Imaginary Worlds - The Nine Lives of Red Dwarf

Episode Date: September 13, 2023

35 years ago, Doug Naylor co-created a sitcom called Red Dwarf about the last human left alive in the far future. But the character is not alone. The rest of the crew aboard the ship Red Dwarf includes an annoying hologram, a very helpful android, a very unhelpful A.I. and a cat-person with a great sense of style. The show was considered a huge gamble back then. Sci-fi and comedy were not supposed to mix. But Red Dwarf was a hit – and Doug Naylor has continued to revive the show over and over due to popular demand. I talked with him about why this existential comedy works so well, and how it continues to inspire him to create “emotion bombs.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Go to Kraken.com and see what crypto can be. Non-investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See Kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Belinsky. In the last episode, we talked about shows or movies to watch until Hollywood is up and running again. This episode is my entry into that discussion, Red Dwarf. I first discovered Red Dwarf during the pandemic.

I was talking with a friend about Doctor Who, and he was surprised that I hadn't heard of this other really popular, long-running British sci-fi show. Red Dwarf takes place mostly on a spaceship, and it's a sitcom. It's really funny, but also surprisingly existential. I binged through it on the streaming service BritBox, and during the pandemic, the show gave me a lot of laughs when the streaming service BritBox. And during the pandemic, the show gave me a lot of laughs when the world felt pretty dark. In the first episode, we meet Dave Lister. He works on Red Dwarf, which is a mining ship. Lister's a cool guy. I mean, even today, his outfits from back

then look cool, like he went thrifting at vintage stores. But Lister is also a total slacker and a slob. It's stupid anyway, all this maintenance business. The only reason they don't give this job to the service robots is they've got a better union than us. Lister, that is absolute nonsense. That's his arch nemesis on the crew, Arnold Rimmer. Rimmer is an overachiever and a stickler for the roles. One of the rules that Lister breaks is that he brings his cat on board. As punishment, Lister is put in suspended animation. See you in 18 months. His sentence is supposed to last 18 months, but he wakes up millions of

years in the future. All of humanity has gone extinct, except for him. But he's not alone. His annoying supervisor and roommate, Arnold Rimmer, has been reincarnated as a hologram. And we know he's a hologram because he's got a silver H on his forehead. I'm dead, Lister, or haven't you noticed? I know you're dead, Rimmer. Don't whinge on about it. Sorry to be a bore. I mean, you're everything you were when you were alive. Same personality, same everything. Apart from the minuscule

detail that I'm a stiffy. But, Rimmer, death isn't the handicap it used to be in the olden days. It doesn't screw your career up like it used to. That's what they say, Lister, but if you had two people coming for a job and one of them was dead, which one would you choose? And remember the cat that Lister smuggled on board? It gave birth to kittens who evolved over millions of years to become cat people.

One of them is on the ship. They just call him Cat. He's got a James Brown, Cab Calloway look. He also has cat fangs, and he moves like a cat. Ah! Ah! Oh, wee! How am I looking?

They can also talk to the ship's AI, who looks like a head floating on a computer screen. But he's not helpful. Polly? Hmm? What is going on? Look, I'm a 10th generation AI hologramic computer. I'm not your mum. helpful. Eventually they add a fifth character to the crew, an android called Crichton. He looks like a mannequin with a squared off head in a robot suit. spinning. We've been doing this all morning. Frightened? I'm going to teach you how to lie and cheat if it's the last thing I do. I want you to be unpleasant, cruel, and sarcastic. It's the only way to break your programming, man. Make you independent. I'm truly grateful, sir. Don't you

think I'd love to be deceitful, unpleasant, and offensive? Those are the human qualities I admire the most. And so that is the crew of Red Dwarf. The last human alive, a hologram, an AI, a cat person, and a robot. The show first ran from 1988 to 1999, but it's been revived many times with short bursts of episodes or made-for-TV movies. They're not reboots or spinoffs. It's the same actors playing the same characters who are basically stuck together on that ship. Doug Naylor is one of the co-creators of Red Dwarf. He started the show with his writing partner, Rob Grant. But Doug has written on the show the most consistently over the last 35 years.

I had so many questions about why this premise works so well as a comedy and how it keeps inspiring him to write. But first, I wanted to know how it all began. We'd written a radio show, which was a sketch show. And one of the recurring sketches in that was a science fiction thing called Dave Holland's Space Cadet, which was a kind of a parody of Alien, where the crew have all been killed, the lone survivor and a computer. And then when we decided we were going to write a sitcom, we looked around and what could we do, what kind of format. And then we came back to that and said, let's revisit that and expand that.

So we went, okay, fine, we'll have the one guy. And so he should be the last human. We'll have the computer, but we don't want a really brilliant computer we'll make him senile and then we want some we don't want aliens because all science fiction has aliens so we're going to not have any aliens in it at all and it will force us to write good character stuff we then came up with the idea of a hologram and then from there hey it could be someone. Why is the hologram there? He's there to keep this lone survivor human alive and sane. And then we went, okay, there's not enough characters. What can we do? That's not a robot. We don't want a

robot because that's too cliched. And then the idea of someone who had evolved from cats came about. Was there a concern back then about the idea of combining science fiction with comedy in terms of whether that would work? We spoke to a producer at the time and said, we've got this great idea. We're really excited about it. And he went, what is it? And we told him and he went, no, don't bother. You're wasting time. Science fiction comedy is incredibly expensive. No one likes it. No one will buy it. I promise you don't bother. But it turned out he was absolutely right. He read the script, John Lloyd, who at the time had done Blackadder and Spitting Image. He read the script too. They both really liked it, got really excited about it.

Paul Jackson took it to the BBC who immediately rejected it. Paul Jackson took it to the BBC, who immediately rejected it. He then took it back and said, read it again. This is really exciting. They rejected it again. I said, look, this isn't being pitched properly. We need to go in and pitch it. We'll pitch it properly and sell it. So we went and met the head of comedy. He didn't like it. And he said, but I do get where you're coming from, which is science fiction comedy. That isn't an area that's really well mined. Although we did try it with Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

And although it worked on radio and in the books famously well, it didn't really work too good on TV. So then two years went by, I think it was, and just purely by good luck, Manchester, which is BBC Manchester, which is an offshoot of BBC, were looking for something crazy, which they expected to fail. The idea of doing Red Dwarf gave them the excuse of we were trying something different when it did fail. See, one of the things I think is so fascinating, in the mid-90s, I just got out of college. I was a script reader in Hollywood. And that's where the producers, they get this giant slush pile

of unproduced screenplays and need people to go through them to decide what gets kicked up the higher level. I got the script for Men in Black and a couple of years before it was actually made. And it was, you know, we were under a lot of pressure not to say yes to anything, you know, to not waste the executive's time. And I was like, well, this is great. And I actually, I recommended it. And my immediate boss called me, who never called me. And she was just like, okay, so I think alarm bells are going to go off here because about your taste, because science fiction and comedy do not work. Everybody knows that. And if you if you recommend this script, people are going to not people are going to question your taste from now on.

I highly recommend you. You reject this. So, OK, OK. So I wrote it. I rejected it. And I remember thinking as I rewrote my coverage, I really hope this movie doesn't become a hit. And people look

back and wonder who rejected Men in Black. And it was you. It was me. And only because I was under pressure. I remember thinking like, what do you mean science fiction and comedy don't work? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Because it opens up, imagines you. So you've got all the good stuff, all the good character stuff, but you've also got the stories which you can attack from all sorts of interesting angles that you can't just do if you're confined to an earthbound situation. We'll hear more of my conversation with Doug Naylor after the break. A special message from your family jewels brought to you by Old Spice Total Body. a conversation with Doug Naylor after the break. Jay, that's Old Spice Total Body Deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now.

So what were some of the hardest or biggest challenges when it came to casting the show? Well, we went in and said, we don't, we want proper actors. That was, that was our rule, whatever that meant. And so, okay. All right. So like really proper actors. Okay, fine. So we actually saw Alan Rickman actually came in and Paul Jackson and Ed By, who was, who

directed the first few series, both had worked with him and were quite terrified. Oh my God, he's coming in. Rickman's coming in. Oh my God. And he was utterly charming. But he wanted to play Lister. And he said, playing Rimmer would be too easy. And I'm sick of being cast in these bad guy parts.

I don't want to be typecast in these bad guy parts. I don't want to be typecast in these bad guy parts. And of course, he's two of the most famous bad guys ever. So anyway, we'd already thought of Norman Lover as Holly. We thought his deadpan style would be perfect for Holly. How come he never, ever knows anything? He's supposed to have an IQ of 6,000. 6,000's not that much. It's only the same IQ as 12,000 car park attendants.

But you don't know anything. Listen, I happen to be one of the sleekest, most sophisticated computers ever devised by man. I'm the nearest thing you can get to infallible. Infallible. Exactly. Danny John Jaws was the first person we ever saw

for cat. He just came in wearing some cool suit of his dad's and just knocked it out of the park. And I remember saying at the time, I cannot believe we've just, that guy has got to be the cat, but he's the first guy we've ever seen. That's surely

law of averages dictate. It's not going to be the cat, but he's the first guy we've ever seen. Surely, law of averages dictate. It's not going to be him, but it was. How long do we have to do this for anyway? We've only been doing it 10 minutes. 10 minutes too long. We've got to do it all day. What? All day? The whole entire day? What about my naps? I'm a cat. I need to nap.

If I don't nap 9 or 10 times a day, I don't have enough energy for my main snooze. Did he initially audition doing an American accent? Like he's like a, he always was an American accent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it was always that kind of James Brown vibe from the beginning. That was his reading of it. And we just, oh God, there's so much to play. He's really kind of brought this to life. And then Craig Charles at the time was a kind of angry standup poet

who hadn't really done any acting at all. And he kept pestering Paul Jackson because Paul Jackson gave him the script to say, is the cat's part racist? And so Craig read it and went, of course it's not racist it's really good part and he goes oh okay that's good and then Craig said look I haven't read it can I audition for the part of Lister and Paul said you aren't an actor and he goes yeah no but I want to be so I think he he told he said no to him three or four times and then he just wore him down yeah

okay fine come in, audition, audition. So we'd seen some, you know, real quite mega stars. You know, we saw Hugh Laurie, for example, who's a brilliant actor, who's gone on to be, you know, amazing. But it just felt too safe and too kind of middle class, and we wanted something a bit rougher. And we'd worked with Chris Barry on several other shows, and then we realized that it was all about the chemistry between these two guys and it wasn't just about casting one at one

person we had to get this duo together and chris barry was chris barry was was rimmer yeah so we then got the two together and then you could immediately see oh they're so different both as as people and their performances this this this could work you touch that guitar lister i'll remove the e-string and garage with it can i do anything it's okay for breathe can i breathe so i love the character of creighton it's so interesting that he shows up well he shows up i think it was the second season maybe but he he's brought on board as a regular on the third season. Yes. Why did you decide to bring him on the crew?

And I think the other interesting thing is that he has a Canadian accent, which is another very interesting, as an American, I'm fascinated that two of the main characters have North American accents. Tell me about that choice. Okay, so we felt in that first series, there aren't enough characters.

You've got this senile computer who can't really properly interact with anyone. He just comes in and does gags. And then you've got the cat who's a little similar. And then you've got the two boys, Lister and Rimmer, and we're desperate for another character. And then in the very first show of the second season, we brought in the original Crichton, played by David Ross. And Rob was so against a robot because he thought it was a – and he was right, it was a cliché.

So I was then, we have to bring Crichton back for season three. We have to bring him back as a regular. It's going to fix all our problems. So it was a long summer and I basically wore him down. And then, of course, David Ross couldn't do it. And Robert Llewellyn was playing a robot in the Edinburgh Fringe in a show. And the accent?

That's such an interesting choice. Oh, the accent was, he did all sorts of crazy accents. He started off as sort of an english butler accent and then he was swedish um craig said i will you know beat you up if you use that accent because it's going to annoy me so much and then he sort of at one point i think it was half swedish and half canadian but yeah so it wound up being what it what it eventually became crichton you're forgetting about space tour directive 1742 1742 no member of the corps should ever report for duty in a ginger toupee well thank you for reminding me of that regulation sir sir, but I can't see how it's pertinent to our present situation. So one of my favorite episodes is Camille. It's where the crew discovers this

genetically, and you did such a clever job of not having aliens, but basically having aliens. Yes. This genetically engineered life form that takes on the appearance of whatever you desire. So Lister thinks he's found this really cool woman. This is weird, you know, the last two human beings in an infinite cosmos who may have to bump into each other. Yeah, it is weird, isn't it? Crichton thinks he's met another android. Camille, I think I E5 A9 08 B7 U. You really mean that? Camille, I'd do anything for you. Rimmer thinks he's seen a female hologram. I'm a second technician aboard that crate. Second technician, that's what I am. And then Cat is so narcissistic that he thinks he's seeing himself.

Hi, buddy. You're a woman. I'm the object of my own desire. Can you think of anyone more deserving? Well, if you put it like that, I guess you're right. Damn my vanity. And it was really funny, but I feel like it highlighted

how desperate the characters were for someone to connect with and how much they really just put up with each other. Tell me about the idea for that episode. Well, it was basically we're trying to kind of create,

have like emotion bombs where you have a concept and then it affects all the characters in completely unique characterful ways and then as we developed it you know we thought oh god the cat falling in love with himself that's just perfect and then robert having meeting a female mechanoid uh which weirdly was played by his wife. Oh. Yeah. He used to go home and complain about how difficult it was having the mask on and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then she did it and she wasn't prepared to listen to him moaning anymore. That's interesting. You said emotion bomb? Tell me more about that. Well, it's basically, it's something that affects all the characters in a unique and hopefully comedic way. And that's one of the glories, of course, of science fiction. You know, in a normal domestic setting, you can't have something that is created where all the characters meet the love of their life in a single episode, it would be really contrived

and weird. Whereas in science fiction, it's actually this genetically engineered life form that is able to manipulate people to converse with them and learn about them. That's so interesting. Now I'm flashing back to different plots of Red Dwarf to think what were emotion bombs. What was another one that you felt like, oh, this is a really clever premise is a really clever premise this works for well a little bit was polymorph polymorph they all lost a key emotion oh right yeah which was was a part of their character and that came from some reading i did um john cleese's book with skinner the the, where he was talking about the importance of anger and how you need

anger to defend yourself. But then equally, if the anger gets too out of control, it's a terrible emotion. And so it came from, okay, so what happens if, you know, Rimmer lost his anger? How would that affect things? So now we need something to suck out emotions of people okay what's that going to be and who what will it suck out of the other characters and and then what will the effects be what we've got to do is get it around the table put together a solution package perhaps over tea and biscuits look at him you can't trust his opinion? He's got no anger. He's a total dork. Good point, Crichton. Let's take that on board, shall we? So another favorite episode of mine was called Meltdown. And it's basically like a takeoff on Westworld, like the original Westworld from the 70s.

And the crew discovers that there are these like androids of famous heroes and villains in history. And Rimmer decides to train the heroes to fight the villains. But they're all like nonviolent peacemakers like Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama. And it's a total disaster. What's your name, soldier? His name's Gandhi, Sir Mahatma Gandhi. Well, get him out of that damn nappy and into a uniform. Have you no pride, man?

Don't you want to win this war? Don't eyeball me, Gandhi. Get on the floor and give me 50. No! I read that a lot of fans didn't like that episode because it was not set in space, but I thought it was great social satire. I know, I know.

I really loved that episode. I was dismissed at the time as being too silly. And actually, although it was dismissed as silly, during the Gulf War, the show wasn't allowed to be broadcast because it was about war. So it can't have been that silly. So, yeah, I mean, it's a wild premise and it allowed Rimmer to be the general he'd always wanted to be with a, you know,

not great army as it turned out. Yeah. In a way that sort of starts from what if Rimmer got to have his dream, you know, his career goal dreams. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think the good thing and the bad thing about science fiction comedy is the the ideas are quite hard to to to get you know so it's tough to come up with new fresh ideas but when you get them they're often you know worth the hard work the initial run of red dwarf ended in 1999 doug thought he was going to go on to a Red Dwarf movie, but he spent years trying to get the financing. Eventually, he gave up.

Meanwhile, Red Dwarf was being rerun on a comedy channel called Dave, which is part of the BBC system. The network asked if he could bring the actors back in costume to record new introductions to the episodes. And I just said, well, if you're going to do that, why don't we just make more shows? And they said, well, we don't have the money and we don't commission scripted material.

We never have done. So I kind of persuaded them that it would be a hit and they believed me and fortunately it was. I mean, it's had a lot of starts and stops on Dave. I mean, from what I understand, the ratings have always been strong, but it's like there'll be gaps in between. I know, I know, I know. I mean, have you ever during that time wondered,

did I just write my last Red Dwarf script? Every time. Every time I do a last show of a season, I always think that's it. That's the last one. You better make sure it's decent because it could be the last one ever. And then I think they kind of like to leave it a few years. So it's then, oh, it's back. While forgetting that the cast are now all close to 80.

No, they're not really. But they're not in the prime of youth either. Although I feel like that kind of, I think that's interesting to me because if the characters, like we know at the beginning that they're kind of stuck together forever, basically. But for them to actually

age in real time is really interesting. Like the sitcom is all about familiarity and it can be maddening if these characters are stuck together for eternity. But I think it's almost as part of the existential comedy of the show. Yes, I think that's right. I think it does fit like that. And also it's quite unique because you don't generally have comedy shows that cover this kind of period where all the cast want to continue working together.

You nearly always get people dropping out. you nearly always get people dropping out and our guys do really enjoy making it and enjoy one another's company and they keep coming back which is amazing yeah i think it's also interesting too because i mean rimmer is always just rimmer even if i mean you know the actor looks older and then crichton is under a lot of makeup but i think with lister particularly because he's the last human and you know like when the show begins he's in hiss, but he's supposed to be like a slacker and a slob, but he's really cool. But the same characteristics on this guy now, I think it was probably in his 50s, late 50s,

the last time you did the series, and it's just so different. I mean, it's almost like when you meet a guy in high school who was like the coolest guy in high school, and then you meet him 35 years later, and he's exactly the same, but those same attributes on a much older man just don't age well yes and i but i actually think that's really

interesting for a lister like in a in a comedy character way yes no i think that's right yeah i think that's very well observed that thing about how he's really cool actually he's wearing pretty much the same clothes as he used to. Actually, now that's kind of a bit sad. He's not moved on. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's it. I mean, Red Dwarfs is about lack. It's about what's missing. It's about failure. That's where the fun is. What happened to you, bud? You're a wreck. Then perhaps I should use my Swedish massage chair that doesn't have batteries. No one is blaming you, sir. You're carrying wreck. Then perhaps I should use my Swedish massage chair that doesn't have batteries. No one is blaming you, sir. You're carrying an enormous burden.

The future of the human race is entirely in your, in your, well, hands? Lower. Danglier. Do you ever have, like, once you have one of these breaks, do you ever have creative challenges getting back into the Red Dwarf mindset? Do you think, oh, God, it's been a while. Can I write these characters again?

Yeah, it's always terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying. Yes, yes, absolutely. Because the other thing is you don't want it to become bad. And then you go out with a whimper. And you don't want to undo all the good stuff. And so there's a real tension there. I mean, the last time out, we did a 90 minute TV movie. It was something UK TV wanted us to do. I don't think they really quite understand the challenges of that. It was like, oh, yeah, V1 is to do. I don't think they really quite understand the challenges of that. It was like,

oh yeah, keep the audience and do a 90 minute movie. And it was like, okay, do you realize how difficult that is? Because we're going to have two audiences over the 90 minutes and we're going to play one 45 minute show in front of that audience and we'll play in some pre-existing film that we filmed. And then the second audience, we're going to have to give the story so far and then play the second half. I was wondering about that because there were certain shots that clearly looked like they were,

there's obviously not an audience. You're doing, the camera is cutting like a single camera comedy type thing. And then other times it's clearly sort of in front of a live studio audience on the set. So yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah um anyway that was terrifying from the heat signature it's one ship coming in at six o'clock open the sunroof there's no point i forgot to bring my surrender flag i take it everywhere

with me and on the one day i think i would need it we're not surrendering can't stand on the chair and start blasting out the emergency escape hatch like I said I think the thing that I really enjoy about it now is that they really are stuck together and that the actors have so much chemistry with each other they're so familiar with each other and yet while the characters themselves are so sick of each other in a weird way that it kind of that bond

really makes the existential joke of the show work even better. Yes. I think that's right. I think that's right. I mean, you don't start off like that, of course,

because you start off a new show. Everyone's just looking out for themselves in the first couple of seasons. Where are my gags? Where are my gags? I haven't got any gags. No, no, there aren't gags in like that.

There are laugh lines. Where? I don't know when the audience see it it will trust us so there was all that going on and then you get to kind of season three season four and people just relax and go right we trust you you know and we just we're here for the ride um i went to a convention a few weeks ago and the lines for for the cues for autographs for the cast and even me were just overwhelming so many people with kids there was a lever old girl came with her dad uh and she said can you answer a question i'm like yeah sure of

course and she goes um you remember that show where red dwarf went faster than the speed of light and i went yeah and she said a rim is uh made of light so how is it possible for anyone to see him and she was 11 and it's like wow and i was really blown away how this a really young audience there that have either been introduced it by the parents well almost certainly probably uh who are loving it all like you know the parents did it's quite weird so you got something else come i mean it's coming back right well it's looking awfully like it's coming back it's not signed and sealed yet but there are certainly very encouraging noises hopefully hopefully hopefully as a mini series a movie they haven't said uh last time i mean to be fair they did want two new specials and then we got tripped up by a couple of things one of which was covid

so whether they'll want something different i don know. And also the other thing I did was I wrote a, I've written rather, a TV film for the Red Wolf cast being fictitious versions of themselves. And they're desperate to do that. What do you mean fictitious versions? Well, so in other words, it's Craig Charles playing Craig Charles, a fictitious version of Craig Charles. Chris Barry is very like, is a comic version of the real Chris Barry. Like a Curb Your Enthusiasm version of behind the scenes Red Dwarf. Exactly. But it's also science fiction and they get wrapped up in a real world.

It's set on Earth in contemporary times. And they're desperate to do that. So I'm trying to blackmail UK TV into forcing them to do that along with more Red Wolf. Have you ever thought to yourself, you know, maybe it's time to wrap it up. I have an idea for how to end this entire thing.

I've always said, I don't think emotionally I could cope with certainly not directing this is the very last show. I would just be a sobbing mess. And I don't want to inflict that on myself. I'd rather just keep making shows and then one day we'll realize that that last show was the last show we ever made. You know, life doesn't wrap up. Why should TV series? That's it for this week.

Thank you for listening. And special thanks to Doug Naylor. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. If you like the show, please give us a shout out on social media or leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. That helps people discover imaginary worlds the best way to support the show is to donate on patreon at different levels you get either free imaginary world stickers a mug a t-shirt and a link to a dropbox account which is the full-length interviews of every guest in every episode you can also get access to an ad-free version of the show through Patreon, and you can buy an ad-free subscription on Apple Podcasts.

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