Do you believe in miracles, you sexy thing? Because, like George McIntyre, Arnold Rimmer and your man Jesus H. Christ, reddwarf.co.uk has returned from the dead. Three and a bit years since it was mothballed, Red Dwarf finally has an official online presence once more. I doubt it will be quite the same as before – I’m not anticipating weekly updates come rain or shine, like the good old days – but this is very much a positive move. It means that once again there’s a proper place to give us reliable news on forthcoming releases and behind the scenes developments, rather than having to hope a fan spots something in the wild, or spending our time debunking tabloid rumours. We imagine updates will be ad hoc from now on, but it’s just lovely to have the old girl back up and running.

The catalyst for the site rising from the dead is presumably the impending release of Sin Bin Island, which is the main new update. It’s out on Thursday week, and Doug will be marking the occasion with a Reddit AMA this Saturday 6th, and a launch party at Waterstone’s Piccadilly on September 16th, at which we’re promised that at least one Red Dwarf cast member will be in attendance. The front page of the site also has a new intro, which mentions the upcoming boxset, soundtrack release (which it confusingly refers to as “Red Dwarf Audible Collection“, when it’s not exclusive to Audible) and official convention. Somewhat optimistically, it describes the boxset as containing all the shows “so far”. While we’re on the subject, the listings have updated with a new image that reveals a little more about what to expect. On the right, you can see what looks like a fairly hefty booklet, which is a promising sign. But oof, it’s frustrating that the first folder of discs contains Series 1-VII and Just The Smegs, while Series VIII is in the second set. It’s undoubtedly due to needing an even split of discs across the two, but it would be so much more satisfying to swap JTS and VIII around.

But anyway, welcome back TOS! If I were to be picky (and this is G&T, so I am), I’d say the sidebar could do with a refresh – you can’t currently watch The Promised Land on UKTV Play, signing up for the Quarantine Commentaries is probably not worth it these days, and you probably don’t want to be flogging your old boxset when the new one is out in just over a month. Also, technically there are a few updates that have been removed from the site in this relaunch. Two of which were the announcements of the site’s downtime and its return in archival form, but more significantly we’re now missing the statement that confirmed the legal kerfuffle had come to an end. So we’ll continue to maintain our own unofficial archive for the timebeing, and keep hoping beyond hope that the missing bits of older content are restored to the main site at some point.