Going Up To Eleven

Work starts on brand new Red Dwarf!

Well, it's been a long time coming. Three years, three months and ten days, to be precise: for it was on 19th June 2012 that post-production of Red Dwarf X was completed. But now, finally, Red Dwarf has entered production again.

Well, pre-production, we should say. The show isn't officially in "production" until it actually goes before the cameras, and that's not happening for another six weeks. But right now, Red Dwarf XI - and, lest we forget, Red Dwarf XII - is an actual work in progress. When we finally come out of the other side of this process, we'll have twelve brand spanking new episodes of Dwarf, increasing the show's size by a whopping twenty per cent.

The pre-production period officially started on Monday 28th September, an occasion that was marked by producer Richard Naylor tweeting the following image of a certain, rather familiar, piece of rubber:

First day of #RedDwarfXI pre-production tomorrow, rubber at the ready. pic.twitter.com/OJGh0sGmRw — Richard Naylor (@RichardDGNaylor) September 27, 2015

And if you missed them, Richard also tweeted a couple of photos from location scouting earlier this month. Of course, we've no idea if these places will show up in the upcoming episodes, but... well, they certainly have a very Red Dwarf kind of feel about them, don't they?

As you'll know if you kept up to date with our news on the audience ticket allocation, the first of the twelve episodes goes before cameras on Friday 13th November 2015 - although as was the case on Series X, there will likely have been some material shot during the week, prior to the live audience night. The remaining five episodes of Series XI will be filmed over the following five weeks, wrapping up just in time for Christmas on Friday 18th December. Then after a well-earned break... it's back to the studio to start all over again, with six episodes of Series XII being recorded between Friday 29th January and Friday 6th March.

As for those live audience recordings, the lucky fans whose ballot applications were successful should now have had an email from Lost in TV inviting them to pick one of the twelve dates on which to attend. Quite incredibly, almost 14,000 people applied for tickets - so understandably, there will have been significant numbers of fans who were disappointed not to be picked. But if you missed out first time around, there's still hope: any tickets that aren't picked up by the first batch will go back into the pot for another ballot next week; and even after that, any tickets that aren't claimed will continue to be randomly re-allocated right up until each episode is recorded. So you could get your own Charlie Bucket moment yet...

When all twelve episodes have been filmed, then the long and complicated post-production process will begin, with the aim being to have Series XI ready for broadcast later in 2016, and Series XII to follow in 2017. And of course, along every step of the way we'll bring you updates on exactly what's going on right here on reddwarf.co.uk.

Red Dwarf XI comes to Dave in 2016!