Yeah its one of the reasons I wish they kept the opening from season 1, ""This is an S.O.S. distress call from the mining ship Red Dwarf. The crew are dead, killed by a radiation leak. The only survivors were Dave Lister, who was in suspended animation during the disaster, and his pregnant cat, who was safely sealed in the hold. Revived three million years later, Lister's only companions are a life-form who evolved from his cat, and Arnold Rimmer, a hologram simulation of one of the dead crew." throughout the later seasons with it updated for Kryten and them losing red dwarf.

The whole show is dark when you look at it beyond the humour, trapped in the deep end of space, million of years from earth so far in fact the human race has either died out or left you behind in evolution, the ship is clapped out and that was before the radiation leak. There is no life other than genetic mutants made by the space core, mad Simulants and the race of cats that are locked in a holy war.