Following the airing of Red Dwarf: The Promised Land in April, writer – and co-creator – Doug Naylor said he still has loads of ideas for the crew of Red Dwarf (here) and at Comic-Con@Home he knuckled down on that idea.
During the Red Dwarf: The Promised Land panel starring Naylor, Chris Barrie (Rimmer), Craig Charles (Lister) and Robert Llewellyn (Kryten), host Kyle Anderson asked Naylor if he had a favourite character to write for, to which he replied: “The truth is it wouldn’t have lasted [if I’d written primarily for one character]. They’d have left,” he said.
“You have to be able to write a part for each of them, you know? And you wouldn’t be able to do that if you thought, ‘Oof, this person. There’s nothing left in the tank. There’s no new stories.’ But it just seems there’s an infinite amount of things we can do and always has done, so there’s a wonderful opportunity to explore all kinds of things.”
Red Dwarf: The Promised Land is now arriving on streaming platform BritBox in the US.
On The Promised Land’s creation, Naylor said: “What would happen if we revisited the cats and they thought Lister is a god?
“And what effect what that have on Lister? He wouldn’t be able to tolerate that. He’d fall apart. What would happen to Rimmer because Rimmer’s got no story there? And you start to piece the thing together. That’s the kind of process.”
The special was released in the darkest days of the lockdown due to that damned virus, so it was a ray of sunshine to fans and gave Dave, the channel behind it, a new record audience of two million views: “Hopefully, people in the States will take it in the way that the folks in the UK did,” Naylor adds.
What say you all? Would you be up for spending more time with Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten or are you a smeghead? Let us know your thoughts, gang.
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