The very essence of cartoons is that they possess the ability to 'stretch reality'. In other words, to take an initial idea or assumption that we are all familiar with and then start pulling at it very hard. Taking that which is so clearly absurd and taking it to its logical conclusion. This is why cartoons and satire make for excellent bedfellows. Since after all, the latter is doing exactly the same thing. From Hogarth to Watterson, with Tenniel, Shultz, Uderzo, and Groening somewhere inbetween. Yet rarely if ever has anyone dared to make a good space satire. Animated or otherwise. Though it may seem at firstglance a simple thing to do. After all the sheer preposterous of the genre might lend suggest that it seems ripe for a good ribbing. But good satire requires a certain sense of subtlety, at least to start off with. Not an easy feat when the story begins with spacemen from the planet Zog.
There have been some noble attempts in the past, most notably Douglas Adam's sublime 'Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy'. Yet even then, an almost unrivaled comic flair (not to mention a quotability up there with Blackadder and Monty Python) is fatally undermined by an uneven narrative. '
Red Dwarf' on the other hand presents a much more conventional proposition. Being as it is a standard (albeit first rate) sit-com set in space, thus with all the jokes being references to the eccentricities and inconsistencies of its chosen genre. Thus what it presents in barrel laughs, it lacks in any sense of subtlety.
Which is what makes the entire 'Crest of the Stars' series such an astonishing piece of work. Unquestionably the single finest satire on the space (and/or space opera) genre that I have ever seen. All the great works from the Anglo-American tradition are put to the sword. Nothing is sacred, nothing is given quarter.
I for one welcome our new Ahb overlords.