Aftermath

The buildup to Red Dwarf X was marked by a promotional campaign the likes of which the show had never before seen. From billboard posters across the country - a marketing tactic originally desired for Back to Earth but simply beyond that show's marketing budget - to a wealth of magazine articles (including TV listings mag covers) and an extensive social media campaign, throughout September and October 2012 Red Dwarf was everywhere.

Fans were able to find out more about the show in its leadup than they ever had before, thanks to Dave's policy of carefully releasing teaser photos, video clips and full trailers in the weeks and months leading up to broadcast. Perhaps the oddest part of the campaign was the "Vindalunar" initiative, which saw a Leopard Lager can and tray of vindaloo launched into space - no, really, actually out into the upper atmosphere, honest - to announce the series' launch date.

The publicity campaign evidently paid off, as Trojan debuted to frankly gobsmackingly superb ratings of 2.09 million viewers on its opening night alone. While these figures didn't quite match those achieved by Back to Earth in 2009, it's worth noting that they were reached without the boost of a bank holiday weekend, and on an ordinary midweek night against strong new drama commissions on BBC1 and ITV. The ratings also held up across the series as a whole, never dropping below a million viewers once consolidated - i.e. including the all-important "timeshifting" viewers - figures came in.

Critical and fan reception for the series was also strong, with an overall consensus across national newspapers, magazines and the Internet that the series was "back on form" in terms of recapturing the style of the early '90s episodes. Red Dwarf also became a "trending topic" on social networking site Twitter for the first time ever, during the broadcast of Trojan. While every episode had its fans, there seemed to be a particular swell of opinion that the first and last shows were among the strongest - while Lemons, already something of a favourite with cast, crew and Dave execs alike, also attracted particular praise.

In the quickest ever turnaround for a Dwarf home release, Series X was available on Blu-ray and DVD just a week after broadcast of the final episode - while the series could also be downloaded from iTunes the morning after each individual show. The disc release, while naturally not subject to the same sort of archive-raiding as had characterised the original series DVDs, again drew favourable reviews, largely thanks to an epic behind-the-scenes documentary that pulled no punches in laying bare the production's ups and downs.