Red Dwarf encounters its first life forms in about a decade, only to discover that they’re genetically-engineered humanoid garbage disposals. Lister engages them in the only kind of diplomacy he knows: a game of poker, in which he loses Starbug. Attempting to get Red Dwarf’s shuttlecraft back, he then proceeds to put Rimmer up as collateral, and loses again. Rimmer is less than pleased (but also less than surprised) at this development, but Lister is determined to reverse his losses at the poker table – and fast, because to ensure his cooperation, the life forms have fitted him with a security device that will explode (starting with his crotch) if he upsets them. Kryten and the Cat discover that they’ve become intermittently entangled on the quantum level, leading to a number of favorable coincidences in their presence. Lister and Rimmer are now counting on these coincidences to set them free.
written by Doug Naylor
directed by Doug Naylor
music by Howard Goodall
Cast: Chris Barrie (Rimmer), Craig Charles (Lister), Danny John-Jules (Cat), Robert Llewellyn (Kryten), Steven Wickham (Begg Chief), Peter Elliott (Chimp), Sydney Stevenson (Professor Edgington), Emma Campbell-Jones (TV Character 1), Nick Barber (TV Character 2), Nik Williams (Chimp Puppeteer), Jun Matsuura (Chimp Puppeteer)
Notes: Kochanski gets another mention; interestingly, so too is the incident from the very first episode, The End, in which Rimmer’s negligence wipes out Red Dwarf’s original crew, and Lister talks as though that crew was lost forever, which would seem to cast the rediscovery of that crew in Red Dwarf VIII in a very vague new light – was that season a bad dream, a parallel timeline that never happened to the “real” Lister, et al., or some other kind of marginalized reality?
LogBook entry by Earl Green