Last weekend the first brand-new Red Dwarf in ten years aired on UK television network Dave (and probably found its way to households outside of its country of origin thanks to the internet). I was fortunate enough to get to watch it while I was there. I recently re-watched the whole thing from beginning to end, and I now feel confident enough to give my final verdict on the thing.

Although this blog entry isn't going to be particularly spoiler-heavy, I'd strongly suggest that if you haven't seen Back To Earth yet that you not read this blog entry. That means you, Dino.

I'll start with the aesthetic stuff - Back To Earth looks absolutely brilliant. The special effects look absolutely top-notch, which is remarkable considering the absolute shoestring budget that Grant Naylor Productions had to work with. Granted, practically everybody involved with BTE was working for less than industry-standard pay, with one VisFX guy accepting a signed copy of the script as his only payment, but nevertheless the Small Rouge One has never looked better. We're talking greenscreen and matte compositions that wouldn't look out of place in an episode of new Doctor Who.

The loss of the studio audience laughter doesn't hurt the show either. People will happily argue about the relevance of studio audience comedy for years to come, and indeed whether or not the audience is an integral part of Red Dwarf is another matter entirely. Personally, I feel that as Dwarf has evolved it has outgrown the studio audience. Indeed, series VII of the show - arguably the glossiest, most professional-looking series of the show's original run - feels much slicker without the audience as you can see by watching the Xtended versions of some of the episodes on the series VII DVD.

It's a pity, then, that the writing doesn't quite feel as slick. Part One is definitely the weakest of the three, focusing more on the story than the humour. An attempt to recreate some of the bunkroom tension between Rimmer and Lister almost reaches the quality of classic Dwarf but doesn't quite get there. In fact much of the attempted humour in Part One feels very first- or second-draft, and watching it you begin to wish for show co-creator Rob Grant to return to the Writer's Room and give Doug Naylor, the show's other co-creator and sole writer of these specials, someone to bounce ideas off of. It doesn't help that when hologram Katerine Bartikovsky, Red Dwarf's Science officer before the accident that killed the drew, makes her sudden and inexplicable appearance, no one seems to bat an eyelid. That is, until she tells Lister she can get him home. Which she does. More or less.

Part Two, wherein the Red Dwarf crew returns to Earth in the early 21st century and discovers that they are characters in a television series, is actually the strongest of the three. Despite how awful that metafiction story sounds, it's actually incredibly well-written and very, very funny. There is another attempt to recreate a Rimmer/Lister bunkroom scene, albeit in the Furniture department of a large department store, which is far more successful and very, very funny. This is also where the Blade Runner references start to creep in. While many fans seem to agree that the Blade Runner stuff was a bit much, I actually really enjoyed it and thought it worked really well given the context of the story - the crew discover that their show is nearing its end and aim to find their creators and plead for more life. It's very funny, very clever and, most importantly, very, very entertaining. This is Doug Naylor doing what many people didn't think he was capable of - writing classic-quality Red Dwarf on his own, without Rob Grant.

Part Three doesn't quite reach the same amazing highs, but comes pretty close. There's a moderately amusing encounter with the "real" Lister - actor Craig Charles, on the set of British soap Coronation Street - after which the show's mantra is "In for a penny, in for a pound". The real world starts to seem a little less real as the Blade Runner homage kicks into full effect. It's still very funny, despite a couple of scenes dragging on for far longer than they needed to (I can only look at Rimmer bashing his crotch into the corner of an end-table for so long before it begins to get tiresome). I'd predicted part of the ending here, but not all of it. And it is a glorious ending.

Re-watching it from beginning to end as one whole, it feels a lot less messy. It's not a story that benefits from being cut into three chunks. It still feels a little overly long, but it works. Overall I have to say I really enjoyed Back To Earth, and if this is where the show ultimately ends then I won't complain. Of course, with the show having received remarkably strong ratings, there's every chance we might get a full series at some point in the future.

One can only hope.