What Is Red Dwarf Really About?
You probably think it’s a light-hearted comedy.
Red Dwarf is a British science-fiction comedy TV show with a cult following. It also aired in the US.
It centered on Dave Lister, the last human survivor on a deep space mining ship, following a catastrophic radiation leak, and the holographic recreation of his antagonistic former supervisor, Arnold Rimmer.
Other characters included Holly, the ship’s computer, and Cat, a humanoid creature that evolved from the domestic cat Lister once kept as a pet. Later on, they’re joined by Kryton, an android.
You may well have seen Red Dwarf and enjoyed it. But have you ever stopped to wonder what it was fundamentally really about?
On the surface, it’s a comedy that gets lighter, more slapstick and more action-packed as it develops (and sadly, after series VI, much less funny). But in the beginning, it was, in some ways, much darker than that. It was a hard-hitting commentary on human society and the human condition — at least it was for those people who were watching carefully enough.
Fear and mutual loathing — in deep space
Like a lot of science fiction, Red Dwarf was set in a remote location, deep in space and far off in the future. But it was…
