Writing

If Doug Naylor thought he was going to get a break after writing the six episodes that made up Red Dwarf XI, he had another think coming - with Red Dwarf XII hot on its heels, he barely had time to think about how the first six would be made before having to come up with plot ideas for the next six.

Perhaps this is why he found himself in the position to write Rimmer's speech about wishing he could be a fish, in Siliconia. Indeed, the writer/director said himself that "It was inspired by when I've got lots of deadlines, and I look out of the window, and I see people with normal jobs - or even a dog - and I go, 'I wish I could be a dog. It'd be great. I wouldn't have to get up at five in the morning and write a script!'"

Siliconia - originally titled Kryticus as a pun on the movie Spartacus - was actually the first hint, plot-wise, that anyone was given about Series XI or XII. During the announcement of the twin series at 2015's Dimension Jump convention, Doug explained that after years of the cast badgering him about the possibility of doing an "everyone is Kryten" episode, he was finally going to write it for the new run. That "fish" speech of Rimmer's, meanwhile, provided a nice link back to the show's past - with many fans noticing that perhaps this had been a subconscious dream of Rimmer's for many years, finally giving us a reason for his "I am a fish" exam answer...

Indeed, these sorts of "kisses to the past" would become a recurring feature of Series XII, although often not initially by design. Series XI had presented multiple variations or echoes of previous concepts and episodes, but Series XII went so far as to actively reference them. This was a series informed and enriched by the show's entire past - perhaps not coincidentally, as the landmark thirtieth anniversary year approached.

Some of these nods weren't originally intended at the planning stage, however. Producer Richard Naylor was the one arguing in favour of including Talkie Toaster at the climax of Mechocracy, while the series was already two-thirds written when a chance email from Norman Lovett suggesting his availability for the series led to Holly being written in to Skipper.

Another late change came with Cured - written and filmed under the working title Here No Evil. Originally, the episode's big reveal would be that the evil Professor Telford himself was actually Hitler - but as time went on it was felt that it wasn't quite right having not one, but two versions of Hitler in the episode.

The rest of Cured's conceit, meanwhile, was inspired by Doug's reading about psychopaths, and notably the discovery that being one doesn't necessarily also mean being a murderer. This led to the episode's rewritten climax in which the Cat - going against the expectation of it being Rimmer - was confirmed to be a psychopath himself. But while it was predicted that some fans would take issue with the Cat killing Telford at the end, Doug reasoned that Telford was "massively evil" - and besides, killing things is what cats do best!

Mechocracy had been in the works from the early planning stages of Series XI and XII, but initially Doug was worried that it was too much of a repeat of Series X's style of vending machine-heavy plots. Going back to it following production of XI, however, a re-read of the script unlocked its potential. It was an unusual example of Red Dwarf taking direct cues from current political events, with much of the rhetoric from the election campaigns being inspired by those going on in the USA and UK in 2016.

M-Corp and Timewave also stemmed from contemporary concerns - the former from a fear of corporations having an excessive and oppressive impact on society, and the latter around modern trends for online criticism. With M-Corp there was also a desire to do something "a bit darker", with many viewers noting a similarity in the episode's tone and feel to that of the Red Dwarf novels.

Once again, Series XII made for an imaginative set of episodes - one that would present the usual challenges for production. But 29 years after the first series, it was comforting to know that the show could still come up with inventive and hilarious new concepts.