Turning Thirty

Fans celebrate Red Dwarf's 30th birthday!

16 February, 2018

As you surely can't have failed to notice, yesterday (15th February) marked the thirtieth anniversary of Red Dwarf's debut broadcast in 1988. And unsurprisingly, there was a huge swell of celebratory activity from fans, cast, crew and well-wishers alike - so if you've missed any of it, here's a handy round-up!

First of all, in case you haven't read it yet, we published an in-depth look at three decades of Red Dwarf fandom, and what the show has meant to various people across the years, including new interviews with Doug Naylor, Ryan Gage, Mark Dexter and UKTV's Steve North. In fact, if you haven't read it yet, go and make yourself a cup of tea, sit down with it, and then report back for the rest of this.

The anniversary naturally felt like an appropriate time to look back at what things looked like in 1988. Doug Naylor dug out his copy of the Radio Times for that original broadcast week - with an amusing link to the present day in that 30 years ago the Winter Olympics were also the talk of the town:

Doug also shared a vision of what could have been, with the original intent for Rimmer:

And Danny John-Jules paid tribute to the late Peter Tory, one of Red Dwarf's earliest champions in the press, with this 1988 review of Series I:

The BBC Archive, meanwhile, made a particularly excellent find - presenter Philip Schofield getting the opinion of a group of schoolkids on Series I, for the show Take Two. We hope the kids who were saying things like "Best TV series in a long time!" have stuck around for the last three decades!

Contrasting with this archive footage, The Official Red Dwarf Fan Club presented a couple of new videos, asking fans about their favourite episodes:

... and what they love about the show:

The fan club also sneakily unveiled the official logo for this year's Dimension Jump XX convention:

Turning Thirty

And confirmed the appearance of not one, but both Hollys at this October's event!

Our chums over at Dave celebrated with a compilation of "smeg"s:

While UKTV Play cracked open a few beers:

The still-active Red Dwarf fansites have been busy - Ganymede & Titan posted the results of a survey of over 300 fans worldwide, while Gazpacho Soup published several features including this look at Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers' place alongside other comedy novelisations. And there's been writing about the show elsewhere - the i Paper gave an extended shout out to Gunmen of the Apocalypse, and We Are Cult looked at the impact of the show as a whole, while Metro picked ten of their favourite moments.

We've seen some terrific fan creativity across social media, with this awe-inspiringly extensive range of cake makers coming together to produce Red Dwarf specials:

Turning Thirty

Some amazingly detailed Asclepius and Snacky models by Robert C. Maitland:

Artist Dan Schaffer gave us these fantastic drawings of the crew and ship:

And Twitter user Horsenburger went truly retro with these Teletext-style renditions:

The Chris Barrie Fans Twitter account put together this fan tribute video:

Custom Who - known for their Doctor Who videos - made this terrific mashup, imagining the first 2005 series of Who as if it were a series of Red Dwarf:

And Sean McDonnell created a trailer telling the story of Red Dwarf from the beginning:

Some fun "Throwback Thursday" pictures from Linda Glover:

And Samsara's Maggie Service:

And here in the present day, composer Howard Goodall found himself literally acting out the lyrics to the theme tune:

And finally, we're not going to link to it - but yes, we did think it was a little bit weird that the Daily Mail decided to act as if Michelle Keegan's appearance in Back to Earth was an "exclusive" or "newly unearthed" footage. But there you go.

So phew. All in all, it was quite a fun day. We've thoroughly enjoyed celebrating Red Dwarf's first three decades with all of you, and reading all the supportive comments, favourite moments, and nostalgic reminiscences that you've left on our Twitter and Facebook.

And don't forget - the actual anniversary date might have passed, but this is still the anniversary year (of not one, but two series in fact!); so if you think we're going to let it pass without giving you anything else, well, you'd better stay tuned for the rest of 2018, because we promise you it's not over yet...

Thanks to every Red Dwarf fan, old and new, for your support over the last thirty years!

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