History Series / RedDwarf

** ''Better Than Life'' itself is significantly different as it doesn't actually give the player whatever they wish for like the version in the TV show; rather, it gives the user their deepest subconscious desires. As a result, Lister's reality in particular is based far more on his hidden desires and sentimentalities than the generically extravagant wishes he makes in the TV version of ''[=BTL=]''.

* CulturalStereotypes: Death is apparently "like being on holiday with a group of Germans."

* MeetYourActor: In the ''Back to Earth'' episodes.

* GreenEggs: All over the table in ''Legion''.

* EldritchAbomination: The Polymorph's real form is ''ugly''.
* EldritchLocation: The crew come across several 'alternate universes' where normal laws of physics and reason are askewed or dont exist at all.

* BetterThanSex: When Rimmer [[spoiler: copies himself and moves in with his new double]], he describes his new life of discipline as "better than sex". Of course, he's soon proven wrong when it turns out [[spoiler: even his double doesn't like him]].

The ship's AI, Holly, sends the ship immediately out of the solar system, until the radiation reaches safe levels and Lister can be safely released from stasis three million years later. To keep Lister sane, the ship Holly creates a hologram of the despised (and now deceased) Second Technician Arnold J. Rimmer. The pair discover the Cat, the last known member of ''his'' race ''Felis sapiens'', which evolved from the pregnant cat that got Lister put in suspended animation in the first place.

-->-- '''Holly'''

** ''Dimension Jump'' was intended to be the opening episode of Series IV. However it was moved to the fifth episode because of concerns that viewers would consider it insensitive due to the Gulf War. If hostilities had continued, it might not have been shown at all.

After series VIII finished, a three-part, PostModern, movie-length sequel ''Back To Earth'' aired across the Easter Weekend of 2009 on digital channel Dave, putting an end to the complete lack of any new TV or book output since 1999. Dave has since commissioned a six-part "tenth" series, to air some time in 2012.

* AdaptationDistillation: The novels turn an episodic TV series into a sprawling adventure. Each of them takes particular episodes from the series and incorporates their plots into one long narrative, integrated with original material. The first novel is much more heavily based on episodes of the series than its sequels, and also has a much more meandering plot.
* AdaptationExpansion: The novels again. For the episodes that are incorporated into the novels' plots, they go deeply in-depth and add a lot of detail that wasn't or couldn't be realised on screen. The novels' depiction of the AR Game "Better Than Life", as compared to its more lighthearted TV depiction, is a good example.

* AlternateContinuity: The novels.
** Also within the novels themselves. Grant and Naylor jointly wrote the first two books, ''Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers'' and ''Better Than Life''. They then separately wrote books called ''Backwards'' and ''Last Human'', each of which is a direct alternate-continuity sequel to ''BTL''.
** RetCanon: As of Series IV, Lister's backstory with Kochanski is {{Ret Con}}ned to one closer to in ''Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers'' than series 1 and 2.
*** In one case, an episode was adapted from a section of a novel rather than the other way around: the episode "White Hole" is based on the "Garbage World" section of the novel ''Better Than Life''.

** Also appears in the novel series: a universe where time runs backwards appears in ''Better Than Life'' and ''Backwards'', and almost all the events of ''Last Human'' take place in an alternate universe wherein [[spoiler:their version of Lister is a homicidal sociopath.]]

*** This becomes a larger plot point in the novels, as it's the newly-12,000-IQ Holly who reveals in ''Better Than Life'' that Lister is, in fact, the creator of their universe.

* BittersweetEnding: Each of the novels has one. ''Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers'' ends with the crew being stuck in a virtual reality simulation of their fantasies, which gives them all everything they ever wanted, but will eventually kill two of them by starvation. The book ''Better Than Life'' ends with Lister's death and resurrection on backwards earth along with Kochanski, but unable to leave until the others return for him, not to mention that Holly has less than a minute to live should he be switched back on. Rimmer, Kryten, Holly and Ace Rimmer are all killed during ''Backwards'' (and since Kryten's cure for the Apocalypse virus doesn't remedy Starbug's problem in time to avoid losing the ship, Kryten and Rimmer's sacrifice was a bit wasteful). Lister and the Cat use Ace's ship to jump dimensions to an alternate RedDwarf where they had died in Better Than Life, but Kryten, Rimmer and Holly are all okay. ''Last Human'' probably gets the best possible scenario of the series. Rimmer, of all people, performs ''two'' [[HeroicSacrifice heroic sacrifices]] in order for the crew and the "volunteers" for the terraforming project to survive and Lister has been rendered sterile by his EvilCounterpart. Yet, after the planet travels through the Omni Zone and the survivors return to the surface, it is implied that the Luck virus can reverse Lister's sterility and that Lister and Kochanski can begin to rebuild the human race.

* CanonDiscontinuity: After the Grant/Naylor writing partnership broke up in 1993, both writers penned a new Red Dwarf novel: Doug Naylor wrote ''Last Human'' in 1995, and Rob Grant wrote ''Backwards'' in 1996. Each one ignores the other and is written as following the second book ''Better Than Life''.

* DarkerAndEdgier: The novel continuity, for the better in some ways. It retains the absurdist humour, but devotes much of a chapter to Lister having a [[FreakOut spectacular mental breakdown]] in which DrowningMySorrows is ''not'' played for comedy in the least. Rimmer's massive self-image problems and crippling neuroses aren't played for laughs quite so much either, and he's made slightly more rounded as a result.

* {{Deconstruction}}: The novels deconstruct the premise of a number of their episodes and show how harrowing they could be.
** Upon discovering he's three million years away from home and totally alone, Lister has a [[HeroicBSOD mental breakdown]] and drinks himself into oblivion until Holly activates Rimmer to keep him company.
** Rimmer clones himself and the relationship eventually breaks down, just like on the TV version. This time we're treated to Rimmer's thought process regarding why [[MesACrowd hanging out with yourself]] generally won't work in the long run, although whether it's Rimmer's personality flaws or the concept itself that doomed the experiment is left open.
* DeepImmersionGaming: The titular video game in episode ''Better Than Life'', the premise of ''Back to Reality''.
** "Better Than Life" is even more immersive in the novels, to the point that the game erases any memory of the player beginning to play and conjures semi-realistic explanations for why they suddenly have everything they ever wanted. As a result, players tend to die of starvation in short order unless somebody is caring for them in reality. The game is treated like a street drug and banned accordingly, with analogous "game heads" and "game dealers."
*** It's worth noting that both the addictive version of the game from the novels and the benign version from the episode have the same weakness: [[spoiler:Rimmer's self-loathing is so tremendous that it undermines everybody's fantasies, ruining the experience and leading them to ''want'' to exit]].
*** The Series VII episode "Duct Soup" contains a scene cut from the original broadcast but restored for the extended DVD release in which Kochanski mentions spending years hooked up to a computer (the actual term "Better Than Life" is not mentioned, but the premise sounds similar) during her school years. After returning to the real world, she confesses to "going off the rails" for a while and becoming a "retro-punk".

* FantasticDrug: Bliss, from the first novel. A brown powder substance notable for causing addiction just by looking at it (which made drug busts notoriously difficult), and for its effects. It causes the user to believe they are God, all seeing, all knowing, infinite in power and the creator of all things. Kind of laughable as you couldn't even tie your own shoelaces while high on Bliss. Its high lasted a few minutes, followed by decades of suicidal depression, the only relief from which could be bought with another hit.

** In the first novel, the characters are unknowingly in the game Better Than Life. In Rimmer's fantasy he is incredibly wealthy, and continuously buys new bodies to inhabit, allowing him to live as a human once again. Upon acquiring his latest model, he comments that the penis "still isn't big enough". His butler informs him that any larger and he'll have severe problems with balance.

* MindScrew: Quite a few examples, but ''Backwards'' the novel and "Back to Earth" took it UpToEleven.

** The accident that originally wiped the crew out was caused by a sloppily-repaired component of such low importance that the captain trusted Rimmer to fix it properly.
*** In the novel, the accident is caused by a techie not realising that the warning light on his console is real, as opposed to a result of his coffee spillage a few seconds ago.

** Don't knock it, it worked.

* [[EverybodysDeadDave Everybody's Dead, Dave]]: The core premise; the show is the TropeNamer.

* MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: ''Polymorph'' was the TropeNamer, but many of the [=GELFs=] could qualify.

* TwoFirstNames: The entire main cast. No, seriously!
** Craig Charles
** Chris Barrie
** Danny John Jules
** Robert Llewellyn
** Chloe Annett is sadly just one letter short.

* {{UnInstallment}}: ''Back to Earth'' reveals that [[spoiler:there were two more seasons of Red Dwarf somehow made in the 'real world' that the crew land in, which we of course don't have]].
** And worst of all, [[spoiler: Series [=IX=] was apparently "the best by miles."]]
** And in real life, too, Doug Naylor has said something along the lines of "I have no interest in writing Series [=IX=]... though I ''am'' interested in writing Series [=X=]".
** Not to mention there really are two missing episodes that were planned but never filmed. (One featuring the story of Lister's twin sons and Kryten's return should have opened season 3/Series [=III=]. The other was the Cat episode.)
** Plus the ''Bodysnatcher'' episode, for which the script was unfinished, as it didn't gel well with the continuity of the first series. Originally intended to be the finale, it was dropped and some of its dialogue was placed into other episodes.

!! Is the TropeNamer for:

* EverybodysDeadDave: Repeated to OverlyLongGag levels in the first episode.
* HardLight: Rimmer.
* MoreTeethThanTheOsmondFamily: The polymorph.

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The ship's AI, Holly, sends the ship immediately out of the solar system, until the radiation reaches safe levels and Lister can be safely released from stasis. To keep Lister sane, the ship Holly creates a hologram of the despised (and now deceased) Second Technician Arnold J. Rimmer. The pair discover the Cat, the last known member of ''his'' race ''Felis sapiens'', which evolved from the pregnant cat that got Lister put in suspended animation in the first place.

Lister decides that he wants to return to Earth, despite the fact that no-one aboard knows if the human race still exists, and despite the problem that the journey back will take another three million years at sub-light speed (even turning the ship around at near lightspeed will take 4000 years according to Holly).

* SillyReasonForWar: The conflict which almost wiped out the Cat race was fought over their different interpretations of Lister's favourite colour for party hats. [[spoiler:They were both wrong.]]

** There's a ShoutOut to ''DieHard 2: Die Harder'' in "DNA"; Lister exclaims "How can the same smeg happen to the same guy twice?" after he is [[CallBack attacked yet again by his favorite foods]].

--> "Androids, everybody needs good Androids...."