Film is Fabulous: Long Lost Red Dwarf Film Collection Found

[barbucha]

Original The Film is Fabulous! Facebook Post

The Film is Fabulous! team are pleased to announce that three important private film collections, which belong to former industry professionals, or their estates, will be catalogued in the new year.

The collections were amassed over many years by two former BBC editors, and a film projectionist. Sadly, two of these elderly gentleman are in very poor health, while the third passed away recently.

The first of these collections has already revealed a number of interesting BBC items, including original material. This includes model shots on 35mm film from the popular television series, Red Dwarf.

The three collections total in excess of two thousand films, many of which are in corroded cans like those in the videos we’ve posted. They need to be examined, listed, and catalogued; it’s a huge task.

To coincide with the cataloguing of these, and other, collections Film is Fabulous! will be engaging, early in 2026, a trainee film cataloguer on a short-term contract. Money donated by our followers will be used to fund this vital enhancement of the team’s capacity.

Topic

[Dave]

Pretty great find. If these can be cleaned up and scanned then you could conceivably get some true HD sequences for the model shots.

[barbucha]

Mike Tucker, Peter Wragg’s fx team member while series VI was filming, has said:

It’s Red Dwarf 6 – and I have no idea how these cans got into a private collection. The neg was all given to BBC Heritage in 2005

All the neg for the modelwork for Red Dwarf was retained by the BBC VFX dept. It was all retransferred at the BBC when the show was released on DVD and those mute rushes were included as extras on the relevant seasons. When the VFX dept was closed in 2005 all the neg was passed on to BBC Heritage for safekeeping.

Editors often keep items that may otherwise be disposed of – this might be a 35mm pos print for example – kept by an editor perhaps and now passed on to FIF. – its really good that they are in safe hands at least –

The DVD transfer was done in 2002 by BBC colourist Jonathan Wood.
If you get yourselves a copy of the Series Vl dvd, it should be a good guide to what existed at that point

[Ben Saunders]

Neat! The big rumour is that there is at least one missing Doctor Who in the lot(s) Film is Fabulous are working with, and obviously that takes up most of the buzz, so this is a nice unexpected treat, potentially.

[barbucha]

Neat! The big rumour is that there is at least one missing Doctor Who in the lot(s) Film is Fabulous are working with, and obviously that takes up most of the buzz, so this is a nice unexpected treat, potentially.

According the comment section, they are now taking Christmass break, and plan to have an announcement about Doctor Who at the start of the next year.

[Technopeasant]

My understanding was the death of one of the collectors required reworking the paperwork.

[Paul Muller]

Interesting stuff! Always hoped they’d come across the remaining S1 Model shoot rushes, which are missing off the DVD release. 

[Ridley]

this might be a 35mm pos print for example

I thought *haha* it was supposed to be for series VI *teehee* not series VIII ahhhh

[Author]

Replies