The Lost Series News Posted by John Hoare on 7th October 2005, 00:37 Isn’t it odd to think that Red Dwarf Series 1 wasn’t generally available to the public for over five years since its first broadcast, until 5th July 1993? Just put that into perspective for a moment – it was released after Series V had been shown, when the Smegazine was up and running, when Dwarf fandom was at its height (the first wave of it, anyway) – and the only copies around were manky xth-generation off-airs from 1988? That’s just weird. And easy to forget when you’re clutching your shiny Series 1 DVDs…
This is an example of how fucked up the world is. Something else that’s fucked up is the fact that the BBC haven’t repeated series 3 of The League Of Gentlemen from 2002, and they also didn’t give a fuck about it when it was on, which meant that even some League fans didn’t know the third series had started! Actually, I’m not 100% sure that it hasn’t been repeated. But I don’t think so. This is what they should use BBC3 for. They should never have done that deal where they have to show so much percent original BBC3 shows, because that basically boils down to Two Pints.
I no longer have my videos, but my old VHS copy of “Red Dwarf I” boasted ‘never before repeated on Television!’. It was subsequently repeated a couple of months after release.
You know what? My enjoyment of Red Dwarf went down a little with my experience of the first series. Simply because the RD universe was kind of other-worldly by being unexplained up until then. I’d encountered the odd episode of series IV and V here and there (memory didn’t really separate them and I may have seen episodes pre-IV) when someone at school lent me the first byte of series 2. And that was really weird, to see Kryten in that manifestation and Rimmer with that big silver 3D H. I adored Lovett’s Holly and the introduction SOS signals – the mood was lovely. By filling in the gaps though, series 1 and then every episode ever thereafter (which were repeated in sequence from 1994 onwards, and which I taped religiously) took away the peculiar atmosphere of it all. Perhaps that’s what happens when you get too into something. And maybe that’s why some people feel they “grew out” of Red Dwarf.