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Mr Flibble is very cross. The Red Dwarf crew run in terror
through six more adventures, encountering love, death, existential
erasure and a killer glove puppet...
The
fifth series of Red Dwarf is arguably the finest in
the show's entire run. Episodes in this series include Holoship
(with guest stars Jane Horrocks and Don Warrington),
The Inquisitor (with Jack Docherty), Terrorform,
Quarantine, Demons and Angels and, my personal favourite
episode, Back to Reality (with Lenny Von Dohlen and
Timothy Spall).
This
series was originally recorded in 1991, being screened between
February and March 1992 and the show had a much larger budget
than in previous years.
Extras
on this collection are by far the best so far. They include
commentaries for all six episodes by the main cast; a fan
commentary for Back to Reality; deleted scenes; Smeg
Ups, Dwarfing USA - documentary on the making of
the US pilot; Bad Guys featurette; a look at the SFX
of Red Dwarf V; trailers, idents and episode intro;
raw FX footage; isolated music cues and Dave Hollins
radio sketch from Son of Cliché.
The
extras listed above are so incredible this time around, that
I think it's well worth breaking them down and commenting
on each of them.
The
audio commentaries are as we've come to expect - lots of "classic!
great line that." And there's even one, yet again, where
they go through the credits reading them all in a Whose
Line is it Anyway stylee - unintentionally funny! There's
no Craig Charles this time around - which is not necessarily
a bad thing. And on a couple of occassions the cast start
to talk about someone, or something, and then their commentary
is quicky turned down - no doubt for legal reasons.
These commentaries do provide interesting little nuggets about
this series - Danny John-Jules spills the info on how camera
supervisor Rocket got his nickname. Danny also gets excited
when he spots a continuity error in the episode Quarantine.
So in fairness Danny, Robert and Chris do provide some interesting
comments... however Hattie... what was she doing there? No,
seriously. Bearing in mind this was her last series, why didn't
she have anything to add. Okay, there is an amusing story
about her car and being stopped by a police officer who was
a Red Dwarf fan, but other than that I can't remember
one memorable anacdote from her.
The
fan commentary on Better Than Life is interesting.
And to be honest I think, on balance that perhaps one of the
fans should be in on the cast commentaries in the future -
they'd certainly be able to drum up a few more interesting
stories.
I
really enjoyed the extras this time around. The only slight
downer was the Bad Guys featurette - a collection of
clips set to music. However it's not very long and, unlike
previous simlar extras on previous collections, it actually
works.
The
Heavy Science documentary is probably the best extra.
This 1hr 17min documentary tackles some interesting areas:
including why Juliette May's didn't last long in the director's
chair and how the news that Holly was being dropped from the
show was broken to Hattie.
The
Smeg Ups featurette gives us another seven minutes
of amusing outtakes; Dwarfing USA (28 mins) breaks down the
events that led to Red Dwarf USA not making it past
the pilot stage. In the past I'd heard the story first hand
from Doug Naylor, Robert Llewllyn and Danny John-Jules (who
also talked about it in a recent interview
he conducted with us) back in the days when I worked for Dreamwatch,
but it was great to hear everybody's views on this failed
series - especially Craig's.
The
BBC has recently re-released series' 1-4 of Red Dwarf without
any extras - a good move as the majority of the special features
on those discs are pretty dull. This time around everything
works really well and Red Dwarf fans will be pleased
with the finished result.
If
you only buy one Red Dwarf DVD make sure it's this
one.
 
Darren
Rea
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