JMC Red Dwarf (Ship)

The Red Dwarf is a five-mile long mining ship belonging to the Jupiter Mining Corporation. It houses several support craft, including at least two Starbugs and a Blue Midget. It is red in colour, with a large hydrogen scoop at the front and a single engine at the rear. This class of ship is extremely durable, as shown by it's three-million-year maximum-thrust run from the solar system.

Crew complement varies wildly between sources. The first series has it in the low hundreds, but the ship is simply too vast for that to be a realistic figure, unless they weren't counting the mining crew.

Design:
The vessel has actually been designed twice. The original design was a practical effects model. It's shape was intended to reflect the age and job of the ship. Big, stumpy and with a large asteroid embedded into it's underbelly (a never-explained occurance from before the series begins) it was intended to be ugly. The model was destroyed in Series 5's 'Heroes and Demons', although the in-story ship was not. As a result, all subsequent shots of the model are stock footage.

The second design of the Red Dwarf was a CGI model. Much longer, cleaner and sleeker looking, the ship was still quite ugly. However, it no longer looked like a tired old hulk, and was missing the asteroid. An explanation for the radical redesign was hinted at in early Series 8, when nanobots had rebuilt the ship molecule-by-molecule. However, attempts were then made to rewrite history when Red Dwarf ReMastered was released. The first three series of Red Dwarf were recut with new special effects, including substituting the new CGI Red Dwarf for the older model. The commercial failure of Red Dwarf ReMastered meant that further series updates were not commissioned. As a result, series 4-7 are untouched, retaining the original footage of the ship.

The DVD's that have been released also retain the original model footage.

Record 173 - ship - Last update 28 Mar 2007, 23:15:30

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