45 Fun Facts About Red Dwarf

Which all-purpose swear word do the Red Dwarf crew use in place of real profanity?

Smeg, with offshoots like 'smeghead', let the crew curse constantly without using anything offensive; the show's blooper tapes were even sold as 'Smeg Ups'.

How long was Dave Lister in suspended animation before waking as the last human alive?

Holly kept Lister in stasis for three million years, until the radiation from the leak that killed the crew had fallen to a safe level.

In Red Dwarf's first episode, why is Lister sentenced to stasis just before the crew die?

For smuggling a cat aboard, an unquarantined pregnant one he refused to hand over, Lister got 18 months in stasis, which is why he alone was shielded when the radiation leak killed the crew.

Which horror-story name did Lister give his pet in Red Dwarf?

Frankenstein was sealed safely in the hold when the crew died, and her descendants evolved into a whole civilisation that worshipped Lister as its god.

What is Arnold Rimmer's middle name?

Judas was his mother's choice: in 'Lemons' Rimmer explains that her church, the Church of Judas, held that Judas was Jesus's twin brother and took his place at the Crucifixion.

What symbol does Arnold Rimmer wear on his forehead in Red Dwarf?

An H marks him out as a hologram; through series I to V he is 'soft light' and cannot touch anything, until an upgrade in series VI makes him solid.

Which BBC sitcom starred Chris Barrie as a leisure-centre manager called Gordon?

The Brittas Empire kept Barrie so busy as the calamitous Gordon Brittas that, worn out by Red Dwarf's schedule as well, he agreed to appear in only four episodes of series VII.

What had made Craig Charles a familiar face on television before he was cast as Lister?

Performance poetry had made the Liverpudlian 'punk poet' a TV regular; asked whether the Cat might be seen as a racist stereotype, he read the script and asked to audition for Lister instead.

Which combat-themed game show did Craig Charles present from 1998 to 2004?

Robot Wars had Jeremy Clarkson as its first host before Charles took over for the rest of its original run; he later left Coronation Street in 2015 to film new Red Dwarf episodes.

What does Red Dwarf's Lister dream of owning back on Earth?

A farm on Fiji with a doughnut diner, selling hot dogs too, was Lister's five-year plan, stocked with a sheep, a cow and horses and shared, he hoped, with Kristine Kochanski; instead he ended up the last human alive.

What was Lister's rank aboard Red Dwarf?

Third technician is the lowest rank on the ship: Lister is outranked by his bunkmate Rimmer, a second technician, and even by the four service robots.

Kryten's name nods to The Admirable Crichton, a play whose resourceful hero works as what?

A butler, Crichton proves the only capable castaway when his aristocratic employers are shipwrecked in J. M. Barrie's 1902 play, and ends up ruling them; Kryten likewise outgrows his servant's programming.

Who played Kryten in his one-off Red Dwarf debut in series II, before Robert Llewellyn took over?

David Ross played Kryten only as a one-off guest in series II; when the mechanoid became a regular the part went to Robert Llewellyn, and Ross later returned as the voice of Talkie Toaster.

Kryten was rescued from which crashed spaceship?

Kryten was found aboard the crashed Nova 5, faithfully serving its long-dead crew; he is a Series 4000 sanitation mechanoid whom Lister slowly teaches to break his programming.

Kryten believes devoutly in what afterlife?

Silicon Heaven is the afterlife Kryten expects for electrical appliances; Lister fails to talk him out of it, yet Kryten later shuts down his murderous replacement by telling it no such place exists.

Which engineering game show did Robert Llewellyn present?

Scrapheap Challenge had Llewellyn as host for its first ten series from 1998, cheering on teams as they built working machines from junk; he later launched the electric-car show Fully Charged.

Which two actors have played Holly, Red Dwarf's ship's computer?

Norman Lovett and Hattie Hayridge both played Holly: Hayridge had already appeared as Hilly, the computer's female counterpart from a parallel universe, before taking over for series III to V.

Red Dwarf grew out of which recurring sketch on the Radio 4 show Son of Cliché?

Dave Hollins: Space Cadet starred a lone space traveller and his computer Hab; for television they became Dave Lister and Holly, and Chris Barrie, the voice of Hab, was cast as Rimmer.

What did Holly's first actor successfully push for in Red Dwarf's early days?

Appearing on screen was the actor's own suggestion: Holly had been written purely as a voice-over, but he talked the makers into showing the computer as a face on the ship's monitors.

Which BBC regional centre finally commissioned Red Dwarf in 1986, using a spare budget?

BBC North West in Manchester took it on in 1986 with money set aside for a second series of Happy Families that never happened, after producer Paul Jackson pushed for Red Dwarf instead.

What delayed filming of Red Dwarf's first series in early 1987?

An electricians' strike at the BBC hit partway through rehearsals, so the cast rehearsed episodes that could not be recorded; the whole series had to be remounted that September.

Who wrote and performed the Red Dwarf theme music?

Howard Goodall wrote the theme and the incidental music, with Jenna Russell singing the closing song; he also sang 'The Rimmer Song' himself for the series VII episode 'Blue', leaving Chris Barrie to mime.

Which Red Dwarf song, released by Danny John-Jules as 'The Cat', hit UK number 17 in 1993?

Tongue Tied began as a song-and-dance dream sequence that opens the series II finale 'Parallel Universe'; five years later it was released as a single credited to 'The Cat'.

Which Red Dwarf episode won an International Emmy in 1994?

Gunmen of the Apocalypse sends Kryten into a Wild West dream to fight a computer virus he has caught on purpose, with the rest of the crew riding in as gunslingers to help him.

Which Red Dwarf episode is the only one to open with a pre-credits warning about its content?

Polymorph opens with an on-screen warning, then lets its shape-shifting mutant feed on the crew's emotions, taking Lister's fear, the Cat's vanity, Kryten's guilt and Rimmer's anger.

Which character upgraded Rimmer to a 'hard light' hologram in series VI?

Legion, the gestalt entity formed from the crew's minds, gave Rimmer a hard-light drive in the series VI episode of that name, making him tangible and nearly indestructible, though not immune to pain.

In which Red Dwarf episode does Rimmer leave to become Ace Rimmer?

Stoke Me a Clipper has the dying Ace pass his role to Rimmer, who flies off to become the next Ace; it wrote out Chris Barrie, who had agreed to only four episodes of the series.

Ace Rimmer, the dashing test-pilot version of Red Dwarf's Arnold, first appeared in which episode?

Dimension Jump reveals where the two Rimmers split: as a boy, Ace was the one kept back a year at school, and the humiliation spurred him to work harder and become a hero.

In Red Dwarf, what is the name of the Cat's dorky alter ego with the bowl haircut and overbite?

Duane Dibbley is who the vain Cat turns out to be in the shared hallucination of 'Back to Reality': a no-style nerd in an anorak, a discovery that helps drive the crew to despair.

What is Dave Lister's favourite food in Red Dwarf?

Chicken vindaloo is such an obsession that in 'DNA' a curry turned into a rampaging mutant shrugs off every weapon until Lister kills it with lager.

Which actress played Red Dwarf's Kristine Kochanski in series I, II and VI?

Clare Grogan played the Kochanski who died with the crew; Chloë Annett's Kochanski, who joined in series VII, comes from a parallel universe where she was put in stasis instead of Lister.

How was Red Dwarf VII made differently from the six series before it?

Filmised, with no studio audience: series VII was shot single-camera and processed to look like film, with laughter added at screenings; series VIII brought the live audience back.

Which channel revived Red Dwarf in 2009 with the miniseries Back to Earth?

Dave drew record audiences for a digital channel's own commission when it aired the three parts over Easter 2009, and went on to order full new series of the show.

In Back to Earth, the crew arrive on Earth in 2009 and discover what?

They learn they are characters in a TV series, Red Dwarf, and track down actor Craig Charles on the Coronation Street set; the story, partly inspired by Blade Runner, turns out to be a squid-ink hallucination.

The 2020 special The Promised Land pits the crew against Rodon, leader of what?

Ray Fearon played Rodon, tyrant leader of the feral cats, who wants every cat to worship him as a god; three cat clerics instead seek out Lister as their creator, Cloister.

What was the title of the first Red Dwarf novel, published in 1989?

Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers reworks the early episodes into one story with a new beginning: Lister wakes on Saturn's moon Mimas after a drunken Monopoly-board pub crawl in London, with no fare home.

Which two rival sequels to the Red Dwarf novel Better Than Life did its co-writers publish separately?

Last Human and Backwards are rival continuations: after the writing partnership split, Doug Naylor wrote the first in 1995 and Rob Grant answered with the second a year later.

Red Dwarf VIII opens with nanobots resurrecting whom?

The original crew, Captain Hollister included, return when nanobots rebuild Red Dwarf, and they promptly lock the regulars up; the series drew the show's biggest audiences, peaking above eight million.

Red Dwarf X's finale reused material from which unmade project?

A feature film had been in the works since the late 1990s but never went before the cameras, so material from its script was reworked into the finale of the first full series since 1999.

Which film studios became Red Dwarf's production base from series IV onwards?

Shepperton Studios took over when the show's original BBC studios closed for refurbishment; the sets were moved with it, and the cast could at last rehearse on them.

Red Dwarf Remastered replaced the model shots of the first three series with what in 1998?

Computer graphics replaced the models in the hope that a glossier version would sell better to overseas broadcasters; remasters of later series were commissioned too, then shelved.

Which science-fiction staple did Red Dwarf's creators deliberately leave out of the show's universe?

Aliens were ruled out from the start, so every creature the crew meets traces back to Earth; the writers also banned robots, a rule they broke when Kryten proved too popular to drop.

Which channel first broadcast the eight original series of Red Dwarf?

BBC Two showed all eight original series, starting in 1988, even though the BBC had repeatedly rejected the script before commissioning it in 1986.

Which original cast member reprised his role in the unaired 1992 American pilot, Red Dwarf USA?

Robert Llewellyn kept the part of Kryten opposite a new cast, with the British actress Jane Leeves, later of Frasier, as Holly; neither that pilot nor a second attempt was picked up, so no series followed.

What is the title of Red Dwarf's very first episode, broadcast in February 1988?

The End was the opener's title; twenty-four years later the series X finale, drafted as 'Death Day', was renamed 'The Beginning' in deliberate reference to it.