We jump forward ten years with our next Red Dwarf review, the “Back to Earth” special, or specials I guess, I do remember watching over several nights originally, its just the Blu-ray is edited into one feature. It’s an odd one, mainly because there’s no live audience or even a laughter track, which makes a lot of jokes come off as flat or unfunny because you’re just used hearing it. Personally I always dislike “characters come to our Earth and meet the actors who play them” storylines, it’s one of my least favourite plots of any medium, so that also strikes it down in my book. You know what though? It’s still better than most of Series VIII! Let’s take a look…

*sigh*, here we go then. This is the series I’ve been “dreading” rewatching for this run-down of Red Dwarf as I kind of liked it when it aired (though more for discussing new episodes of Red Dwarf with my friends than the episodes themselves) and then it went down in my eyes with each rewatch, to the point where I got to my first DVD watch I thought “I doubt I’ll ever watch that again…” and yet here we are with the Blu-ray version for the sake of this blog. I’d love to say the series has gone up in my estimation in the previous years, but nope. One episode still stands out as fun though flawed, but the series as a whole is definitely the low point of Red Dwarf. Oh well: let’s take a look, then THIS time I really won’t rewatch it again!

Red Dwarf’s seventh series is an odd one for me, and indeed for the show in general. Rob Grant left the writing team leaving Doug Naylor as the sole writer and his vision of the show was a lot more… cinematic and leaned heavier on the sci-fi than previous series. In terms of Series VII it works more than it doesn’t but I can’t say the same for the next two… Also VII was the first series I watched as it aired rather than through repeats / VHS tapes, so it also holds a special place in my heart for the reason… Overall though it’s a mixed bag, so let’s take a look!