red dwarf Xii The Jupiter Mining Corporation’s finest
SEASON 12 UK BROADCAST: Dave, autumn US BROADCAST: TBC
Considering the lengthy hiatuses Red Dwarf fans have had to endure over the show’s three-decade history, waiting a mere year for new episodes feels like a walk in the park. Although series XI and XII were shot back to back, however, writer/director/co-creator doug naylor says the new run of six episodes has a “different flavour”.
“Red Dwarf XII has a quite different feel to XI,” he tells sFX. “i think it’s more out there, there’s a kind of interesting looseness to it, and there’s some interesting ideas – things like a ship where criticism is illegal, corporations that make certain products invisible so you have to buy theirs, a cure for evil...”
We also get an episode where rimmer, Lister and the Cat experience life as mechanoids – the result of Kryten star robert Llewellyn getting his own back on Chris Barrie, Craig Charles and danny John-Jules for all those years spent buried under prosthetics, perhaps?
“it didn’t come from robert’s revenge,” laughs naylor. “on Red Dwarf X, Craig and danny both came in after a show wearing discarded Kryten heads, and people were absolutely killing themselves. they were saying, ‘We’ve got to do a show as Kryten!’ My attitude was it’s very easy for you guys to say that, but it’s got to be a story that isn’t just you guys having fun in your masks! it came from their genuine enthusiasm that it would be amazing to be Kryten for a week, and of course, i don’t think anyone quite appreciated the difficulty of it.”
“it was a unique, fun, great experience...” adds producer richard naylor, “that no one would ever want to do again.”