The lovely folk over at Dave have unveiled the first official teaser trailer for the new series of Red Dwarf, which you can see here. The trailer shows the main gang in action, and frankly it’s as if they’ve never been away. Here are seven things we learned from watching the trailer twenty times in the last half-hour:
1. Red Dwarf is back
And looking better than ever. Back in February, we got our first look at the new Red Dwarf model (actually a refurbished version of a model that was built for Series VIII in 1997 but never used) in a behind-the-scenes video. Now we get our first look at it in action, and it’s glorious. This is Red Dwarf for the HD age.
2. Blue Midget is back!
Ever since the series was announced back in April 2011, fans have been wondering whether Starbug and/or Blue Midget would be popping up in the new run. Well, there’s no sign of Starbug (yet), but we do get a shot of Blue Midget zooming away from the main ship. With Blue Midget being used heavily in the first couple of series of Red Dwarf and disappearing in the years that followed, could this be part of an attempt to harken back to the show's early years?
3. New Quarters
When we last saw the Dwarfers in Back to Earth, they had their run of the ship, with gleaming white sets evocative of Series III-V. Now, for some reason, they’re stuck in what are presumably the bowels of the ship, in smaller, darker sets that resemble a cross between Series II’s grimy Drive Room set and the Starbug sets of later series.
4. No Holly
This one probably won’t come as a surprise to many (Especially given the apparent animosity between Norman Lovett and the production team), but there’s no sign of Holly in any of the cockpit scenes, whose computer monitors are instead filled with a constant stream of data and patterns which will probably have the most ardent fans pausing and zooming in when they receive their Blu-Ray sets. But the big question is - what’s happened to him/her?
5. No Kochanski, either
Having made a brief fictional cameo in Back to Earth, Kochanski appears to be out of the picture for this series - as a regular character, at least. With Lister last seen resolving to track her down, are there more twists and turns to come in the universe’s most complicated love story?
6. You’ve got mail
Towards the end of the trailer, we see Lister opening a card which reads ‘Happy Father’s Day Dad’. Given that Lister’s twin sons are safely in a parallel universe, who’s sending the card? Certainly whoever it is, they seem to know him pretty well... Other fleeting moments include Lister eating a kebab in the only way he knows how, Cat with a nice bowl of Krispies, a bit of a strong gale in the bunk room, and Rimmer and Kryten aboard a spaceship which looks far too snazzy to be the Dwarf...
7. It’s funny again
This one’s subjective, of course, but the trailer suggests that there’s a far greater emphasis on jokes than there was in Back to Earth, and maybe even Series VII or VIII. But most importantly, the cast all look like they’re really having fun here. All have stated their preference for having a studio audience to bounce off, and early indicators are it’s a gamble that’s paying off in spades.
Dave has promised to release something new in relation to Red Dwarf X every Friday, and the series is set to start in the autumn. Look out, Earth - the slime’s coming home...
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