In the ending that ACTUALLY happened, Lister, Kryten and Kochanski escaped to the mirror universe. Red Dwarf was exploding with Rimmer on board. True, he kicked Death, but we're left to assume that the ship exploded soon after he got back as there was no way Rimmer could have escaped in time or prevented the ship from exploding. So that would mean that the events of Series 9-12 happen in the mirror universe on the mirror Red Dwarf, which had a mirror crew (including Professor Cat and Private Shambles "Hollister"). So where did the mirror universe Red Dwarf crew go between series 8 and 9? Also, if they're in a mirror universe, how would Series 1-7 "Ace" Rimmer have found them before the events of Series 9 took place? Of course, this alternate ending puts all the pieces together, but because it was deleted, it's not technically part of Red Dwarf canon. It's left the show with a massive, unexplainable plot hole.
I've been watching through Red Dwarf for the past few weeks, and I'm about halfway through X. I've enjoyed every series so far (and the Back To Earth special), and the only ending/finale I've not been big on was series 5 with the despair squid and the strange hallucination stuff. Probably my least favourite episode so far, but Timothy Spall does give a good performance and saves it from being too bad. But about VIII: This ending just kills the momentum of the episode and slows it down too much. Plus it doesn't have Rimmer kneeing Death in the nuts and delivering the brilliant 'remember, only the good die young.' It's not even that funny. I don't like it at all. I think if they went with this, it would've ranked amongst my least favourite finales. They made the right call to scrap it. It's just boring, regardless of whether it makes more sense or not. We are shown the crew leaving the ship in the ending they went with, so that explains why it's empty. And they kept the vending machine scene, but the context was different. Also, while the ending they went with doesn't explain how Rimmer died, I just assumed he died somewhere in the 9 years between the end of VIII and the start of Back To Earth. Which is fine by me, offscreen deaths aren't unheard of and it's a pretty long gap. They explain Kochanski's absence in Back To Earth, so that's not a problem. Again, 9 year gap. A lot would've happened in-universe in that 9 years. For example, Cat accidentally letting a female despair squid on board. And yes, 'it happened in the 9 year gap' is my answer for everything.
Longtime fan of Red Dwarf since I was very young, finally decided to go back and watch it all now I’m a bit older (21) and will understand the story and jokes a bit more now. I can’t express enough how disappointed I am that there was never a proper ending to the show (S8, I’m now on S10) they just ignore all the inmates still on the ship, the rest of the crew are just vanished into space, rimmer is a hologram again, Kochanski is gone and the ship is once again completely different. I understand it’s just a comedy show and I can excuse the plot holes and weird changes the show makes throughout the seasons, but BTE and S10 (so far) just feel so empty in comparison to the older ones, especially not knowing what actually happened to the crew, just now on a brand new version of red dwarf and still having Lister complaining 9 years later about wanting to go back to earth etc etc
😀😃😄😁😆😅😂🤣😝😜 I love the Way Kryten just gently way he was goodbye. this ending made so much more sense, and I wish they’d used it, in reality I think I just count this as the actual ending. as it also explains why Rimmer is a hologram again in the later series.
Everyone here saying this ending 'makes more sense', but it doesn't because in BTE and beyond, Lister is still the last human being alive and is missing the human race. The original RD crew have to be dead for that to be the case, otherwise Lister would be tracking them down, and he's also not the kind of man to leave them stranded.
This makes a lot more sense and is also hilarious, but part of me really likes the used ending too. I feel like this still needed a bit more explaining as to how Rimmer died again (knowing how useless he is the can of soda probably did it) but it’s really interesting to see it and it really helps explain the gap between Season 8 and later Red Dwarf seasons. Still though, nothing will ever top Rimmer KICKING DEATH IN THE BOLLOCKS and running off screen, that’s just hilarious. That ending never made much sense to me though because it explained how Rimmer died but not now the rest of the crew made it back into the normal universe on a fully repaired Red Dwarf without the crew.
Funny how if this aired we'd probably have accepted MODEL SHOT as a special effect. They could have put a Red Dwarf christmas ornament on a string and swung it back and forth and I'd love it. As far as I'm concerned the characters are all that really matter anyway.
Well, Hollister did desert his command; Captains are supposed to go-down *with* the ship. Hollister was more interested in saving his-own skin. Now, he's forfeited his ship.
In a parallel universe people got the ending where Ace Rimmer came to save the day When you think about it though, at this point isnt Ace still the original Rimmer ?
he could just have jumped back and forth and always just remember a part of it, like when he just remembers Cesium....next time he adds another part...and so on until it´s all :D
So many people think this is the better ending, but I couldn't disagree more, the ending we got is the best by far, it's only problem was that it was never continued like it said it would be, they just jumped straight to the travesty that was Back To Earth were they made the littlest effort possible to explain the lack of Holly and Kochanski.
I still wAnt them to somehow flashback to this (in a new episode) and seee that Ace (the original) Rimmer came back and saves the day and swapped places with series eight Rimmer
It says at the start this is presented without final effects work. They could probably only use whatever they could get hold of in the BBC archives of these deleted scenes for the DVD.
Nice ending, and I imagine that Rimmer dies at the end, so they reboot him as a hologram. However, they have to use the holo-disc onboard the crashed Starbug, meaning that the Rimmer they bring back is the one just before 'Stoke Me A Clipper'. Just a thought, that might tie up continuity issues.
I actually did something like that in a fanfiction years ago, except I basically combined both Rimmers by having the Series VIII Rimmer die and get rebooted, but they upload him with the Series I to VII Rimmer's memories added to his own. Without looking, I can't remember if I gave a reason why they had to do it like that (I basically needed him to have pre-Series VIII memories for the story to work.)
This wasn't even the ending that the final one replaced; there was a THIRD, as far as I know totally unseen, ending filmed where original Rimmer, as Ace, returns to save the day. The reshoot with Death was literally last-minute, after all other filming had done, and it was so slapdash that it wasn't even an actor under the hood, it was Ed Bye, the producer. But why? Even the Ace ending would have been better than what they did! (source: The DVD this extra comes from, all the cast/crew interviews)
@The SNES Man Yes, this is pretty much true. Doug Naylor was at this point obsessed with getting a film made, and was trying his hardest to push the production value of the show to impress Hollywood executives and convince them to fund it. The CGI dinosaur was apparently one of his ideas to accomplish this. This was also why Pete was a two part episode
@The SNES Man I'm not sure we can hope for conclusive answers like that, given that they've ironed over other wrinkles like the two Rimmers (the revival series Rimmer seems to have memories of both the original and the resurrected one from S8) for the sake of convenience. Still, we can live in hope