Red Dwarf: 11 Episodes That Never Made It To Air

When plans for Red Dwarf’s revival were still in their early stages, Back to Earth was written as two-parter while the third episode commissioned by Dave would have been a completely stripped down episode titled Red Dwarf Unplugged.

Doug Naylor’s plan for Unplugged would have seen Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules, and Robert Llewellyn performing scenes from previous episodes in front of a live studio audience without sets or props. An idea described by Charles as “Just the four of us—and some chairs—trying to improvise, or rather trying to remember, classic scenes”.

During pre-production, it became apparent that the idea just wasn’t working. Instead; Unplugged was scrapped and Back to Earth was expanded to a trilogy, using the two filming days set aside for Unplugged for extra location work. Although this was mainly to fill the contractually required third episode, it also gave Back To Earth more breathing space.

Which was definitely the better option considering that it had been deliberately overwritten in the first place for an extended director’s cut on DVD. Though, ironically, the released director’s cut actually ended up coming in at a slightly shorter runtime than the three individual episodes.