Dave Hollins: Space Cadet
from archive.org
Dave Hollins: Space Cadet was a series of sketches on the BBC Radio 4 show Son of Cliche, produced by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor. The main characters were Dave Hollins (voiced by Nick Wilton) and the ship's computer Hab (voiced by Chris Barrie). These sketches later became the basis for the sci-fi comedy TV show Red Dwarf, which was originally inspired by the film Dark Star.
The first sketch appeared in the first series of Son of Cliche and was meant to be a one-off. Hab did not appear in this sketch, and Dave was on a different ship, Psion IV, rather than Melissa V. In this story, Dave meets strange aliens and is killed at the end by decapitation, apparently, exchanging heads for an hour is how the aliens greet each other.
The other four sketches appeared in the second series. Dave was alive again, now aboard a new ship, and accompanied by Hab. These stories placed him billions of years from Earth (later changed to 300 years), after he put himself in suspended animation when the rest of his crew were eaten by a chameleonic monster during a UAC mining mission to Titan. In the fourth sketch, Dave returns to Earth but leaves again when he finds that fruit flies, not humans, are now the dominant species.
When Grant and Naylor planned a TV adaptation, they chose Dave Hollins: Space Cadet over other sketches like Freshers, Asso, Spanish Detective, and Captain Invisible and the See-Thru Kid. They made some changes for television: the timeline was reduced, Dave's surname was changed to Lister, Hab became Holly, and new characters like Rimmer and Cat were created. Many of the original sketches were reused in Red Dwarf.
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