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130-418: Red Dwarf is a British science fiction comedy programme created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor , consisting of a sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999, and on Dave since 2009, gaining a cult following . The programme follows low-ranking technician Dave Lister , who awakens after being in suspended animation for three million years to find that he is the last living human , and that he

260-604: A teaser trailer was released. A rough release date of sometime in April was given and, a day later on 11 March 2020, the official Twitter account for Dave revealed the title of the television film: Red Dwarf: The Promised Land . While speaking to the British Comedy Guide in May 2024, Robert Llewellyn confirmed that a three-episode special was due to be filmed in late 2024 with an air date sometime in 2025. Red Dwarf

390-424: A warp drive , in which a ship would be enclosed in a "warp bubble" where the space at the front of the bubble is rapidly contracting and the space at the back is rapidly expanding, with the result that the bubble can reach a distant destination much faster than a light beam moving outside the bubble, but without objects inside the bubble locally traveling faster than light. However, several objections raised against

520-441: A 90-minute feature-length special would be produced instead, to be filmed from December 2019 to January 2020, with location filming scheduled for November. Three 60-minute documentaries were also announced to accompany it, intended to act as a retrospective of all previous 12 series. In January 2020, the first publicity photos of the special were released, with Ray Fearon revealed as the first confirmed guest actor portraying Rodon,

650-605: A Cause (1955), Casablanca (1942), Easy Rider (1969), The Terminator (1984), Pride and Prejudice (1813), Isaac Asimov's Robot series (1939–85) and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse . The writers based the whole theme of some episodes on the plots of feature films. The series III episode "Polymorph" references and parodies key moments from Alien (1979); from series IV, " Camille " echoes key scenes from Casablanca (1942), while " Meltdown " borrows

780-465: A circle is a product of the radius and angular speed. It is also possible on a geostatic view, for objects such as comets to vary their speed from subluminal to superluminal and vice versa simply because the distance from the Earth varies. Comets may have orbits which take them out to more than 1000 AU . The circumference of a circle with a radius of 1000 AU is greater than one light day. In other words,

910-482: A comet at such a distance is superluminal in a geostatic, and therefore non-inertial, frame. If a laser beam is swept across a distant object, the spot of laser light can seem to move across the object at a speed greater than c . Similarly, a shadow projected onto a distant object seems to move across the object faster than c . In neither case does the light travel from the source to the object faster than c , nor does any information travel faster than light. No object

1040-540: A commissioned programme on a digital network. Back to Earth was released on DVD on 15 June 2009, and on Blu-ray on 31 August 2009. Back to Earth was subsequently described on the series' official website as "for all intents and purposes, the 'ninth series' of Red Dwarf ". This placement was confirmed when Series X was commissioned and branded as the tenth series, although Back to Earth continues not to be referred to as "Series IX" on home media or digital releases. On 10 April 2011, Dave announced that it had commissioned

1170-477: A consistent set of opening titles, replacing music and creating ambient sound effects with a digital master. The remastered series were released in a four-disc DVD box set "The Bodysnatcher Collection" in 2007. Four years elapsed between Series VI and VII, partly due to the dissolving of the Grant and Naylor partnership, but also due to cast and crew working on other projects. When the series eventually returned, it

1300-453: A hologram once again. While it was left unmentioned whether the Rimmer on board ship is the one who originally left, the revived version, or a third incarnation entirely (episodes have alluded to him remembering events from both previous incarnations' lives); with the release of The Promised Land , series-creator Doug Naylor confirmed in 2020 that the Rimmer from Back To Earth onwards is

1430-628: A literary reference to the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot ), as well as the crew meeting a man whom they believe to be Jesus Christ in series X episode " Lemons ". The series VII episode " Ouroboros " derives its name and theme from the ancient mythological snake of the same name . The third episode of series VI, " Gunmen of the Apocalypse ", was based on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The series explores many science-fiction staples such as time-travel paradoxes (including

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1560-471: A local sense (in small regions of spacetime where curvature is negligible), general relativity does allow the space between distant objects to expand in such a way that they have a " recession velocity " which exceeds the speed of light, and it is thought that galaxies which are at a distance of more than about 14 billion light-years from us today have a recession velocity which is faster than light. Miguel Alcubierre theorized that it would be possible to create

1690-410: A network of wormholes to violate causality would result in their decay. In string theory , Eric G. Gimon and Petr Hořava have argued that in a supersymmetric five-dimensional Gödel universe , quantum corrections to general relativity effectively cut off regions of spacetime with causality-violating closed timelike curves. In particular, in the quantum theory a smeared supertube is present that cuts

1820-486: A non-propagating static field, as mentioned in the sections above for gravity and electromagnetism. In physics, the Casimir–Polder force is a physical force exerted between separate objects due to resonance of vacuum energy in the intervening space between the objects. This is sometimes described in terms of virtual particles interacting with the objects, owing to the mathematical form of one possible way of calculating

1950-438: A particle interaction. However, it was shown in 2011 that a single photon may not travel faster than c . There have been various reports in the popular press of experiments on faster-than-light transmission in optics — most often in the context of a kind of quantum tunnelling phenomenon. Usually, such reports deal with a phase velocity or group velocity faster than the vacuum velocity of light. However, as stated above,

2080-477: A professional voice actor and impressionist who had previously worked with both the writers on Spitting Image and with the producers on Happy Families and Jasper Carrott productions. Craig Charles, a Liverpudlian "punk poet", was given the role of Dave Lister. He was approached by the production team for his opinion about the "Cat" character, as they were concerned it may be considered by people as racist. Charles described "Cat" as "pretty cool" and after reading

2210-488: A result of a spare budget being assigned for a second series of Happy Families that would never arise, and producer Paul Jackson 's insistence that Red Dwarf should be filmed instead. The show was fortunate to be remounted after an electricians ' strike partway through rehearsals in early 1987 shut the entire production down (the title sequence was filmed in January 1987). The filming was rescheduled for September, and

2340-460: A single set of plates since the plates' rest frame would define a " preferred frame " for FTL signaling. However, with multiple pairs of plates in motion relative to one another the authors noted that they had no arguments that could "guarantee the total absence of causality violations", and invoked Hawking's speculative chronology protection conjecture which suggests that feedback loops of virtual particles would create "uncontrollable singularities in

2470-427: A six-episode series X to be broadcast on Dave in late 2012. Filming dates for the new series Red Dwarf X were announced on 11 November 2011, along with confirmation that the series would be shot at Shepperton Studios in front of an audience. Principal filming began on 16 December 2011 and ended on 27 January 2012, and the cast and crew subsequently returned for six days filming pick-ups . Discounting guest stars, only

2600-406: A superluminal phase velocity cannot be used for faster-than-light transmission of information The Hartman effect is the tunneling effect through a barrier where the tunneling time tends to a constant for large barriers. This could, for instance, be the gap between two prisms. When the prisms are in contact, the light passes straight through, but when there is a gap, the light is refracted. There

2730-493: A vocabulary of fictional expletives to avoid using potentially offensive words in the show and to give nuance to futuristic colloquial language; in particular, "smeg" (and variants such as "smegging", "smegger", and "smeg-head") features prominently, alongside the terms "gimboid", "goit" and " Gwenlan ". The changes made to the series' cast, setting, creative teams and even production values from series to series have meant that opinions differ greatly between fans and critics as to

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2860-410: A wave component must be infinite in extent and of constant amplitude (otherwise it is not truly monochromatic), and so cannot convey any information. Thus a phase velocity above c does not imply the propagation of signals with a velocity above c . The group velocity of a wave may also exceed c in some circumstances. In such cases, which typically at the same time involve rapid attenuation of

2990-559: Is 299,792,458 m/s (by definition of the metre) or about 186,282.397 miles per second. This is not quite the same as traveling faster than light, since: Neither of these phenomena violates special relativity or creates problems with causality , and thus neither qualifies as faster-than-light as described here. In the following examples, certain influences may appear to travel faster than light, but they do not convey energy or information faster than light, so they do not violate special relativity. For an earth-bound observer, objects in

3120-460: Is a local notion, and there is not even a unique definition for the relative velocity of a cosmologically distant object. Faster-than-light cosmological recession speeds are entirely a coordinate effect. There are many galaxies visible in telescopes with redshift numbers of 1.4 or higher. All of these have cosmological recession speeds greater than the speed of light. Because the Hubble parameter

3250-493: Is a non-zero probability that the photon will tunnel across the gap rather than follow the refracted path. However, it has been claimed that the Hartman effect cannot actually be used to violate relativity by transmitting signals faster than c , also because the tunnelling time "should not be linked to a velocity since evanescent waves do not propagate". The evanescent waves in the Hartman effect are due to virtual particles and

3380-429: Is alone on the mining spacecraft Red Dwarf —except for a hologram of his deceased bunkmate Arnold Rimmer and " Cat ", a life form which evolved from Lister's pregnant cat . As of 2020, the cast included Chris Barrie as Rimmer, Craig Charles as Lister, Danny John-Jules as Cat , Robert Llewellyn as the sanitation droid Kryten , and Norman Lovett as the ship's computer, Holly . To date, twelve series of

3510-462: Is an approximation to a more general theory, but since the relevant comparison would (by definition) be outside the observable universe , it is difficult to imagine (much less construct) experiments to test this hypothesis. Despite this difficulty, such experiments have been proposed. Although the theory of special relativity forbids objects to have a relative velocity greater than light speed, and general relativity reduces to special relativity in

3640-501: Is called a Casimir vacuum . Calculations imply that light will go faster in such a vacuum by a minuscule amount: a photon traveling between two plates that are 1 micrometer apart would increase the photon's speed by only about one part in 10 . Accordingly, there has as yet been no experimental verification of the prediction. A recent analysis argued that the Scharnhorst effect cannot be used to send information backwards in time with

3770-423: Is decreasing with time, there can actually be cases where a galaxy that is receding from us faster than light does manage to emit a signal which reaches us eventually. However, because the expansion of the universe is accelerating , it is projected that most galaxies will eventually cross a type of cosmological event horizon where any light they emit past that point will never be able to reach us at any time in

3900-411: Is described by the logarithmic Schrödinger equation . It was shown that the relativistic gravitational interaction arises as the small-amplitude collective excitation mode whereas relativistic elementary particles can be described by the particle-like modes in the limit of low momenta. The important fact is that at very high velocities the behavior of the particle-like modes becomes distinct from

4030-424: Is in suspended animation at the time, as punishment for smuggling a cat aboard the ship. The cat, Frankenstein, who is revealed to be pregnant, is safe in the cargo hold. Following the accident, the ship's computer Holly keeps Lister in stasis until the radiation levels return to normal—a process that takes three million years. Lister therefore emerges as the last human being in the universe —but not alone on board

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4160-412: Is moving in these examples. For comparison, consider water squirting out of a garden hose as it is swung side to side: water does not instantly follow the direction of the hose. The rate at which two objects in motion in a single frame of reference get closer together is called the mutual or closing speed. This may approach twice the speed of light, as in the case of two particles travelling at close to

4290-568: Is nothing more than an effect of the underlying local time evolution of the wavefunction of a system and all of its environment. Since the underlying behavior does not violate local causality or allow FTL communication, it follows that neither does the additional effect of wavefunction collapse, whether real or apparent. The uncertainty principle implies that individual photons may travel for short distances at speeds somewhat faster (or slower) than c , even in vacuum; this possibility must be taken into account when enumerating Feynman diagrams for

4420-436: Is supposedly dead and Holly is offline due to water damage caused by Lister leaving a tap running. Actress Sophie Winkleman played a character called Katerina, a resurrected hologram of a Red Dwarf science officer intent on replacing Rimmer. To achieve a more cinematic atmosphere, Back to Earth was not filmed in front of a studio audience. Some previous Red Dwarf episodes had been shot in that way (" Bodyswap " and all of

4550-523: Is that they do not exist. According to all observations and current scientific theories, matter travels at slower-than-light ( subluminal ) speed with respect to the locally distorted spacetime region. Speculative faster-than-light concepts include the Alcubierre drive , Krasnikov tubes , traversable wormholes , and quantum tunneling . Some of these proposals find loopholes around general relativity, such as by expanding or contracting space to make

4680-456: Is usually addressed with Rimmer's belief in extraterrestrial life being shot down, as with a vessel he believes to be an alien ship (which turns out to be a garbage pod). However, there are non-human life forms such as evolutions of Earth species (e.g. the cat race), robotic or holo-life forms created by humans, and a "genetically engineered life form" (GELF), an artificially created creature. Simulants and GELFs frequently serve as antagonists during

4810-555: The Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, traveling faster than light by a relative amount of 2.48 × 10 (approximately 1 in 40,000), a statistic with 6.0-sigma significance. On 17 November 2011, a second follow-up experiment by OPERA scientists confirmed their initial results. However, scientists were skeptical about the results of these experiments, the significance of which was disputed. In March 2012,

4940-732: The Hogben series (about a family of mutant hillbillies). The former appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1943 and 1948 and was collected in hardcover as Robots Have No Tails (Gnome, 1952), and the latter appeared in Thrilling Wonder Stories in the late 1940s. In the 1950s, comedy became more common in science fiction. Some of the authors contributing to the sub-genre included: Alfred Bester , Harry Harrison , C. M. Kornbluth , Frederik Pohl , and Robert Sheckley . The Hitchhiker's Guide to

5070-593: The ICARUS collaboration failed to reproduce the OPERA results with their equipment, detecting neutrino travel time from CERN to the Gran Sasso National Laboratory indistinguishable from the speed of light. Later the OPERA team reported two flaws in their equipment set-up that had caused errors far outside their original confidence interval : a fiber-optic cable attached improperly, which caused

5200-492: The Planck length is also the same in all reference frames, and is associated with the work of Giovanni Amelino-Camelia and João Magueijo . There are speculative theories that claim inertia is produced by the combined mass of the universe (e.g., Mach's principle ), which implies that the rest frame of the universe might be preferred by conventional measurements of natural law. If confirmed, this would imply special relativity

5330-587: The UK charts . Goodall himself sang "The Rimmer Song" heard during the Series VII episode "Blue", to which Chris Barrie mimed. In 1998, on the tenth anniversary of the show's first airing (and between the broadcast of Series VII and VIII), the first three series of Red Dwarf were remastered and released on VHS . The remastering included replacing model shots with computer graphics, cutting certain dialogue and scenes, re-filming Norman Lovett's Holly footage, creating

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5460-431: The dark energy in three large spatial dimensions: height, width and length. Cleaver said positive dark energy is currently responsible for speeding up the expansion rate of our universe as time moves on. The possibility that Lorentz symmetry may be violated has been seriously considered in the last two decades, particularly after the development of a realistic effective field theory that describes this possible violation,

5590-431: The grandfather paradox ), the question of determinism and free will (in several episodes), the pursuit of happiness in virtual reality and, crucially to the show's premise of Lister being the last human, the near-certainty of the human species' extinction sometime in the far future. Aliens do not feature in the series, as Grant and Naylor decided very early in the process that they did not want aliens involved. This

5720-424: The neutrino might have a tachyonic nature, while others have disputed the possibility. General relativity was developed after special relativity to include concepts like gravity . It maintains the principle that no object can accelerate to the speed of light in the reference frame of any coincident observer. However, it permits distortions in spacetime that allow an object to move faster than light from

5850-529: The pilot episode finally made it onto television screens on 15 February 1988. Despite the commission of further series, the cast felt like "outsiders" at the BBC. Co-creator Doug Naylor attributed this to the show being commissioned by BBC Manchester , but its being filmed at Shepperton Studios near where the cast lived in London. When the show won an International Emmy Award in 1994 , Naylor's attempts to have

5980-518: The relativistic one – they can reach the speed of light limit at finite energy; also, faster-than-light propagation is possible without requiring moving objects to have imaginary mass . In 2007 the MINOS collaboration reported results measuring the flight-time of 3 GeV neutrinos yielding a speed exceeding that of light by 1.8-sigma significance. However, those measurements were considered to be statistically consistent with neutrinos traveling at

6110-523: The science fiction genre's conventions for comedic effect. Comic science fiction often mocks or satirizes standard science fiction conventions, concepts and tropes – such as alien invasion of Earth, interstellar travel , or futuristic technology. It can also satirize and criticize present-day society. An early example was the Pete Manx series by Henry Kuttner and Arthur K. Barnes (sometimes writing together and sometimes separately, under

6240-509: The " Parallel Universe " episode of the show, was released in 1993 as a single and became a top 20 UK hit for Danny John-Jules (under the name "The Cat"). Stage plays of the show have been produced by Blak Yak, a theatre group in Perth , Western Australia, who were given permission by Grant Naylor Productions to mount stage versions of certain episodes in 2002, 2004 and 2006. In October 2006, an Interactive Quiz DVD entitled Red Dwarf: Beat The Geek

6370-712: The "leader of the feral cats". In February 2020, the day before the 32nd anniversary of when Red Dwarf first aired , a synopsis was given by the official Red Dwarf website: "The special will see the posse meet three cat clerics ( Tom Bennett , Mandeep Dhillon , Lucy Pearman ) who worship Lister as their god. Lister vows to help them as they're being hunted by Rodon, the ruthless feral cat leader (Ray Fearon) who has vowed to wipe out all cats who worship anyone but him." Norman Lovett officially announced to be returning as Holly following his one-off guest spot in Series XII . On 10 March 2020, in an exclusive with Radio Times ,

6500-604: The Alcubierre drive appear to rule out the possibility of actually using it in any practical fashion. Another possibility predicted by general relativity is the traversable wormhole , which could create a shortcut between arbitrarily distant points in space. As with the Alcubierre drive, travelers moving through the wormhole would not locally move faster than light travelling through the wormhole alongside them, but they would be able to reach their destination (and return to their starting location) faster than light traveling outside

6630-565: The Apocalypse ", won an International Emmy Award in the Popular Arts category. In the same year, the series was also awarded Best BBC Comedy Series at the British Comedy Awards . The series attracted its highest ratings, of more than eight million viewers, during the eighth series, in 1999. The revived series on Dave has consistently delivered some of the highest ratings for non– Public Service Broadcasting commissions in

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6760-649: The Apocalypse ." When the show returned in 1999, it gained the highest audience figures yet; over eight million viewers tuned in for Series VIII's opening episode " Back in the Red: Part I ". The show has won numerous awards including the Royal Television Society Award for special effects, the British Science Fiction award for Best Dramatic Presentation, as well as an International Emmy Award for Series VI episode "Gunmen of

6890-750: The Apocalypse", which tied with an Absolutely Fabulous episode, "Hospital," in the Popular Arts category. The show had also been nominated for the International Emmy Award in 1987, 1989 and 1992. Series VI won a British Comedy Award for 'Best BBC Comedy Series.' The video sales have won eight Gold Awards from the British Video Association, and the show still holds the record for being BBC Two's longest-running, highest-rated sitcom. During 2005 SFX surveyed readers' top 50 British telefantasy shows of all time, and Red Dwarf placed second ahead of The Hitchhiker's Guide to

7020-401: The BBC decided not to renew the series, as they preferred to work on other projects. A short animated Christmas special was, however, made available to mobile phone subscribers the same year. Ultimately, however, fans had to wait a decade before the series finally returned to television. In 2008, a three-episode production was commissioned by the digital channel Dave . Red Dwarf: Back to Earth

7150-538: The Galaxy is a comic science-fiction series written by Douglas Adams . Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it later morphed into other formats, including stage shows, novels, comic books, a 1981 TV series , a 1984 computer game , and 2005 feature film . A prominent series in British popular culture , The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has become an international multi-media phenomenon;

7280-402: The Galaxy (1981), but also had a large element of British-style comedy and satire thrown into the mix, ultimately moulded into the form of a sitcom. Having written the pilot script in 1983, the former Spitting Image writers pitched their unique concept to the BBC, but it was rejected on fears that a science fiction sitcom would not be popular. It was finally accepted by BBC North in 1986,

7410-411: The Galaxy and behind Doctor Who . In 2007, the series was voted 'Best Sci-Fi Show Of All Time' by the readers of Radio Times magazine. Editor Gill Hudson stated that this result surprised them as 'the series had not given any new episodes this century'. Entertainment Weekly listed it in a 2009 roundup of shows they missed in their list of best cult television series. In January 2017, Series XI

7540-566: The UK. Series XI was voted Best Returning TV Sitcom and Comedy of the Year for 2016 by readers for the British Comedy Guide . In a 2019 ranking by Empire , Red Dwarf came 80th on a list of the 100 best TV shows of all time. The main setting of the series is the eponymous mining spaceship Red Dwarf . In the first episode, set sometime in the late 21st century, an on-board radiation leak kills everyone except lowest-ranking technician Dave Lister, who

7670-486: The already-alive Lister and Kochanski), including a pre-accident Rimmer and the original male Holly. The series ends with a metal-eating virus loose on Red Dwarf . The entire crew evacuate save the main cast (Lister, Rimmer, Cat, Kryten, and Kochanski), whose fates are unresolved in a cliffhanger ending . Series IX onwards revert to the same four main characters of Series 3–6 (Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten), on Red Dwarf and without Kochanski or Holly; Rimmer reappears as

7800-624: The apparently faster-than-light measurements, and a clock oscillator ticking too fast. In special relativity, it is impossible to accelerate an object to the speed of light, or for a massive object to move at the speed of light. However, it might be possible for an object to exist which always moves faster than light. The hypothetical elementary particles with this property are called tachyons or tachyonic particles. Attempts to quantize them failed to produce faster-than-light particles, and instead illustrated that their presence leads to an instability. Various theorists have suggested that

7930-401: The barrier are in fact fully compatible with relativity, although there is disagreement about whether the explanation involves reshaping of the wave packet or other effects. Because of the strong empirical support for special relativity , any modifications to it must necessarily be quite subtle and difficult to measure. The best-known attempt is doubly special relativity , which posits that

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8060-412: The best British science fiction shows of the 1980s, as well as among the top ten movies and shows inspired by Star Trek . It was listed at 90 on Empire 's "The 100 Best TV Shows Of All Time" ranking. The show's logo and characters have appeared on a wide range of merchandise. Red Dwarf has also been spun off in a variety of different media formats. For instance, the song "Tongue Tied," featured in

8190-419: The cast invited to a party thrown by the BBC proved futile when they objected to Craig Charles' and Danny John-Jules' inclusion, claiming they were "fire risks". Alan Rickman and Alfred Molina auditioned for roles in the series, with Molina being cast as Rimmer. However, after Molina had difficulties with the concept of the series, and of his role in particular, the role was recast and filled by Chris Barrie,

8320-568: The cast showed strong interest in making another series. During the Dimension Jump fan convention in May 2013, Doug Naylor stated that discussions were ongoing with all involved parties and while arrangements had not been finalised, he hoped shooting could begin in February 2014. In October 2013, Robert Llewellyn posted on his blog, stating that "an eleventh series would happen" and that it would be "sometime in 2014". Llewellyn later removed

8450-445: The closing speed of 2 v  >  c . Expressing the speeds in units of c , β  =  v / c : If a spaceship travels to a planet one light-year (as measured in the Earth's rest frame) away from Earth at high speed, the time taken to reach that planet could be less than one year as measured by the traveller's clock (although it will always be more than one year as measured by a clock on Earth). The value obtained by dividing

8580-428: The core cast of Charles, Barrie, Llewellyn and John-Jules returned for Series X, with Annett and Lovett absent, though the scripts include references to Kochanski and Holly. On 20 July 2012, a 55-second trailer for series X was released on Facebook , followed by a new "teaser" every Friday. The new series debuted on Thursday 4 October 2012. Following series X, which attracted high viewing figures, Dave, Doug Naylor and

8710-454: The crew pursue it in the smaller Starbug craft, with the side effect that the character Holly disappears. Series VII is also set in Starbug . Early in series VII, Rimmer departs (due to actor Chris Barrie 's commitments) and is replaced by Kristine Kochanski , Lister's long-term love interest, from an alternate universe . Kochanski becomes a regular character for Series VII and VIII. At

8840-543: The dispersion relations of different particle species, which naturally could make particles move faster than light. In some models of broken Lorentz symmetry, it is postulated that the symmetry is still built into the most fundamental laws of physics, but that spontaneous symmetry breaking of Lorentz invariance shortly after the Big Bang could have left a "relic field" throughout the universe which causes particles to behave differently depending on their velocity relative to

8970-406: The distance traveled, as determined in the Earth's frame, by the time taken, measured by the traveller's clock, is known as a proper speed or a proper velocity . There is no limit on the value of a proper speed as a proper speed does not represent a speed measured in a single inertial frame. A light signal that left the Earth at the same time as the traveller would always get to the destination before

9100-409: The earlier series, however, and the topic is the subject of constant fervent debate among the show's fanbase. Although the pilot episode of the show gathered over four million viewers, viewing figures dipped in successive episodes and the first series had generally poor ratings. Through to Series VI, ratings steadily increased and peaked at over six million viewers, achieved with the episode " Gunmen of

9230-588: The eleventh series would commence in October 2014, with an expected release of Autumn 2015 on Dave. On 2 May 2015, at the Dimension Jump XVIII convention, Naylor announced that an eleventh and a twelfth series had been commissioned. The two series would be shot back-to-back towards the end of 2015 for broadcast on Dave in 2016 and 2017, respectively, and would be co-produced by Baby Cow Productions , with company CEO, Henry Normal , executive-producing

9360-474: The end of Series VII, Kryten's service nanobots , which had abandoned him years earlier, are revealed to be behind the theft of the Red Dwarf at the end of series five. At the beginning of the eighth series, Kryten's nanobots reconstruct the Red Dwarf , which they had broken down into its constituent atoms. As a consequence, Series VIII features the entire original crew of Red Dwarf resurrected (except for

9490-455: The field; however, there are also some models where Lorentz symmetry is broken in a more fundamental way. If Lorentz symmetry can cease to be a fundamental symmetry at the Planck scale or at some other fundamental scale, it is conceivable that particles with a critical speed different from the speed of light be the ultimate constituents of matter. In current models of Lorentz symmetry violation,

9620-399: The first six series together (using the pseudonym Grant Naylor on the first two novels and later as the name of their production company, although never on the episodes themselves). Grant left in 1995, to pursue other projects, leaving Naylor to write series VII and VIII with a group of new writers, including Paul Alexander and actor Robert Llewellyn (who portrayed the character Kryten). For

9750-545: The first. The characteristic of this experiment is that the observation of the second photon can take place at a later time than the observation of the first photon, which may give the impression that the measurement of the later photons "retroactively" determines whether the earlier photons show interference or not, although the interference pattern can only be seen by correlating the measurements of both members of every pair and so it cannot be observed until both photons have been measured, ensuring that an experimenter watching only

9880-412: The full transmission of the leading part of a pulse while strongly attenuating the pulse maximum and everything behind (distortion), the pulse maximum is effectively shifted forward in time, while the information on the pulse does not come faster than c without this effect. However, group velocity can exceed c in some parts of a Gaussian beam in vacuum (without attenuation). The diffraction causes

10010-462: The future if the event was less than 16 billion light-years away, but the signal would never reach us if the event was more than 16 billion light-years away. Apparent superluminal motion is observed in many radio galaxies , blazars , quasars , and recently also in microquasars . The effect was predicted before it was observed by Martin Rees and can be explained as an optical illusion caused by

10140-600: The house pen-name of Kelvin Kent). Published in Thrilling Wonder Stories in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the series featured a time-traveling carnival barker who uses his con-man abilities to get out of trouble. Two later series cemented Kuttner's reputation as one of the most popular early writers of comic science fiction: the Gallegher series (about a drunken inventor and his narcissistic robot ) and

10270-502: The infinite future, because the light never reaches a point where its "peculiar velocity" towards us exceeds the expansion velocity away from us (these two notions of velocity are also discussed in Comoving and proper distances#Uses of the proper distance ). The current distance to this cosmological event horizon is about 16 billion light-years, meaning that a signal from an event happening at present would eventually be able to reach us in

10400-457: The intensity, the maximum of the envelope of a pulse may travel with a velocity above c . However, even this situation does not imply the propagation of signals with a velocity above c , even though one may be tempted to associate pulse maxima with signals. The latter association has been shown to be misleading, because the information on the arrival of a pulse can be obtained before the pulse maximum arrives. For example, if some mechanism allows

10530-412: The later series of the show. The series developed its own distinct vocabulary. Words and phrases such as hologrammatic [ sic ], dollarpound, bazookoids, Felis sapiens , Simulants, GELF, space weevil , and Zero Gee Football appear throughout the series, highlighting a development in language, political climate, technology, evolution and culture in the future. The creators also employed

10660-496: The main plot from Westworld (1973). For series IX, " Back to Earth " was partially inspired by Blade Runner (1982). The series' themes are not limited to films or television, having also incorporated historical events and figures. Religion also plays a part in the series, as a significant factor in the ultimate fate of the Cat race, and the perception of Lister as their 'God', both in the episode " Waiting for God " (whose title makes

10790-406: The most part, Ed Bye produced and directed the series. He left before Series V due to a scheduling clash (he ended up directing a show starring his wife, Ruby Wax ) so Juliet May took over as director. May parted ways with the show halfway through the series for personal and professional reasons and Grant and Naylor took over direction of the series, in addition to writing and producing. Series VI

10920-424: The new episodes. Series XI and XII were filmed back-to-back at Pinewood Studios between November 2015 and March 2016. The eleventh series premiered on UKTV's video-on-demand service UKTV Play on 15 September 2016, a week ahead of its broadcast transmission on 22 September. On 8 September 2017, it was announced that Red Dwarf XII would begin broadcasting on Dave on 12 October 2017, and on 15 September 2017 it

11050-665: The non-local correlations seen in entanglement cannot actually be used to transmit classical information faster than light, so that relativistic causality is preserved. The situation is akin to sharing a synchronized coin flip, where the second person to flip their coin will always see the opposite of what the first person sees, but neither has any way of knowing whether they were the first or second flipper, without communicating classically. See No-communication theorem for further information. A 2008 quantum physics experiment also performed by Nicolas Gisin and his colleagues has determined that in any hypothetical non-local hidden-variable theory ,

11180-413: The novels are the most widely distributed, having been translated into more than 30 languages by 2005. Terry Pratchett 's 1981 novel Strata also exemplifies the comic science fiction genre. Faster-than-light Particles whose speed exceeds that of light ( tachyons ) have been hypothesized, but their existence would violate causality and would imply time travel . The scientific consensus

11310-432: The object appear to be travelling greater than c . Such proposals are still widely believed to be impossible as they still violate current understandings of causality, and they all require fanciful mechanisms to work (such as requiring exotic matter ). In the context of this article, "faster-than-light" means the transmission of information or matter faster than c , a constant equal to the speed of light in vacuum, which

11440-592: The object partly moving in the direction of the observer, when the speed calculations assume it does not. The phenomenon does not contradict the theory of special relativity . Corrected calculations show these objects have velocities close to the speed of light (relative to our reference frame). They are the first examples of large amounts of mass moving at close to the speed of light. Earth-bound laboratories have only been able to accelerate small numbers of elementary particles to such speeds. Certain phenomena in quantum mechanics , such as quantum entanglement , might give

11570-680: The original Rimmer, having returned from his time being Ace Rimmer. The first series aired on BBC2 in 1988. Twelve full series and one miniseries have so far been produced , and a feature length special was released in 2020. The concept for the show was originally developed from the sketch series Dave Hollins: Space Cadet on the BBC Radio 4 show Son of Cliché in the mid-1980s, written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. Their influences came from films and television programmes including Star Trek (1966), Silent Running (1972), Dark Star (1974), Alien (1979) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to

11700-448: The peak of the pulse to propagate faster, while overall power does not. According to Hubble's law , the expansion of the universe causes distant galaxies to recede from us faster than the speed of light. However, the recession speed associated with Hubble's law , defined as the rate of increase in proper distance per interval of cosmological time , is not a velocity in a relativistic sense. Moreover, in general relativity , velocity

11830-496: The phenomenological parameters are expected to be energy-dependent. Therefore, as widely recognized, existing low-energy bounds cannot be applied to high-energy phenomena; however, many searches for Lorentz violation at high energies have been carried out using the Standard-Model Extension . Lorentz symmetry violation is expected to become stronger as one gets closer to the fundamental scale. In this approach,

11960-844: The photons going through the slit does not obtain information about the other photons in an faster-than-light or backwards-in-time manner. Faster-than-light communication is, according to relativity, equivalent to time travel . What we measure as the speed of light in vacuum (or near vacuum) is actually the fundamental physical constant c . This means that all inertial and, for the coordinate speed of light, non-inertial observers, regardless of their relative velocity , will always measure zero-mass particles such as photons traveling at c in vacuum. This result means that measurements of time and velocity in different frames are no longer related simply by constant shifts, but are instead related by Poincaré transformations . These transformations have important implications: Special relativity postulates that

12090-433: The physical vacuum is viewed as a quantum superfluid which is essentially non-relativistic, whereas Lorentz symmetry is not an exact symmetry of nature but rather the approximate description valid only for the small fluctuations of the superfluid background. Within the framework of the approach, a theory was proposed in which the physical vacuum is conjectured to be a quantum Bose liquid whose ground-state wavefunction

12220-456: The point of view of a distant observer. One such distortion is the Alcubierre drive , which can be thought of as producing a ripple in spacetime that carries an object along with it. Another possible system is the wormhole , which connects two distant locations as though by a shortcut. Both distortions would need to create a very strong curvature in a highly localized region of space-time and their gravity fields would be immense. To counteract

12350-405: The post from his blog and Doug Naylor issued a statement on Twitter, saying: "Getting tweets claiming Red Dwarf XI is commissioned. Not true. Not yet." However, in January 2014, Danny John-Jules stated that the eleventh series of Red Dwarf was in the process of being written. At the April 2014 Sci-Fi Scarborough Festival , during the Red Dwarf cast panel, Danny John-Jules stated that filming of

12480-610: The quality of each series. In the "Great Red Dwarf Debate," published in Volume 2, Issue 3 of the Red Dwarf Smegazine , science fiction writers Steve Lyons and Joe Nazarro argue about the pros and cons of the early series versus the later series. Lyons states that the show "once had was a unique balance of sci-fi comedy, which worked magnificently." Nazarro agrees that "the first two series are very original and very funny," but goes on to say that "it wasn't until series III that

12610-421: The renormalized quantum stress-energy" on the boundary of any potential time machine, and thus would require a theory of quantum gravity to fully analyze. Other authors argue that Scharnhorst's original analysis, which seemed to show the possibility of faster-than- c signals, involved approximations which may be incorrect, so that it is not clear whether this effect could actually increase signal speed at all. It

12740-592: The script he decided he wanted to audition for the part of Dave Lister. Laconic stand-up comedian Norman Lovett , who had originally tried out for the role of Rimmer, was kept in the show as Holly, the senile computer of the titular ship. A professional dancer and singer, Danny John-Jules, arriving half an hour late for his appointment, stood out as the Cat immediately. This was partly due to his "cool" exterior, dedicated research (reading Desmond Morris 's book Catwatching ), and his showing up in character, wearing his father's 1950s-style zoot suit . Grant and Naylor wrote

12870-466: The series has no aliens) that had developed in the intervening millions of years. Despite the pastiche of science fiction used as a backdrop, Red Dwarf is primarily a character-driven comedy, with science fiction elements used as complementary plot devices . Especially in the early episodes, a recurring source of comedy was the Odd Couple -style relationship between the two central characters of

13000-419: The seventh series), but Back to Earth represented the first time that a laughter track was not added before broadcast. It was also the first episode of Red Dwarf to be filmed in high definition . The specials were televised over three nights, starting on Friday 10 April 2009. The broadcasts received record ratings for Dave; the first of the three episodes represented the UK's highest-ever viewing figures for

13130-403: The ship. His former bunkmate and immediate superior Arnold Judas Rimmer (a character plagued by failure) is resurrected by Holly as a hologram to keep Lister sane. They are joined by a creature known only as Cat , who was initially thought to be the last member of a race of humanoid felines that evolved in the ship's hold from Lister's pregnant cat during the three million years that Lister

13260-422: The show have aired (including one miniseries ), in addition to a feature-length special The Promised Land . Four novels were published from 1989 to 1996. Two pilot episodes of an American version of the show were produced but never aired. The magazine The Red Dwarf Smegazine was published from 1992 to 1994. One of the series' highest accolades came in 1994 when an episode from the sixth series, " Gunmen of

13390-431: The show hit its stride." Discussions revolve around the quality of Series VI, seen by one reviewer as just as good as the earlier series', but criticised by another reviewer as a descent into formulaic comedy with an unwelcome change of setting. The changes seen in Series VII disappointed some; while much slicker and higher-budget in appearance, the shift away from outright sitcom and into something approaching comedy drama

13520-459: The show, who have an intense dislike for each other yet are trapped together deep in space. In Series III, the computer Holly changes from male ( Norman Lovett ) to female ( Hattie Hayridge ), and the mechanoid Kryten (who had appeared in one episode in Series II) joins the crew and becomes a regular character. In Series VI, a story arc is introduced where Red Dwarf has been stolen, and

13650-479: The sky complete one revolution around the Earth in one day. Proxima Centauri , the nearest star outside the Solar System , is about four and a half light-years away. In this frame of reference, in which Proxima Centauri is perceived to be moving in a circular trajectory with a radius of four light years, it could be described as having a speed many times greater than c as the rim speed of an object moving in

13780-491: The so-called Standard-Model Extension . This general framework has allowed experimental searches by ultra-high energy cosmic-ray experiments and a wide variety of experiments in gravity, electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos, mesons, and photons. The breaking of rotation and boost invariance causes direction dependence in the theory as well as unconventional energy dependence that introduces novel effects, including Lorentz-violating neutrino oscillations and modifications to

13910-433: The speed of light in opposite directions with respect to the reference frame. Imagine two fast-moving particles approaching each other from opposite sides of a particle accelerator of the collider type. The closing speed would be the rate at which the distance between the two particles is decreasing. From the point of view of an observer standing at rest relative to the accelerator, this rate will be slightly less than twice

14040-506: The speed of light in vacuum is invariant in inertial frames . That is, it will be the same from any frame of reference moving at a constant speed. The equations do not specify any particular value for the speed of light, which is an experimentally determined quantity for a fixed unit of length. Since 1983, the SI unit of length (the meter ) has been defined using the speed of light . The experimental determination has been made in vacuum. However,

14170-495: The speed of light. Special relativity does not prohibit this. It tells us that it is wrong to use Galilean relativity to compute the velocity of one of the particles, as would be measured by an observer traveling alongside the other particle. That is, special relativity gives the correct velocity-addition formula for computing such relative velocity . It is instructive to compute the relative velocity of particles moving at v and − v in accelerator frame, which corresponds to

14300-475: The speed of light. After the detectors for the project were upgraded in 2012, MINOS corrected their initial result and found agreement with the speed of light. Further measurements are going to be conducted. On September 22, 2011, a preprint from the OPERA Collaboration indicated detection of 17 and 28 GeV muon neutrinos, sent 730 kilometers (454 miles) from CERN near Geneva, Switzerland to

14430-455: The speed of the quantum non-local connection (what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance") is at least 10,000 times the speed of light. The delayed-choice quantum eraser is a version of the EPR paradox in which the observation (or not) of interference after the passage of a photon through a double slit experiment depends on the conditions of observation of a second photon entangled with

14560-442: The strength of the effect. Because the strength of the force falls off rapidly with distance, it is only measurable when the distance between the objects is extremely small. Because the effect is due to virtual particles mediating a static field effect, it is subject to the comments about static fields discussed above. The EPR paradox refers to a famous thought experiment of Albert Einstein , Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen that

14690-413: The superficial impression of allowing communication of information faster than light. According to the no-communication theorem these phenomena do not allow true communication; they only let two observers in different locations see the same system simultaneously, without any way of controlling what either sees. Wavefunction collapse can be viewed as an epiphenomenon of quantum decoherence, which in turn

14820-408: The traveller would. The phase velocity of an electromagnetic wave , when traveling through a medium, can routinely exceed c , the vacuum velocity of light. For example, this occurs in most glasses at X-ray frequencies. However, the phase velocity of a wave corresponds to the propagation speed of a theoretical single-frequency (purely monochromatic ) component of the wave at that frequency. Such

14950-530: The unstable nature, and prevent the distortions from collapsing under their own 'weight', one would need to introduce hypothetical exotic matter or negative energy. General relativity also recognizes that any means of faster-than-light travel could also be used for time travel . This raises problems with causality . Many physicists believe that the above phenomena are impossible and that future theories of gravity will prohibit them. One theory states that stable wormholes are possible, but that any attempt to use

15080-522: The vacuum we know is not the only possible vacuum which can exist. The vacuum has energy associated with it, called simply the vacuum energy , which could perhaps be altered in certain cases. When vacuum energy is lowered, light itself has been predicted to go faster than the standard value c . This is known as the Scharnhorst effect . Such a vacuum can be produced by bringing two perfectly smooth metal plates together at near atomic diameter spacing. It

15210-582: The vocals on the closing theme tune by Jenna Russell . The first two series used a relatively sombre instrumental version of the closing theme for the opening titles; from Series III onwards this switched to a more upbeat version, with Goodall singing on vocoder , the line "Red Dwarf" four times in the second half of the song. Goodall also wrote music for the show's various songs, including " Tongue Tied ", with lyrics written by Grant and Naylor. Danny John-Jules (credited as "The Cat") re-orchestrated and released "Tongue Tied" on 11 October 1993; it reached number 17 on

15340-424: The wormhole. Gerald Cleaver and Richard Obousy, a professor and student of Baylor University , theorized that manipulating the extra spatial dimensions of string theory around a spaceship with an extremely large amount of energy would create a "bubble" that could cause the ship to travel faster than the speed of light. To create this bubble, the physicists believe manipulating the 10th spatial dimension would alter

15470-426: Was filmised and no longer shot in front of a live audience, allowing for greater use of four-walled sets, location shooting and single-camera techniques. When the show returned for its eighth series two years later, however, it had dropped use of the filmising process and returned to using a live audience. The show received a setback when the BBC rejected proposals for a Series IX. Doug Naylor confirmed in 2007 that

15600-526: Was broadcast over the Easter weekend of 2009, along with a "making of" documentary. The episode was set nine years after the events of " Only the Good... " (with the cliffhanger ending of that episode left unresolved, a situation that would continue with Series X). The storyline involves the characters arriving back on Earth, circa 2009, only to find that they are characters in a TV show called "Red Dwarf". Kochanski

15730-591: Was directed by Andy De Emmony , and Ed Bye returned to direct series VII and VIII. Series I, II and III were made by Paul Jackson Productions, with subsequent series produced by the writers' own company Grant Naylor Productions for BBC North . All eight series were broadcast on BBC Two. At the beginning of series IV, production moved from BBC North's New Broadcasting House in Manchester to Shepperton . The opening theme tune, closing theme tune, and incidental music were written and performed by Howard Goodall , with

15860-478: Was founded on the standard sitcom focus of a disparate and frequently dysfunctional group of individuals living together in a restricted setting. With the main characters routinely displaying their cowardice, incompetence and laziness, while exchanging insulting and sarcastic dialogue, the series provided a humorous antidote to the fearless and morally upright space explorers typically found in science-fiction series, with its main characters acting bravely only when there

15990-550: Was further announced that each episode would preview a week earlier via the UKTV Play video on demand service, effectively meaning that series 12 would be starting on 5 October 2017. In late May 2019, in a radio interview, Robert Llewellyn stated that a thirteenth series was happening and in June of that year, Danny John-Jules stated that it was expected to be wrapped up by the end of 2019. However, in October 2019, UKTV announced that

16120-449: Was in stasis. In season 1 episode 3 ' Waiting for God ', it was revealed that the cat priest had also survived, and was living in the hold of the ship. The series revolves around Lister being the last human alive, after three million years of travel from Earth , with his companions. The crew encounter phenomena such as time distortions , faster-than-light travel, mutant diseases and strange lifeforms (all evolved from Earth, because

16250-516: Was later claimed by Eckle et al. that particle tunneling does indeed occur in zero real time. Their tests involved tunneling electrons, where the group argued a relativistic prediction for tunneling time should be 500–600 attoseconds (an attosecond is one quintillionth (10 ) of a second). All that could be measured was 24 attoseconds, which is the limit of the test accuracy. Again, though, other physicists believe that tunneling experiments in which particles appear to spend anomalously short times inside

16380-502: Was no other possible alternative. The increasing science-fiction elements of the series were treated seriously by creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. Satire, parody and drama were alternately woven into the episodes, referencing other television series, films and books. These have included references to the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Top Gun (1986), RoboCop (1987), Star Wars (1977), Citizen Kane (1942), The Wild One (1953), High Noon (1952), Rebel Without

16510-747: Was realized experimentally for the first time by Alain Aspect in 1981 and 1982 in the Aspect experiment . In this experiment, the two measurements of an entangled state are correlated even when the measurements are distant from the source and each other. However, no information can be transmitted this way; the answer to whether or not the measurement actually affects the other quantum system comes down to which interpretation of quantum mechanics one subscribes to. An experiment performed in 1997 by Nicolas Gisin has demonstrated quantum correlations between particles separated by over 10 kilometers. But as noted earlier,

16640-511: Was released, hosted by Norman Lovett and Hattie Hayridge, both reprising their roles as Holly. In 2005, Grant Naylor Productions and Studio Hubris, in conjunction with Across the Pond Comics, collaborated to produce the spin-off webcomic Red Dwarf: Prelude to Nanarchy . Science fiction comedy Science fiction comedy ( sci-fi comedy ) or comic science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction or science fantasy that exploits

16770-459: Was seen by one reviewer as a move in the wrong direction. The attempt to shift back into traditional sitcom format for Series VIII was greeted with a response that was similarly lukewarm. There was criticism aimed at the decision to resurrect the entire crew of Red Dwarf , as it was felt this detracted from the series' central premise of Lister being the last human being alive. There are other critics who feel that Series VII and VIII are no weaker than

16900-416: Was voted "Best Returning TV Sitcom" and "Comedy of the Year" for 2016 by readers for the British Comedy Guide . A year later, Red Dwarf was once again voted "Best Returning TV Sitcom" for Series XII, retaining the title from British Comedy Guide. As noted by Collider in 2023, it ranked number four among the top ten British science fiction shows on IMDb . In 2024, it was listed by Den of Geek as among

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