Author Tom Salinsky has already blessed Geek Native with a guest article on how an assumption by an accountant was wrong and happily led to Red Dwarf getting on British TV in the first place. There would have been no sci-fi comedy if there had been no error.
I don’t have the hardback of the book due out this month, but I do have a fragile soft and marked Unedited Proof Not For Re-Sale to enjoy! Thank you to all who were involved in getting me a copy.
It’s a book of two unequal parts. I really enjoyed Tom’s Geek Native article, and the book’s first part is exactly like that. There’s an introduction, a notes section of a few pages, and then a Part Zero: Shipwrecked and Comatose.
It’s in Part Zero that we join the dots from Spitting Image and Dark Star and get to Red Dwarf. I note with glee that Dark Star is on Amazon Video to rent for a few quid, and I’ll have to watch it. It’s a sci-fi comedy by Dan O’Bannon and horror-master John Carpenter. O’Bannon later did Alien and Carpenter Halloween.
It’s a great read!
Then, Part One begins, simply called The Making of Series 1. Salinsky brings so much together so clearly and so tightly that you’re engrossed and might wonder what’s left for the rest of the book.
Did removing the large H stuck to his forehead after filming hurt Chris Barrie? Yes! Did the whole thing nearly fail to get on TV after all? Yes, again.
It’ll feel like no time because these eye-openers, head nodders and pub ‘Did you know’ for later swim by, and suddenly we’re in Salinsky’s Impressions of Series I. This format takes us to Impressions of Series VI.
There’s a “Making Of” for each Series in which Tom finds more stories, more history, more links and surfaces more anecdotes. I started to skip to these rather than read through each episode in turn.
You’ll have guessed that the rest of the book is about episodes and the seasons they’re in. We start each episode with a title, an air date, a list of actors and how many people watched. For example, the season one Balance of Power aired on the 29th of February 1988 and was watched by 4.25 million people. Red Dwarf was really popular!
Tom Salinsky also gives each episode a star rating. Balance of Power gets 2/5 stars. The author is a fan, but not a slavish one.
There’s a summary and stories for each episode, followed by a “The one with” single-line reminder. This works great. For example, Balance of Power is where Lister seems to pass his officer’s exams. I bet you remember it now.
Just as there’s “The one with” each episode also has;
- “That Rimmer’s a solid guy” – where we can spot that Rimmer isn’t really a hologram.
- “There’s a time and a place” – to point out timey-whiney stuff.
- “Influences, references and rip-offs” – to examine where the idea came from.
- “Best gag” – which must have been hard to pick for some episodes.
- “Worst visual effect” – I love the show but, yeah, not hard to pick one for each episode!
- “Continuity is for smegheads” – no idea how I missed so many of these.
- “Remastered” – what’s changed in editions
Highlights
I love Discovering the TV Series (Volume 1: 1988 to 1993) as a reference book. It’s a good did-you-know read and then transforms into something worth keeping as a databank for Red Dwarf fans.
Some of my highlights are;
In episode 1, season 2, Kryten, we discover how and why that first android mask was so bad.
I remember the brief glimpse of a rubber snake in Polymorph episode 3, season 3.
I thought the GELF episode, actually called Camille, became Casablanca, and clearly, I’m not the only one! Isn’t it great to find someone else who agrees?
It’s handy there’s an index in the back! The idea makes sense; remember something cool, want to check which episode it is in, use the thorough index and jump to the right page.
Remember that I have a weird pre-print version of the book, but my index sometimes has different numbers. I’m sure that’s a glitch, and the benefits of being able to look up Flibble and then read about the episode in which the deadly puppet is featured are fantastic.
Yeah, I’m listing the index as one of my highlights.
Overall
I’m fond of Red Dwarf and would have been upset at Discovering the TV Series (Volume 1: 1988 to 1993) if it was off the mark. Phew. It’s not.
Tom Salinsky is sometimes a harsh judge, especially with the star ratings, but I’ll admit it seems fair. Not every episode has the same quality, so they can’t all be five stars.
Equally, I can only see people who are fond of British sci-fi classics finding much time for the book. I was impressed at the number of watchers the show once had, so perhaps there are still plenty of fans out there worth keeping in mind as we move into book gift-buying season.
Geek Native doesn’t do star reviews; I got fed up with them years ago, but let’s sum up this unofficial history of Red Dwarf by rating four out of a potential five Skutters as functional and sane.
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Disclaimer: My copy was provided free to review and may be slightly different from the final retail edition.
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