Parody & Pastiche

While Red Dwarf is a comedy series, there is a mistaken belief that it exists solely as a 'parody' of existing science fiction shows. This, however, is untrue — the science fiction elements of the series were always treated seriously by Grant and Naylor, and indeed there were many concepts introduced by the series that would later go on to be used by more "serious" programmes. Nevertheless, like many sitcoms of its era, a number of its episodes contained references to other (not always science fiction) television shows, films, books and plays. These included spoofs of films and TV programmes as diverse as 2001: A Space Odyssey, Alien, Neighbours, Casablanca, Top Gun, RoboCop, Doctor Doolittle and Pride and Prejudice.