Overview: Red Dwarf: Series Two

Series Two is a swansong, of sorts, to the early concepts that littered Series One. The large, empty ship, the polarisation of the characters. But it brought with it the bounty of new ideas, smoother characterisations and a sense of knowing what its doing. This series was made almost entirely of "What if" situations - "What if the crew were the opposite genders?", "What if you could transplant memories?" Only a few of the episodes managed to fulfull these questions to their full potentials, but all had fun exploring them.

The first thing you notice is the wider scope. The producers had decided that basing all of their episodes on the same empty ship had only finite potential, and so it was the next logical step to make the series cover planets and asteroids as well. This included the advance of technobabble, and a lot of more conflicitng sets. It provides some freedom from the dull greys of Red Dwarf, as well as introducing foreign elemants to the usual four players. It also gave the characters some valuable personality time using the greater technology avaliable, using basic ideas channelled through the tech, which is what true Sci Fi is about.

This series also saw the end of many elements present from the beginning. At the end of this series, the production team had their first ReVamp, and so many things were lost in Series Three. The Cat's polarised behaviour, the original sets, the madness of Chris Barrie, Norman Lovett as Holly, as well as the original title sequence were all lost in the transition. The feel of the empty universe would never be visited again until rare moments in Series Eight.

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