ORBzine - Red Dwarf TV Review
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Red Dwarf [Season 1, Episode 1]
The End
Shown 15 Feb 88
The story is set on the interplanetary mining ship Red Dwarf. Lister and Rimmer are the Odd Couple in Space, total opposites and completely at odds with each other. The background characters among the crew include Lister's friend Peterson (Mark Williams - ) and the woman of Lister's dreams, Christine Kochanski ( Clare Grogan ).
Lister broke quarantine by bringing his pet cat onto the ship. His punishment is eighteen months in stasis, frozen in time ...
Red Dwarf [Season 1, Episode 2]
Future Echoes
Shown 22 Feb 88
The ep starts with an emergency broadcast by Holly, who gives a recap of the story so far.
The ship is approaching lightspeed. And when it breaks the light barrier, the crew see flashes of things that are about to happen! Rimmer claims he saw Lister's death ...
There are a couple of scenes which foreshadow later episodes. Rimmer tells Lister You can't whack Death on the head!. More importantly, they discover that somehow, Lister will have two sons ... even though there are no women on the ship!
Red Dwarf [Season 1, Episode 3]
Balance of Power
Shown 29 Feb 88
Rimmer is the highest-ranking officer on the ship, even though he is dead. Also, he has hidden Lister's cigarette supply, so he can force Lister to comply with orders. He makes Lister inventory the ship's stores. Even though the cats have been living there for three million years, there is still enough left for the next few centuries.
Lister wants Rimmer to swop disks and let Lister date Kochanski's hologram. Rimmer, terrified he will not be switched on again, refuses. Lister decides to get promoted above Rimmer - by taking the exam to become the ship's chef!
Red Dwarf [Season 1, Episode 4]
Waiting For God
Shown 7 Mar 88
Holly detects a UFO on long-range sensors. Rimmer thinks it is part of an alien civilisation. He wants them to clone him a new body.
Lister learns how to read the Cat language. He borrows the Cat bible, which contains the legend of Cloister the Stupid. Unfortunately, like all religions it caused terrible Holy Wars! We discover the fate of the Cat civilisation.
Red Dwarf [Season 1, Episode 5]
Confidence and Paranoia
Shown 14 Mar 88
Lister goes through Kochanski's stuff in the Officers' Quarters. However, they have not been decontaminated yet. Lister contracts mutant pneumonia ...
Lister's hallucinations come to life. Two men appear - his Confidence and Paranoia. Rimmer complains, of course. Is Rimmer going to save the day, for once?
Red Dwarf [Season 1, Episode 6]
Me2
Shown 21 Mar 88
Rimmer and his duplicate move in together. Their relationship parallels the previous ep - they start up boosting each others' Confidence, but end up more like Paranoia!
Lister watches Rimmer's death video. His last words were Gespacco Soup ...
2nd Series (Autumn 1988)
The BBC On Demand service has the new version of Season Two, with fancy intro credits and CGI SPFX. It clashes quite badly, especially because Season One has the original classic intro!
Red Dwarf [Season 2, Episode 1]
Kryten
Shown 6 Sep 88
Holly detects a crashed ship. It is run by a robot butler named Kryten, who is obsessed with a TV soap opera named Androids (a parody of Australian show Neighbours). There are three female officers aboard ...
Rimmer takes advantage of the opportunity to have his own personal butler. Lister trys to help Kryten break his programming and become rebellious ...
Red Dwarf [Season 2, Episode 2]
Better Than Life
Shown 13 Sep 88
Holly detects a pod approaching the ship. It is the mail delivery! Everything is three million years out of date, but it does not matter! One of the items is a next-generation VR game named Better Than Life!
Rimmer's background is explored. His relationship with his parents, which made him the person he became, is shown.
Holly's pen-pal, with an IQ of 8000, seems every bit as dozy as Holly does after three million years of senility!
Red Dwarf [Season 2, Episode 3]
Thanks for the Memory
Shown 20 Sep 88
The crew wake up, but they have no memory of the last few days. Someone has wiped their memories. Rimmer assumes it is aliens! They have to retrieve the ship's black box in order to solve the mystery.
Lister uses the ship's onboard memory-machine. The moral of the story is that no good deed goes unpunished.
Red Dwarf [Season 2, Episode 4]
Stasis Leak
Shown 27 Sep 88
It is not just the credits and ship's external shots that have been updated. Holly's broadcast was originally about a moon the shape of Felicity Kendal's bottom: now he compares it to Marilyn Monroe's bottom!
Lister spends his time going through everyone else's stuff. Kochanski has a photo of her getting married to Lister, and Rimmer's diary tells them where to find a stasis leak that will let them travel back in time (and space!) ...
We get to see more of Hollister and Peterson. The Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ) meets women, for the first time in his life. There is a spare stasis pod aboard the ship ... Lister wants to save Kochanski, but Rimmer wants to save himself! Unfortunately the crew are having a fancy-dress party, and Rimmer thinks he has been dosed with hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Lister learns a lot about his personal future. This sets up foreshadowing for events in five years time ...
Red Dwarf [Season 2, Episode 5]
Queeg
Shown 4 Oct 88
Lister accidentally resets Holly's settings. He awakens the ship's backup A.I., Queeg. The good news is, the new A.I. is actually good at his job - unlike the senile Holly. The bad news is, he has the name of a character from Mutiny on the Bounty and the personality of the Drill Instructor from An Officer And A Gentleman.
Red Dwarf [Season 2, Episode 6]
Parallel Universe
Shown 11 Oct 88
Red Dwarf enters a Parallel Universe. The alternative crew are the female counterparts of the Dwarfies - and alt-Lister is Angela Bruce!
Red Dwarf [Season
, Episode 2
]
Shown
Reviewed
This is reviewed in our special supplement!
Red Dwarf [Season 3, Episode 1]
Backwards
Shown 14 Nov 89
After Season 2, the show was privatized by PJP. The foreshadowing and arc from the previous Seasons was set aside, and a super-fast exposition scroll (only readable if you video it and watch in slo-mo) inserted at the start of this ep to explain what happened after the end of Season 2.
Kryten was rescued after he crashed the space-bike, and rebuilt to look like Robert Lewellyn. Rimmer takes him for a flying test in one of the shuttles, Starbug One. They go through a time hole, and end up on Earth circa 1993. However, this is in the future, after the Big Crunch ... where time goes backwards!
Red Dwarf [Season 3, Episode 2]
Marooned
Shown 21 Nov 89
Holly has everyone evacuate the ship to avoid a cluster of black holes. Rimmer and Lister, along with their most prized possessions, are on Starbug One. Naturally, it crashes and they are left stranded ...
This goes back to the basic concept of the show - The Odd Couple in Space! Rimmer, easily the most complex and human of the characters, is developed and explored as a person. His most prized possessions must be burned to keep Lister alive. Although why Rimmer needs paper books (when Holly already has digital copies of every book ever written) is never explained.
Red Dwarf [Season 3, Episode 3]
Polymorph
Shown 28 Nov 89
The ship is invaded by a shapeshifting creature that reads a victim's surface thoughts, embodies their greatest fear or desire, and feeds off their negative emotions. It targets the neurotic and unstable ...
Lister loses his fear, Rimmer his anger, Kryten his guilt and the Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ) his cool. This is easily the best episode ever, a masterful combination of excellent performances and wonderful writing.
The new version has a different epilogue, which gives closure rather than leaving it open-ended.
Red Dwarf [Season 3, Episode 4]
Bodyswap
Shown 5 Dec 89
A skutter goes haywire and sabotabes the ship. Rimmer actually shows the ability to save the day, athough Lister's stupidity gets in the way.
Rimmer discovers that hologram technology allows him to swap brain-patterns with one of the others. He talks Lister into doing the body-swap, so each lives a few weeks in the other's body. Unfortunately, Rimmer becomes addicted to tactile sensation.
Red Dwarf [Season 3, Episode 5]
Timeslides
Shown 12 Dec 89
Kryten's photographic developing fluid (yes, they do not use digital cameras!) has the ability to turn photographs into time portals to whenever they were taken. The crew can go back and visit past events, although they cannot go outside the borders of the photo. They go back to visit guest stars Adolf Hitler (as himself) and the young Dave Lister (Craig Charles' younger brother!). Kryten even suggests going to Dallas in November 1963 and changing history ...
They manage to change history, and make Lister the richest man in the world. He marries Koo Stark , and is interviewed by Ruby Wax . However, this means Rimmer is trapped alone on Red Dwarf ...
Red Dwarf [Season 3, Episode 6]
The Last Day
Shown 19 Dec 89
Another Mail Pod arrives. This one was intended for Kryten's original ship, but somehow it goes to him on Red Dwarf instead. It contains a message to let him know he is now obsolete, and must decomission himself. Lister and the others throw him a party, to let him know how important his life is.
Unfortunately, Kryten's replacement is on his way. Hudson (Gordon Kennedy - Robin Hood 2006 ) is a massive Terminator type. Not exactly what you would want if you need your domestic chores done. And for some reason he has a pump-action shotgun!
Red Dwarf [Season 4, Episode 1]
Camille
Shown 14 Feb 91
Reviewed 21st November 2001 - Wednesday
This episode was originally screened on BBC2 around Valentine's day. Lister teaches Kryten about lying and rebellion, which leads the robot to disobey Rimmer and search a crashed ship for survivors. He discovers a female mechanoid, but when she is taken back to the ship each of the crew sees her as his perfect woman.
Kryten falls in love with the female mechanoid. As with the next Season's romance-based episode, Holoship, there are many references to Casablanca.
Red Dwarf [Season 4, Episode 2]
D.N.A.
Shown 21 Feb 91
Reviewed 28th November 2001 - Wednesday
The Dwarf crew discover a strange ship of unknown design, floating dead in space. They board it, and discover a machine that can alter something's genetic structure. Thanks to the Cat's ineptitude, Kryten's dream of becoming human comes true!
The climax of this episode is a hilarious Aliens rip-off, that climaxes with a fight against a Curry Monster!
Red Dwarf [Season 4, Episode 3]
Justice
Shown 28 Feb 91
Reviewed 5th December 2001 - Wednesday
Lister is suffering from a hilarious case of Space Mumps. The crew take aboard a cryogenic survival pod ejected from a space ship. It was a prison ship where the prisoners rioted - the pod contains either a beautiful woman or a psychotic cyborg!
The only option is to take the pod to a penal space station. However, to enter the station (now uninhabited and run by an AI) they must submit to a mind probe. This detects any criminal activity they might have committed, which is bad news for one of them!
Red Dwarf [Season 4, Episode 4]
White Hole
Shown 7 Mar 91
Reviewed 12th December 2001 - Wednesday
Kryten repairs Talky the Toaster, last seen several years ago. The Toaster does not sound like Tony Hawks any more - probably due to the accident involving Lister, the Toaster and a sledgehammer!
Kryten tries to boost Holly's IQ and reverse her senility. However, as always things go badly wrong. The ship ends up with no power and failing life support, headed straight into a White Hole. Can Lister save the day by playing space-snooker?
Red Dwarf [Season 4, Episode 5]
Dimension Jump
Shown 14 Mar 91
Reviewed 19th December 2001 - Wednesday
The Dwarf is visited by a super-pilot from another dimension. His name ... Ace Rimmer!
The irony of this show is that while the good version of Lister is recognisably the same character, Alt-Rimmer is entirely the opposite of his usual self. However, if Rimmer (now apparently a big fan of hammond organ music) were to fulfill his potential he would be the greatest hero in the Universe!
Red Dwarf [Season 4, Episode 6]
Meltdown
Shown 21 Mar 91
Reviewed 18th November 2007 - Sunday
Rimmer's boring hobby of the week is the board-game Risk.
This episode introduces a couple of technological innovations, Kryten's teleporter and Rimmer's light bee. The matter transporter was built on the research labs on Zed deck - so the tech is contemporary with Lister and Rimmer! In Kryten's hands it has a range of 500k Light Years (the length of five galaxies!).
They land on a world populated by wax-droid replicas of famous people from the 20th Century and earlier. Rimmer and Kryten end up among the Heroes, who are lacking in leadership. Lister and the Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ) are captured by the Villains, and interrogated by Caligula (Tony Hawks).
The most evil figures in human history are waging a war of genocide against a handful of celebrity types (including Einstein and Marilyn Munroe). Will Rimmer fulfill his potential, and become more like Ace? Since he cannot physically touch anything, he must limit himself to being a General. But with his skill at the game of Risk ... Luckily, Rimmer thinks he is a strategic genius and commands them to launch a last-ditch suicide attack on the evil-doers. But if he did not, Evil would have triumphed and the good guys would have all died anyway!!!
Lister is particularly damning of Rimmer's First World War strategy. However, he does not actually have a plan of his own. But his anti-War rhetoric is quite poiginant, especially fifteen years on.
Red Dwarf [Season
, Episode 2
]
Shown
Reviewed
This is reviewed in our special supplement!
Red Dwarf [Season 5, Episode 1]
Holoship
Shown 20 Feb 92
The Dwarf encounters a ship that has no discernable mass. It is a Holographic ship, crewed by holograms of the best crew in the Fleet. Rimmer wants to join their crew. The Holograms send their own representative to assess the Dwarfies ...
The core of the ep is Rimmer's relationship with Nirvana Crane ( Jane Horrocks ). This is yet another Casablanca reference.
Red Dwarf [Season 5, Episode 2]
Inquisitor
Shown 27 Feb 92
A time-travelling robot can change the fabric of space-time by replacing people who failed to fulfill their potential. He travels to Red Dwarf to Judge the crew, including the Last Human, Dave Lister ...
Red Dwarf [Season 5, Episode 3]
Terrorform
Shown 5 Mar 92
Reviewed 1st February 2002 - Friday
Starbug is destroyed, and Kryten sends off a distress signal. After mild confusion, Lister and the Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ) come to the rescue. It turns out that the guys are trapped on a Psi-Moon that has mapped itself to represent Rimmer's subconscious.
Finally we get the chance to see Rimmer in a more sympathetic light. Unfortunately there is very little character development. Let's face it, Chris Barrie later dropped out of the show because of the way his character was treated, and it is little wonder.
Red Dwarf [Season 5, Episode 4]
Quarantine
Shown 12 Mar 92
The Dwarfies board a derelict, where they discover scientific research items. The scientists had isolated certain viruses, including Luck.
Unfortunately, Rimmer takes it upon himself to lock the others in quarantine. Worse still, nobody knows who has been infected ...
Red Dwarf [Season 5, Episode 5]
Demons & Angels
Shown 19 Mar 92
Kryten builds a matter duplicator. It divides items into two copies - one with all the best properties, one with all the worst. Then the field reverses itself, causing the entire ship to explode ...
Red Dwarf [Season 5, Episode 6]
Back to Reality
Shown 26 Mar 92
The Dwarfies try to salvage a derelict, but get attacked by the Despair Squid.
They wake up in cryo-pods, and a technician (Timothy Spall - ) reveals that they spent the previous few years in a total immersion video game. This makes them completely re-examine their lives.
Red Dwarf [Season 6, Episode 1]
Psirens
Shown 7 Oct 93
Reviewed 17th October 2007 [Wednesday]
Rimmer wakes up from Stasis aboard Starbug One. He has total amnesia, and Kryten gives him (and new viewers) an update. Red Dwarf was hijacked by persons unknown, and the crew have been in hot pursuit aboard Starbug for two hundred years! Kryten has decided to reactivate the crew because they have almost caught the ship again. Starbug, if piloted by the Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ), can take a shortcut through an asteroid belt ...
The asteroid belt is inhabited by the Psirens - GELFs who (like the Polymorph) can read thoughts and project mental images. Although the effect is psychological, even artificial life forms like Rimmer and Kryten can be fooled by it. The Psirens take on the forms of crew members, and Kryten's designer ( Jenny Agutter ). There is even a reappearance of Kochanski ( Clare Grogan ). Could she have survived, or is it a trick?
Red Dwarf [Season 6, Episode 2]
Legion
Shown 14 Oct 93
The Dwarfies arrive at a space station where Space Corps scientists developed new technologies. They are greeted by the Station's sole inhabitant, a strange creature named Legion. He removes Lister's appendix (which was previously removed on Earth) and gives Rimmer a Hard Light Drive.
Naturally, it is all too good to be true ...
Red Dwarf [Season 6, Episode 3]
Gunmen of the Apocalypse
Shown 21 Oct 93
Reviewed 31st October 2007 [Wednesday]
Starbug falls foul of some vicious Rogue Simulants. The Dwarfies end up getting their ship upgraded, but they also get a dose of the Apocalypse Virus in their central computer. Their only chance is for Kryten to infect himself with the virus, analyse it and create an antivirus program. Naturally, the others have to help him by using a VR game as an interface. Kryten's subconscious looks like a poorly-shot Western film.
This is an award-winning episode of the show. However, you would be hard-pressed to say why. It over-uses SPFX, which were passable at the time but have not gotten better with age. The older episodes which relied on wit and humour were far superior.
Red Dwarf [Season 6, Episode 4]
Emohawk: Polymorph II
Shown 28 Oct 93
Reviewed 7th November 2007 [Wednesday]
The Dwarfies are desperate for a new Oxygen unit, so they trade with some Gelfs. Unfortunately the Gelfs want Lister to marry the Chief's daughter (Celebrity chef Ainsley Harriot!).
After Lister double-crosses the Gelfs, the Chief sends his per Emohawk to kill the Dwarfies. It is a Polymorph, and sucks its victims emotions. Naturally, this is a great excuse for the return of a couple of fan favourites - Ace Rimmer and Dwayne Dibbley!
Red Dwarf [Season 6, Episode 5]
Rimmerworld
Shown Nov 1993
Reviewed 5th April 2002 - Friday
The Dwarfies try to salvage some gear from a wrecked cyborg ship. Of note, Kryten still has the teleportation device from Season 5.
Rimmer ends up stranded on a planet. He seeds it with terraforming gear, and creates human clones ... of himself!
Red Dwarf [Season 6, Episode 6]
Out of Time
Shown Nov 1993
Reviewed 12th April 2002 - Friday
Rimmer and the others are feeling the strain of being trapped together in Starbug in deep space. Things get more interesting when they run into a subspace pocket of unreality.
This is the end of the series, so there is a cliffhanger.
7th Series (1997)
Red Dwarf [Season 7, Episode 1]
Tikka To Ride
Shown 17 Jan 97
The crew are still on Starbug, but now they have enlarged sets - apparently a spacial distortion side-effect.
Lister wants to use time-travel to get himself a Tikka curry. He secretly installs Kryten's spare head, which has no guilt chip.
They time-travel to 22 Nov 1963 (to get the US Audience!). After all, this was made in 1996 when the film JFK was still in the public mind.
Red Dwarf [Season 7, Episode 2]
Stoke Me a Clipper
Shown 24 Jan 97
Reviewed 5th December 2007 [Wednesday]
This is an extra-length episode, packed full of Rimmer goodness. It starts with Ace Rimmer on a typical mission of daring-do!
Meanwhile, Lister is using the VR game for sex. He offends the King (Brian Cox - Troy ) so he can win the favour of the Queen ( Sarah Alexander )!
Ace Rimmer arrives on Starbug again. He has a request - he is dying, and Arnie Rimmer must take his place!
Red Dwarf [Season 7, Episode 3]
Ouroboros
Shown 31 Jan 97
The Dwarfies investigate a rip in the fabric of space-time. They meet their opposite numbers from an alternate universe. Unfortunately, Lister's Wife (Celebrity chef Ainsley Harriott) is still after him ...
The Alternate Dwarf does not include a Rimmer (though he appears in the flashback). Instead they have Kristine Kochanski (who now looks like Chloe Annett ) ... and she ends up accidentally trapped with the regular crew!
The climax reveals the identity of Lister's parents. Ignoring, of course, the facts that nobody cared who Lister's parents were, or indeed the fact that the solution offered is completely and utterly nonsensical!
Red Dwarf [Season 7, Episode 4]
Duct Soup
Shown 7 Feb 97
The crew are trying to adjust to their new circumstances. Kryten is incredibly jealous of Kochanski, and engineers a plot against her.
The crew get trapped in the ship's air vents. Lister is claustrophobic, and Starbug's autopilot is flying straight into disaster ...
Red Dwarf [Season 7, Episode 5]
Blue
Shown 14 Feb 97
Lister finds himself missing Rimmer. This goes to unbelievable proportions, until Kryten takes drastic measures.
Red Dwarf [Season 7, Episode 6]
Beyond A Joke
Shown 21 Feb 97
Red Dwarf [Season 7, Episode 7]
Epideme
Shown 28 Feb 97
The Dwarfies investigate a crashed ship. Aboard is a frozen woman, a Jupiter Mining Corp employee. They take her back to Starbug, just like the guys did in The Thing ...
Lister gets infected with an intelligent virus. Whoever bio-engineered it must have given it a personality based on Talkie the Toaster! It will kill him within hours, and the best he can hope for is just losing an arm!
Red Dwarf [Season 7, Episode 8]
Nanarchy
Shown 7 Mar 97
Red Dwarf [Season 8, Episode 1]
Back in the Red (1)
Shown 18th Feb 1999 [Monday]
Finally - a new series! This episode is the start of a Season-long 6-episode arc, probably the first time this has ever happened on UK TV. It starts with Lister and Rimmer (RL Rimmer, NOT a hologram!) in a prison cell together, then goes into a flashback that takes off exactly where the previous Season ended.
Not only have the nanites repaired the ship, they have resurrected the crew as well. However, the Captain has no way of knowing what has happened, so he has Lister arrested for joyriding and crashing a Starbug, and smuggling two stowaways (Kryten and the Cat) aboard. Their only hope is ... yes, you've guessed it - Arnold J. Ace Rimmer!
Continued next week - and eagerly awaited!
Red Dwarf [Season 8, Episode 2]
Back in the Red (2)
Shown 25 Feb 99
The Dwarfies are put on trial. They decide to escape, disguised as the Dwayne Dibbley family.
Red Dwarf [Season 8, Episode 3]
Back in the Red (3)
Shown 4 Mar 99
The Dwarfies continue their escape plan. However, it seems they are not in reality. The Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ) is much smarted than usual. Oh, and they are made of plasticene!
We finally get to see how Rimmer and the others ended up in the brig.
Red Dwarf [Season 8, Episode 4]
Cassandra
Shown 18 Mar 1999
As an excuse to get the Dwarfies out of the Brig the writers have Lister volunteer them for the CANARIES - which stands for Convict Army, Nearly All Retarded, Inadequate Expendable Sheepshaggers.
Almost as good an acronym as CLITORIS! :)
Red Dwarf [Season 8, Episode 5]
Krytie TV
Shown 18 Mar 99
Kryten is reprogrammed as a one-robot TV station - and sets himself up as a pay-per-view Jeremy Beadle for his fellow convicts. He gets to take showers with the female inmates ...
Red Dwarf [Season 8, Episode 6]
Pete: Part 1
Shown 25 Mar 99
Rimmer and Lister are assigned KP duties - Kitchen punishment, peeling thousands of spuds. They cheat, and it backfires. They end up in the Hole with crazy bird-man Kevin Eldon.
Kryten, the Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ) and Kochanski discover a time-dilation device. They plan to use it to speed up the next few years, so their prison sentences will pass in an instant.
Red Dwarf [Season 8, Episode 7]
Pete: Part 2
Shown 1st April 1999 [Thursday]
A ravenous T-Rex is running around the lower decks of the mining vessel.
Their secret weapon against the T-Rex - vindaloo!
Red Dwarf [Season 8, Episode 8]
Only the good ...
Shown 5th April 1999 [Monday]
As a special treat, BBC2 gave us the final episode. Rimmer achieves his dream of captaining the ship, and meets his nemesis - a vending machine voiced by Tony Slattery!
The cliffhanger ending (reminiscent of the Season 5 ending) explains why the episode is so entitled - and gives us ample hope that Arnold Judas Rimmer will NOT die young!
Red Dwarf [Season 9, Episode 1]
Back to Earth (1)
Shown 10/Apr/09
This is referred to as Season Ten - they have skipped Season Nine, and used it as an excuse for the lack of continuity.
Kochanski and Holly are both gone, as are the rest of the resurrected crew. Rimmer is a hard-light hologram again, and they are on the Red Dwarf instead of Starbug.
Red Dwarf [Season 9, Episode 2]
Back to Earth (2)
Shown 11/Apr/09
The Dwarfies find themselves in London, Earth, circa 2009 CE. This means that productions costs are low (compared with the green-screen stuff in the previous episode), but it leads on to an incredible plot twist. Red Dwarf is fictional. Yes, the characters discover they are fictional, and set out to meet their creators.
Red Dwarf [Season 9, Episode 3]
Back to Earth (3)
Shown 12/Apr/09
The Dwarfies continue the Blade Runner parody as they track down the man who created their TV series. Lister gets some closure with Kochanski, of sorts. And the ending is ... oddly apt.
Red Dwarf [Season X, Episode 1]
Trojan
Shown 04/Oct/12
The gang are all back where they used to be, about a quarter of a century ago. Lister, Rimmer (a Hologram again), the Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ) and Kryten. They are aboard Red Dwarf, though Holly (in either form) is missing from the line-up. Lister and the Cat pass the time watching the Android shopping network. They decide to buy a Stirmaster, but Lister's phone call gets put on hold. He will not let the phone out of his sight until he gets through.
The crew discover a Derelict spaceship, and decide to explore it. Rimmer intercepts a distress call. It is from another hologram - his elder brother! Rimmer decides to pass his AstroNav exams in record time, so he can become an officer. Will the rest of the crew help him pass himself off as Captain of the ship, so he can impress his brother?
Red Dwarf [Season X, Episode 2]
Fathers and Suns
Shown 11/Oct/12
Lister celebrates father's day again. Unfortunately, he is his own father (see Red Dwarf [Season 7, Episode 3] Ouroboros ), so he has to write the card himself and then get so drunk he forgets that he wrote it. Unfortunately, he also feels the need to encourage himself to better himself.
Rimmer and Kryten install a new AI on the ship, to replace Holly. Yes, both versions of Holly are now gone. The new version is very attractive, but anyone who remembers Queeg knows this will not end well.
The end hinges on Lister becoming a hero and saving the day.
Red Dwarf [Season X, Episode 3]
Lemons
Shown 18/Oct/12
The team build a Swedish DIY flat-pack kit. Of course, there are bits left over. And the machine malfunctions, sending them to England in AD 23. To get back to Red Dwarf they need to use the remote control. Unfortunately, Lister left the 8-volt battery on the ship. Rimmer knows how to make a battery. However, they have to walk all the way to India to get some Lemons.
The Dwarfies bump into a famous face along the way.
Red Dwarf [Season X, Episode 4]
Entangled
Shown 25/Oct/12
Rimmer becomes obsessed with Health & Safety, and tries to force the slobbish Lister into completing a series of forms the size of a phone directory.
Lister gambles with the BEGGs, a group of garbage-eating GELFs. He loses - after betting Starbug (and Rimmer).
Kryten and the Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ) get contaminated with a coincidence effect, with hilarious (and useful) result.
Red Dwarf [Season X, Episode 5]
Dear Dave
Shown 01/Nov/12
Lister gets depressed because the human race is extinct. Worse, the ship's vending machines have female personalities that become obsessive about him.
Rimmer's letter-writing campaign to get himself awarded a medal backfires. He is accused of dereliction of duty, and threatened with demotion to the same rank as Lister. Kryten suggests bribing the Med-computer for a sick note. However, this means collecting all the spare toilet paper on the ship and returning it to stores. Unfortunately, the Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ) needs to go bathroom.
Red Dwarf [Season X, Episode 6]
The Beginning
Shown 08/Nov/12
We get a flashback to Rimmer's days in the Academy. Typically, he shows himself to be a spineless twit. The fact that his father is the Tutor makes things even worse for him.
The Dwarfies are attacked by Rogue Simulants. Their only hope is their military strategist - Arnold Judas Rimmer. Rimmer is not afraid of dying, because he already died. He claims he had dignified last words, but fans remember the Gesacco Soup incident in Red Dwarf [Season 1, Episode 6] Me2 . Wow, yet ANOTHER continuity glitch? In all fairness, the original Rimmer Hologram is the last Ace Rimmer, while this Rimmer is presumably the Hologram of the Rimmer cloned by the nanites in Season Seven.
Red Dwarf [Season XI, Episode 1]
Twentica
Shown 22 Sep 16
The crew are on Starbug when they encounter a Rogue Simulant ship commanded by Kevin Eldon ( Hyperdrive ). He offers to trade a hostage for a cargo that they scavenged earlier. Unfortunately he has a secret plan ... to go back in time and change the past.
The crew no longer seem to have the capacity for time travel, last seen in Red Dwarf [Season X, Episode 3] Lemons . Thankfully, this storyline is an extended homage to Star Trek: First Contact so they follow the villains' slipstream and arrive back in the Twentieth Century.
The Nineteen Fifties have been reduced to a parody of the Twenties, with science illegal and scientists running a speakeasy akin to the one in Harrison Bergeron . Can the Dwarfies save the world?
Red Dwarf [Season XI, Episode 2]
Samsara (30 min)
Shown 29 Sep 16
The Dwarfies go to investigate a crashed starship. It turns out to use a Karma drive, an updated version of the Justice World tech used in Red Dwarf [Season 4, Episode 3] Justice . It is intended to reward moral behaviour and punish immoral behaviour. However, as Rimmer points out this is all relative.
The ship's crew are all long dead, their skeletons arranged in a variety of sexual positions. The Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ) must still be a virgin - despite being shallow and obsessed with sex, he assumes they were all playing Twister!
We get a series of flashbacks to the crew's final days. The morality field was indeed linked to the cause of their destruction. However, can the Dwarfies manage to get out alive? After all, they can hardly get along at the best of times. If they tell the truth they will hurt each others' feelings, which some might consider is immoral, but the alternative is to tell lies (which is also immoral).
Red Dwarf [Season XI, Episode 3]
Give and Take (30 min)
Shown 06 Oct 16
The Dwarfies investigate a highly-advanced medical space station. Lister falls foul of an insane medical droid, and wakes up with his kidneys missing. The good news is, Rimmer and Kryten have recruited a hi-tech droid. The bad news is ... they did not read the name on his back.
The team try to turn a stasis booth into a time-travel machine. This makes sense, because it is the same basic technology. A pity nobody thought of doing this before.
Red Dwarf [Season XI, Episode 4]
Officer Rimmer (30 min)
Shown 13 Oct 16
Red Dwarf encounters a 24th-Century exploration vessel. It has the equivalent of force-field technology in Star Trek: TNG , which is basically a combination three-in-one printer. The holodeck is a photocopier, the teleporter is a fax machine and the replicator is a printer. This version is a caricature of the Replicator, and looks like a massive desk-top laser-printer the size of a small car. The ship prints out a copy of the Captain from its Hard Drive, and he ends up promoting Rimmer to Officer rank.
Last week, Rimmer tried to bribe an elevator's male-voiced AI with the offer of a transfer to the elite Officers' deck. Now it turns out that the elevators all have female voices, and there is no elite officers' deck. Well, now that Rimmer has been promoted to Officer he decides to create one.
Rimmer also wants to print out a new crew for the ship. This is actually a good idea, because the ship needs hundreds of experts while the current crew is a handful of mismatched and uneducated idiots. Unfortunately Lister goes all Socialist and opposes the idea of conscripting a new crew.
Rimmer's only option is to make an entire crew of himself! Anyone who remembers the last time this happened in Red Dwarf [Season 6, Episode 5] Rimmerworld will be able to tell you that this is not a good idea. Luckily the episode manages to make things go wrong in a completely new and original way!
Red Dwarf [Season XI, Episode 5]
Krysis (30 min)
Shown 20 Oct 16
Kryten has a mid-life crisis. Well, he is half-way through his six million year life expectancy. It seems a bit wasteful that his replacement, Hudson, was sent out millions of years early in Red Dwarf [Season 3, Episode 6] The Last Day.
The team take a detour to meet one of Kryten's predecessors. They plan to show Kryten how he is so much better off than his ancestor. After all, the difference should be the same as between Kryten and Hudson.
Red Dwarf [Season XI, Episode 6]
Can of Worms (30 min)
Shown 27 Oct 16
The Dwarfies rescue a prisoner from a Mercenoid. She is a female Cat. This is good news for the Cat (Danny John-Jules - Labyrinth ), because after decades hanging out with Lister and Rimmer he is still a virgin. Well, this was obvious in Red Dwarf [Season XI, Episode 2] Samsara (30 min) .
The idea of a female honeytrap has been part of the show since Red Dwarf [Season 4, Episode 1] Camille . This leads on to male pregnancy, previously explored in Red Dwarf [Season 2, Episode 6] Parallel Universe . The result is that the crew have to go on a Polymorph hunt, like in Red Dwarf [Season 3, Episode 3] Polymorph . However, this time they have a new twist on things. Kryten removes Lister's emotions, so the monsters cannot detect him. Unfortunately it backfires.
Red Dwarf [Season XII, Episode 1]
Cured
Shown 12th October 2017 [Thursday]
The Dwarfies discover a remote scientific base. Its mission was to discover a cure for evil. Rimmer points out that this is impossible, even though he was personally exposed to the Luck virus. Kryten's exposition is that Evil is linked to psychopathic personalities, and that the scientists cloned and cured famous historical psychopaths.
One of the cured psychopaths is Hitler (Ryan Gage - Hobbit: Battle Of The Five Armies ). Lister previously encountered him in Season Three, but they never actually got a chance to talk. However, now it turns out that they have a lot in common. For example, they both flunked out of art college.
The equivalency between psychopathy and evil is undermined when they discover that one of the regular Dwarfies is a psychopath. He is a shallow self-obsessed narcissist, but he is not a murderer.
Red Dwarf [Season XII, Episode 2]
Siliconia
Shown 19th October 2017 [Thursday]
Kryten is over-worked cleaning up after the rest of the crew. However, he gets rescued when they are captured by the Mechanoid Intergalactic Liberation Front - the MILFs!
Kryten is brainwashed to join the MILFs. Meanwhile, the other Dwarfies are enslaved. Their personalities are digitally copied into android bodies, and they are made to perform the same tasks they made Kryten do it. Ironically, one of the Dwarfies actually prefers life as a robot. After all, his neuroses are all gone.
The mechanoids have a caste system. Slightly older models, like Rusty (James Buckley - Zapped ), are made to do the menial work. Which begs the question - how is Kryten accepted by the MILFs when he is in all likelihood a much older version than any of the others?
Red Dwarf [Season XII, Episode 3]
Time Wave
Shown 26th October 2017 [Thursday]
The Dwarfies encounter a strange phenomenon, a Time Wave.
Our heroes take Starbug to a nearby starship, which is run by people who have made criticism illegal. This is obviously a parody of Social Justice Warriors on the Internet.
The Dwarfies get captured by the Criticism Police (Johnny Vegas - ). The punishment is to have their negativity drained. Not unlike what a Polymorph or Emohawk would do to its victim, although these folk have an electronic way of doing it. For Rimmer, this punishment might actually be a good thing.
Red Dwarf [Season XII, Episode 4]
Mechocracy
Shown 2nd November 2017 [Thursday]
The ship's sub-systems are all automated. Worse than that, they not only have artificial intelligence but they are all linked into the ship's central computer server. When the server gets infected with a virus, the sub-systems all go on strike. The skutters, the vending machines, the elevators ...
Rimmer decides to stand as the mechs' representative. Kryten opposes him, so they hold an election. This means they must tour the ship and speak with all the mechanoids. Finally we discover what happened to Talky the Toaster, last seen in Red Dwarf [Season 4, Episode 4] White Hole !
Red Dwarf [Season XII, Episode 5]
M-Corp
Shown 9th November 2017 [Thursday]
Everything on Earth, including the Jupiter Mining Corporation, was taken over by M-Corp in the 26th Century. The good news is that they teleport a lot of brand new consumer goods aboard the Red Dwarf. The bad news is that they alter Lister's brain so he can no longer see other brands of goods. Kryten and Rimmer naturally disappear, since they are technically artificial life forms, but for some reason the Cat also disappears from Lister's perception.
Red Dwarf [Season XII, Episode 6]
Skipper
Shown 16th November 2017 [Thursday]
The ship encounters a strange anomaly. Every time one of them makes a decision, they end up in a universe where the opposite decision was made. The trick for getting about is to deliberately make the wrong decision. Unfortunately the Cat is incapable of remembering this.
This is all setup to introduce Kryten's discovery, a machine that lets the user skip to another universe. Rimmer tries it, and ends up with Holly (Norman Lovett) and Captain Hollister! A different universe shows what would have happened if Lister had a pet rodent instead of a cat. What are the chances that that his own universe is the one that suits him best?
Red Dwarf [TV Movie] The Promised Land
Shown 16th April 2020
Doug Naylor, one half of the original Grant Naylor team, gives us a feature-length storyline involving the species of sentient Cats that were mentioned in Season One but never fully explored until this time. Their civilisation lives in a handful of world-ships which have been taken over by an extreme dictator. A trio of religious objectionists go off in search of their god, Cloister of Smeg, or as we know him ... Dave Lister the smeg-head!
Meanwhile, the boys on Red Dwarf are up to their usual tomfoolery. They manage to reboot Holly (Norman Lovatt - ), but he turns out to be an even bigger git than Queeg 5000. This means they have to abandon Red Dwarf.
The boys take Starbug to loot a derelict spacecraft. Rimmer orders Kryten to ignore the European Space Agency's regulations. Since he would normally refer to Space Corps rather than the ESA, this is a barely-disguised reference to the idiocy of Brexit.
The feature-length nature of this story allows more exploration of the regular characters. Lister is conflicted because the Cats worship him as a god, while Rimmer finally has to come to terms with his status as an artificial life-form.