I’ve been waiting so long to share this with you!
I’m a massive Red Dwarf fan, from watching it late at night on BBC 2 as a kid (I blame it for my lifelong addiction to fresh mango juice) to marathoning all my favourite series (the ones with male Holly, FYI), so it was a dream come true to be able to stand on the mining ship Red Dwarf with my own human feet.
This came about because I tweeted the picture I had taken at Nottingham Comic Con – where I met the entire cast and saw my brilliant friend Norman Lovett again (he’s got the same IQ as 6,000 PE teachers, you know):
And the Director of Photography on the show, the excellent Ed Moore (hire him), got in touch to offer a set tour and production guest seats to watch the show. Twitter is the best and so is Ed.
I saw the final episode of the final series being filmed live – how amazing is that?! – and took a tour of the series 11/12 set. It’s based on the original one, with some snazzy new bits.
The attention to detail on the set is incredible. Look at these props. Most of this stuff you’ll never even notice on screen, but it’s all put together like the success of the programme depends on every word being in place. And it is. I was so impressed.
The filming was pretty epic – I can’t give away any details because the final series hasn’t aired yet, and of course I know all the secrets of the last episode! But it was so cool to see the cast joking and interacting with the audience, taking the piss out of themselves when they got bits wrong (there’ll be a fair few cuts for the Smeg Ups compilation) and even live-auctioning off merch at the end, for charity.
When I took this picture, having just arrived on set, I hadn’t even noticed one Arnold J. Rimmer (BSC, SSC) casually sitting on the right!
Speaking of those awards at the end of his name…
And he’s still got his press clippings, of course.
Can you spot the typo in Lister’s bunk?
To be fair, that’s probably how he spells it, when he’s not spraying shaving cream under his arm. Lunar City Seven…
Everything, and I do mean everything, bears the Jupiter Mining Corps logo. Even the floor cleaner.
(Note: Cat’s milk means milk for the Cat. Definitely not milk from cats. And not dog’s milk, even though it lasts longer than any other. Why? No bugger’ll drink it).
Did I mention we flew Starbug?
Ever wondered what the key looks like? This!
And here’s the medical bay, with a bed that came from the set of Prometheus:
That’s it on the left. The bunks are on the right, and I’m standing beside the audience seats. We could see everything on set, as well as the screens.
The cast were friendly and fun, especially this little guy:
No Queeg, though!
Fun fact: ‘nivelo’ is Esperanto for ‘level.’ So Level Nivelo means… level level.
Now let’s go behind the scenes, to the control desk. I had no clue what I was doing, but then again neither does Rimmer. He’s such a smee-hee.
After that, I hung out with Cat in the green room. Yep, that’s a thing that happened. Unbelievable!
I had the most incredible day. I think you can tell from the smile on my face here:
I’d been to Ganymede and Titan, but until that day, I’d never been to the mining ship Red Dwarf.
Enormous thanks to Ed Moore for making my dreams come true.
Bonus, for no reason at all other than I love it:
