The series follows the fortunes of Dave Lister who is stranded three million years in the future, together with the hologrammatic representation of his former bunkmate and immediate superior Arnold Rimmer; a creature known only as Cat; and the ship's computer Holly.
[7] In Series VII Kristine Kochanski, Lister's former love interest, joins the crew, following the departure of Rimmer.
[9] Series IX (Red Dwarf: Back to Earth) involves Lister, Rimmer (back as a hologram), Cat, and Kryten hallucinating that they've arrived on Earth in another dimension in the early 21st century, and Series X to XII sees the same four crew members continue their adventures back on Red Dwarf, Kochanski having departed due to Lister's descent into depression and Holly offline due to water damage.
As of 9 April 2020,[update] 74 episodes of Red Dwarf have aired, including one special, concluding the twelfth series.
Realising that they were limited with stories based on the huge, but empty, mining ship of Red Dwarf, writers Grant and Naylor decided to go in a different direction for Series II.
The regular cast changed for Series III: Robert Llewellyn came in as Kryten, and Hattie Hayridge replaced the departing Lovett as Holly.
[24] Kryten is shocked to discover that the developing fluid in Red Dwarf's photo labs has mutated, causing still pictures to come to life.
Realizing they can enter any photograph developed in the fluid and effectively time travel anywhere they want, Lister opts to take advantage of this and change his life so he does not get stranded in deep space.
[25] The broadcast was not as originally intended; the BBC had decided to start off with the romantic story of "Camille" for Valentine's Day,[26] while the outbreak of the Gulf War affected the series' running order, thus both the anti-war "Meltdown" and heroic Ace Rimmer's "Dimension Jump" were almost postponed.
[30] The writing of Series VI was rushed, due to the fact that the BBC wanted the episodes completed as soon as possible.
The writers decided to make changes for the new series—Red Dwarf itself was written out, thus removing Hattie Hayridge as Holly—and the series was set entirely aboard Starbug.
Chris Barrie, disappointed with the hectic workload of Series VI, had decided to only take part in four of the episodes.
Writing the scripts himself, Naylor resurrected the original crew of Red Dwarf, along with Holly, this time played by Norman Lovett, and Chris Barrie as Rimmer.
[36] With 52 episodes, the series was now in a good position for international syndication and the prospect of a feature-length film increased.
Red Dwarf returned for its first full series since 1999 in October 2012 for six new episodes written by Doug Naylor filmed before a live audience.
It was confirmed on 2 May 2015 that an eleventh and twelfth series of Red Dwarf (consisting of six episodes each) would be filmed in late 2015 and early 2016 for Dave.
It was never filmed or even fully scripted; writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor abandoned it halfway through writing it.
Instead, a comically fast Star Wars opening crawl provided exposition for the episode "Backwards", which became the new Series III premiere.
"Dad" was to primarily deal with Lister's pregnancy, why former guest character Kryten had reappeared and become a regular member of the cast and what had happened to him, and why Holly's image had changed from a male to a female.
[48] Also, apparently Lister would have rebuilt Kryten while "heavily pregnant", and not "shortly afterwards" as the pre-title "Backwards" scroll suggests.
[49] In The Red Dwarf Programme Guide, Chris Howarth and Steve Lyons write that another reason "Dad" was rejected was because it was possibly sexist.
A reconstructed version of the episode (read by Chris Barrie) appears on the Series VII DVD release.
[52] The flyer outlined the movie's plot, set in the distant future where Homo Sapienoids—a fearsome flesh-machine hybrid race—had taken over the solar system and were wiping out the human race.