Red Dwarf V retrospective: Back to reality
Published: Saturday 5th October 2024
Often considered the comedy's greatest series, Red Dwarf V places us at the very heart of the golden era of the show. More than a successful sitcom, this was now event television. Audiences were properly invested in these characters and as fans throughout the world started to hold their own Red Dwarf conventions, you'd imagine that at the pinnacle of its success, the show would have been cruising along behind the scenes. However, it wasn't all plain sailing. Red Dwarf's creators, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, even doubted the success of what many fans consider to be the greatest episode ever.
The series had lost its previous director, and this was a blow. Ed Bye had been with the show since the very start, but he left as he had agreed to helm his wife Ruby Wax's television show, The Full Wax.
New director Juliet May (who would go on to direct Miranda) had no previous experience directing sci-fi and was young and learning the ropes of directing. Naylor (along with support from Grant) took on directing duties alongside her for most of the series, eventually going solo for the episode Quarantine. May left the production before its completion. It was a difficult period for the series. Red Dwarf now needed a new director mid-production, and although Rob Grant was keen for the writers themselves to take on the role, Doug Naylor was more hesitant. Reminiscing for the making of Series V documentary, he revealed his thoughts at the time: "Oh my God! Are we biting off more than we can chew? And also, what would the reaction be? People would think, 'Oh, it's just egos gone absolutely berserk.'"
One thing they all agreed on was that there was nobody who knew the show better than the writers themselves. Craig Charles commented: "We had to support Rob and Doug, but there was no change really. They did very well. I didn't know why they didn't continue doing it!"
On top of their new directing duties, the pressure of the episodes' timeslot was becoming a struggle for the writers. The BBC had strict limits of a 29 minute and 30 second running time with absolutely no overrun allowed, and keeping within these confines was proving no easy task when weaving a complex sci-fi tale.
The series had seen a budget increase, but that was only of around £6,000. As a result, funds were still limited. Cat's new wardrobe for the series consisted of colouring in his old zebra coat from the previous series with "forty felt-tip pens" to provide him with a dramatic new yellow zebra coat.
Series V was broadcast in early 1992 and consisted of six episodes:
Holoship
The Inquisitor
Terrorform
Quarantine
Demons And Angels
Back To Reality
It would prove to be a Rimmer-centric series. Holoship was probably the most serious representation of Arnold Rimmer as a character that we'd seen since the first two series. But it was also his most sympathetic portrayal. His romance with Jane Horrocks's Nirvanah Crane was strangely believable. Oddly enough, this was not her only role as the unlikely love interest to a largely unheroic and repressed lead in a British sci-fi comedy series, as she became Arthur Dent's soulmate in the continuation of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy on Radio 4 in 2004.
Holoship also gave Rimmer what many believe to be his greatest line ever, possibly Red Dwarf's most recognisable line too, as he says goodbye to his crewmates for what he believes to be the final time:
Look, I'm not much good at big speeches and I know I haven't always been an easy guy to get on with... and I know that given the choice, I probably wouldn't have chosen you as friends. But, I just wanna say, that over the years... I, have come to regard you... as people... I met.
Craig Charles expressed his annoyance that Rimmer got a girlfriend in that episode when all Lister got to do was eat a cigarette during his confrontation with Don Warrington's Commander Binks, which unsurprisingly tasted disgusting and wasn't even in the script anyway. 'I don't know why I did that,' Craig said. 'It was horrible.' Danny John-Jules and Warrington would eventually work together again, some years later in Death In Paradise, where ironically Danny plays a character called Dwayne/Duane in what we can assume was the latter show's way of paying tribute to Red Dwarf.
Rimmer's gradual switch from being a complete gimboid to actually quite a decent guy deep-down, crumbling somewhat under his neurotic behaviour, had been building subtly over the years, but it came to the forefront in this series. This is illustrated perfectly in Terrorform, where Rimmer's neurosis literally took on a form of its own. By the final gag, we, as an audience, end up feeling a little bit sorry for him.
However, the most instantly recognisable episode from Series V is of course Quarantine, which gave us that famous image of Rimmer in a gingham dress (and army boots) holding Mr Flibble. The Mr Flibble puppet was bought from a charity shop, meant to be used merely as a place holder for rehearsals before they swapped it for a more monstrous looking creature. However, the new candidates for Mr Flibble were all rejected, until eventually everyone decided that they'd become quite fond of the little penguin. But here's one for all the Whovians out there: could Mr Flibble be a reference to Frobisher the Penguin? - A small shapeshifting detective (who just preferred to live as a penguin) who was companion to multiple Doctors in a series of comic strips throughout the 1980s (and later audio adventures in the 2000s)? We can't rule it out.
Robert Llewellyn mentioned in the DVD documentary (2004) that he was yet to attend a sci-fi convention without seeing somebody dressed in that infamous garb. Some more dedicated cosplayers have even managed to get hold of a Mr Flibble puppet. There was an increasing appetite for Red Dwarf merchandise when Series V aired, and even things as random as Polly Pockets (miniature children's playsets) were being made of the Red Dwarf crew.
During the 2020 covid lockdown, Dave repeated the episode with a cast commentary (as part of the build up to the special The Promised Land). In terms of fan popularity, it has consistently ranked as one of the greatest episodes of Red Dwarf, whilst Demons And Angels remains the most overlooked of this series and probably the least repeated. This may be due to its horror elements. After all, it did have Lister apparently eating a spider in it. But Red Dwarf was never about playing it safe, consistently pushing the boundaries of what a sitcom could be.
There isn't really a stronger series in terms of storytelling than this, either. In particular, The Inquisitor is an episode that feels as if it could have been a big-budget movie. The idea was of a rogue Simulant, who has lived until the end of time itself, only to discover that there is neither God, nor an afterlife. Therefore, the only thing a species must do, is live a worthwhile life. And so the Simulant appoints itself as judge, jury and executioner, erasing people from history if he hasn't deemed them to have had a worthy enough existence. It is such a clever plotline that if Hollywood had got its hands on it, it would likely have ended up as the next gritty sci-fi summer blockbuster, possibly starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Kryten is at his most noble in his fight against the inquisitor: "But I am not human, and neither are you, and it is not our place to judge them. I wonder why you do?"
The characterisation was so on point. Lister was especially brilliant in Back To Reality. His turmoil at the realisation that he wasn't "real" culminated in his inability to cope with his "reality" as a murderous gang boss. The episode is of course almost unanimously considered the greatest to date, continually winning fan polls. It may therefore come as quite a surprise to learn that Rob and Doug had serious reservations about it.
The studio audience reaction to the episode had been surprisingly low-key - perhaps due to a large number of retakes that had to be done. With the writers' new responsibilities as co-directors, this concerned Grant especially. Feeling disconcerted with the daunting prospect of patching together an episode that he felt hadn't worked, he stepped back from production for a few days, whilst Naylor worked on the edit. Eventually, Doug managed to convince Rob that after it had been cut together it was a good episode. It proved, of course, that far from being just a 'good' episode it was in fact a great one.
A scenario like this really proves that doubt can trick anyone into believing that something truly great is going badly - as well as the importance of a really good edit! Perhaps its dramatic moments, when viewing the raw, uncut footage, just appeared too dramatic. The scene in the car park with Lenny Von Dohlen (of Twin Peaks fame) was pure drama, and brilliantly acted too. But it was the true skill of the Red Dwarf writers that pushed the drama just far enough, before bringing it back to a joke.
Retrospectively, it's otherwise near-impossible to see how anyone could have thought this episode wouldn't work, particularly as it introduced us to another of Red Dwarf's most iconic characters, Cat's ultra-nerdy alter-ego. Somehow, all Danny John-Jules had to do to get a laugh was utter the immortal words, 'Duane Dibley?'.
Duane was a character that evolved fairly naturally. According to Danny, plans were originally more along the lines of The Nutty Professor. The "nerd look" that eventually became "Duane" was a result of Red Dwarf costume designer Howard Burden once again raiding charity shops, whilst false teeth naturally gave Danny a completely different and more "Duane" way of speaking.
Back To Reality was teased to the cast as an finale for the sitcom, with notes in the script informing them that they were all being replaced with the new, alternate Red Dwarf characters (who we see getting plugged into the AR game machine). And many really believed that it was the end of the show. Crucially, Rob and Doug felt that it was perhaps time to wrap it up, or possibly try a new format for the next series.
As it was, Red Dwarf did not go on a hiatus and returned in its familiar guise the following year. However, as Robert Llewellyn pointed out, once again within the Series V DVD documentary, if the American remake had been a success, then it really would have been the end of the show. And we'll come to that in the next chapter of Red Dwarf retrospectives.
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Love comedy? Find out moreRed Dwarf V
The complete fifth series of interstellar comedy from the Red Dwarf crew, filled with classic moments such as Rimmer finally making it into the Space Corps, not to mention Mr Flibble and the first appearance of Cat's alter-ego, the dreaded Dwayne Dibley.
First released: Monday 8th November 2004
DVD DVD 
- Distributor: 2 Entertain
- Region: 2
- Discs: 2
- Minutes: 180
- Subtitles: English
- Catalogue: BBCDVD1371
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- Released: Tuesday 2nd May 2006
- Distributor: BBC Worldwide
- Region: 1
- Discs: 2
- Minutes: 180
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- Released: Monday 12th September 2016
- Distributor: BBC Worldwide
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Red Dwarf - Complete Series I - VIII
For the first time, own the first eight series of the smash hit British comedy on Blu-ray - remastered in high-definition.
Chicken soup machine repairman and intergalactic loser Dave Lister awakes from suspended animation to discover he is the lone survivor of a radiation leak and is now three million years into deep space and the last surviving member of the human race.
Dave is soon joined by Arnold J. Rimmer, a hologram of his dead bunk-mate, a life-form who's evolved from his pet cat and Kryten, a neurotic sanitation mechanoid. Together this unlikely bunch of heroes attempt to find their way back to Earth, under the guidance of Holly, the ship's senile computer. Along the way they'll be brought back to reality, lose their mothership, become stranded on Starbug, bump into Lister's ex-girlfriend and find themselves back on Red Dwarf where the original crew have been resurrected by nanobots.
First released: Monday 14th January 2019
Blu-ray- Distributor: BBC
- Region: B
- Discs: 19
- Minutes: 1,466
- Subtitles: English
- Catalogue: BBCBD0441
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