My Scintillating Observations on the Recording Order of the First Series of Red Dwarf

The first series of Red Dwarf was originally scheduled to be recorded and broadcast in the following order:

1. "The End"

2. "Bodysnatcher"

3. "Balance of Power"

4. "Waiting for God"

5. "Future Echoes"

6. "Confidence & Paranoia"

However, before the episodes could be recorded, an electrician's strike at the BBC put paid to the planned filming dates in early 1987. The series was eventually remounted towards the end of the year, but as the story famously goes, during the hiatus, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor took a second look at the scripts and decided to drop the planned second episode, "Bodysnatcher". They rewrote the ending of "Confidence & Paranoia" so, instead of successfully resurrecting Kochanski as a hologram, Lister unwittingly brought a second hologram of Rimmer online instead, and wrote a new finale, "Me²", following on from this. The episodes were thus recorded in the following order:

1. "The End"

2. "Balance of Power"

3. "Waiting for God"

4. "Future Echoes"

5. "Confidence & Paranoia"

6. "Me²"

(7. Reshoots to "The End")

"Future Echoes" turned out so well that it was bumped up from fourth to second, giving a broadcast order as follows:

1. "The End"

2. "Future Echoes"

3. "Balance of Power"

4. "Waiting for God"

5. "Confidence & Paranoia"

6. "Me²"

The story of "Bodysnatcher" getting dropped is a pretty well-known one to any Dwarf fan, but the changing of "Confidence & Paranoia" seems to be a less-discussed one -- had Grant Naylor already changed their minds about this ending when they decided to drop "Bodysnatcher"? Were the two decisions made in tandem? Was the originally planned ending a consequence of deciding to bump all the episodes after "Bodysnatcher" up one and write a new finale, rather than write a new second episode?

On the documentary on the making of Series 1, "The Beginning" (available to see on "The Bodysnatcher Collection" DVD and the Series I-VIII Blu-ray), Rob Grant says this:

"The original ending to 'Confidence & Paranoia' was... Lister gets Holly to power down unnecessary resources, and he has enough power then to generate another hologram, and it was going to be Kochanski. And it was because it was sort of the final show of the first season, we thought, 'oh well, you know, it's kind of a bit of a cliffhanger', we want people to think 'what's going to happen next time?' It was only after the hiatus that we were sitting in the office, talking about the series, and I said 'You know what we should have done at the end of that, we should have brought back Rimmer instead,' and Doug said, 'You're right, let's write it', and I said, 'You're mad, we've got six shows, we're not going to get paid any more, why would we do that?', and, er... but we did, and it turns out that knocked out the second show we'd written, which featured two Listers, but it had the same theme, 'How would you get on with yourself?'"

Moments later, Doug Naylor pops up on the same documentary with another familiar story: "Me²" was, unlike the other Series 1 episodes, written with the benefit of having seen the cast in rehearsals and being able to write to their strengths. However, he then goes on to say:

"I'm sure the shows would have continued to get stronger... and we would have knocked out at least 'Waiting for God', and probably at least one more, if we'd had just a few more weeks. But unfortunately we didn't spend that summer as wisely as we might have done."

So, perhaps the unsold copies of "The Bodysnatcher Collection" getting destroyed in a fire has led this revelation to be underdiscussed, but Grant Naylor are basically saying that "Bodysnatcher" got dropped because they decided to reuse the basic premise of the episode, but with Rimmer instead of Lister... and that episode might not have been the only one to be dropped if they'd had the time! (Once you consider the original running order, the dropping of "Bodysnatcher" does do a little damage to the show's internal continuity -- Rimmer and Lister's inventory stocktake at the start of "Balance of Power" is clearly meant to follow on from the roll call in the dropped episode -- so it's interesting to consider even more changes could have been on the way given how serialised some elements of the series are...)

One other thing: Isn't it a little odd that in the original plan, "Future Echoes" would have gone out fifth? There are bits of it that seem to make sense when you know it was meant to come late in the run (Lister believing he's going to die has more impact coming towards the end of the series, for one), but apart from the penultimate slot usually being the place to dump the weakest episode, as pointed out when I raised the issue on Ganymede & Titan, it seems strange to put an episode which explains why Lister doesn't just go back into stasis whilst the ship turns around and heads back to Earth so late in the running order. And also: It's well-documented that Holly was originally meant to be a voiceover, and the first two episodes were filmed that way -- so when was the SOS call that starts every episode of the first series (bar "The End") recorded? Was there a version of it before the decision was made to put Holly in vision, or was it only thought of after that?