Aftermath

As anticipation for Red Dwarf XI built to a fever pitch among fans, Dave teased the new episodes' arrival that coming "Smegtember" with an August bank holiday weekend trailer launch. Snippets from the trailer itself were revealed online and shown on air, before the full 40-second trail was shown amid an all-day Classic Dwarf marathon on the channel. Possibly the most exciting Red Dwarf trailer ever produced, showing off new effects and gags aplenty, it was the perfect way to lead into the series.

Just like in 2012, an extensive poster campaign saw the crew appearing at bus stops and rail stations up and down the country. And long-time friend of the show SFX magazine produced a special issue featuring five collectable covers - one for each main character plus a subscriber-only group shot - and an additional supplement charting the 28-year history of the show.

In a first for Red Dwarf, the episodes were made available online - via UKTV's growing UKTV Play on-demand service - a week before their regular transmission. Just as with the audience recordings, however, fans who elected to watch the episodes early were good at keeping spoilers under wraps - meaning that the livetweeting experience week-on-week was still a huge success. So much so, that moments after the words were uttered on air in week three, #CaptainBollocks became a UK-wide trending topic - matching #RedDwarfXI's achievement in having done so in the first week.

Excluding on-demand figures, consolidated totals for the first episode were 1.38million - down on Series X in terms of actual numbers, but once again posting a phenomenal audience share for the night in question. Twentica was actually the most-watched programme in its week outside of the five previously-terrestrial "main" channels - the first time the show had achieved this ranking in the Dave era.

Reviews were widely impressive across the board, with Den of Geek and SFX giving positive write-ups on a weekly basis - while the likes of the Metro, the Mail, the Telegraph, the Mirror and Radio Times all weighed in with raves across the course of the series. Recurring themes were the notion that the show successfully blended inventive sci-fi ideas with a high hit-rate of classic gags - in other words, the essence of Red Dwarf.

The new series was also accompanied by the first serious merchandise push the show had had in over a decade - with a brand new range of t-shirts and other miscellaneous items available to buy from a brand new official shop. There was also the first ever Red Dwarf video game - if you don't count the Java mobile game Simulant's Revenge - made available on iOS and Android devices and updated with new content for each episode.