Draft To Reality Features Posted by Ian Symes on 23rd May 2025, 12:52 It's the best episode of Red Dwarf of all time. Undefeated in all four of our anniversary polls so far, more often than not the winner of other wide-ranging surveys by the Smegazine and Better Than Life, and even given a special BBC2 repeat screening under the title The Best Ever Red Dwarf. It happened to be the first episode I ever saw, probably the one I've rewatched the most, and quite possibly the single piece of media in the entire history of human civilisation that I'm most familiar with. I could quote every line of dialogue word for word, perfectly duplicating the intonation. I can picture each and every visual effect in my mind's eye. It taught me the words "seppuku", "twonk" and "calamari". After 33 years, what more could we possibly learn about this episode? Well... I recently came into possession of a rather special script. Dated 1991. Series V. Show One. Draft One. Back To Reality. The very first draft of the very best episode of our favourite show. Only a small handful of deleted scenes are included on the DVD. A version of the script was released as part of the Primordial Soup book, but that was a much later draft, and doesn't contain anything that wasn't either in the episode or on the DVD. We know a lot about this episode, but we don't know how it started out, before it was honed to perfection. Let's do this. Read more →
Script Extracts: A Glimpse of a Shadow Features Posted by Ian Symes on 20th November 2018, 12:01 Well, in the absence of any Series XIII news, and with no Bluray until the new year, we're scrabbling for crumbs. We'll take whatever morsels of intrigue are thrown our way, but when our friend and loyal G&Ter Jonathan "Jonsmad" Young recently got in touch to draw our attention to The Prop Gallery, we didn't realise how intriguing these particular morsels would turn out to be. It's one of those places that sells props, costumes and other film and TV memorabilia, often at somewhat eye-watering prices. In the past, such items have included Red Dwarf scripts, and a quick search reveals that twelve have been sold in total. They're all long gone now, but the listings remain online. As well as providing details of their condition and provenance - many have come from the personal collection of the late, great Peter Wragg - what we're really interested in are those tantalising images of sample pages. Read more →
Better Than Reality Features Posted by John Hoare on 30th July 2017, 19:56 "I alter people's perception of reality." - Dr. Hypnosis One recurring theme of Red Dwarf has always been the rather tenuous grip on reality our crew have. Whether it's the Total Immersion Videogame of Better Than Life, the hallucinations suffered in Back to Reality, those damn reality pockets in Out of Time - to name three of many - perception of reality is something which Grant Naylor return to time and time again. What's interesting, however, is that Red Dwarf is far from the first time Grant Naylor have explored this idea. In fact, we can trace their fascination with it right back to their very first solo writing credit: the first episode of Radio 4 sketch show Cliché, broadcast on the 16th March 1981. I present to you the strange adventure of Dr. Hypnosis: his real name... Dr. Hypnosis. Read more →
DwarfCast 32 – Back to Reality Commentary DwarfCasts Posted by Jonathan Capps on 26th October 2011, 08:26 Subscribe to DwarfCasts: RSS • iTunes LIVE from RUISLIP, it's the BEST Red Dwarf episode EVER, talked over by A PACK OF CUNTS Read more →
We’re still in the game! News Posted by Jonathan Capps on 13th March 2007, 15:28 In an article that could well win awards for featuring the biggest leap in logic ever, PrisonPlanet.com has been theorising on the similarities between Sony's new online community software Home with the fictional virtual reality concepts seen in The Matrix, Red Dwarf and Phil Dick’s Time Out of Joint along with their less than desirable situations and concequences. Read more →
