you’ve got your head right up your big fat arse…�
When the guys discover a stasis leak on floor 16, it becomes possible for them to travel back in time three million years - to exactly three weeks before the explosion that wiped out the ship's entire crew. While Lister dreams of saving the love of his life Christine Kochanski, Rimmer is interested in saving his own worthless hide...

Queeg
“This is mutiny Mister Queeg! I’ll see you swing from the highest yardarm in Titan dock for this day's work…
When Holly’s senility endangers the crew, Queeg 500 - the Red Dwarf backup computer - assumes control of the ship. However, with strict adherence to the Space Corps regulations, Queeg’s new daily regime isn’t quite to the taste of our lazy space bums. Now if only they could get daft old Holly back…

Parallel Universe
“I’m in there…�
When Holly invents his new ‘Holly Hop Drive’ he promises to reduce the return journey to Earth to a matter of seconds. Instead, engaging the Holly-Hop the crew find themselves in a parallel universe where the male and female roles are reversed. Can Lister, Rimmer and Holly possibly survive 17 hours with their female equivalents?

Commissioned towards the end of production on the first series, in terms of both production values and production design, series 2 of Red Dwarf is a substantially different beast than its predecessor. The reasons are twofold. Firstly, with the budget for the second installment released from providing the series' basic visual effects (the Red Dwarf model and two scutters blew the entire effects budget for series 1), the series was freed to explore strange new worlds. The characters manage to make it outside the confines of the ship, finding themselves in new models and sets such as Blue Midget and the Nova 5, as well as more exotic, exterior locations such as beaches and even a restaurant.

Secondly, with increased workload on director Ed Bye and the substantial success of the first series, Red Dwarf creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor were permitted much greater input into the visual look and feel of the episodes. With their strict confinement to writing duties lifted, the pair were able to give the interior sets a much-needed injection of colour. Gone was the sterility of the blank, institutional sets that formed the backdrop for the first six episodes. Walls were repainted, coloured gels were used for highlights and for mood, and the sets were populated with a colourful array of props from Lister’s bright red space bike to a blow up banana and numerous photos covering the sleeping quarter bunks.

But more so than these largely cosmetic changes, the second series sees a marked change in the characters themselves. Not only are the actors noticably more comfortable within their roles, the writers too seem more at ease with the various dynamics aboard the ship. Certainly the dialogue flows more freely and there’s plenty more of it; and utilising the chemistry built between Craig Charles and Chris Barrie towards the end of the first series, it results in some absolutely classic exchanges between Rimmer and Lister.

So too, the writers make a conscious effort to soften and humanise the character of Rimmer in series 2, continuing and enhancing the traces of likeability that were introduced towards the end of series 1. More so than any other aspect of Red Dwarf, it amazes me how deftly Grant and Naylor have created in Rimmer such an annoying yet likeable bastard. At the end of the day, most of this credit must surely go to Chris Barrie, the undisputed cornerstone of the series. "What a guy..."

Most will agree that it was in the video department that the series 1 DVD release of Red Dwarf represented the major disappointment; struggling as it did with substandard source material and the decision of producers to cram all six episodes onto the one dual-layer disc. Well the bad news is that things are little different for series 2, maybe even a little worse, and although it can still be said that the video quality displayed here is certainly much better than its VHS equivalent, the sharper, more detailed digital medium makes painfully obvious every little flaw in the original production.

Like series 1, that the series was shot on video is immediately and very painfully apparent, with a substantial amount of video grain loitering in the background of most shots; grain that quickly becomes a swimming blur of pixels if the camera or performers move substantially. This grain is accompanied by an almost uninterrupted level of macro-blocking, and posterisation. Although mostly restricted to the monochromatic walls of the interior sets, every now and again these digital artefacts (alarmingly) accompany foreground objects such as faces. Edge enhancement too is painfully (but not distractingly) obvious at times.

Although all these deficiencies are indeed shared by the series 1 release, series two’s use of blue-screen compositing has added further problems for the image, with foreground images – often characters - ringed by ugly, and remarkably clear interference patterns. At a frequency of around one instance per episode, these nasty little artefacts are so distracting that they really do spoil the viewing experience.

Taking these deficiencies as read, the digital image is reasonably sharp (as the video source allows) and detail is pretty good (but not great). Certainly there’s a substantial amount of detail to be seen here that just doesn’t appear in the VHS release; with the steam from Lister's day-glo orange moon boots and the bodgy nature of Kryten’s costume clear for all to see. Similarly, shadow detail is fairly good, with the background grain reducing it slightly over the levels seen in the foreground. In terms of colour, series 2 is a veritable rainbow compared to its predecessor, with the drab institutional interiors of the first series livened considerably with an assortment of colourful props and computer monitors. The good news is that all these new colours are nice and bright; rendered faithfully by the transfer as evidenced by the range of natural skin tones.

All in all, while a definite improvement over VHS, like the release of series 1 before it, series 2 is all a little disappointing. I still believe that the majority of the compression artefacts could have been avoided by spreading the episodes over the two discs (say three a piece) and the extras scattered throughout. With that said, there’s no point whingeing about the poor source material. Let’s just be thankful that this second series was green-lit at all.

In terms of audio, it’s much the same story as the first series with the original mono soundtrack provided for your listening pleasure. Whilst pretty uninspiring, the all-important dialogue remains clear and distinct throughout; drowned out by the studio laughter on only a handful of occasions. All in all quite servicable, but nothing to get that expensive sound system jumping.

As in the case of the first series, Red Dwarf Series 2 provides some wonderfully animated, 3D-rendered menus that take you on a virtual tour of the interior of our rouge behemoth. Replete with Holly, Hilly, Queeg and scutters playing cowboys and indians, the menus on this dual-disc release provide access to a new and comprehensive bunch of extras that, while reminiscent of the series 1 disc, provide a great overview of series 2.

DISC 1
Only one commentary accompanies the episodes this time around, with cast members Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules and Norman Lovett again reunited for a round of anecdotes, reminiscences and general piss-taking. It’s sometimes hard to follow their comments because of the way the guys endlessly talk over the top of each other, and they don’t really seem to have anything particularly intelligent to say, but it’s still great to hear the guys together again. Certainly their cheap shots and boundless mirth supply a good supply of giggles.

DISC 2
Disc 2 opens with a great featurette - Red Dwarf A-Z. A 30 minute, loosely coupled collection of snippets from all eight series', interviews with cast, crew, critics and even with celebrity fans, it provides an entertaining look at all aspects of the Red Dwarf phenomenon. Next up is an interview with Doug Naylor (17:07) where Doug talks about all aspects of the development of the second series, and the differences between it and the first series. It contains some very interesting anecdotes and observations that fans will certainly lap up.

Supplying a few good laughs, a set of series 2 deleted scenes (18:14) provides the full theme for the mechanoid soap opera Androids, a musical duet between Cat and talkie toaster, tons of dialogue cut from various episodes for reasons of time, a little drunken frivolity and a few altered sets. Similarly, outtakes provides six and a half-odd minutes of smeg-ups from series 2, with a generous helping of fluffed lines and cases of the giggles.

Moving right along, Alternate Personalities (3:21) provides a montage of scenes from all seven episodes in which the boys from the Dwarf take on alternate versions of themselves or others. Basically, that’s every other episode (Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast…). At three and a half minutes, Tongue Tied presents the full ‘uncut’ version of Cat’s Tongue Tied dream, replete with lurex-clad dancers. It’s very funny stuff. Finally, the ubiquitous trailer provides a 33 second replay of the “dog’s milk� gag from the Kryten episode.

In less interesting additions, a photo gallery provides 20 stills made up of publicity shots and the slicks from various VHS releases of series 2, while model shots presents ten of the original exterior shots straight from the BBC visual effects archive. We see the crashed Nova 5, Blue midget flying here and there, and the speeding mail pod much as they appeared in the series.

Rounding out the second disc, there’s also two audio-only inclusions. The first, in a similar manner to the first release, presents two longish audio book clips. Extracts from Chris Barrie’s reading of the Grant Naylor’s Red Dwarf novel Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, it sees Barrie is in classic form. The second audio-only inclusion, music cues presents the gamut of series’ two musical elements. These include the theme song, character themes, the Cat’s Tongue Tied dream, and other background musical elements. All told, 4 main and 28 other musical pieces are selectable.

Still one of the best comedy series' ever produced by the BBC, Red Dwarf represents absolutely essential viewing for any serious comedy fan, and this second series is certainly amongst the best of Red Dwarf’s eight incarnations. Teeming with extras, this Collector’s Edition DVD release, while sharing the video transfer problems that plagued the series 1 disc, is without doubt a worthy replacement for those tired old VHS tapes. You’d have be a total smeg-head to pass it by!