Following Doug Naylor’s hint yesterday that the new series would air in September, we now have official confirmation by Dave and the official Red Dwarf website. No specific day has been given but it gives us a good barometer of how much longer we have to wait.
But that wasn’t all we got in today’s update, they also decided to give us an extra treat: an official series synopsis.
The show’s six episode run sees two of the Dwarfers’ dreams come true: Rimmer accidentally saves the life of a Space Corps Captain and is promoted to Officer, while Cat takes time off from being in love with himself to fall in love with a female Cat with a secret. Meantime, Lister wakes up to discover a deranged droid has stolen some of his body parts and Kryten has a mid-life crisis and considers leaving the Dwarfers for a younger crew. The posse also find themselves in an alternative America where modern technology is outlawed, making both Kryten and Rimmer illegal.
Whilst the episode synopsis only seem to cover 5 episodes it looks like we have a good mix of episodes giving each character a story centring around them. Whilst it is nice to see a Kryten centric episode for the first time in 17 years we have long been craving for a Cat centric episode.
It is worth pointing out that the set reports regularly commented on the more ensemble nature of most episodes so whilst we might see each character get a central role at least once this series, nobody ever would seem to get sidelined in the way characters were sometimes in the past. Naming no series specifically. Series VIII.
The synopsis I’d highlight in particular would be the episode set in an alternative America. You could perhaps draw comparisons with the plot of Tikka to Ride. It is particularly exciting to think we might get an episode to the scale and ambition of Tikka to Ride but filmed in front of an audience and without the model shoot going wrong.