A veritable one-stop shop for the series’ BBC era, this nineteen-disc set includes almost all of the highly-regarded supplementary material from the groundbreaking noughties’ DVD releases, which together with Doctor Who really set the bar for the medium. However, these special features haven’t been upscaled, or even transferred onto Blu-ray disc – instead we’re essentially presented with a copy of each bonus DVD as was. Whilst this gives rise to a lot of unnecessary disc-swapping, it’s hard to grumble about when we have so much quality programming gathered together in one set. Even the once-exclusive content from the hard-to-find Bodysnatcher Collection has been ported over, Re-Mastered commentaries and all, with only the Re-Mastered episodes themselves conspicuous in their (nonetheless welcome) absence. You could be forgiven for missing “Bodysnatcher” and its superlative selection of special features (the Series I and II retrospectives amongst them), though, as for some reason it is hidden in a newspaper-giveaway style cardboard slipcase and buried beneath the box set’s booklet, which contains the only real clue as to its existence. It’s a bizarre design decision that reeks of afterthought, in some respects summing up both the strengths and weaknesses of this release in one fell swoop.
Above: Animation fuses with Chris Barrie’s energetic narration to bring “lost” Dwarf to life
The episodes themselves, for the most part, look better than they have ever done – if you watch them on a ten-year-old TV. Blown up well beyond their intended proportions on a contemporary 4K TV, though, they look much as they always did, warts and all, only bigger – any gains made in upscaling are lost to the larger canvas. But if I watch them on the 26” TV now relegated to our bedroom, they do look far better than the DVDs ever did on there – particularly the filmic Red Dwarf VII. The built-in problem with this type of release is that we’re never comparing like for like, and so we’re always destined to be disappointed. You can’t invent resolution. You can’t create fidelity. What this box set does is provide us with the best possible means to carry classic Dwarf into the next era of television, looking much as it always did – which is, I’m afraid to say, a bit rubbish.
Because I held out for a while before picking this up, I was fortunate enough to receive the corrected edition, but if you notice that Series III and V look even less impressive than the rest of the episodes, then you’ve probably received discs from the original pressing in which certain episodes had been mistakenly deinterlaced (effectively losing half of the information in the picture and significantly reducing the quality). If so, you can obtain replacement discs from the BBC by clicking here.
Overall, the lack of quality control on this release is lamentable, but equal to its pricing. To be able to pick up the entire BBC run of Red Dwarf for less than a couple of seasons would have cost you on DVD back in the day is a genuine gift – unless, of course, you already own the DVDs and don’t have a massive telly, in which case all this box set would really save you is a bit of shelf space.
Today’s cheapest retailers for the Red Dwarf: Complete Series I - VIII Blu-ray are Zavvi and Amazon, who each have it listed for £30.98 inclusive of delivery.
