Photo courtesy: Red Dwarf

After 12 series, 74 episodes, 1 feature-length film and 35 years after the series premiered in 1988, it looks as if Red Dwarf will be taking a page out of the Inspector Morse/Endeavour playbook and will soon be getting the prequel treatment.

RD co-creator Rob Grant revealed recently he is working on a prequel called Red Dwarf: Titan. Pretty much all that is known so far with regards to a storyline is that it will focus on a Young Rimmer and Young Lister. The news was revealed at a Q&A session during the BFI’s Comedy Time Travel Special, which took place as part of the institute’s program Destination Time Travel: Playing with Time in Film and TV.

The Red Dwarf fansite Ganymede & Titan reports from BFI Southbank, “A short sizzle reel was screened, for a project to be called Red Dwarf: Titan, written by Rob Grant and Andrew Marshall – Rob’s recent writing partner on [radio comedies] Quanderhorn and The Nether Regions.”

“This would be a prequel to Red Dwarf, apparently featuring Young Rimmer and Young Lister, named for Saturn’s moon of Titan. It felt like it would occupy a similar space of the first section of Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers [the 1989 novel] while perhaps being a little more adventure-focused. No further information was provided. It’s not even clear whether it would be a TV series or perhaps a radio thing. It could even be a book or a comic.”

For those that have somehow escaped the greatness that is Red Dwarf….here’s 3 million years for you to enjoy in 45 minutes.

More good news on the RD front, it appears as if the legal dispute over the rights to the show have been resolved, with the show’s co-creators, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, both being able to continue working separately on Red Dwarf in different media. It’s been no secret that the writers Grant and Naylor haven’t always seen eye to eye and dissolved their partnership in the 1990s.

A statement released following the resolution said, “Moving onwards and upwards, Rob and Doug hope to launch separate iterations of Red Dwarf across various media, working again with the cast and other valued partners, and wish each other the very best.” 

As most of you know, while I’m not normally a fan of series reboots, the concept of a prequel is intriguing. It will be interesting to see how Grant handles a pre-accident Red Dwarf and, in the end, fans of Red Dwarf can only benefit from whatever comes from the separate mind palaces of Rob Grant and Doug Naylor.