Aftermath

The publicity campaign for a series of Red Dwarf is almost - not quite, but almost - as fun a time as actually watching the episodes themselves.

The first glimpse of Series XII saw the show get some of the widest publicity it had received since the original Back to Earth comeback on Dave - with the "four Krytens" photo seeing print in several national newspapers in July. This began a sequence of weekly "drops" of photos and other information on social media, with two months' worth of exciting reveals in store for fans.

Once again, the show was teased with an exciting and memorable trailer campaign - with different versions of the trail airing on different occasions, and not all versions being made available online. The broadcast version of the trailer, in an homage to the then-imminent movie Thor: Ragnarok, featured the memorable sounds of Led Zeppelin's classic "Immigrant Song".

Social media engagement for the campaign was boosted by an initiative whereby fans could sign up on Twitter to receive their very own Jupiter Mining Corporation ranking badge - with the earliest to register ascending all the way to Captain by the end of the weekly run.

The broadcast month in October saw a classic piece of Red Dwarf lore make it into the real world in the shape of a special "Leopard Lager" campaign. Fans could trade in tokens obtained from newspapers at a wide range of pubs up and down the country, and get an exclusive bottle of a specially-crafted and branded lager in the process. The same month, Red Dwarf made it onto the longest billboard in Europe, with a huge promotional poster greeting commuters outside London's Clapham Junction station.

Once again, Red Dwarf made its debut online on UKTV Play a week before each Dave broadcast. And once again, the opening episode cracked well over a million viewers in the consolidated figures, becoming the most-watched programme on Dave all year yet again in the process. Those unable to watch the shows as they went out each week were also catered for quicker than at any time in the show's history - with the DVD and Blu-ray sets landing only four days after Skipper had aired.

And just as Series XI had been greeted by a wave of new merchandise, so too was Series XII - with brand new t-shirts landing in the online store including, for the first time ever, a classic-style "London Jets" design (which was still Series XII appropriate thanks to its appearance in M-Corp). And there was another mobile game for iOS and Android, this time taking the form of an endless runner with a huge range of characters from Red Dwarf past and present for players to unlock.

And so ended the longest, and perhaps most action-packed, period of Red Dwarf production in the show's three-decade history. Two-and-a-half years, from announcement in May 2015 to the end of broadcast in November 2017 - and at the end of it all, twelve more episodes in the can and a very happy Red Dwarf fanbase.