Red Dwarf USA refers to two failed attempts to translate Red Dwarf to an American audience. The first attempt had Rob Grant and Doug Naylor at the helm and was written by Linwood Boomer. However, it did not go so well, with conflict between the American writers and Grant and Naylor occurring and their scripts being rejected.
Eventually, a pilot was produced but the executives weren't happy with it so they gave Grant and Naylor another chance. The intention was to produce a promo video with a slightly altered cast and the use of footage from both the British version and the initial pilot. Despite the changes though, the pilot wasn't picked up and the pilots remain a novelty amongst the fandom. A thorough documentary on both attempts, Dwarfing USA, can be found on the DVD release of Red Dwarf V.
This show provides examples of:
- 2-D Space: We finally see what a Zero-G Football pitch looks like but it's the same as a regular pitch. Not seeming to take the walls, ceiling or air into account.
- Adaptational Attractiveness: Lister is more traditionally handsome.
- Adaptational Early Appearance: Kryten is present on Red Dwarf from the start, rather than being picked up from the Nova 5 later on as in the original version.
- Adaptational Hairstyle Change: In most adaptations, Lister is depicted as having dreadlocks. However, in the two American pilots for the series, he's depicted as having short bushy hair instead, with no dreadlocks in sight. Ditto for Holly, who goes from a blonde in the UK version (at the time) to having dark brown hair in the American version.
- Adaptational Jerkass: Kochanski is a lot colder and more caustic towards Lister than her original counterpart. Doug Naylor even noted in the documentary that there is no way Lister should be pining for someone as awful as her.
- Adaptational Nationality: Being adapted for American audiences, Lister and Rimmer are Americans, with Lister specifically hailing from Detroit.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Frankenstein the cat is now tabby and white instead of black.
- Adaptation Name Change:
- The captain is now called Tau rather than Hollister.
- Kryten's full name is given here as "Kryten 2XB 517P" when "The Last Day" gave his full name as "Kryten 2X4B 523P".
- Adopt the Food: Here Lister took Frankenstein on board because he felt sorry for her after seeing her in a restaurant window on Titan where people eat cats.
- Blood Knight: The Cat in the second pilot, who seems to be rather interested in tearing off the necks of the crew's enemies and then spitting on their necks.
- Cats Have Nine Lives: The Terry Farrell version of The Cat is said to have nine lives.
- Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit: When Lister finds out he's been frozen for three million years, he comments that his baseball cards must be worth a fortune.
- Gender Flip:
- The Cat is a woman (played by Terry Farrell) in the second pilot.
- Holly is female from the outset this time around, being played by Jane Leeves.
- The captain is now a woman played by Lorraine Toussaint.
- Heroic Build: Lister is a tall, chiseled man, which is at odds with the characterization of him as a Lazy Bum.
- His Name Is...: At the end of the initial Pilot, the crew meets their future selves. They are about to tell them some critical information but...Future Lister: OK. This is very important. Everything hangs on this. You gotta— (The Crew Disappears).
- Last of His Kind: Holly specifies that the rest of the cats wiped each other out in a civil war, making the Cat the only survivor of his kind. This is a notable change from the original, which had at least some of the other cats surviving and managing to make it off of Red Dwarf.
- My Future Self and Me: Near the end of the original pilot, the crew comes into contact with their future counterparts, who try to give them crucial information before they are sent back, but are interrupted before they can dispense with it. The fact that the group includes Kochanski however means that Lister is able to realize that they do eventually find a way to bring her back.
- Opening Scroll: Parodied. The first pilot starts off with a Star Wars-style scroll explaining the concept of the show, before starting to complain about it, as well as lamenting the fact that they became a writer. Most of this is also sped up fast, much like how the original show used it in the episode "Backwards".
- Race Lift:
- Lister (played by the mixed-race Craig Charles in the original), is played by the White Craig Bierko here.
- The Cat doesn't have this happen in the first pilot, but the second time round, this trope is also combined with Gender Flip.
- The captain is now a black woman.
- Ret-Canon: Some elements of this pilot ended up back in the main show:
- Originally Lister only had a crush on Kochanski but never asked her out. "DNA" retconned her into being Lister's ex-girlfriend though the novel continuity made her his ex before this pilot did.
- Kochanski being alongside the future Dwarfers implied she would eventually replace Rimmer in the show. This eventually happened in the seventh season's "Ouroboros".
- It's implied that something horrible happened to future Rimmer. These jokes were used for Lister in "Out Of Time".
- The Slow Path: Kryten's detached head is fully conscious, sitting on a shelf in the repair shop, for the entire time that Lister is in stasis in the first pilot:
- Lister: You've been stuck here for three million years? What have you been doing?
Kryten: I've been reading that fire exit sign over there. It's given me a lot of solace over the years.
- Uncertain Doom: When the crew encounters their future selves, Rimmer is absent amongst them. The future crew's reactions upon being asked this suggest that something bad will happen to Rimmer, but with the pilot never picked up, it'll probably never get an explanation.
- Who Writes This Crap?!: The Opening Scroll has the writer complain about the show, calling it tedious and arguing that no one is going to watch a show about "people who move rocks from planet to planet".
