Red Dwarf followers have been gutted when it emerged {that a} new special from one of the show’s original writers had been scrapped – however now co-creator Rob Grant has supplied a hopeful outlook on the present’s future.
Doug Naylor, who created and wrote the sci-fi comedy with Grant from its inception in 1988, revealed final yr that his new special, which was set to see Craig Charles’s character Lister going again in time to assist his 23-year-old self escape from stasis, had been scrapped by UKTV.
Grant, who lately introduced he’s co-writing the first Red Dwarf novel in 30 years with Andrew Marshall, has responded to the information, completely telling Radio Times: “It’s been going for so long, and I’m sure it’ll have another life down the line somewhere. These things happen.”
A spokesperson for UKTV beforehand advised Radio Times in an announcement: “UKTV has no current plans to commission further episodes of Red Dwarf.
“It’s been a privilege to work with Doug Naylor and the forged in a relationship that started with the Back to Earth specials, which premiered to 4 million viewers, and has subsequently produced three full sequence, a retrospective and Red Dwarf’s first ever function size, The Promised Land.”
However, as Grant says, that might not be the last we see of Red Dwarf on screen.
The two co-creators, who dissolved their partnership in the 1990s, have been working on their own individual Red Dwarf projects since a legal dispute was resolved in 2023.
Speaking about how that has impacted his work, Grant explained to Radio Times: “It’s widespread information that there was a authorized dispute over the rights of Red Dwarf for bloody years. It went to courtroom, and it made Bleak House appear to be an episode of Judge Judy!
“But we finally got it resolved [in 2023], and suddenly all these rights became available to me, and one of them was for the prequel, and that’s where it started.”
Grant and Marshall’s prequel novel Red Dwarf: Titan shall be revealed in July – and so they revealed they’ve taken it to streamers in the hopes of getting it made into a TV spin-off.
“We originally wrote it as a treatment for a TV spin-off and took it around, but it’s horribly expensive, and we couldn’t really raise enough interest,” Grant advised us.
He added: “We might down the line… we’ve been talking to streamers about it but, when you read it, [you’ll realise] it’s a whole world you’d have to create. It wouldn’t be cheap.”
For now, nevertheless, they’re centered on the brand new novel, with Grant explaining: “It’s Lister and Rimmer before the accident on shore leave on Titan.
“It’s set one universe to the facet, so we will have acquainted characters however we will do various things with them, as a result of the problem was writing one thing that was going to be authentic and recent and utilizing the identical characters with out breaking the canon.
“So it was quite an intricate bit of work that actually took us about a year-and-a-half longer than we were hoping!”
He added that the story will see Lister and Rimmer “get a message from the far future warning them that all realities are going to collapse unless they do something about it.”
Grant and Marshall are additionally eager to proceed their new story, with a sequel novel.
“We’d love to,” Grant mentioned. “We so fell in love with the characters. There are some new ones, and its explores existing characters more deeply.”
Watch this house!
Red Dwarf: Titan will publish in hardback, e book and audio on 16 July 2026. Red Dwarf is accessible to stream on BBC iPlayer.
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