Well, blimey. A massive thank you to bloodteller on our forum, who points out that an early cut of the first American pilot has turned up on Youtube.
This can’t be the first time this has done the rounds, as bloodteller also helpfully linked to this ancient document from 1994, which details the differences between the two edits. But it’s new to me, and I’ll wager to the majority here. I imagine a full write up will follow at some point when we’re not busy polling you all.
Katydid / January 8, 2018 at 10:22 pm / #
It just doesn’t feel like Red Dwarf USA without the WORST THEME MUSIC THAT HAS EVER EXISTED.
cwickham / January 8, 2018 at 10:26 pm / #
Brian J. Cowan, associate producer on the pilot, was also the producer for the original run of Futurama. A fun link between the two shows I never knew about before now.
bloodteller / January 8, 2018 at 11:06 pm / #
hooray, some stuff i found has ended up on the front page
Paul Muller / January 8, 2018 at 11:10 pm / #
Does anyone else recognise that Red Dwarf model shot at 1.03?
I don’t recall seeing it before in any of the UK episodes, or on the Raw FX featurettes. Which is odd, as it’s really quite a good one.
It’s unlikely they shot it specifically for the US pilot, but it could be an unused shot from the Series V model shoot, featuring the replacement RD model prior to its destruction.
Of course, I could be talking bollocks. I haven’t watched Series V for ages, and for all I know it could pop up every few minutes.
EDIT: That 17th century website mentions that it’s not a shot that appeared in the original series. So, yeah – the mystery deepens…
Ben Saunders / January 8, 2018 at 11:11 pm / #
I’m pretty sure I have never seen that particular model shot at the end of the intro before.
>My name is Holly,
>Cough
Love it.
si / January 8, 2018 at 11:20 pm / #
Sure that it would disappear very quickly, I watched this last night despite my phone battery only being on 6%. Needless to say, the battery ran out halfway through and I had to wait about ten minutes for it to charge just enough to enable me to watch the second half.
Anyway, like I said over on the forum, I can’t believe how much better that is than the version we ended up with. It’s just funnier, especially the pre-accident stuff. Holly is played better (although she’s just cringeworthy once Lister’s released from stasis), and the opening with the arrivals and the Kryten-Lister-Kochanski scene…it’s all just better. Even the always annoying laughter of the American audience is fine. Shame about the scene changes not allowing a fully flowing audience track, because this would easily make a great TV half hour.
bloodteller / January 8, 2018 at 11:32 pm / #
for all the hate the US pilot gets from most fans, i honestly think the pilot (especially this edit of it) is a thoroughly enjoyable watch- i had more fun watching this than any episode of Series VII or VIII, to be honest.
Ben Saunders / January 8, 2018 at 11:42 pm / #
Huh, that’s interesting. Because I thought she was shit before the accident, then actually started putting some effort into her performance after it. Still a bit cringeworthy, though.
I absolutely don’t think it would make a great TV half hour, I think it’s stilted and unsure of itself, but there are as ever a couple decent gags in it. I never want to watch it again, but I know I’ll be watching VII and VIII again at some point in the future and am not horrified by the prospect.
I quite liked Lister wanting out to run after Kochanski, that added another layer of tragedy to proceedings, but him thinking she said “I lick you” was a shit joke. It looked more like “I spit on your wrist.”
Also, similar chair gag to Trojan.
GlenTokyo / January 9, 2018 at 12:30 am / #
It’s in the Raw FX I’m 99.9% certain – I’ve watched them a lot and I recognise it, I’ll go and have a look and let you know.
Possibly in The End the original assembly maybe?
N2K7 / January 9, 2018 at 1:22 am / #
I’ve actually had this version downloaded for just over 2 years, had no idea it was quite so rare!
It was uploaded to a private torrent tracker I’m a member of (the site is mainly for old vhs recordings of MTV/Nickelodeon and various other tv recordings from the 80s/90s).
The person that uploaded it there 2 years ago requested it stay on that site at the time, which is why I guess it hasn’t appeared on YouTube until now!
This is the comment he left with the upload there:
GlenTokyo / January 9, 2018 at 1:38 am / #
Had a look at some raw effects, not there. However, after I’d done the tedious job of putting DVD’s in and skipping through things for series I, II, III and some of the Bodysnatcher collection my brain kicked in and told me where I’d seen it.
Settling the Score on the VI DVD – during the Tongue Tied demo bit. Why it isn’t on the Raw FX I don’t know – it’s definitely the OG Red Dwarf though, not the rebuild.
I may not be fast, but I get there in the end.
flanl3 / January 9, 2018 at 2:31 am / #
I hate it when failed mid-90s US TV pilots reuse jokes from a 2012 episode of a similar British show.
Also, being mid-VI, there are a lot more chair jokes than I remembered.
Katydid / January 9, 2018 at 2:52 am / #
They not only copied and butchered gags from the early series, they copied and butchered gags from a series that wouldn’t be made for 20 years. That takes effort.
The exchange about Harry Johnson was decent, so of course they had to chop out the actual joke part of it in the final edit.
Paul Muller / January 9, 2018 at 8:05 am / #
Nice bit of detective work there. I don’t feel too embarassed about my wrong guess as that’s pretty bloody obscure.
Jonsmad / January 9, 2018 at 12:25 pm / #
A little bit of Dwarf i hadn’t seen for the 30th anniversary from the most unexpected corner.
Didnt know there was an assembly edit of Pilot1 that had ever leaked. It does feel more like
UK dwarf minus the final usa music. Still 75th in my pearl poll.
Jonsmad / January 9, 2018 at 12:33 pm / #
The chair gag isn’t from Trojan quantum rodded from the future, its a variation of the cut scene of lister and kochanski from The End. So yeah that’s three chairs. Hip hip Hooray.
Captain Bollocks / January 9, 2018 at 6:21 pm / #
Why did they combine three separate chairs into one throwaway visual gag though?
Warbodog / January 9, 2018 at 10:20 pm / #
This is like those people who hoard lost 1960s Doctor Who episodes that aren’t theirs. I don’t get it.
performingmonkey / January 10, 2018 at 12:09 am / #
Bobby is really funny in parts of this pilot, though he has an obvious advantage (of not being shit).
The “hey, you know, whatever” exchange still goes down as maybe the worst thing….. It’s like they’ve suddenly never done a scene opposite another actor. Though Craig Bierko is generally good here. Despite not really being Lister, he still would have made a decent lead for the show, and what scenes he has here with Bobby have a good feel to them. Anything involving Rimmer, however………
Paul Muller / January 10, 2018 at 12:46 am / #
I really enjoy a lot of Todd Rundgren’s music. His score for Dumb & Dumber is up there with my favourite film soundtracks. But yeah, I’ll take Howard Goodall’s Thundering Organ™ (Oo-er missus etc, etc…) over that particular effort. It does sound a bit vaporwave-y though, which I like.
GlenTokyo / January 10, 2018 at 1:07 am / #
I think the US theme is an interesting and not awful bit of 90’s music, it’s just a shit theme for Red Dwarf. The sudden sort of middle 8 bit that accompanies the ‘STARRING’ section I’m not so bothered about, but the rest of it is pretty cool, if dated.
Can’t beat the original opening for me though as you say. It’s my vain hope that should we get any new Red Dwarf this year that it will recreate it either as a one off for the first episode or for the entire series.
You could quite easily still have the names on, just do it Voyager style.
Katydid / January 10, 2018 at 1:59 pm / #
Oh, I actually quite love the music for its kitsch value. It sounds the theme music for a classic so-bad-it’s-good early ’80s sci-fi drama.
Too bad it’s 1992, and attached to Red Dwarf.
Ridley / January 11, 2018 at 10:00 am / #
“Here is a different version of a different version.”
flanl3 / January 11, 2018 at 2:55 pm / #
Why did you combine several different versions out there into one though?
IonianKnight / January 13, 2018 at 5:03 pm / #
The most depressing scenes of the US recordings are the ones hacked from the UK’s Marooned – dialogue that makes Marooned a top-ten episode for 90% of the fanbase utterly butchered. In the UK Marooned, Barrie’s delivery of the line, ‘There’s half a bag of soggy smoky bacon crisps, a tin of mustard powder, three water biscuits, a brown lemon, two bottles of vinegar and a tube of Bonjela gum ointment’ brilliantly conveys several things at once: Rimmer’s smugness at starvation and death not being issues for him; the extent of Lister’s plight; a hilarious sense of disgust; and the comical randomness of these objects. Compare this with the delivery of the US Rimmer – it’s truly terrible. No understanding of the material.
Stilianides / February 2, 2018 at 3:03 pm / #
This was quite an enjoyable re-watch. The Rimmer is desperately weak and there are weaknesses all over the place, but I would agree that it is superior to Series VII and VIII.
Katydid / February 3, 2018 at 7:07 am / #
To be fair, any one episode of a TV show would compare favorably to VIII as a whole.
But frankly there are better episodes in VIII than the US pilot, and I’m the last person you’ll hear defending VIII.
Ben Saunders / February 3, 2018 at 5:10 pm / #
Yeah I have to agree, the US pilot is just too shoddy and too much of a cheap imitation to be better than things like Cassandra and (yes) Back in the Red. It’s very difficult to imagine how I’d rate the US pilot if it had no recycled material in it/if it had the same material but said material was original.
Lily / February 3, 2018 at 10:29 pm / #
That was an interesting watch. Rimmer was pretty awful but Lister was good. Holly, I liked the difference of style pre/post radiation leak. Cat was just .. cat. The guy had clearly watched the originals and copied Danny.
What seemed bizarre to me though was that they didn’t have the “they’re dead Dave” scene, considering that even to this day that’s the most quoted line of the the show (along with smoke me a kipper).
Katydid / February 5, 2018 at 5:52 am / #
I could happily go the rest of my life without seeing another random person end their Red Dwarf-related comment with “smoke me a kipper”.
Hamish / February 5, 2018 at 6:22 am / #
Everbody’s dead Dave.
Smoke me a kipper.
Ben Saunders / February 5, 2018 at 6:31 am / #
I’ve never heard anybody in real life ever quote Red Dwarf, apart from me, if that counts.
Edit: Oh, and my brother saying “I want be body bach now” in a very poor Liverpudlian accent.
Hamish / February 5, 2018 at 6:38 am / #
I think the most quoted line from Red Dwarf in my household is actually variations on “aliens used our bog roll?”.
bloodteller / February 6, 2018 at 11:57 am / #
i have a friend who used to say “everybody’s dead, dave” every time somebody said “dave.” thankfully this was rare as we knew nobody called dave
flanl3 / February 6, 2018 at 9:30 pm / #
I once had a friend accidentally text me “everybody’s dead dave” (she had meant it for somebody called dave) and I tried to play along and reference back and she didn’t get it turns out she just found it on tv tropes and didn’t even know the show existed
Dave / February 6, 2018 at 9:36 pm / #
Surprisingly, it isn’t the comedy line you hear quoted at you most often as a Dave. We’ve got the League Of Gentlemen and Papa Lazarou to thank for that.
International Debris / February 6, 2018 at 10:20 pm / #
Everybody’s wife’s dead now, Dave
si / February 7, 2018 at 12:01 am / #
You’re my dead wife, Dave.
flanl3 / February 7, 2018 at 12:46 am / #
Everybody’s your dead wife, Dave.
clem / February 7, 2018 at 8:54 am / #
Wanna buy some smegs, Dave?
clem / February 7, 2018 at 8:54 am / #
Is there more comedy about “Dave” than any other name? Trigger calling Rodney Dave, this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8nvzEqsZIGo
bloodteller / February 7, 2018 at 12:55 pm / #
everbody’s Dave Hill, from Slade
International Debris / February 7, 2018 at 2:42 pm / #
There’s that channel that shows a lot of comedy that I think is named after someone called Dave.
Dave / February 7, 2018 at 2:57 pm / #
Well it probably is Dave Ja Vu, it sounds like it.
flanl3 / February 7, 2018 at 3:09 pm / #
Well it probably is Dave’s boob job, it sounds like it.
bloodteller / February 7, 2018 at 5:22 pm / #
well it probably is Spit on Dave’s Wrist, it sounds like it
Dave / February 7, 2018 at 7:30 pm / #
Well it probably is the Daves Intergalactic Liberation Defence Organisation, it sounds like it.
Stephen Abootman / February 4, 2019 at 2:05 pm / #
No idea if this is common knowledge or not but Doug answering a question on whether the US pilots could ever be released officially: “Apparently they can’t. Last I heard paperwork proving who owned them had been lost!!”
https://twitter.com/DougRDNaylor/status/1092347182781526016
Darrell / February 4, 2019 at 7:08 pm / #
Doug Naylor thinks everything’s been lost though.
GlenTokyo / February 4, 2019 at 9:00 pm / #
Conspiracy: Doug Naylor had all this stuff in an armadillo storage locker but changed banks and forgot to tell them so it got sold off to that fat bloke off Storage Hunters UK.
Captain Bollocks / February 5, 2019 at 12:31 am / #
Come on, NBC. You’re the ones who parked it. You’re the ones who can’t remember which celluloid you left it on.
bloodteller / February 6, 2019 at 1:42 pm / #
Heads up for anyone interested, you can download the full version of the 2nd US Pilot here- http://www.reddwarfx.co.uk/USA/index.php
The version on Youtube has about 4 minutes cut out for copyright reasons, and as far as I know nobody has mentioned where to find the original before, so it’s here. (under the Downloads section)
si / February 6, 2019 at 9:06 pm / #
Don’t thjink I’ve ever seen the whole of the second pilot before. The most embarrassing thing about either/both of them is Jane Leeves’ performance. Ouch.
RealBigOleDummy / February 7, 2019 at 2:36 pm / #
Well, I must admit I got a few laughs from this. Surprising to me actually because I’ve watched what I guess was the first edit and found it totally bad. It’s just really hard for me to accept this cast, except for Kryten of course. Not that they were terrible, excepting maybe Rimmer, and I actually quite enjoyed the post accident Holly. Missed a few of the gag’s from the original “The End” but a few of the new ones actually made me laugh. I thank the poster for finding this.
As an U.S. citizen I’ve always wondered just why the hell one of our major networks couldn’t have just brought Red Dwarf HERE, instead of relegating it to PBS which has practically no viewership. I myself found it, but for the most part PBS is just for mostly …. how to say this without sounding like a jerk … “higher end”, more culturally significant type shows. Not really Red Dwarf’s target audience if I may say so. We sure missed out lol.
Warbofrog / February 7, 2019 at 3:04 pm / #
Craig Charles’ accent might have been an immediate barrier to US mainstream acceptance even before they got into plot and tone specifics they didn’t like.
Ben Kirkham / February 7, 2019 at 9:00 pm / #
I’d have been interested to have seen what would have been done with the female Cat…
bloodteller / February 7, 2019 at 9:47 pm / #
Interestingly, Rob and Doug submitted several scripts along with the second US pilot to showcase this sort of thing. Amongst them was a version of Camille in which the female Cat’s ideal mate was “nine identical Conan-esque men”
GlenTokyo / February 7, 2019 at 9:48 pm / #
She would have fell out of the airlock in the first episode.
International Debris / February 7, 2019 at 10:19 pm / #
A clothes-and-image obsessed female character would be an absolute disaster in the hands of anyone other than a really skilled writer.
Pete Part Three / February 8, 2019 at 6:20 am / #
Sex obsessed too.
Hang on, isn’t this Dorian from Birds of a Feather?
bloodteller / February 8, 2019 at 6:22 pm / #
Just realized, Timewave steals a joke from the second US Pilot, almost word-for word.
——US PILOT——
RIMMER: Hey, what’s that streaky blue missile thing heading towards us?
HOLLY: Hang on, I’ll just check my databanks….Apparently it’s a streaky blue missile thing heading towards us.
——TIMEWAVE—–
CAT: It looks like a big wibbly wobbly tidal wave thing heading straight for us!
RIMMER: I want a full Space Corps verified diagnostic on that thing.
KRYTEN: It says it’s a big wibbly wobbly tidal wave thing heading straight for us.
Either that’s an extraordinary coincidence, or Timewave was so lazily put together that Doug just stole jokes from stuff he’d already written
Ben Saunders / February 8, 2019 at 6:46 pm / #
Similar jokes were in at least VI iirc so it felt more like aping VI. Then again, can you really plagiarise yourself, especially if what you’re taking from is an unaired pilot nobody is really supposed to see?
si / February 9, 2019 at 1:42 am / #
See also Dave Hollins, Space Cadet.