22 today, and all that…

My old man watched the first ep. I was a month shy of my third birthday. If I recall, I first caught the show around Series II/III.

Happy Birthday RD, you old git.

I first watched Red Dwarf in 1991 – there were some repeats of series 3 or 4 on (it was definitely a bunk scene with Rimmer in those awful green braces!) and I remember being 6 years old and watching it on an old, tiny black and white TV my grandad had passed on to me.

Seb – loving the avatar. Who drew you that?

> Surely you mean those rather fetching dark grey braces?

Indeed, for the first three years of my Red Dwarf watching, the outside of the ship was as Ocean Grey as the inside….

I first saw Red Dwarf in 1973. It was the episode where Lister and Petersen spend the day desperately trying to avoid hearing the score of the London Jets game so they can watch the highlights later. Classic stuff.

First broadcast episode I saw was Backwards. The show had me at the scroller.

For some reason that posted twice :S

Well I only know the date because I know my first episode was Holoship. I’d been watching Fry & Laurie in the same timeslot for weeks prior and when they aired the final episode, there was a trailer for Red Dwarf “next week at 9pm”… I think it was on Monday nights (from memory, I’d have to look it up which I can’t be arsed doing).

I then watched the rest of the series except Inquisitor which I missed bar the final 5 seconds, hence my belief for a long time that Lister had three arms (hey, everyone else had *something* about them!).

I also thought Cat was a vampire based on the trailer (obviously until I became aware his name was “Cat”) and that’s pretty much why I ended up watching Red Dwarf in the first place. Having been on a bit of a vampire kick (I’d somehow watched and taped both Fright Night movies on TV prior to this – I had only just turned 9 at the time!) I thought “ooh cool, a show about a vampire”. Yeah, I thought Cat was the primary protagonist.

Anyway… watched it, loved it, bought all the videos that were available, watched every subsequent series at first airing, taped the entire Red Dwarf Genesis repeat run, all the books, Smeg Up tapes, magazines, everything… and at some point between series VI and VII became a lapsed fan and sold the lot, only to resume my obsession at the premiere of VII and regret parting ways with my entire Red Dwarf collection.

SO there you have it: “Red Dwarf & I – A History” by Carl Wheatley.

>Well I only know the date because I know my first episode was Holoship.

Likewise, I know the date because I know it’s Camille.

(although I STILL remember it as being Justice, even though I KNOW I saw Camille on original broadcast. Weird.)

My first episode was a repeat of Pete: Part 1, shown to me by my big brother, who insisted – “Red Dwarf’s really funny, you’ll really like it. Oh, it’s the dinosaur one on tonight, that’s the best one!”

My first ep was the first broadcast of Backwards. I couldn’t tell you the exact date, although I’m pretty sure someone on this board can.
I was a student at the time so it must have been around 1989/1990 – too bloody long ago, if you ask me.

Future Echoes. A Friday in January (?) 1994. I was 13. Was pretty much convinced that it was the cleverest thing I’d ever seen. Anyone who disses Series 1 can bite my big one. Spent the rest of the year buying all the videos, despite the fact that the episodes were being broadcast each and every week. Happy days.

My first episode was the 1st broadcast of Future Echoes. I had seen The End listed
in the paper and thought, It’ll probably be shit I think i’ll go out instead.
Tuned into Future Echoes because everyone at school had been talking about The End for a week, being a brilliant new show, while I had sat around thinking, Dam I wished I hadn’t gone out that week. :-)