Do mechanoids dream of electric skutters?

Red Dwarf Back to Earth: caught episode 3 tonight and was pleasantly surprised - perhaps there actually was a point to this exercise after all. While TV characters entering the real world and tracking down their creator is not an original concept by any means, this final episode actually managed to wring some decent comedy from the situations, while the many nods to "the show's original inspiration", Blade Runner, were welcome and, if not bringing actual depth, at least added some perspective and dimension to the show. Two of these scenes, the crew fleeing for their life through a Chinatown market and the appearance of Kochanski as Rachael, were also beautifully filmed.

While the concept for this three-off appears embarrassingly contrived, it's consistent with Red Dwarf past episodes that have brought the crew back to Earth temporarily in a variety of ways - from the slides taking them back to the mansion of the Tension Sheet inventor, through the Backwards contracting universe scenario, to the classic episode Better than Life - Back to Earth is in some ways a remake of the latter.

I was trying to work out whether Red Dwarf was really inspired by Blade Runner. There aren't too many obvious connections! However after tonight I'm willing to give the Grant Naylor gestalt the benefit of the doubt, because a) inspiration can be as lateral as you like, and b) it's one of those things that would be cool if it were true.

Smoke me a kipper

Red Dwarf: Back To Earth episode 1 premiered on Dave last night with Craig, Danny, Robert and Chris back in their roles. Sadly there was no Norman Lovett or Hattie Hayridge, however the episode introduced Sophie Winkleman as Katerina, a high-ranking holographic officer set on outranking Rimmer. This episode was enjoyable although the wit and humour is not on a par with anything in the first two series. Initially I also thought the gleaming new sets took away some of the charm of earlier episodes - and I wondered if the series might be taken too seriously. However one diving bell, one giant purple latex squid tentacle and several delightfully hammed-up performances later I was reassured that this was a comedy. There's also some good comedy chemistry between Barrie and Winkleman. It was also cool to see the Scutters back in the frame too - these robots appeared frequently in the early episodes but were only rarely seen after this due to technical difficulties in operating them on set.

This is the opener for a weekend of sci-fi across the UK channels - tonight there are the second episodes of Red Dwarf (Dave) and Primeval (ITV) while over on the BBC Doctor Who teams up with Bionic Woman actress Michelle Ryan in Planet of the Dead.

Cats Rule

I'm currently reading The Black Ship by Diana Pharaoh Francis - thanks SQT. It's too early to review but having been introduced to the character of Fitch, Thorn's somewhat overprotective pet cat, I started to wonder if fantasy, or for that matter sci-fi, might be a cat people thing. Are cat lovers over-represented amongst sci-fi or fantasy writers?

Simone Simon starred in The Cat People (1942) a genuinely creepy and sexy black and white feline variation on the werewolf legend and an all time favourite. Ripley's cat Jones survives the first encounter with the Alien(1979) and shares Ripley's escape pod - Jones reappears at the beginning of Aliens(1986) and provides one of the film's first memorable moments. There's also a memorable cat moment in The Matrix(1999) where deja vu is given a new, sinister significance.

Cat-loving sci-fi writers include Robert Heinlein, whose novels and short stories feature a great many cats, not least the mysterious Pixel, the Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Many writers have also written about cat-like alien species - for example Nimitz and his fellow treecats in David Weber's Honor Harrington novels, the Kzin of Larry Niven's Known Space and C.J.Cherryh's hani.

There are Cat People on the BBC too, Cat, the humanoid evolutionary descendent of Lister's cat smuggled aboard Red Dwarf was a high water mark in sci-fi comedy, particularly in earlier episodes that genuinely played with Cat's feline characteristics. More recently cat-like aliens have featured in Doctor Who. The BBC believes in "balanced reporting" and both series have also featured dog characters - Cat's counterpart in the Parallel Universe turns out to be a (very scruffy) dog; while Doctor Who occasionally travels with robotic companion K9.

Cats in sci-fi seem to stand for a range of different ideas, playing on their reputations for having a wild streak, being independent or untameable; they're both self-centred and deeply honourable, sinister, funny and sexy and above all enigmatic.