How did did you discover Red Dwarf?

I have a love for popular science fiction in general (in particular Doctor Who and Blake’s 7). I probably learned of its existence through cultural osmosis, and then decided to look up the synopsis on Wikipedia. 

Eventually, I craved something new to watch, and gave it a shot. Somewhere in the early 2020s. 

First episode I saw was Terrorform, specifically the scene with Rimmer being oiled. My dad and I had been to the working men’s club – him for a pint, me for an orange juice (28 I was) – and come home and put the TV on. That scene was on as we turned it on. I’d been into comedy from a young age, thanks to dad always watching HIGNFY, Monty Python repeats, Blackadder, playing tapes of the Goon Show in the car and so on, so we sat and watched it and enjoyed it and decided to tune in next week. Whether it was shortly afterwards or the following year – I don’t know if this was the original airing or a repeat run – we also watched VI, and I became a definite fan. A friend of mum’s had the first two series on VHS and lent me them, which I duly devoured. I taped VI off the TV on its second repeat run, when Rimmerworld was replaced with Dimension Jump, and watched that video more times than I care to remember. VII followed, and VIII, and I became gradually disappointed in things, although had I-III Remastered tapes and IV and V off-airs to keep me happy during that period. 

I caught The Inquisitor on first broadcast, liked it and watched the rest of series V, followed by most of the repeat run of IV that came soon after. Then by the time VI was on I was a fully-fledged fan and vividly remember watching each new episode as it came out as well as picking up all the books etc.

(I eventually caught up on the whole thing in full via the VHSs and the ’94 repeat run.)

I really can’t remember to be honest.  I remember seeing bits and pieces on TV, then at some point I had some tapes (six of the best, Smeg Ups) then series VII was airing and I was getting more tapes as they were released. Eventually I was hunting down other episodes, buying remastered in place of the originals as I think they’d stopped printing the originals by then.  I was using Red Dwarf as the basis of projects at school, Red Dwarf night was on, then VIII

I was born in the late 80s and was very much a “fan” by the end of the mid to late 90s but I couldn’t really pinpoint the moment or how exactly. Other than someone must have realised I liked the show to buy me those VHS tapes I had.

We didn’t have a TV until the turn of the Millennium, and the only sci-fi any of my family were into was Gerry Anderson, so there was no chance of me finding Red Dwarf as a child.  A friend introduced me to it in the early 2010s (along with Stargate among other things – though I had found TNG and VOY myself by then – and I introduced her to another few things) but I didn’t know of any way to watch it at home myself, although I do have very vague memories of watching some of the Dave era.  I was becoming properly ill when XI and XII came out so there were episodes I had literally no memory of watching, either because I missed them or I watched but they completely fell out of my head.  And the ones I did recognise slightly when later doing my own full watchthrough, it was only certain moments I recognised.

Sometime before the pandemic hit I caught a couple of episodes on TV, Polymorph and Bodyswap, and I suddenly remembered how much I’d enjoyed RD when I watched it with my friend several years prior.  It turned out they were all available to stream and I dove right in.  Looking up something about the production or behind-the-scenes led me here.

So although it was those two III episodes I happened to catch on TV that reminded me about RD, my first episode was definitely The End.

I’m younger than all of you and American so my exposure was my dad renting through the entire series on Netflix back when they were only DVDs, circa summer 2007 (he’d first read the novels in the mid 90s without realizing they were based on a TV show and then caught a few episodes on PBS over the years). I vaguely remember seeing the “Hol rock” bit from Series II but at some point in Series III, definitely by Polymorph, I started actively watching with him and I got really into it. I don’t remember which episodes I saw and didn’t see the first go around but I know I missed some here or there. I went and stuck Series 1 on the queue after we got through VIII and then my dad decided to just start getting me the DVDs rather than have my clog up the Netflix queue renting the entire show a second time. I first got Series 1 and IV together. I don’t remember the overall order but the last one I got was VII, which had achieved a sort of mythical status in my brain as a result of having to wait for it. I had also missed Duct Soup the first time around, making it the last original BBC episode for me to watch.

I went through a phase where VII and VIII were my favorites for which I apologize. I also got a copy of Bodysnatcher before they all burst into flames. I feel like I was watching just those original 52 shows with no sign of a return for years but realistically Back to Earth was airing within a year of me having collected all eight original series. 

I feel like I “grew up” with the Dave era in a deeper sense than I did with the BBC shows just because I got those in essentially one big block while I got to see new episodes airing every few years from age 13 to 24. Every cycle I was following or participating in the online discourse at G&T which made it all the more exciting. I’m more attached the original BBC episodes obviously but the Dave episodes have a special place in my heart because the online space here was such a big part of my life while they were on.

Come on, GNP. You gotta manage one more special. I wanna ride the hype train one more time.

Psirens should have been the first episode I saw in full if the BBC hadn’t skipped it in the ’94 repeat run. Then for some reason I didn’t catch it on the ’96 repeats of VI when I watched most of them again, so it ended up being the last of the old episodes I saw and I’m less close to it as a result. It feels a bit wrong and like a series VI.5 or something.

Psirens should have been the first episode I saw in full if the BBC hadn’t skipped it in the ’94 repeat run. Then for some reason I didn’t catch it on the ’96 repeats of VI when I watched most of them again, so it ended up being the last of the old episodes I saw and I’m less close to it as a result. It feels a bit wrong and like a series VI.5 or something.

Psirens is an odd one for me too because I read the script in Primordial Soup before I saw the episode, but not before the original broadcast like some people did. Thanks to its omission from the ’94 repeats it was the last bubble episode I saw. I think it was ’95 when VI came out on VHS but I don’t remember having Byte 1 then, so it was probably one of the two times it was repeated on BBC2 in ’96 when I eventually saw it.

My older brother recorded Series I and II and we’d get up early to watch it before school. 
Only hazy memories of that as I would’ve been 4 or 5.

Next encounter was the repeat of V (or the back end of it). Watched because friends at school (among their number Ryan Gage / Hitler) were big fans and I needed to know what the hell was going on when they’d reenact scenes in the playground.

I set the video for The Inquisitor but we had a power cut after the first five minutes.  There was no episode the following week cos of football or snooker or something, so for a fortnight I watched that opening five mins over and over.
Then finally it was the remainder of V followed by purchase of all the videos.
I remember us playing Terrorform in the playground and running away from an imaginary Lust Monster.

My dad recorded all (most) of the show on bootleg VHS and I just had those available to watch at any time, so naturally I stuck one in when I was about 8 or whatever and never looked back. We had the official Series I Byte 1 video and Smeg Outs (Ups?), and for some reason we were missing Epideme/Nanarchy and some episodes off the end of Series VIII, for better or worse. I didn’t see Only The Good until a few years later and Epideme/Nanarchy until much later. We got IV on DVD because our tape of it was deteriorating and playing in slow motion and being all kinds of fucked up by that point. Like they were being affected by the White Hole the entire series.

Providing you avoided talking about politics, he was an absolute hoot.

My Dad put it on one night after being told about it by a friend in work.  He got my attention away from whatever I was doing at the time and told me that I might enjoy this show we were about to watch, so I settled in for my first viewing of Red Dwarf.

I was around 9 or so at the time and this was unlike anything I’d every seen.  It was a comedy show that looked like something out of 2000ad, the characters were funny, the theme tune was cool.  I was onboard from almost the first second I saw it.

So you can imagine my childish disappointment when all the characters died and it turned out that it had been a computer game all along.  Had I tuned in just in time to see the last episode of this amazing new show?  I was gutted.

Thankfully the twists and turns of Back to Reality played out and the loveable crew ended the episode in one piece, off for more adventures.  I was enthralled.

A pocket money purchase of Series IV Byte Two on VHS from Woolworths that weekend sealed the deal.

Thankfully the twists and turns of Back to Reality played out and the loveable crew ended the episode in one piece, off for more adventures.  I was enthralled.

Back to Reality probally isn’t the best first ever episode no, but hey if it did the job…

BTR was also my first episode. I was seven, and I liked the fact that the man had funny teeth.

Genuinely can’t remember, it’s just always been there. I don’t remember seeing the first series for the first time, either. I would guess I probably “got on” around series 3 or 4.

My earliest Red Dwarf memory outside of watching the show is seeing the Smegazine with the image of them from ‘Justice’ on the front and recognising it as such. 

Any good episode is a good first episode

Hang on, are you saying that Pete Part Two is a good episode, or just that if it were a good episode, if would still be a bad first episode because it’s a “Part Two”?

Asking the real questions.

Also, I always want to reply to the title of this thread with “Was it all fossilised and stuff?”
Which is also a very good joke from Red Dwarf and part of a very good scene in an episode of the same.

I was living and working in the United States when Red Dwarf first aired and it wasn’t until 1993 or 1994, on a return to the UK, that – switching channels one night – I came in this middle of this programme, clearly a science-fiction programme, and at once to my horror and outrage what I thought I saw was a rip-off of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

I was already reaching for the telephone to call my lawyer when something happened that made me laugh and it was something that certainly would not have happened on The Next Generation.

So… I left the telephone where it was and I went on watching and, I think within a few moments, I had got what the show was and, and I was laughing all the time.

For me, what made it then and what continues to make this show SO appealing is that it is at times so close to the television series that I recorded for seven years and so delightfully mmmakes a mock of the kind of show that I was doing.

I- I sometimes wish that we could have introduced some of that same wild ironic humour into The Next Generation.

I, on the other hand, had only watched ‘The Next Generation’ and found myself wondering where the inspiration for a character like Data could possibly have come from, which lead me to ‘Red Dwarf’. 

My parents were fans before I was born. I grew up watching it from before I understood any of the jokes and possibly before I understood the English language. It’s fun to look back on the earlier series and trying to remember what Littleworm Jim made of certain jokes. I remember not getting ‘souper’ in particular, along with thinking I really liked the look of these Pot Noodle things.

Sometimes if I’m going to a gig and only want a light bite to eat in my hotel room, I’ll settle for a Pot Noodle. 

King Size Chicken & Mushroom Pot Noodle is my go-to snack meal rn. A friend recently introduced me to the concept of putting extra soy sauce in, which makes them even better. Some of the other flavours (particularly bacon from memory) are as bad as Rob & Doug make them out to be generally, though.