So What Is It?

Repetition, Running Gags and Callbacks in Red Dwarf

We’re once again opening our doors to long term G&T regular Dave, bringing us his latest deep analysis of one of the show’s core elements.

Like all sitcoms of a certain age, Red Dwarf has a tendency to repeat itself from time to time.

I’m not talking about in-the-moment repetition like the White Hole sequence that gives this article its title, or the Terrorform gag about Kryten’s short-term memory being erased – those are deliberate repeated phrases that give a single joke the necessary rhythm and cadence. I’m talking about episode-to-episode and series-to-series recurrences of the same ideas, jokes, lines and structures, and the way that these have accumulated as the show has gone on.

George Lucas famously once said about the repeated plot points and ideas in the Star Wars saga that “it’s like poetry: they rhyme”. And if you subscribe to that way of thinking, then Red Dwarf is full of these metaphorical rhymes – some of them inspired reprises of past ideas that are as delightful as Rimmer, Zimmer and Yul Brynner; but some of them as lazy and uninspired as Kindle, Dwindle and Wind’ll.

The conventional wisdom around Red Dwarf is that repetition – in terms of a formulaic approach to the show’s writing, particularly its running gags – starts to rear its head most conspicuously in the sixth year of the show. But while I think that Series VI’s label as the poster boy for formulaic Dwarf is fair to an extent, I’d also argue that the seeds of this approach are sown much earlier, with several notable examples of repetition and formula cropping up throughout the show’s classic era.

Let’s talk about them!

Did You Erase The SOS Distress Call From Your Memory?

Perhaps the first really obvious example of the show settling into its groove and finding an explicit plug-and-play joke formula is Holly’s SOS messages that begin from the second episode, Future Echoes, and run throughout the rest of Series 1 and most of Series 2.

As well as serving as a recap of the show’s concept (for viewers living in a now-unthinkable late-80s era in which post-broadcast catch-up was impossible without an off-air VHS copy), these messages provide a dedicated slot for a quick opening gag, separate from the rest of that episode’s storyline, that gives the audience an easy (and reassuring early) nailed-on laugh, and sets the tone from the outset – almost like an in-show warm-up man.

In other words, Norman Lovett was the 1980s sci-fi equivalent of Seinfeld.

It’s interesting that this approach only lasted for the initial two series, though. On the Series III DVD, you can see examples of similar messages recorded by Hattie-Holly that were never used. And while the DVD intro to the Series III deleted scenes suggests “that they were cut speaks volumes about the writers’ opinions of their material”, I don’t know if that’s altogether fair.

Because Hattie’s SOS gags are just as funny as Norm-Holly’s jokes, really – especially in retrospect, when you realise that the joke about the AA man not turning up could have offered the longest setup in sitcom history for the eventual Stellar Rescue adverts – and they also provide a welcome opportunity for a bit more Holly material, in an era when the character was already beginning to be sidelined in favour of Kryten.

I wonder whether the real reason for dropping the SOS gags was that Rob and Doug simply didn’t feel that these openings were needed any more. Along with all the other overhauls that came with Series III – not least the more complex and ambitious storylines – I could imagine them feeling that a long intro sequence ate into the runtime of the episodes; that the show was becoming established enough that it didn’t need a Porridge-style voiceover to explain the setup to viewers every episode; and just maybe, that these openings were becoming a bit too familiar, formulaic and cosy for a show that was at that time being revamped to appear as fresh and forward-looking as possible.

Indeed, throughout Series III there’s a general sense of actively not trying to consciously repeat previous highlights of the show. While the addition of Kryten certainly does represent an idea from a previous episode being reused – even becoming a permanent part of the show – the character immediately creates a different crew dynamic that helps to separate Series III (and beyond) from what has come before.

What’s more, the storylines venture off-ship more often, and even if certain general story ideas like time-travel do crop up again, it’s in a way that feels new and interesting, rather than a repeat of earlier hits.

Instead, I’d argue that it’s Series IV and especially Series V where we start to get hints of the show becoming a little more backwards-looking – or at least, history-acknowledging – in multiple ways.

Oh Right, I’ve Seen This! It’s Not As Good As The Original

One of the most conspicuous and on-the-nose continuity references in Red Dwarf history comes as early as the second episode of Series IV, DNA, when Lister recalls while fighting the Mutton Vindaloo Beast that it was “twelve months ago to the day, the Polymorph”. 

There’s no real reason for this callback other than to lampshade the fact that, yes, the show has yet again done a story in which Lister’s Indian meal becomes a monster that tries to kill him – albeit in more distinctive and different circumstances than you’d expect that incredibly narrow and specific synopsis to allow. But for me, this reference to an older episode is a hint that the show is starting to acknowledge the burden of its history and to become a little bit more backwards-looking, both in terms of story concepts and running jokes.

Viewers might also be forgiven for experiencing a little déjà vu with one of Series IV opener Camille’s Cat-Lister scenes, with the ‘Tales Of The Riverbank: The Next Generation’ sequence feeling like a conscious attempt to repeat the success of Series III opener Backwards’ Flintstones dialogue. Perhaps it’s not technically a repeat of an earlier joke, but it’s definitely an early sign of leaning into a formula. Even Camille is itself the second time in the space of five episodes that the show’s plot has revolved around a GELF that can change its appearance – albeit with a distinctly more romantic flavour than Polymorph.

A better example of building on the past is the reappearance of Talkie Toaster in White Hole. He’s still very much the irritating presence that he was in Series 1, but now with material that’s more tailored to his specific functionality, along with an amusingly inadvertently antagonistic relationship with the newly super-smart Holly that provides the novelty of a genuinely new character dynamic among the cast – if only for a few brief minutes.

Moving on to Series V, an early episode sees Red Dwarf exhibit what is maybe the show’s first outright rehash of a pre-existing gag, just to mine it for more laughs: Lister in The Inquisitor reminding Rimmer of his afternoon on the Samaritans’ switchboard, a direct reference to the classic Lemming Sunday routine from The Brittas Empire. (Er, I mean The Last Day.)

However, in fairness this example is quite smoothly done. In context, Lister’s recall of an earlier embarrassing piece of Rimmer’s history makes sense, and Rob and Doug lessen the sense of familiarity by mixing this reprise of a past gag with other, more original “callbacks” to conversations that we never saw (in fact, it’s so organic-feeling that for years I was convinced in a Mandela-effect style that the Fiona Barrington/hand in warm compost joke was also a reference to a Series 1-2-era line), as well as chucking in general established trivia about Rimmer like Judas being his middle name or his BSc standing for Bronze Swimming Certificate.

You could also argue that Terrorform’s Taranshula scene is an attempt to recapture the underwear-based hilarity of Polymorph’s boxer shorts sequence, although lacking the outrageous sex-comedy aspect of Kryten’s groinal attachment flapping about mid-rescue. (Sadly the show wouldn’t contrive a way to make extended jokes about Cat and Lister having sex until The Promised Land special, decades later.)

But then there’s maybe the most memorable Series V callback-gag of all: Kryten in Quarantine irritatedly describing Rimmer as a “smee-heeee”, just like he did back in Camille – a joke that was already a running gag in that episode, but which becomes a full-on catchphrase for the show with its reuse here (and we’d see it used again in subsequent episodes like Gunmen Of The Apocalypse and Stoke Me A Clipper, and even many years later in Siliconia). 

Elsewhere, explicit continuity references are beginning to accumulate – like Demons & Angels’ offhand mention that the Triplicator is an adaptation of Meltdown’s Matter Paddle, or that same episode referencing Lister visiting a parallel universe, seeing time running backwards, giving birth to twins and playing pool with planets. Again, there’s no real need to refer back to these past episodes other than as a neat callback for fans – although it does make for a great setup for the Pot Noodle joke.

But as well as these callbacks, Series V is also the birthplace of a more formulaic approach to gag-writing, of the type that we’d see in full force later. A proto-Series-VI writing approach manifests in V in the form of Kryten’s repeated rebuttals of the Cat’s suggested plans, due to “just two minor drawbacks”. This joke actually originated as a one-off in Series IV’s White Hole – when Kryten told Cat that they didn’t have a power source for the lasers, and didn’t in fact have any lasers – but Rob and Doug clearly thought that it was such a good joke format that it was worth mentioning twice. Or indeed, four times – it shows up in twice in Holoship (becoming a kind of mini-running-gag within that episode) and then again in Terrorform.

But as we all know, this embrace of gag-writing formula was just the beginning. Because when Red Dwarf returned for a sixth series, formulaic jokes went from being the exception to the rule.

You’ve Just Come In And Said Exactly These Things

So, we come to Series VI. Which is, as any Red Dwarf fan knows, the series to cite when it comes to formulaic running gags and stock situations.

And in a lot of ways, it’s difficult to argue with that conventional wisdom. With its regular roll-out of Space Corps Directives, “deader than” similes, references to how fast Cat’s nasal hairs are vibrating and inventively insulting comparisons to the shape of Kryten’s head – not to mention the curiously repetitive structure of its cockpit scenes and its reliance on stumbling across derelicts to kick off each episode’s plot – Series VI seems to go out of its way to provide a formula for Red Dwarf that would allow even the most incompetent AI chatbot to put together the bare bones of an episode without too much trouble.

There are reasons for this approach. The increasing pressure of writing deadlines on Rob and Doug (along with all of their other responsibilities) is well-documented, to the extent that it’s remarkable that Series VI turned out as well as it did. So under those circumstances, why not give yourself an easy go-to formula for certain jokes, some guaranteed woofers, in the same way that other great sitcoms often did? After all, later series of Blackadder certainly weren’t averse to leaning on their extended similes or Cunning Plans to get a big laugh; Fawlty Towers had no qualms about making repeated references to Manuel’s Barcelonian heritage to reliably induce an audience reaction – why should Red Dwarf be any different?

The truth is, I don’t think that this formulaic approach is truly a bad thing, in and of itself. In particular, Rimmer’s inaccurate quoting of Space Corps Directives is actually a neat bit of continuity back to Quarantine, where Rimmer read and absorbed (albeit inaccurately) the Space Corps Directive manual, and even at that time volunteered his own ridiculous directive (about Lister flossing his teeth with the E-string of his guitar and spraying sugar puff sandwiches over his bunk). This is just a refinement of that concept into a convenient gag format that can be dropped into conversations at virtually any time.

The same is true of stuff like the jokes about Kryten’s head or shape or Cat’s “deader than” jokes. Yes, they’re somewhat repetitive and formulaic, but you still have to do the work of giving each example a funny punchline of its own – making up a ludicrous alternative Space Corps Directive or an amusing comparison to Kryten’s angular features – and let’s be fair, finding the right words to make even a formulaic joke function properly still requires some not-inconsiderable effort.

The truth is, I think that the formulaic approach to gags of Series VI is just part of a wider sense of increasing repetition and reliance on old ideas that underpins this run of six episodes. It’s the series that gave us Emohawk: Polymorph II, an episode that manages to be a sequel to three separate Red Dwarf episodes from the preceding three series, but which struggles to match any of them as it buckles under the weight of having to find amusing alt-forms for its transforming antagonist, provide hilariously geeky accoutrements for Duane Dibbley, and create sufficient opportunities for Ace to absolutely insist that the people he encounters smoke him some kippers (another Red Dwarf catchphrase that eventually became a grating as it was once delightful).

Series VI is also the series that gave us Rimmerworld, an episode that builds on Me²’s idea of multiple Rimmers leading to a horrible situation by giving us… even more multiple Rimmers leading to a horrible situation. Even a great, imaginative, award-winning episode like Gunmen of the Apocalypse still includes a Space Corps Directive gag in all but name (OK, this time, it’s an “All Nations Agreement” article) and at a key moment falls back on another “smee-heeee” from Kryten.

And a legendary story like Out Of Time can feel a little familiar in its Stasis Leak-like clash of younger and older versions of the cast and its Back To Reality-esque warping of what we know about the show’s overarching story (ironically, droid-Lister gets far closer to evoking Blade Runner than Back To Earth ever did).

Yes, it’s inevitable that a show that’s six years old will start to repeat beats to some extent, but given all of the above examples, it’s easy to see how Series VI has become a bit of a byword for Red Dwarf becoming dependent on running gags, bogged down by repetition, and overly reliant on formula.

And yet. 

And yet. 

Legion.

Because Legion is one of the best, tightest, funniest, most imaginative half-hours of Red Dwarf – maybe even of sitcoms full stop – that have ever been produced. And yet it’s a veritable check-list of all the formulaic things that fans gripe about when it comes to Series VI.

After opening talk of exploring derelicts, Starbug gets pulled towards yet another abandoned space-station to explore. Within the same sentence, Kryten is referred to as “butter-pat-head” and Cat’s nostrils begin vibrating faster than the springs on a Spaniard’s honeymoon bed. Moments later, Rimmer is misquoting a Space Corps Directive and Cat is declaring the crew deader than tank-tops (and then again, a few minutes later, deader than A-line flares with pockets in the knees).

And yet.

And yet.

And yet what Legion also does, of course, is to couple these formulaic elements with all manner of utterly fantastic original elements. This is an episode that can boast an intriguing and dramatic central concept that’s directly tied to our characters and their personalities; no less than two completely separate but equally inspired jokes about switching lights on; throwaway gold like “don’t get your double-helix in a straight”; and even a revolutionary and fundamental change to Rimmer’s hologrammatic status that allowed him to do so much more for the remainder of Red Dwarf’s long history.

These original gags and compelling concepts propel the episode forwards – and in doing so, they make the formula-based moments feel like the icing on the cake, rather than a crutch on which the show feels overly dependent. This distinction between overly relying on existing ideas and merely using them to garnish an otherwise innovative script is, I’d argue, what makes the difference between Red Dwarf’s repetition and formula feeling stale and obvious, or feeling like just one additionally fun element of a show that is otherwise still excelling. And it’s a distinction that became increasingly important in the show’s later years.

Beyond A (Running) Joke

Series VII saw arguably the most significant changes that any series of Red Dwarf has had to bear. As well as co-creator Rob Grant stepping away from the show, we also saw the mid-series departure of Rimmer, a new Kochanski, and a new approach to filming the show that removed the studio audience. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that – especially early on – Series VII clings to Red Dwarf’s history to provide some stability amid a sea of change.

So we have a first episode, Tikka To Ride, that not only directly reprises the time-drive plot from Series VI’s closer (albeit with some fresh contradictions), but couples it with an idea first jokingly mooted back in Timeslides – the Boys From The Dwarf paying a visit to JFK’s assassination and standing on the grassy knoll.

The nostalgia ramps up even further in Stoke Me A Clipper, which features the return – again – of Ace Rimmer, elevating the character to a legacy hero with almost godlike status, in a seeming response to his real-life popularity. And not only that, but Lister’s eulogy for Rimmer during his funeral reads like a “greatest hits” for the character, sending him off with references to Alexander the Great’s chief eunuch, underpants on coat-hangers, name tags on condoms and whiskers on kittens. Er, I mean, Rachel his inflatable sex-doll. It makes you realise how far we’ve come from the Lemming Sunday mention in The Inquisitor, when an entire speech is basically cribbed from funny gags from earlier, better episodes.

As Series VII goes on, it starts to feel a little more confident in its own ideas. While Ouroboros is ostensibly another throwback to the past – this time with the reappearance of Kochanski – it also marks a new status quo for the show, with a sense of a new beginning.

Or at least it would do, if the show didn’t keep resorting to further throwbacks all the time. The sense of leaning on the past persists, when – even as a new version of Kochanski is being (re)introduced to the show – we get a flashback-based Rimmer cameo, before the audience has even had a chance to miss him: a sign of insecurity that feels comparable to that time that Matt Smith’s Doctor showed up again the episode after his regeneration to literally reassure Peter Capaldi-Doctor’s companion (and the audience watching) that everything was still going to be okay.

And that’s not the end of it. Just a couple of episodes later, in Blue, we have Rimmer coming back yet again to make a flashback cameo appearance, as well as a further dream-sequence with Lister in which things get really meta via a joke about Rimmer’s Space Corps Directive jokes. Along with one of the crew members actively resenting Kochanski’s presence at all times, you could almost be forgiven for thinking that the show wasn’t entirely comfortable with moving on from the past.

But wait! Series VII has one more chunk of familiarity-bait left to offer up, with the closing episode, Nanarchy, providing an opportunity for Norman Lovett to step back into his all-time finest role of “man smiling while he rides a wave of nostalgia-fuelled applause” – a part that he’d play again before Red Dwarf is over.

By the time Series VIII rolls around, the floodgates have well and truly opened on resurrecting Red Dwarf’s past – quite literally, as it turns out, with various members of the ship’s crew (including Captain Hollister, Chen and Selby) turning up early on in Series VIII to inform everyone that Mark Williams is now too rich and famous to do the show.

Explicit continuity callbacks abound in Series VIII, with Back In The Red in particular featuring countless references to the show’s history. The positive viruses from Quarantine play a particularly significant role, tales of Lister’s past adventures are sprinkled throughout, and the general impression of the show attempting to recreate the past becomes stupidly literal with the replication of the original Series 1/2 bunkroom.

And the less said about the Dibbley family, the better.

While you could argue that Series VIII is laudably more successful than Series VII in creating a new vision for the show, and in coupling its nostalgic callbacks with genuinely new elements, it’s unfortunately a vision for the show that is largely rubbish and new elements which are largely pretty shit.

Is it any wonder that we didn’t see Red Dwarf for a decade after that?

Every Callback Is Dead, Dave (Era)

Inevitably, once a show gets as old as Red Dwarf, there’s going to be some echoing of old ideas. There’s also a simple logic to the fact that, the more episodes a show racks up, the more history there’s going to be to refer to. However, you still have choices to make about how you acknowledge the past, and how you weave it into stories that can still offer something fresh and new. But in the Dave era, the rehashes of past jokes and ideas became more explicit than ever.

The Back To Earth miniseries turned out to be an extended (budget-friendly) riff on Back To Reality – which is an approach that is perhaps forgivable for what was originally positioned as a one-off-revival, but less so for the full trio of new series that followed. In fairness, the signs from Series X were fairly promising. Most of the episodes have fairly original plots, and the most obvious callbacks to earlier Red Dwarf history manage to do something inventive with the reference.

The final sequence of The Beginning contains two of the most conspicuous back-references in Series X, but I’d argue that both of these acquit themselves by offering more than just a hollow, empty regurgitation of the past.

The gag about how the crew escaped the cliffhanger at the end of Only The Good… is maybe the most meta reference the show has attempted outside of Back To Earth, but it gets by on its cheeky charm: a quick joke about how the show isn’t going to address that gap in its history is frankly far more fun than a five-minute exposition-dump that creates an unnecessary continuity bridge between the BBC and Dave eras.

And Rimmer’s triumphant exclamation of “the slime’s coming home” – helping the end of The Beginning evoke the end of The End – is perhaps a little forced, but forgivable when you factor in the knowledge that Doug wrote this story as a possible Last Ever Episode, and wanted to create something that could act as a 2012 bookend to that First Ever Outing from 1988.

Maybe the most substantial example of Series X relying on something from the show’s past, though, is the father-son shenanigans of Fathers And Suns – which is actually a pretty good example of how to take an old idea and build on it to turn it into something new and different. Lister’s argument with himself as his own dad is a very inventive and fun way to acknowledge Ouroboros while doing something entirely fresh with the idea – although it would take a couple more series before the show reached the same heights again.

Because Series XI and XII, for all their great qualities, don’t half love to lean on Red Dwarf history a lot of the time. One trademark gag-formula is seemingly endless variations on the “they’ve taken Mr. Rimmer” joke from Holoship, in which something happens to Rimmer, and (this is brilliant), everybody else on the crew is (you’re going to crack up at this), everyone is (wait for it) – actually really happy about that!

But there are other, even clunkier rehashes of past glories in XI and XII. Perhaps most egregiously, Can Of Worms decides that it’s time for yet another Polymorph episode, without really managing to add anything extra to the mix except for an odd subplot about Cat’s virginity. For the most part, it just feels like “let’s do Polymorph again, but worse”, and its position as the finale of Series XI suggests that Doug was expecting that to result in a lot more goodwill than it ends up generating.

At least when Samsara mentions that the Karma Drive is related to the morally-oriented technology of Justice, or Kryten in Officer Rimmer reminds the titular protagonist that he has a poor history with making copies of himself, it’s an explicit acknowledgement that “yes, we’ve done this idea before”. Not that this really excuses it, but at least it lets us know that it’s a conscious retread.

(Which makes it all the stranger when Series XII’s Skipper so conspicuously avoids mentioning Ace Rimmer, when the entire back half of the episode is based around alternate dimensions in which different decisions are made. But maybe that was avoided because to even mention Ace might set up the expectation of a cameo later on, and even Skipper doesn’t want to go that far.)

In Series XI, it’s only really Give & Take that bucks the trend, standing out as another Legion-esque example of taking a formula of ideas that are well-established in Red Dwarf – whether it’s Stasis Leak’s time-travel, Ouroboros’ causality loop, the tired old exploring-a-derelict plot catalyst, or the generally Kryten-like aspect of Snacky evolving from a humble service droid to a science expert – and coupling this formula with other aspects that sparkle and delight, helping to make these old ideas feel fresh and new.

Compared to its predecessor, Series XII fares better in terms of story ideas, but worse in terms of explicit callbacks and nostalgia-bait. Especially in the final three episodes, the weight of references becomes almost unbearable at times – whether it’s Mechocracy’s old archive clips and reintroduction of Talkie Toaster, M-Corp having the actors reprise the opening of The End (but not before also rehashing the Uncle Frank story from The Last Day – with Cat even commenting “you already told us this story!”), or the apparently endless references to the fucking Om Song.

And as for the second half of Skipper… well, the tone is set by Norman Lovett again getting a round of applause simply for turning up as Holly. Yes, there’s a fun play on the “everybody’s dead, Dave” routine from The End, but even that feels like more of a command performance for longtime fans than a genuinely inventive twist on an old gag. 

That feeling of history-for-its-own sake is compounded by a slew of further cameos and callbacks – Captain Hollister, the original Red Dwarf model, the old Series 1/2 sleeping quarters – that seeming exist only to push our nostalgia buttons and give us a warm fuzzy feeling, rather than actually building on that history with anything new. (We should probably be thankful that Ace didn’t turn up after all, as it would probably just be more of the same.)

So which episode saves the day in this respect? Which one runs against the grain of Series XII and actually does something genuinely innovative with a past concept?

In many ways, it’s the least likely hero of them all. Because it’s only bloody Timewave.

Yes, in a twist greater than Chubby Checker teaming up with John Travolta while Katy Carmichael from SPACED enjoys a lemon-and-lime-flavoured spiral ice lolly in the background, it’s perennial punching-bag Timewave that actually features the smartest and most innovative resurrection of an old Red Dwarf gag in the whole of Series XII.

Its late-in-the-game subversion of the Space Corps Directive gag structure – with a swift pre-interruption “Shut up, Kryten” from Rimmer after he knowingly gets his citation wrong – is a genuine delight, and one that proves that you can do more with these old ideas than just mindlessly rehash them for a bit of nostalgia-fuelled audience recognition.

(Although even with this example, you can argue that the G&T Dwarfcast sting from Chris Barrie got there first.)

David, David Lister, Lister Listy, Lister Listy

We can be thankful, then, that the final Red Dwarf episode of the Dave era (for now anyway, pending any further announcements from ActualKryten on Twitter), The Promised Land, seems to acknowledge the weaknesses of empty nostalgia that we saw in XI and XII, and take a different approach.

Because while The Promised Land might at first glance appear to be another nostalgia trip – drawing on elements from the very earliest days of Red Dwarf, like Lister’s supposed godhood and the fate of the other Cat people – it does so in a way that builds on these concepts and does something interesting and new with them, rather than simply rehashing them for a quick hit of recognition. (Although it certainly has small moments that do that too, like Rimmer “going through the gears” of all his classic outfits as he takes on his new Diamond Light mode.)

But in the main, The Promised Land feels less like someone ticking off callbacks to Red Dwarf history, and more like the work of a writer who wants to take some of the show’s lesser-examined ideas and approach them from a new angle. So we get a more complex society of Cat people, and a genuinely interesting look at what their (misplaced) faith in Lister means to the true believers; we get an exploration of existential questions around Rimmer’s status as a hologram that the show has avoided until now, but which make for some surprisingly compelling moments of pathos; and we get a deadpan take on a rebooted Holly that (for a substantial chunk of the story) actually gives Norman Lovett something new to do after 30 years, and also sets up a triumphant return of classic-Holly that feels funnier and more lively than anything he’s done since Series 2.

Even the relationship between Rimmer and Lister – the very core of the show, that has anchored it since the first moment of the first scene of the first episode – gets a fresh examination in The Promised Land, with the instant-classic “moonlight” scene that shows that Red Dwarf still has something new to say about its characters after more than three decades.

If anything gives me hope for the show’s future, it’s The Promised Land – because it seems to represent a tacit acknowledgement that if you’re going to repeat yourself, if you’re going to look backwards, if you’re going to mine past episodes for ideas, then there has to be a point to that; there has to be something more than just an empty rehash.

By all means refer to the show’s rich history when it makes sense, by all means mine laughs from running gags, and by all means feature callbacks. But make these the additional garnish that the formulaic gags were in Legion, the perfect finishing touch that heightens an already great script – not a crutch, or a substitute for fresh ideas and new thinking.

Because, like Legion before it, The Promised Land shows that the current version of Red Dwarf excels most spectacularly when it’s doing new things with the characters and concepts that we’ve come to know and love over the years, taking these old ingredients and combining them with new ones to make an exciting new meal, rather than a plate of reheated leftovers.

That’s how Red Dwarf can reconcile its history with its future: by giving us new ideas that feel like they build on everything great that’s come before, rather than leaning on it.