Deleted Scenes

Rough Cuts - by Andrew Ellard

31 May, 2002

It's been a fantastic job for Mr Flibble's sidekick, I can tell you. In between website co-ordinating, yours truly was charged with locating deleted and extended scenes from the raw footage of series I. I emerged from my darkened room several days later - paler, video-blind, but chuffed to bits.

There are scenes excised from Red Dwarf that have been talked about so often that you feel like you've seen them. The famous funeral sequence from The End (published in script form in the Red Dwarf Omnibus) is a particular example. Most fans have read the scene, myself included. But watching Chris, Craig and Danny perform it is amazingly different.

Anyone who, back in 1987, saw Chris, as Rimmer, deliver his own eulogy would have known just how good both he and show would become. Yes, the flip-top-bin-cum-canister-eject-system really does look as cheap as it sounds, but while the scene itself is hampered by its low budget, the talent of the actors shines through. Chris runs through Rimmer's eulogy as if he were the best man at his own wedding!

The description of Rimmer's hobby of 'elbow-titting' - along with over 15 minutes of other deleted and extended scenes - will get their first public airing on the series I DVD. And one scene might just solve the problem of just why, at the end of Me2, Lister appears to select the wrong Rimmer for deletion!

More DVD Details will follow soon...