Lister and Kochanski ending speculation

At first I thought the grave scene in part 1 was just an acknowledgement of Kochanski being written out, and no more would be said about her. But with the kids revealing in part 2 that there’s more to the story than that, and with that bus scene focusing on Lister’s emotional reaction rather than jokes, I think Kochanski will turn out to be very important to “Back to Earth”.

One of the core overarching themes of everything Dwarf has been Lister’s hope that one day he’ll be able to settle down with her somewhere – if not on the Earth of his time, then in Better than Life’s Bedford Falls, or un-retiring with her on Backwards Earth.

Think back to this dialogue in “Back to Reality” (which, remember, is being repeated after part 3):

ANDY: Did you get Kochanski?
LISTER: Was I supposed to?
ANDY: Supposed to? It’s the objective of the game for Lister, you twonk. You’re separated to begin with, then it’s basically a love story across time, space, death and reality.

So I’m wondering: what if part 3 ends with an appearance by Chloë Annett, and Lister reunited with Kochanski once and for all?

I think such an ending has the potential to be extremely powerful, as emotional as the ending of “Out of Time“. It would be the resolution of something we’ve followed across 52 episodes and a ten-year gap. It would underline why the series at its best is much more than just some people running round saying “smeg!” a lot.

Doug Naylor has been thinking about the movie for years, and I think it’s possible he always had the intention of giving that a more emotional tone. In many ways (such as the absence of a laugh track), I find myself thinking of “Back to Earth” as if it really is The Movie.

I’m aware that a lot of people disliked the Kochanski of series VII and VIII. But in the Dwarfcast after the first part, someone made the point that “we don’t care about Kochanski, but we care about Lister.” So even for Kochanski-haters, it could be a satisfying conclusion.

OK, you might say that a romantic ending is too slushy for Red Dwarf. And, yes, it would have to tread a fine line in order to avoid going over the top. But I think the fact that it appears in a comedy series would make it all the more affecting. When you’ve always laughed along with characters, it helps make you more emotionally invested when something serious happens to them. The Royle Family‘s “Queen of Sheba” special worked so well for that reason – all the more so because, like Red Dwarf, it had been away for a long time. (And of course another example is Futurama‘s “Jurassic Bark”.)

And they could always undercut it with a joke, like with Rimmer’s line in “Holoship”: “We won’t be apart. We just won’t be together… I cannot believe I just said that!”

I don’t know, maybe this speculation is completely wrong. But if that does turn out to be the ending, and it’s well-executed, I think it could be not merely satisfying, but utterly amazing.