Red Dwarf: 11 Episodes That Never Made It To Air
9. Dad - Series 3 Episode 1
In an uncharacteristically logical move for Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, Series 3 of Red Dwarf would have originally followed on from the Series 2 cliffhanger that saw Lister discover he was pregnant after sleeping with himself in a parallel universe. Which itself was a follow-up to the Series 1 episode Future Echoes that ended with a future Lister giving birth to twins.
But during the screenwriting process, it was decided that a comedy pregnancy didn’t quite gel with the Red Dwarf universe and that the script just wasn’t very funny. Elsewhere, writers of The Red Dwarf Programme Guide Chris Howarth and Steve Lyons have also suggested that the episode was rejected for possibly being sexist. Dad was subsequently replaced by Backwards, an episode now regarded by some fans as one of the very best.
At the start of Backwards, Series 2’s cliffhanger and the considerable changes to the programme (namely Holly’s sex change and the reintroduction of Kryten) were dealt with in typical Grant Naylor style: a Star Wars-esque opening crawl that was fast to the point of being unreadable. But fortunately, some snippets of Dad do survive. Eight minutes of script were animated in the same storyboard style as Bodysnatcher with voice work supplied by Chris Barrie as a bonus feature on The Bodysnatcher Collection.