With Christmas upon us and a new series of Red Dwarf having just filmed, you may well be wishing there was some way of combining these two things. But of course, aside from a passing reference to a prior Christmas the Pan-Dimensional Liquid Beast from the Megaton Cluster, Red Dwarf has never had a Christmas special in the traditional sense.
But that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been Christmas related things in the Red Dwarf world. So while we can’t provide you with a Christmas episode to watch, we can take on our Jacob Marley role to bring you three festive videos on Christmas Eve to get you in the mood for the big day.
First up is the least official of the list, with the fan created Red Dwarf Animated special, Mistletoe and Whine. A two hander bunk scene between Rimmer and Lister, this fan creation has a strong melancholy air to it, and is a surprisingly good attempt to try and capture the direction a Christmas special for the show could take.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjlutPwxxNc]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhLuQ-YTbFQ]
The second Christmas video is model man Bill Pearson’s pitch video for a proposed Red Dwarf Christmas special. The models made for this wouldn’t be forgotten however, and come Series X, one of them was reused as a Simulant death ship. To accompany it, you can find Bill’s script, concept drawings and model shots here, and the video can be viewed below.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYif-KzhjVA]
Finally we turn to the third and final video in this tenuous Christmas Carol themed post, which means that by association, it should be a video that offers a grim vision of the future and has an look that makes you think of death. Step right up, Red Christmas; the closest Red Dwarf has ever come to having a Christmas Special. Featuring Chris and Robert on vocal duties, this short mobile based vignette was in 2007 the closest thing to a new episode of the show. Dark days indeed.
Long since made unavailable, the mobisode has perhaps unsurprisingly turned up on YouTube, and while we wouldn’t normally ever condone linking to official material uploaded there, we make a small exception in this case due to the out of print nature.
The videos can be viewed below, and are frankly best accompanied by Ganymede & Titan’s scathing review from the time, which can be found here.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdtRvJNONgM]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anq2ZLU5tdw]
And with that, Christmas is now just around the corner. So we’ll leave you all to enjoy the rest of Christmas Eve before the big fat git sneaks down the chimney to steal all the kids favourite toys. 2016 will be a big year for the show with Series XII recording at the start of the year and Series XI being broadcast later in the year. We’re hugely excited for all of it as we’re sure you are too, and we hope you’ll keep coming back for more podcasts, articles and news in the run up to the new series.