Red Dwarf: 11 Episodes That Never Made It To Air

11. Bodysnatcher - Series 1 Episode 2

The first of these lost episodes comes right from the very beginning, being from such an early stage that Alfred Molina and Alan Rickman were said to have used the script for their auditions to play Lister and Rimmer. The story itself was largely concerned with Rimmer coping with his death and trying to build a new body from parts of Lister’s. It also put a lot more focus on their interactions than other episodes, whilst the Cat and Holly were mostly background elements.

A major rethink from creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor after considering the episode unworkable led to the decision to drop the unfinished script in favour of Me2, while a number of jokes and smaller plot points were moved to other Series 1 and 2 scripts. Eventually, the idea of Rimmer trying to build a new body was brought out of mothballs and used for a brief gag in the Series 4 episode DNA.

Almost twenty years later; Grant and Naylor collaborated for the first time in a over a decade to finish the script, and the episode was animated with storyboards for release on DVD along with the remastered versions of Series 1 to 3 as part of The Bodysnatcher Collection. As far as things brought back from the dead go, it’s much more tolerable than Rimmer.