Red Dwarf Series 1 - 8 Boxset BD [Blu-ray] [2018]

Product Information

What do we make of this? SD upscales? Or have the BBC commissioned proper HD restorations? I thought the show was shot on VHS, or was it film? It's hard to believe that it's been less than two months since Red Dwarf: The Promised Land first aired on Dave; but while reality plays fast and loose with our perceptions of time, we've had one solid date to hang on to: Monday 1st June, the date on which the special is getting released on DVD and Blu-ray. And that date is this coming Monday! On Disc 1, you’ll find the Red Dwarf episode from the Comedy Connections series that was broadcast on the BBC in 2004. With interviews with the creators and the cast, it takes us from the genesis of the series all the way to series eight, following the careers of the key participants. There’s a lot of carrot dangling for the non-existent Red Dwarf movie, but it’s an interesting watch. This last 29 minutes and is presented in widescreen. I wanted this to be the definitive Red Dwarf collection, I really did. But it isn’t. It does a lot of things right, and the effort to collate as much material as possible, as well as the attempt to bring the quality up to a higher standard, is admirable. But the execution falls well short.

The special is a Baby Cow production for UKTV, and first aired on Dave in April 2020, attracting 2.02 million viewers to make it the highest non-PSB broadcast of the week. The DVD and Blu-ray are released by BBC Studios. I don’t think they ever corrected the discs in the retail version. You *have* to send off for the right discs, which if memory serves, are just plain discs more or less, they don’t match the artwork or anything else of the box set. There’s a guy in there arguing that modern CGI looks indistinguishable from reality, and I would go one for about seven paragraphs about how that’s utter nonsense if this topic were even slightly related. Even watching the most expensive modern movies ever made, more often than not I feel just as aware I am looking at CGI as I am that Red Dwarf is only 8 feet long. As ever, I appreciate the performances of the main cast. All great. And having some new Red Dwarf to watch after all of these years is a wonder. Lister’s moonlight speech was really nice. And Doug Naylor can still bang out some quality gags…

1: Launching Red Dwarf

We very much hope for an international release of the set in various regions, but this will depend on its sales performance in the UK. We'll keep you posted! The 1992 attempt at making an American version of Red Dwarf was a fascinating project, and in this documentary, produced for the Series V DVD, we learned more of the story than ever before. Featuring interviews with many of those involved, and clips that had never been seen in broadcast quality before, it's an essential chapter of Red Dwarf's international story. Starting somewhat sensibly with The End, the vivid red of the ship is immediately apparent from the first second of the first episode, acting as somewhat of a mission statement for the project from the get go, although weirdly it’s not equally bright and bold in subsequent model shots, denoting the continued presence of our friend Mr Inconsistency. The grade yields mixed results throughout the episode, but the overall theme is darker shadows and more saturated colours, which is regrettably reminiscent of the treatment given to Re-Mastered– it’s basically that look but without the film effect. It’s a physical response from me in that it makes me ill, makes everything look too fast, and makes me feel on edge, full of adrenalin, like a fight of flight response. There are also artistic reasons – artifacting, for one, where interpolated footage doesn’t look quite like it would look were it actually shot at a high frame rate – camera movements look particularly fake and changing from shot to shot can create garbage frames that wouldn’t exist otherwise. There’s also the idea of artistic intent – we want to watch Red Dwarf Series 5 at 50fps because that was the artistic intent of the director, but not so many people bother to ask for VII at 50fps, because it wasn’t intended to be seen that way. Series IV: Definitely looking good. No dramatic improvement over DVD but subtly better. My problem is with some bad sound issues throughout, mostly stereo phasing. The sound glitches are an old problem that has carried over from the DVDs, and probably from broadcast. I’m surprised that no review has mentioned it, because it honestly makes the episodes hard to enjoy with headphones… I guess because it’s not a “new” problem, just an unfixed one.

Also, I realised something else today. Given that all of the Series 1-VIII DVD extras have been preserved here, does this mean the Blu ray set would work as a replacement for the originals if you also got the Just The Shows sets??? You would end up with 8 fewer duplicate discs that way…Thank you for your continued patience while we have investigated the issue with the Red Dwarf Blu-ray set. After thorough investigation with all the suppliers involved we have now identified the source of the problem. So keep your eyes here on reddwarf.co.uk, and we'll bring you more news on this release - from content to pricing to cover art - as soon as we're able.

Also the more I think about it the more annoyed I am that I’ve paid for the exact same special features discs I did years ago, even down to the ancient BBC ident. I know they couldn’t afford to do it differently but I wonder if a Just the Shows release may have been a better choice? Don’t know. They clearly didn’t sell well, I’m not at all surprised theres still the odd original release version out there, if they did indeed update the discs in the box. The next option on the menu is Audio Commentaries, and they’re just that – the audio only. I get why the Re-Mastered episodes weren’t included – they’d have undoubtedly upped the disc count, and while they are without question a noteworthy part of the Red Dwarf oeuvre, the Re-Dwarf doc is probably enough to satisfy most viewers. And while I’m glad that they commentaries were included in some form, I can’t see myself plumping to listen to them without the accompanying visuals. Here, they play out over static close-ups of various CGI elements, as do other audio-only extras, the Tongue Tied archive and the full-length Bodysnatcher script). Brilliantly, they choose Starbug to use for the Better Than Life commentary.The source for this work was the original transmission master tapes, the same as were previously used for the DVD releases - however, on the earliest, pre-digital series, those master tapes were several generations down from the original rushes, which sadly no longer exist.

I guess it comes down to whether, for you, forty quid is a good price to pay for a chunky box, the convenience of having everything in one place, and a slightly better viewing experience than what you’ve already got for just-about-most-of the episodes. So buy it if you want, but don’t feel like you’re hugely missing out if you don’t, and for goodness sake, don’t replace your original DVDs with it. You can’t even say “you might as well get this if you haven’t got all the individual releases”, due to the encoding errors on Series V resulting in three episodes ending up less watchable than a duplicated off-air VHS. Why couldn’t they release it full quality (576p)? Even 1080p would have been better (it would still be a blurry mess, but at least it would be better than 720p).. Series VI: Looks pretty awful, but it’s not the fault of the blu-ray. It’s the artistic decision: all that bloom and fuzzy lighting, combined with a lot of edge halos and noise. It’s a bad-looking DVD that’s now an identically bad-looking blu-ray. Red Dwarf also doesn’t scale up. The best stories are the smaller ones that focus on a single conceit or clever premise. I’d take Thanks For The Memory, Waiting For God or Marooned over a feature-length special like this that has more padding than the NFL any day.

Sound

There’s an Easter Egg on disc 2, and if you find it, you’ll be able to enjoy an Intro2 music video with some familiar guest stars.