Red Dwarf X

Three million years into deep space, the crew of the Jupiter Mining Corporation ship Red Dwarf continue to try to find ways of staying sane. Unfortunately, the universe is not interested in helping them.

Back in 2012, it was fair to say there was trepidation awaiting the arrival of the tenth season of venerable British science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf. The show had just had three pretty weak seasons back-to-back-to-back, with co-creator and long-time co-writer Rob Grant still not involved, the prospects for the show being a success seemed limited.

It was with tremendous relief that Red Dwarf X turned out to be pretty good. Not on the level of the "imperial period" of Seasons 2-6, of course, but still a pretty fine run of episodes. It helps that the season has a lower budget than the last few, forcing Doug Naylor to rely on the strength of the scripts to sell the ideas instead of flashy vfx. We get more Lister-and-Rimmer two-hander scenes, the core of the show, and more creative use of the show's setting. The continuous reappearance of both GELFs (genetically-engineered lifeforms) and killer simulants through the last few seasons had become rote, but they are used more creatively in this season and some fresh life is breathed back into the old concepts.

The ideas are generally great: Rimmer getting to meet one of his superstar, space hero brothers as a hologram gives us some more grist for the Rimmer emotional turmoil mill, and the results are pretty funny. The storyline of Lister becoming his own father in Season 7 was weird, but here they revisit the concept in an original and amusing way, as well as showcasing a new, hyper-efficient computer. Another episode has the crew time travel to the first century and meet Jesus before he was well-known, but what could have been a bad-taste extravaganza turns out to be a surprisingly well-considered, even thoughtful yarn about what happens when you find out you're destined to become one of the single most famous humans to have ever lived. The season finale, featuring the arrival of a new type of killer simulant, is also very entertaining.

None of these episodes are challenging Marooned, Polymorph, Back to Reality or Thanks for the Memory in comedy, drama or pathos, but they each have something interesting to offer. It helps that Naylor is happy to row things back and tackle smaller-scaled ideas (Lister discovering the history of his ex-girlfriend through letters she sent him which have only just caught up with the ship) as happily as the really big SF ones, like an AI can foresee the next few seconds of a conversation with total accuracy, making it unnecessary to have the conversation  (shades of Cassandra from Season 8, but better-executed).

There are some negatives. There is still the occasional lowbrow and easy-pickings kind of humour that the earlier seasons tried to avoid. The relaxed approach to continuity, though by now such a feature of Red Dwarf that it mocks it itself, may aggravate some as the missing Kochanski, offline Holly and how Rimmer saved the ship in Season 8 are referenced but never explained. But it feels like the negatives are hugely lacking compared to what fans had endured for three seasons at that point.

Overall, Red Dwarf X (****) is a huge improvement over the preceding three seasons and highly enjoyable to watch, even if it still can't match the show in its prime.

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