Category: Red Dwarf

A malfunctioning skutter starts rewiring Red Dwarf, resulting in a malfunctioning everything, including the self-destruct system which could be connected to anything by now. As it so happens, the destruct system starts counting down when Lister orders a candy bar from the vending machine. Using a “mind swap” to load the personality of one of the ship’s long-dead senior officers doesn’t work, which is just as well – the destruct system countdown was activated by the vending machine, but not the explosive device itself. Rimmer later gets the idea of using the same procedure – the one with the mind swap, not the bomb – so he could occupy a physical form for a brief period, promising to get Lister’s body into shape before returning it to its rightful owner. As it turns out, Rimmer has been missing all the excesses of the flesh that holograms don’t get to enjoy, and when Lister demands his body back, Rimmer isn’t quite ready to return it.

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Ed Bye
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: none

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Lister is approaching suicidal levels of depression and boredom with his life aboard Red Dwarf, venting his loathing for life upon Cat and Rimmer. Meanwhile, in the ship’s photo lab, Kryten is developing photos of a party aboard the Nova 5 when he finds that they have sprung into motion. Repeating the same experiment with other pictures, he finds that the lab’s developing fluid has mutated over three million years, and can now bring photos to life. He then uses a slide projector to create life-size pictures that anyone can walk into, interacting with the subjects of photos from any era of history. Lister decides to go back and visit himself as a dismal rock-star-wannabe teenager, taking with him a sample of one of the future’s most profitable inventions – a Tension Sheet (a square of air-bubble packing material painted red with “Tension Sheet” written on it) – in the hopes he can pry his junior self away from “the Om song” long enough to get him to register the Tension Sheet as his own invention and get rich. When Lister disappears, it becomes apparent that he has changed his own future and become a millionaire who never signed aboard Red Dwarf. But Lister’s non-existence also erases the Cat and Kryten from the present, and Rimmer is left with Holly. Rimmer decides that it is his duty as a complete and utter bastard to set history to rights, unaware that this will bring his greatest wish to fruition – Rimmer will once again occupy a tangible body!

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Ed Bye
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: Robert Addie (Gilbert), Rupert Bates (Bodyguard), Richard Hainsworth (Bodyguard), Emile Charles (young Lister), Simon Gaffney (young Rimmer), Stephen McKintosh (Thicky Holden), Louisa Ruthven (Ski Woman), Koo Stark (Lady Sabrina Mulholland-Jjones), Mark Steel (Ski Man), Ruby Wax (American Presenter), Adolf Hitler (himself)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Genetic Profile: At long last, the guys finally encounter a real live alien ship – or a ship from Earth that’s advanced enough to be alien. The skeletal remains of one otherwise human-looking crew member has two hideous bird-like heads. Lister and Cat find a strange control room, the controls of which Cat immediately takes it upon himself to play with. This has some nasty consequences when the room turns out to be a device for resequencing DNA, and it turns Lister into a hamster, and then a chicken. Kryten and Rimmer arrive to help, and Kryten figures out how to return Lister to human form. Krtyen is then accidentally turned into a human himself, his greatest wish. Rimmer starts trying to find some cells of his dead body aboard Red Dwarf so he can reclone a body for himself, while Lister is having to explain every little detail of human lifestyles to Kryten, including why the rectal recharge socket doesn’t work, and why one should never get a double Polaroid over an electrical appliance. In testing the DNA resequencer before running Kryten through it, Lister’s mutton vindaloo is transformed into a mutant vindaloo big enough to eat anyone who’s ever eaten any form of curry…

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Ed Bye
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: Richard Ridings (D.N.A. Computer voice)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

The Sentence: Lister, whose head has been embarassingly enlarged by a bad case of space mumps, wonders why Cat and Rimmer haven’t been round to see him, when Kryten inadvertently tells him about the escape pod that the ship has picked up, which contains either a security guard or an inmate of a spaceborne prison whose residents revolted against their keepers, and Rimmer starts the pod’s cryogenic thawing process in the off-chance that the vehicle contains a friendly human female, which, as it turns out, it doesn’t, although Lister and the others don’t realize this as they’ve gotten underway to the aforementioned penal station just in case their new passenger turns out to be a homicidal maniac, though they’re not counting on the station’s Justice Computer which metes out punishment appropriate to the crimes it discovers in its subjects’ memories after a mind scan, and this is certainly bad news for Rimmer, who is sentenced to life behind bars for the disregard of safety regulations that led to the death of the entire crew of Red Dwarf, but Kryten manages to plead Rimmer’s case to the Justice Computer and gains Rimmer’s freedom so they can all head back to the Starbug, which, in case you forgot, is where they left an escape pod to thaw out, which it has done, releasing a crazed homicidal simulant in the process.

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Ed Bye
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: Nicholas Ball (The Simulant), James Smillie (Justice Computer voice)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Chain of Events: Kryten commits the most heinous, criminal act ever done aboard Red Dwarf – he manages to bring Talkie Toaster, Lister’s mortal bread-heating enemy, back online. Not without reason, though – Kryten thinks it may be possible to use the same repair method to help Holly regain her IQ of 6000 at the cost of reducing her operational lifespan. The procedure works all too well, leaving Holly with a vast wealth of genius and only three minutes in which to use it. To make matters worse, Red Dwarf is nearing a white hole which is emitting time, creating disjointed pockets of events that haven’t happened yet, have already happened, and may not happen at all. Holly’s solution is to plug the white hole up by altering the orbits of a few nearby planets using a nuclear warhead as the cue ball, but Lister insists on making the shot himself.

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Ed Bye
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: David Ross (Talkie Toaster)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Recipe For Kippers Vindaloo: In some alternate universe, there exists one Arnold Rimmer – an incredibly nice, well-liked guy with guts, bravado, skill, decency, an actual sex life, and the nickname “Ace.” (Keep in mind, this is an alternate universe we’re talking about here.) Ace signs up to test a new spacecraft developed by the Space Corps which can break the dimension barrier and send him into parallel universes, and winds up slamming right into Starbug, which is carrying Lister and the others to a fishing trip they’re dreading due to the presence of their dimension’s Rimmer. Ace feels it’s the right thing to do to help the Starbug crew out when they crash into the ocean of a nearby planet, and all of them develop an immediate rapport with Ace, with the exception of Rimmer, who’s just pissed off because no one’s ever treated him with the kind of respect and admiration Ace has earned. Ace saves the entire crew and returns to Red Dwarf with them when Cat requires emergency surgery. The “real” Rimmer is determined that either he or Ace has to go. Whether you’ve smoked him a kipper or not, Ace Rimmer is back for breakfast in Emohawk: Polymorph II.

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Ed Bye
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: Robert Llewellyn (Bongo), Kalli Greenwood (Mrs. Rimmer), Simon Gaffney (young Rimmer), Hetty Baynes (Cockpit Computer)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

In deep space, control of Starbug is wrested from the gang by the Inquisitor, a deranged simulant who has taken it upon itself to remove those it considers worthless from the universe and replace them with someone who could’ve made more of life. The Inquisitor confronts them aboard Red Dwarf, forcing each to justify his existence. Rimmer complains that he’s lucky to have achieved his esteemed status as a corpse-turned-hologram considering his background. Cat insists that his posterior is a work of art and that it’d be cruel to deny the universe of it. Kryten insists that he has behaved as he was programmed but wanted to be much more, and Lister tells the Inquisitor to spin on it. The latter two are selected to be removed from existence itself.

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Juliet May
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: John Docherty (Inquisitor), Jake Abraham (Second Lister), James Cormack (Thomas Allman)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Rimmer and Kryten, who have taken a Starbug out to do a bit of moon-hopping, have crash-landed on a psi-moon, a self-terraforming world which reconfigures itself to conform to its inhabitants’ psyches. Since Rimmer has become the only living being on the psi-moon, it has uprooted its surface and turned into the hopeless living hell that is Rimmer’s miserable personality. Kryten detaches one of his mechanoid hands and sends it to Red Dwarf to get help. Lister and Cat manage to repair Kryten and set out to find Rimmer. They discover that his persecution complex has manifested itself in an insulting, abusive creature which is about to torture Rimmer just when he is rescued. Returning to the Starbug, they discover that their escape is entirely dependent on how much of a boost they can give to Rimmer’s ego. The guys face their most horrific challenge ever – they must look Arnold J. Rimmer in the eye and tell him they care about him…

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Juliet May
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: Sara Stockenbridge (Handmaiden), Francine Walker-Lee (Handmaiden)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

The guys take Starbug to search for Dr. Hildegarde Lanstrom, a brilliant doctor whose hologram may still be functioning aboard her old ship. Rimmer is dismayed at the prospect of recruiting Lanstrom since only one hologram can operate aboard Red Dwarf or Starbug at a time. As it turns out, his fears are complete unfounded since Lanstrom turns out to be infected with a program corruption called a “holo-virus,” and has not only gone murderously mad but has also developed telekinesis and various other deadly powers. Luckily for Lister, Cat and Kryten, the holo-virus runs its course and destroys Lanstrom, but she has already managed to transmit it to Rimmer. Rimmer confines the others to quarantine when they return to Red Dwarf, and begins to develop the same hideous abilities as Lanstrom. If Lister, Cat and Kryten can avoid strangling each other while facing the prospects of months of isolation, they might be able to save Rimmer…as if anyone would want to.

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Grant Naylor
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: Maggie Steed (Dr. Hildegarde Lanstrom), Mr. Flibble (himself)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Kryten and Lister are experimenting with the triplicator, a device Kryten has adapted from the Matter Paddle which can produce two copies of any object; in this case, they’re trying it out with strawberries, and the device works perfectly, though it somehow produces one divine and wholesome copy of the strawberry and another teeming with maggots and nastiness (which Lister discovers by biting into it). Kryten tries to reverse the process, and before anyone can sing “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the drive room is bursting with explosions and the gang has to beat a hasty retreat to Starbug just in case Red Dwarf explodes…which, rather less than surprisingly, it does soon after Starbug escapes. But, to make up for the predictability of that, the law of averages takes a snooze as Kryten spots two copies of Red Dwarf nearby – which, since he theorizes they were created by a freak field reversal in the triplicator, will be a divine, idealized Red Dwarf, and the other will be, as Lister puts it, “fish bait.” Seeking help from the idealized Red Dwarf, they find four individuals who spend their time in pursuit of higher truths and ideologies and spiritual fulfillment. When the “low” Red Dwarf sends out a mayday, our heroes and their “higher” counterparts set out to render assistance, only to find a trap set by four bloodthirsty, murderous individuals aboard a grungy garbage scow of a ship. If they can survive their “low” selves, the guys may be able to combine the two and recreate their own Red Dwarf.

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Juliet May and Grant Naylor
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: none

Original Title: High & Low

LogBook entry by Earl Green