DATABANK
- Red Dwarf was first shown on BBC 2 on 15th February 1988
- For the recordings of the first series the producers dragged in the customers of a local pub to fill the audience for the laughter track - a far cry from season 8 where often over 200 fans had to be turned away.
- The first series almost never happened, it took Grant Naylor over 4 years to persuade the BBC to make it and it was then postponed for 6 months thanks to a technicians strike.
- The first series of Red Dwarf got the highest Audience Appreciation ratings since Queen Elizabeth II coronation.
- The TV series was a spin off from a comedy sketch on Radio 4's Son of Cliché by ex-Spitting Image writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor.
- Red Dwarf T-shirts are big business with eight new designs each year. They always sell enough to make it into the Top 10 of the HMV/Virgin T-shirt charts.
- When asked the origins of the word 'smeg', Naylor claims, "We created what we thought was a new swearword. We wanted to be like Porridge which invented "naff" as the universal swearword.
- Grant and Naylor are criminals... well not criminals but they did write a criminal record... they are the ones responsible for the Spitting Image 'Chicken Song'.
- In 1995 the world's first convicted computer virus writer was revealed as a Red Dwarf fan. Christopher Pile created two viruses, Pathogen and Queeg, both expressions used on the show.
- Red Dwarf won an Emmy in 1994, as well as a British Comedy Award for best sitcom.
- Guest actor John Abineri, who appeared in RD II's "Better Than Life" as Rimmer's father, only took 10 minutes to record his part .
- During filming of RD II's "Thanks for the Memory" Craig Charles was called away for the birth of his son, Jack. So the production manager - Mike Agnew stepped in. Although Lister is wearing a space suit at the time you can still tell which part is Mike thanks to a continuity error - Mike forgot to put on Lister's plaster cast.
- Kryten's suffocating rubber costume is, according to Llewellyn, a nightmare to wear - he can be in it for up to 17 hours at a time.
- Famous fans of the show include President Bill Clinton, Leonard Nimoy, Madonna, Oasis, Terry Prachett, Patrick Stewart and Professor Stephen Hawking.
- Alan Rickman originally auditioned for the part of Lister while Alfred Molina was up for Rimmer.
- Terry Farrell (Dax in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) played The Cat in the US version of the show.
- Lister was originally described as 41
- A cartoon character called Mugs Murphy was specially created for Red Dwarf. Although he was only seen in Me2 Lister wears a Mugs Murphy T-shirt with the phrase 'D-D-Don't Shoot!' written on it throughout the first 2 series.
- Rimmer's Gazpacho soup obsession was based up on a real incident experienced by Grant & Naylor while at Thames Television although they were unsure of the soups temperature they didn't ask for it to be warmed up.
- In the last scenes of Stasis Leak Floor manager Donna DiStefano had to play Kochanski when CP Grogan was accidentally sent home early.
- Charles Augins who starred as Queeg in series 2 also choreographed the Tongue Tied dance at the start of Parallel Universe
- Queeg was named after the captain in "The Caine Mutiny"
- You can hear the voice of Howard Goodall, who composes all of Red Dwarf's music, in Queeg when Holly marches in to the theme of "High Noon" - It's Howard singing.
- Rob Grant makes a cameo appearance in Backwards he is the man with dark glasses, smoking.
- Craig Charles almost drowned during the filming of a scene where he walks out of a lake in "Backwards" He had weights in his pockets to keep him from floating upwards but got his foot caught in mud while underwater. No one realised until the camera's started rolling and he failed to emerge. A quick rescue operation was mounted and Craig was fine.
- The dogfood eaten by Craig Charles in Marooned was real
- The cut strip poker scene featured on "Smegouts" was originally intended to be the opening scene for "Marooned"
- Polymorph is (so far) the only episode of Red Dwarf to carry a warning as to it's disgusting content. This was however only a publicity stunt and Polymorph wasn't that gory, was it?
- Bodyswap was the first episode of Red Dwarf not to be filmed in front of a studio audience.
- Robert Llewellyn has made three appearances in Red Dwarf with out his Kryten make up. He played Jim Reaper in The Last Day, Bongo in Dimension Jump and appeared as a human Kryten in DNA.
- Robert Llewellyn's real life girlfriend Judy Pascoe played Camile.
- David Ross who originally played Kryten in RD II's "Kryten" returned to Red Dwarf in series IV's "White Hole" - he voiced Talkie Toaster.
- The Kippers at the end of Dimension Jump were originally scripted to fall onto Rimmer after Ace walked under them. This didn't work properly so the rolling caption was inserted at the end of the episode.
- Dimension Jump is the first and only time we see the rest of Hattie Hayridge's body. The scene with Holly fainting at Ace's good looks was Hattie's idea.
- Meltdown is regarded as one of Red Dwarf's worst episodes - Rob & Doug however felt it was a brilliant concept. "Maybe it was the way we told the story." says Rob.
- The actual worst episode, according to most fan polls, is RD I's "Waiting for God".
- The sets on Red Dwarf are mainly made out of plastic & Balsa wood. This causes problems. In "Inquisitor" there is a lot of running up and down the corridors of Red Dwarf so to make it sound metallic sound supervisor Keith Mayes re-recorded every footstep by walking on a metal grate in time to the actors on screen then added an echo.
- A number of fans have inquired why Dr. Langstrom has such bad facial burns. This was make-up applied to actress Maggie Steed to help her portray a dying Hologram by making it look as if her face was melting.
- It took 57 minutes to film the three-minute scene with Rimmer wearing a Gingham dress at the end of Quarantine. The cast kept fluffing their lines & even forgetting the characters names! This worried the producers - they only had the studio booked for 2 & half-hours!
- "Out Of Time" was written minutes before it was filmed which led to the use of an autocue thanks to lack of rehearsal time. It was this "unprofessional" atmosphere that was partly to blame for Chris Barrie not wanting to do all of RD VII. Thankfully RD VII was filmed like a drama far more professionally leading to Chris Barrie returning for all of RD VIII.
- The Aigburth Arms - the pub in which Lister was left under the pool table as a baby - is a real pub. Rob and Grant used to drink there when they were at Liverpool University.
- The tank used by Kryten in "Beyond A Joke" is the same one used by Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in "Goldeneye"
- Sadly Don Henderson died shortly after his appearance in "Beyond a Joke." He was a veteran of Sci-Fi after appearing in Star Wars and playing Gavrok in Dr. Who. He described Red Dwarf as "Sheer bliss to be in."
Red Dwarf is owned by Grant Naylor Productions and broadcast by the BBC. This Website is 100%
unofficial.
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