October 6th 2009 was a great day for fans of British Sci-fi comedy with the arrival of the BBC Warner Blu-ray release Red Dwarf: Back To Earth.
The original Red Dwarf show ran on the BBC back in the late eighties and early nineties, and was certainly a favourite in its time.
The show follows Dave Lister, the last living human on the Red Dwarf, along with his companions – the hologram of Arnold J. Rimmer, a mechanoid named Kryten, and the humanoid creature that evolved from his cat.
While this premise may seem a little strange for those unfamiliar with the show, the four had some great adventures that were both hilarious and at the same time some excellent science fiction.
While the Red Dwarf team had tried a number of times to make a Red Dwarf movie, the project was never completed.
Now, on the 21st anniversary of the show’s inception, one of the shows co-creators produced three new episodes of Red Dwarf entitled Back to Earth.
The actors that play the main characters in Red Dwarf are Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Robert Llewellyn and Danny John-Jules – all of whom returned for the new episodes.
In the new episodes, the crew are catapulted through a portal back into the 21st century Earth where they discover that they are in fact characters in a TV show.
Guided by the synopsis on a DVD of their television show, they set off to find the actors that play their characters and the makers of the show, on a quest to save the lives of the show’s characters, to give themselves a longer life.
The show certainly pays homage to Blade Runner and this fact is often explicitly mentioned in the dialogue.
The Red Dwarf team has a lot of fun with the Back to Earth episodes, including a cross over with a long running British soap called Coronation Street, which currently features Craig Charles, the actor who also plays Dave Lister.
All in all I thought that it started off a little slower than usual, but once it got into its stride it was a lot of fun.
You have the choice of watching the show episodically or in a single feature length ‘directors cut’ – though the HD audio is only available for the director’s cut version.
Red Dwarf: Back To Earth was directed by Doug Naylor, one of the original co-creators of Red Dwarf series.
With an IMDb score of 6.5/10, the show has a middle of the road reception from the critics.
The video on the disc is a VC-1 1080i encode at 26 Mbps, and is presented at 1.78:1 aspect ratio, filling the HDTV screen.
The show was shot using the Red One 4k digital cinema cameras, so it has a very clean look to it.
Check out the details page for Red Dwarf: Back To Earth to see full resolution PNG screen captures.
The main audio is DTS-HD High Resolution with 5.1 channels – 24 bits resolution at 48 kHz.
The disc is a dual layer BD50, with 32.6 GB used and is coded for All Regions.
The release contains extensive extras, most of which reside on a second BD50 disc.
Perhaps the most impressive is a new ‘Making Of’ documentary that is presented in two parts and runs almost as long as the feature itself.
As well as a lot of on set footage, there are extensive interviews which reveal much about the production development and the difficulty in making the show on such a small budget.
For example the ‘Car Bug’ Smart car was personally purchased by the director and a lot of the effects artists were fans and worked for next to nothing.
It is pretty clear that the production crew and cast put everything they could into making this new Red Dwarf installment as good as possible and as true as possible to the early part of the original series.
Additional footage is presented in both a selection of Deleted Scenes (with commentary) and a huge number of out takes in the Smeg Ups feature.
There is an additional wide range of Featurettes covering aspects such as the special effects, the Premiere, a cast signing session, behind the scenes web videos and the video Press Kit.
The Trailers section covers a wide range of promotions and trailers including US PBS announcements and Max Headroom like blipverts made for the Dave channel – a British TV channel named after the Dave Lister character.
There are a pair of Photo Galleries with both production stills and a set of behind the scenes photographs.
The cast commentary and director commentary are of course on the feature disc.
Red Dwarf: Back To Earth is an excellent release from BBC Warner, with extensive extras and fresh new content for a comedy favourite.
This release is a must have for any fan of Red Dwarf, as well comedy or Sci-fi fans looking for something new and different.
As a big fan of Red Dwarf I highly recommend it.
The retail price is $29.99, or order it right now at Amazon for $19.99, saving 33%!
Extras:
Cast Commentary
Director Commentary
All-New Exclusive Documentary
The Making Of
Deleted Scenes
Smeg Ups
Featurettes
Trailers
Web Videos
Photo Gallery
Easter Egg
Synopsis:
The boys are back, and while they may be older, they’re still none the wiser. The crew discover a dimension-hopping leviathan, but Rimmer is threatened with replacement by the new, improved holograph Katrina. She is determined to guide Lister to his home planet, but no one is prepared for Earth 2009, where the hapless crew face death unless they can track down their creators.
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