Uploaded August 2009 | Updated September 2026, 3 hours ago
This episode of Red Dwarf Back to Earth, series 9 was aired in April in 2009.
The crew of Red Dwarf finds out that they are fictional characters, which also happens in the movie spin-off of the dark British sitcom The League of Gentleman.
The crew go back to earth and meet Craig Charles (the actor who plays Dave Lister) on the set of the longest running soap opera in the world - Tavistock Institute creation and behaviour modification tool, Coronation Street, in which Craig Charles plays a taxi driver. They also meet their "creator", who makes references to Blade Runner, and also points out that "nothing lasts forever, NOT EVEN BANKS."
But it turns out that it was all another collective hallucination caused by another despair squid - youtube.com/watch?v=VmEEaNYkFbs
This is in reference to an episode of series 5 called Back to Reality - youtube.com/watch?v=oF14OZKOI68 - originally aired in March 1992, in which an attack from a giant "despair squid" results in a group hallucination that convinces the crew that what they had thought was reality was actually a computer game they had been playing for the last four years - imdb.com/title/tt0094535/episodes - à la The Matrix.
There was an episode of Red Dwarf series 2 called Better Than Life - youtube.com/watch?v=jQ2nprWlciA - originally aired in September 1988, which also featured an artificial reality game.
This seems to be a deliberate confusion of reality, artificial reality and fiction.
This episode of Red Dwarf Back to Earth, series 9 was aired in April in 2009.
The crew of Red Dwarf finds out that they are fictional characters, which also happens in the movie spin-off of the dark British sitcom The League of Gentleman.
The crew go back to earth and meet Craig Charles (the actor who plays Dave Lister) on the set of the longest running soap opera in the world - Tavistock Institute creation and behaviour modification tool, Coronation Street, in which Craig Charles plays a taxi driver. They also meet their "creator", who makes references to Blade Runner, and also points out that "nothing lasts forever, NOT EVEN BANKS."
But it turns out that it was all another collective hallucination caused by another despair squid - youtube.com/watch?v=VmEEaNYkFbs
This is in reference to an episode of series 5 called Back to Reality - youtube.com/watch?v=oF14OZKOI68 - originally aired in March 1992, in which an attack from a giant "despair squid" results in a group hallucination that convinces the crew that what they had thought was reality was actually a computer game they had been playing for the last four years - imdb.com/title/tt0094535/episodes - à la The Matrix.
There was an episode of Red Dwarf series 2 called Better Than Life - youtube.com/watch?v=jQ2nprWlciA - originally aired in September 1988, which also featured an artificial reality game.
This seems to be a deliberate confusion of reality, artificial reality and fiction.
