So What Is It?

Posted by Dave on 25th May 2024, 14:10

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.

This Guy’s Pure Class

Features

Posted by Dave on 27th July 2022, 14:52

It's a rare, nay freak occurrence for us to publish guest articles, but when Dave Wallace got in touch with this effort, we made an exception for three reasons. 1) Dave is a long-standing and very funny member of the community, and it's the community that continues to make G&T worth visiting; 2) We're in one of our shit phases for written content at the moment; 3) It's really bloody good. Enjoy Dave's musings on one of Red Dwarf's most important but lesser documented themes.

Red Dwarf is a sitcom about a lot of things – space, science, weird cosmic phenomena, and the consequences of having a three-million-year old bum, a creature evolved from a cat and a hologram simulation of a long-dead jobsworth as the only sentient beings left in existence.

But strip away its sci-fi trappings, and at the heart of the show is a concept that’s as universal as it is timeless: class.