sfdebris Reviews Round Up of "Red Dwarf".

[Harvey]

Wikipedia says that Lovett has said he'll never play the part again, but if that's because he wasn't invited back for Back to Earth (probably a budgetary decision) then perhaps that could change. After all, they brought him back for Series VII after he had been dropped in between Series II and III.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Wikipedia says that Lovett has said he'll never play the part again, but if that's because he wasn't invited back for Back to Earth (probably a budgetary decision) then perhaps that could change. After all, they brought him back for Series VII after he had been dropped in between Series II and III.

Well apparently they asked him if he could pencil in for a possible appearance, but they couldn't guarantee the role, he pushed to be told one way or the other so they dropped him because his role would have been dependent on coming up with something for him to do that wasn't simply saying one or two lines.
He wasn't happy about it and said he'd never work with them again for dropping him, and has apparently said some not very nice things about the cast, calling them self centred for doing it without him and for not even contacting him, etc.

 

[TedShatner10]

I respect Lovett as an actor, he is the definitive Holly, but he comes across as a moaner even if he may have been legitimately fucked over. I mean he had a popular come back in Series VII and was a major player in Series VIII.

I loved how "Only the Good..." ended with the human Rimmer kicking the Grim Reaper in the family jewels, but you could it tell the episode suffered from production strains and last minute rewrites that were bad by Red Dwarf's standards (the Grim Reaper was supposedly played by the episode's director). If Series VIII had one more episode as good as "Cassandra" it would've been more fondly remembered.

 

[TedShatner10]

Ok, he's finally wrapped the whole thing up.

Red Dwarf: Back to Earth
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

I agree that it has a spark to it, but I agree the whole thing felt underwhelming, and the Blade Runner references were laid on way too thick.

And regards to the whole show in general why did Grant Naylor have a "no aliens" policy? All the non-human creatures they encounter (the GELFs, cyborgs, AIs, and androids etc) were originally made by humans from Earth. How did humanity become extinct, if their highly advanced creations and starships are still around?

Seems rather contrived (what about alien microbes and fauna?) even if it helps the show's formula and makes it creatively distinctive. Firefly had no aliens too, but you could say Firefly took place in a verse where the aliens are either too tiny or too aloof for humans to meaningfully interact with (which is likely the case in real life).

 

[Harvey]

We don't know for sure that humanity went extinct. But the Dwarf was so far out in deep space, and it had been out in deep space for so long (three million years) that humanity was probably extinct.