Red Dwarf 1-01: The End - Part 1

Episode:

1

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Writer:

Rob Grant & Doug Naylor

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Director:

Ed Bye

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Air Date:

15-Feb-1988

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm finally writing about long-running British sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf! The series started way back in 1988, so if I'd been a bit quicker about it I could've written this in time for the 30th anniversary four years ago. Still, I can't feel too bad as the series did nothing for its 30th either, despite airing new episodes in the two years leading up to it.

People joke about British shows having ridiculous short seasons, but Red Dwarf must set some kind of record for managing just 73 episodes in 30 years. Part of the reason for this is that British sitcoms typically have only one or two writers who work their asses off to get six scripts done a year. In fact Red Dwarf was scripted by former Spitting Image head writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor for the first five years and then Naylor basically handled the rest of it on his own after Grant left. I was kind of hoping they'd sort their problems out and get back together, but last I heard Naylor's in a legal battle to get the rights back from his former friend so it doesn't seem like the rift's going to heal any time soon.

SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to be analysing this sitcom episode scene by scene, so I won't just be spoiling the story, I'm going to be ruining all the jokes too. I'll not be spoiling later episodes though.

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The very first shot of Red Dwarf features a guy out on the side of a spaceship making this red area just a little bit more red. It's hard to see through the spacesuit visor but I'm pretty sure it's protagonist Dave Lister, played by Craig Charles. The guy was working at a performance poet on TV shows at the time, and this was his very first acting role. In fact the series was everyone in the main cast's first acting job.

I've heard it's not a great idea to try painting an extremely cold metal surface in the vacuum of space, but I'm sure this is special space paint so it's fine. They wouldn't have created a spacesuit with a paint hose coming out of it if it wasn't going to work. Incidentally, it's vitally important not to get the paint hose mixed up with the air hose, otherwise you'll just be painting with air.

The shot starts zoomed in on the brush and then keeps pulling back until spacesuit guy is just a tiny figure standing in front of some big letters. Which is a bloody clever trick on a BBC sitcom budget in 1987. The shot gets suspiciously fuzzy halfway through which hints at how they pulled it off... but doesn't entirely give it away.

They couldn't quite pull off a seamless transition to this view, it fades into a different shot, but the shot gets the point across: this is a bloody big ship. It's five miles long in fact, much bigger than a Star Destroyer, a Battlestar, or the Enterprise D. The model was bigger than their models as well, as it was a massive 8 feet long. It only cost £9000 to build though, maybe 6 times less than the Enterprise D, but it doesn't look bad though for the price!

The effects were done in house at the BBC by a team that had worked on Doctor Who. In fact it was run by Peter Wragg who had worked on Thunderbirds in the 60s, so he knew what he was doing when it came to models. Some VFX shots later on in the series were done Thunderbirds-style, with models hanging off strings, but they went with motion control for this one, so they could matte in the star field behind it. They also shot these exteriors with 35mm film, instead of the video they used to record the live action scenes, meaning that the old Monty Python gag about the interiors being surrounded by film applies even in space. There's nothing actually funny about any of this though as the opening titles are played entirely straight; more like The Orville than Lower Decks. In fact all the visual effects are as realistic as they could make them, to ground the comedy in a believable world.

This is the title of the series by the way. Okay yeah obviously the show is named after the ship, but what I mean is that this is how the title 'Red Dwarf' is displayed on screen. They hadn't introduced the iconic oval logo yet. The episode also has a much bleaker and more subdued version of the iconic theme tune than we got in later seasons. It's (DRAMATIC "2001"-TYPE MUSIC) according to the subtitles.

Though in 1997 we got a Re-Mastered version of the episode with some subtle differences... like the theme being replaced with the familiar rock tune that had been used for seasons 3-7. They also replaced the beautiful model shots.

Re-Mastered version

Here's what the intro looks like on the Re-Mastered version. (Though I actually got this shot from the Japanese version of the episode included on the Series I DVD as a bonus feature. Which was nice of them; they definitely helped me out here.)

This has to be one of the few cases where a series got a remastered release on VHS with new effects, and everyone hated it so much that they went and released the original version instead when it came to DVD. You can already spot one problem in this screencap: they redesigned the ship, making it much longer! Messing with the design of Red Dwarf is a crime almost as unforgivable as messing with the design of the original Enterprise. Well, the exterior anyway.

They'd actually built a brand new physical model to film... but it was something like 12' long, they'd made it too big, so they went with this CGI version instead. Trouble is that CGI in 1997 wasn't great, especially on a BBC sitcom budget, and judging by this image it especially struggled with the colour red.

Re-Mastered version

On the plus side they now had the technology to create an entirely seamless pull back shot from a close-up of the brush to a view of the entire ship. Though they went and ruined it by putting Lister on a bench hanging from cables this time. In space. Where there's nothing pulling him down. I guess I should be grateful they at least remembered to put him in a spacesuit.

Not everyone was keen on this opening sequence by the way. I remember the writers mentioning that one person they pitched the show to told them that viewers would be more comfortable with the series if the intro started with a shot of people on a sofa. Then the camera would pull back to reveal a set of French windows, and then it'd turn out to be on a spaceship somehow. Their reasoning was that people don't like science-fiction.

Anyway they didn't go with that.

The episode begins with Lister singing "Ganymede and Titan, yes sir I've been around." This is crucial world building, as it sets up the scale of human space travel in this setting. Ganymede is a moon of Jupiter, Titan's a moon of Saturn. They're pretty damn far away, but still well within our solar system.

It also begins with strange laughter coming from an unseen crowd, who finds everything these two vending machine repairmen do to be hilarious. Red Dwarf was filmed before a live studio audience, and still is to this day. Rimmer and Lister are 'lower decks' technicians on the bottom rung of the ranks, a bit like Brett and Parker in Alien, or Mariner and Boimler in Lower Decks, and right now they're carrying out essential routine maintenance.

Rimmer interrupts Lister's singing with a threat of violence, so Lister switches to passive-aggressive humming instead, then tapping his cheeks, then clicking his tongue. Rimmer decides to threaten him with something real this time, saying if there's one more noise from him he'll put him on report... then he puts him on report for "Obstructing a superior technician by humming, clicking and being quiet"  when he refuses to reply to a question.

Red Dwarf Magazine 01

Rimmer then gives him crap for handing over the wrong gauge of pipe cleaner, as if he doesn't unclog this chicken soup nozzle correctly it's his career that's on the line.

Mack and Bo from Babylon 5, there's another pairing they remind me of. Except unlike all those others, Lister and Rimmer drive each other mad. They can't stand each other!

Red Dwarf's iconic sets were created by designer Mel Bibby... but he wasn't available when they were making the first two series, so the look of this episode was created by Paul Montague. He was going for a submarine look, which sounds like a good idea for a spaceship, except it often ends up looking really dull. They tried the same thing with Star Trek: Enterprise a decade or so later with similarly grey results.

The series got a bit an update for season 2, then a massive Alien-inspired overhaul for season 3... in fact the show is always changing its look; there's basically no consistency in this series. This version of the ship is interesting through, with an almost steampunk look in places (mostly the bronze speakers and the rivets).

Rimmer gives the unclogged machine a try by ordering some chicken soup, and then spits it out in disgust. Seems that it's back to normal! The actor really does spit something out as well, so I hope they've got a bucket just under the frame.

Lister points out that the ship's got service robots that could've been doing this job, except they've got a better union.

Re-Mastered version

We get to see a couple of those service robots roll by in the Re-Mastered version of the episode, and it's a pretty good design. Okay an arm on wheels probably isn't the ideal device to carry out repairs (especially as the props kept getting hijacked by radio signals from taxis), but these skutters have a design so distinctive that they were still using it seasons later, even when everything else had been reimagined.

The only trouble with their appearance in this scene is that it's terrible and unnecessary and distracting. It doesn't match the perspective of the shot or look convincing for a moment, the actors don't react to them, and one of them even stops to look at the camera. The Re-Mastered version was made at the same time as the Star Wars special editions, so I can understand why they thought it was a good idea to go back to their old work and George Lucas it up. They didn't have the post-Return of the Jedi Special Edition hindsight we have now. But I'm glad the disc I bought has the original versions instead.

They only updated the first three seasons before overwhelming disinterest from the fans made them stop. Though the Re-Mastering actually worked out well in the end, as the work done on separating the audio tracks finally let them redub and sell those seasons in other languages.

Deleted scene

The Re-Mastered version isn't the only version of the episode though, as The Bodysnatcher Collection DVD set included The End: The Original Assembly, which features alternate versions of many scenes. Like a different version of the intro scene for example, where they're not even fixing a vending machine.

Red Dwarf episodes were generally filmed over just two days, with the first day being used to film things which would be more awkward to have an audience around for, like effects. This pre-recorded footage was shown to a live studio audience during the second day of filming, so that they could follow the story being filmed and hopefully laugh during it.

But what happened was people didn't laugh too much for The End's live recording, partly because the series was something weird and new, and partly because it wasn't very funny and the acting was a bit stiff. Fortunately they had an extra day of live filming available after recording the rest of series 1, so they went back to re-record the episode with a better script and more experience, and nailed it this time. All the stuff they recorded on the first day is the same though.

Anyway, the two of them go off to fix a sticking door in the botanical gardens. It's already obvious that Rimmer's extremely focused on getting the work done and climbing the ranks, so it's a bit of a shame he outranks exactly one person right now. He needs to pass his engineering exam to progress further, and last time it didn't go well. He wrote "I am a fish" 400 times, did a little dance and fainted... well, at least that's what Peterson told Lister.

Lister's next offence is to light a cigarette... but Rimmer doesn't have time to put him on report as Lieutenant Todhunter comes walking over to chat. Lister thinks fast and puts the ciggie in his ear, while Rimmer does an elaborate salute. The characters weren't really based on the actors... except for that ear trick, which was totally something the writers had seen Craig Charles do.

It turns out that Todhunter's been going through McIntyre's artefacts and has discovered that Rimmer's filed 247 complaints against Lister, including one count of mutiny (he stood on his foot to stop him from snapping his guitar in half). He probably also has an issue with how Lister's using this as an opportunity to have a quick lunch break.

Todhunter reveals here that there are only 169 people on board this massive vessel, so I guess most of the space is taken up by mining equipment and ore containers, like how the Nostromo in Alien is almost a mile and a half with its refinery attached, but has a crew of just seven. Rimmer's only in charge of one man, and Todhunter doesn't get why they can't just get along. Lister explains that he's having trouble getting on with Rimmer because he's a "smeghead". For a brief moment Rimmer thinks Todhunter is going to be on his side, but no he agrees that Rimmer's a smeghead and walks off, with Rimmer yelling after him that his career's finished.

Oh right, I should mention the Esperanto. One of Red Dwarf's idiosyncrasies is the way that every single sign on the ship is bilingual... well, except for the signs on all the service dispensers.

Anyway, the bottom row of this sign is in Esperanto, which was designed in 1887 as an easy to learn second language to allow people in different nations to communicate with each other. It didn't massively catch on, but there are an estimated 100,000 or so active speakers right now. Possibly even more in Red Dwarf's future!

The episode then cuts away from Lister and Rimmer for a bit to explain what Todhunter meant by 'McIntyre's artefacts' earlier. Turns out that they've lost a crew member, George McIntyre, and now they're carrying out his funeral in the Drive Room. Which fortunately has a convenient ash disposal console in the centre of the room. They take a canister with a Welsh flag printed on the side and drop it into the flap.

Not many jokes here, except for McIntyre's requested music being 50's rock and roll track "See You Later, Alligator" by Bill Haley and the Comets. I guess that's kind of appropriate for a spaceship. (Though on streaming services the track's been replaced with the football chant "Here We Go").

Everyone's very solemn, except for one crew member and a service robot who start dancing a little.

Re-Mastered version

It's interesting how the picture quality has actually gotten worse in the Re-Mastered version, with the blue uniforms becoming as grey as the walls. Maybe it was done in an attempt to make it look more like film and seem more cinematic, maybe the version of the episode included on this disc just has bad quality video, I don't know.

Those heads in the foreground might look like they've been produced by a Game Boy Color printer, but this compositing was done with some pretty advanced technology for 1997. I mean, the Game Boy Color wasn't even out until later the next year! I'm not really sure why they felt the need to fix the fact that the captain's giving a speech to an empty room though, as the very next scene reveals that it was streamed live to the entire crew.

Re-Mastered version

Here's another change to the Re-Mastered version: they've added moving stars outside the window (though only in scenes where the camera stays still). I don't know why the stars are moving, the ship doesn't travel fast enough to even leave the solar system, they just are.

The episode cuts to Lister and Rimmer's bunk room, with Lister looking out the window to spot the pod with McIntyre's ashes flying away, before turning back to the obviously composited monitor to watch the rest of the funeral. Rimmer turns it off though, as he needs to concentrate on writing the answers to his engineering exam on his arm.

I'm not all that fond of the grey season 1 sets, but I like how you can learn so much about the characters just by looking at the walls, with Lister's zero gee football posters and photos, and Rimmer's framed certificates and schedule. I'm guessing the 'No Smoking' signs are Rimmer's too. I'm with Rimmer when it comes to the smoking, but I'm also with Lister, as he can't even escape his boss at home and there's nothing he can do while the guy's around. It's really awkward when you've got a guitar but no one wants you to play it.

They have another chat about ambition and rank, with Lister pointing out that he at least outranks the laboratory mice. So now we know Red Dwarf has a botanical gardens and a lab off screen. Lister explains that he doesn't care about his rank on the ship as he's got other plans. He's saving up his pay to buy a farm on Fiji, so he can get a sheep and a cow, and breed horses. The animals will have to be tall enough to wade through 3 feet of water though, as Fiji had a bit of a volcanic eruption that raised the water level somehow. Rimmer thinks his plan's ridiculous, but Lister's not an idiot, he's going to get a drainage grant.

Just then Holly appears on screen to let the crew know that the "Welcome Back George McIntyre" reception is going on in the refectory.

Holly is the ship's computer and the name's not short for 'holographic' as the guy wasn't originally supposed to be on screen at all. It was a voice over role at first, but actor Norman Lovett pestered the writers to put him on camera so by episode 3 he was being filmed in a black polo neck to appear on monitors as a floating head and they composited him into the earlier episodes as well. He's got a blue background and a pixelated filter here, but that was eventually dropped.

Much later, around 1997, they filmed new Holly scenes and edited them into their Re-Mastered series 1 episodes to add more jokes, but it's debatable how successful that was. The remastering happened between series 7 and 8, pretty much the nadir of the series when it came to comedy, so the new quips aren't exactly a highlight. In fact it probably would've worked better if they'd written some extra jokes in 1988 to edit into the episodes made 10 years later.

I mean Holly isn't even supposed to be telling jokes yet! He only does that after he goes a bit weird later on.

Damn, they've gotten a ton of crew members in this shot, maybe the most we ever get to see. I think there's about 27 people here, so 16% of the crew. Not a whole lot of Esperanto on the signs though. This is one of the scenes retained from the original, less funny version of the episode, because it had been pre-filmed without a live audience. Plus it probably cost a bit.

I never noticed until now that the officers at the back are getting pelted with stuff by Lister and his mates. It's a bit of a relief to see that Lister has a table full of friends to hang out with on the ship, and he's not trapped with Rimmer for the entirety of his day. Yet.

Meanwhile Rimmer's sitting on his own, wishing he was up at the front table with the higher ranks, not down here with the common folk.

Oh damn, there's actually a wall on this ship that isn't entirely grey!

That's Mark Williams playing Peterson on the right, who became considerably more famous later on due to things like The Fast Show and Harry Potter. He was in Doctor Who as well, playing companion Rory Williams' dad (so he got to keep his last name for that role).

Lister shows Peterson an intelligence test, sticking a coin on his forehead for a moment and telling him the more times you have to smack yourself on the back of your head before it falls off, the smarter you are. Peterson can still feel the coin so he goes for it! Reminder: everyone except Lister on this table outranks Rimmer.

Hey, they've got a cross-shaped cake to celebrate McIntyre's undeath! A hologram like McIntyre can't hold anything though so Captain Hollister has to cut it for him. McIntyre can make a funny speech though, like he's the best man at his own wedding. There's been more jokes about death so far than you might expect from a sitcom, but I think that was smart. It means it's not too jarring when things take an even darker turn later on (the episode's called The End for a reason).

This particular scene is also here to establish that Red Dwarf actually has people on it and explain what a hologram is: two things that are going to be very important later on. This version of McIntyre is a computer simulation based on recording of his memories, so it's not a continuation of his consciousness, more like a clone. The vessel only has the power to simulate one person at a time though, so if anyone more crucial to the mission dies, then they'll replace McIntyre. That's an important fact as well.

We also learn here that there are signs of a non-human lifeform on the ship, so they've got that to worry about. Lister jokes that it's Rimmer, who goes to put him on report for it. They've probably just forgotten they've got those lab mice on board. Oh also I should mention that there's a sign there with "Jupiter Mining Corp." written on, which give us our first proper hint about what the ship actually does.

The next morning Lister is resting peacefully with his thumb in his mouth while Rimmer's freaking out about his test. Turns out it doesn't help to copy a textbook onto your body when you didn't understand the text to begin with (especially if you're going to be wearing clothes over it). Plus it's a little bit illegible, though not as much as you'd expect considering he's got writing on both arms. Maybe he's ambidextrous.

Lister wishes him good luck, sincerely, and Rimmer leaves the room heading right. Then a few seconds we see him walking past the door heading the other way. The joke probably would've worked better if that window wasn't there, giving away that the actor had just been standing in a corner.

When the coast is clear, Lister gets up and spills some milk all over the floor for his secret pet cat Frankenstein. The actor had been aiming for a bowl, but milk's tricky sometimes. Cats are tricky too, so they actually filmed this scene a few times, before giving up and going with the least bad take. No wonder he says he's used up all his milk ration on her.

Look, the cat doesn't even want to look at his photo of Fiji! She's too busy freaking out. At least Craig Charles managed to grab her on this take.

Frankenstein is that non-human lifeform that Captain Hollister's worried about and there'll be another one on the ship soon as she's pregnant. Here's a question: how has Rimmer shared a room with a cat all this time and never noticed? Didn't he hear it meowing? She was pretty loud a moment ago, even before Lister let her out.

Wow, they must have gone all-out with the budget on this episode as they're using different tables here to the ones in the refectory. Same chairs though.

It's so weird to see someone being nice to Rimmer, giving him a random thumbs up after the engineering exam starts. It doesn't cheer him up any though. Todhunter tells them that there's no modems or speaking slide rules allowed, and then they begin. What even is a slide rule anyway?

Oh, I just looked it up and it's a clever analogue calculator device covered in numbers. So hang on, he basically said 'no calculators'?

The scene turns into a bit of a Mr Bean sketch at this point, playing out without dialogue, as Rimmer goes through the stages of despair, panic and insanity. First he tries to separate a page, like he thinks there's two bits of paper stuck together and it'll all make sense if he can get them apart. Then he rubs his hand down his arm to get all of the writing onto it... which only leaves him with a hand covered in ink.

So he slams it down onto the page, signs it, stands to do a salute and then passes out. On the plus side, he doesn't write anything about being a fish this time.

Todhunter notices this but barely even reacts. I guess he's gotten used to it.

Meanwhile Lister's headed down to the Drive Room, the smokiest room on the ship. Which is strange considering that Lister's the only one who smokes. It was apparently kind of hard for the actors to breathe in there and it probably wasn't doing their lungs much good.

It's nice seeing the place so active though, with everyone busy. Even one of the skutters is hard at work carrying a bit of paper around. Plus look at all that antique 80s tech! It actually looks a bit like Alien at times.

Oh, the control panels look considerably less impressive over on this side of the Drive Room. They've tried to do the backlit panel trick that Next Gen uses, but the design they've used makes no sense as a computer interface.

Lister goes over to Kristine Kochanski to ask her where the captain's office is, but it's obvious to her that she's the one he really wants to see. She must be Rimmer's least favourite person on this ship, as he keeps failing the astro-navigation exam and she's their navigator, but Lister's pretty fond of her and she seems to like him. I mean everyone seems to like Lister.

Kochanski was played by Clare Grogan, who was the lead singer of the new wave band Altered Images. She isn't the only actress to play the role during the run but she is the most Scottish.

Hey Captain Hollister has a little model of Red Dwarf in a snow globe on his desk! How did I never notice that before? Wait... Holly, Lister, Hollister. Hmm, that's weird.

Hollister was played by American actor Mac McDonald, who'd already almost appeared in the movie Aliens (his scenes were later restored for the Special Edition), and would later play a role in The Fifth Element.

Anyway Hollister's called Lister to his office because they've found out about the cat. Lots of sci-fi heroes have pet cats, like Ripley in Alien, Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Book in Star Trek: Discovery, and Honor Harrington in her novel series, but the Jupiter Mining Corporation apparently doesn't like cats aboard their ships, at least when they haven't been through quarantine. Lister denies owning a cat, but Hollister has photographic evidence.

Turns out that Lister sent the photo to get processed in the ship's lab instead of just leaving it on his smartphone like a normal person! I guess the guy is fond of his physical photos.

There's something interesting about this, as it's Lister's own stupidity that trips him up, not any sabotage by his arch-nemesis Rimmer, who never had a clue about Frankenstein. Just like how Lister doesn't do anything to mess up Rimmer's test in the end, and even wishes him luck. The writers could've used the cat or the test to dial up the antagonism between them a little, but they didn't.

Though is Lister really that stupid? I mean he took the photo in front of an entirely featureless grey wall, so how does anyone even know it was taken on Red Dwarf? Oh, wait, I'm dumb, never mind. In the novel he actually intended to get caught, as he wanted to get back to Earth and he knew they'd throw him into stasis so he could skip the rest of the trip. I don't think TV Lister would deliberately abandon his cat like that though, especially as he could really do with the 18 months' wages he'd lose out on.

Hollister wants Lister to hand over the cat to be dissected, but he won't do it. I guess he's gambling that they won't think to look for her in the absolute most obvious hiding place... and that he'll have a chance to release her before he's locked away in stasis. 18 months is a long time for a cat to go without her bowl of milk.

Next we see Lister he's all dressed up for Earth and is being led to the stasis booth by Todhunter. We also see Rimmer being taken the other way. He's presumably off to surgery to have a 'H' glued to his forehead forever.

Man, that LEVEL NIVELO sign has to be as iconic as anything in this episode. Also they're on floor 159 again! That's the floor they were on in the first scene as well, with the vending machine and the botanical gardens. And presumably the teaching room too, seeing as Rimmer's here. There are only 169 people inhabiting a ship wider than Manhattan Island, so it makes sense that all their living spaces would fit on the same deck. Oh, the Esperanto for 'stasis' is 'staza' in case you're wondering, seeing as they forgot to put it on the sign.

The poor actor playing Todhunter had to deliver some proper technobabble here explaining the stasis booth, but it's mostly played for laughs. The concept's not difficult: you go in to the room and time stops for you.

This is demonstrated by Lister waving his fingers behind the window... and then freezing.

TO BE CONTINUED IN PART TWO

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NEXT TIME

It seems that my Red Dwarf article is going to be two parts then. I apparently have a lot to say about this 30 minute sitcom episode!

If there's anything you want to say about the first half of The End you're welcome to write some words into the comment box below.