Red Dwarf - Complete Series 1 To 3

The slipcase enclosing this box set of the first three Red Dwarf series proclaims: "New model sequences, new footage, new effects. Digitally remastered sound, digitally enhanced pictures and brand new wooshy [sic] noises!!". It's all a far cry from when the Beeb simply re-used their old Doctor Who tapes, to the fans' subsequent consternation. As it happens, the tarting-up of these earliest episodes from the only successful sci-fi comedy show ever is seamlessly unobtrusive. The premise of the show--a vast spaceship blundering through the cosmos, inhabited by the last human being in the universe, a hologram of his dead bunkmate and a Little Richard lookalike evolved from a cat--was, from the earliest stages, redeemed by its detailed and careful deployment of classic sci-fi plot devices--time travel, virtual worlds, genetic engineering, you name it--with all the care and attention of "serious" sci-fi. However, in Red Dwarf, these concepts are shot through with obfuscation, trivia and the unerring sense that everything is about to go terribly, terribly wrong. So it is, then, that in a parallel universe the crew have feminine counterparts, a new form of spaceship drive looks suspiciously like a large box with stop and start buttons and jigsaws are completed by mysterious forces, to cite but three of the endless highlights contained herein. --Roger Thomas