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"Three million years from Earth this is the mining ship Red Dwarf.
Its crew: Dave Lister, the last human being alive; Arnold
Rimmer, a hologram of his dead bunkmate; and a creature who
evolved from the ship's cat! Message ends.
"Additional: Alone in the empty wastes of space the inhabitants
of the Red Dwarf struggle against knowing they are alone in a godless
Universe and out of Shake and Vac!"

Cast: 
Dave Lister:         Craig Charles
Arnold J Rimmer:     Chris Barrie
Cat:                 Danny John-Jules
Holly
(Seasons 1 & 2):     Norman Lovett
(Seasons 3 - 5):     Hatty Hayridge
Kryten
(Season 2 No 1):     David Ross
(Seasons 3 - 6):     Robert Llewelyn

(NB, this episode guide is NOT spoiler-free.)

1:The End
Dave Lister, a slobby scouser, gets put into stasis when he won't allow
his pregnant pet cat (illegally brought on board) to be dissected to check
for disease. Awakened 3 million years later he decides to head back to Earth
in order to carry out his "plan" to buy a farm on Fiji, have a sheep and
a cow and breed horses. He lacks a "cat" but has the sole surviving member
of Felis Sapiens, the creatures who developed from his own cat's offspring.
To keep him sane the half-wit (IQ 6000 maybe) ship's computer Holly
brings his dead bunkmate Bonehead (properly known as Arnold Rimmer) back
as a hologram.

2:Future Echoes
When Red Dwarf passes the speed of light the crew begin to experience strange
visions which appear to be their own future. These get further forward
and Rimmer sees Lister's apparently imminent death. Resigned to dying
saving the ship, Lister picks up a large metal bar and vows:
"If HE (death) comes near me I'm gonna rip his nipples off!"

3:Balance of Power
Lister is desperate for a date with Krissie Kochanski, a girl he worshipped
from afar but never had the guts to ask out (although in later series and
in the books he had had a short-lived affair with her). To force Rimmer
to allow him access to the disk with her stored memories from which he
can produce the hologram, Lister takes the exam to become a chef officer.

4:Waiting for God
Lister realises that he is the god of Felis Sapiens (Cloister the Stupid)
and follows Cat to find an aging priest who has finally given in
to his desires, given up the sacred way of slobbiness and taken to
wearing stylish clothes again. His faith is restored when Lister appears
(the priest is blind) but his euphoria is short-lived.

5:Confidence and Paranoia
Lister explores the officer's quarters while depressed about Krissie
Kochanski. While there he picks up a mutated form of Pneumonia which
results in some startlingly lifelike hallucinations. The Mayor of Warsaw
appears then spontaneously combusts, it rains fish, causing Cat to
think he's in heaven, and finally Lister's Confidence and Paranoia
become externalised people one of whom is willing to do anything
to stay alive. Episode ends with Lister trying to produce Krissie
Kochanski as a hologram by shutting down most of Holly's operations.
However, the disk he uses is not hers!

6:ME^2
The disk Lister uses is a duplicate of Rimmer's. The two Rimmers move into
quarters of their own, leaving Dave to his own slobby devices. Can even
Bonehead get on with Bonehead? Rimmer's dying words of Gazpacho Soup
are explained, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt what a total SMEGHEAD
Rimmer really is.

			Red Dwarf II

1:Kryten
Red Dwarf receives a contact from another ship from Earth. They think
their troubles are over with three women to rescue, but when they arrive
the only living occupant is a space-crazy mechanoid named Kryten who
"exists only to serve". Rimmer's plan to use Kryten as a slave appears to 
be working despite Lister's attempts to teach him rebellion by showing
him movies like The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause and Easy Rider.

2:Better than Life
The mail pod catches up with the ship, 3 million years after setting
out (about average for second class mail). Included are a letter for
Rimmer telling him his father is dead, and a set of the new TIVs
(Total Immersion Video-games). The crew set up BTL - Better Than Life,
a game which provides you with everything you want by scanning your
subconscious. Unfortunately, Rimmer's screwed-up psyche can't
handle nice things. First he visualises McGruder for a liaison
which turns sour when she has six kids. The final straw is
when he fantasises them about to be eaten alive by ants.

3:Thanks for the Memory
After going to bed drunk from celebrating Rimmer's Death Day, Lister and
Cat wake up with broken legs. Four days are missing from their memories
and the ships Black Box recorder is missing. Rimmer thinks aliens snatched
them all but the truth is far stranger than anything alphabet head can 
make up. All is revealed when they find the Black Box in a shallow grave
marked with a tombstone: "To the Memory of the Memory of Lisa Yates".

4:Stasis Leak
Lister discovers a picture showing his marriage to Kochanski at some point 
in the past. Together with a hint from Rimmer's diary they discover a
doorway into the past through which they can pass. While Rimmer sends
himself mad 3 million years earlier, Lister discovers that he is not about
to realise his most treasured dream. Interesting scenes containing the
full crew, particularly Captain Hollister appearing to a drug-crazed Rimmer
dressed in a chicken suit.

5:Queeg
An asteroid hits Red Dwarf causing havoc in the Hologram simulation
suite. Rimmer loses his legs and Holly almost kills Lister with an error
about which socket goes with which plug. After this accident the
Red Dwarf Backup computer, Queeg 500, takes over from Holly. The crew
find this amusing until Queeg starts applying regulations which Holly
would conveniently forget about. Life is hell so Holly challenges
Queeg to 'the game of his choice' for control of Red Dwarf. Queeg
chooses chess, not Holly's strongest game.

6:Parallel Universe
Holly invents a new form of travel, the Holly-Hop Drive, to take them straight
back to Earth. Instead of this, the drive pushes them into a parallel
universe containing female versions of Lister and Rimmer and the sole
surviving member of the new race Canis Sapiens. While drunk, Lister and
Lister do something they shouldn't, without protection. Is it possible
for a man to end up pregnant? Dave hopes it isn't but this could explain 
the photograph from Future Echoes of Dave with twins.

                        Red Dwarf III


The sets change and Kryten returns with a new head (and a new actor).
The title sequence of the first episode contains the explanations
but you need to play it back at slow speed on a video to read it.

1:Backwards
Rimmer and Kryten plunge through a time-hole into a world where everything
goes backwards. They become big stars on the Nodnol Bup Circuit as
The Reverse Brothers. Lister and Cat follow them through 'A big
orange whirly thing in space!' (You can't go in there - Orange, with this
suit?) but Rimmer and Kryten don't want to come back.

2:Marooned
After abandoning the ship in case Holly fails to navigate her way through a
minefield of five black holes, Rimmer and Lister crash land on an ice
planet. The food supplies are low, meaning Dave has to choose between 
the can of dog food and the Pot Noodle (the dog food wins). He burns
his guitar and Rimmer's toy soldiers to stay warm (or was it really
his guitar?).

3:Polymorph
A genetically engineered monster boards Red Dwarf. It feeds on negative
emotions, sucking them out of its victims. Disguised as a shami kebab
boxer shorts, a snake and a ten-foot armour-plated alien killing machine,
it sucks Lister's terror out. Then it takes Cat's vanity, Kryten's
guilt and Rimmer's anger. Without their defining emotions, can the
boys from the Dwarf kill the monster? And what about it's partner?

4:Bodyswap
One of the skutters goes haywire and re-wires the ship. A simple request
for snack sets off the countdown to self-destruct. To avert the disaster
the recorded mind of one of the dead officers is used to replace
Lister's mind. After he's returned back to his body, Lister is persuaded
by Rimmer to swap minds so Rimmer can get his body back into decent
shape. Having a body again is just too much for Rimmer though,
who puts on 2 stone in a week then scarpers with Lister's body.

5:Timeslides
A mutated photo-developing fluid allows the crew to go back in time
and change the past. Lister returns to a Liverpool pub and persuades
his younger self to invent the Tension Sheet, causing him to become
incredibly rich. In an attempt to beat him to the invention, Rimmer
accidentally puts things back the way they were.

6:The Last Day
A homing pod catches up with the ship telling Kryten it's time to
die. The crew throw him a party and end up with hangovers, a traffic
cone, a police-woman's helmet and a suspender belt. Then Kryten's
replacement turns up to make sure he switches off. The replacement
is mad and declares the whole crew viable targets on discovering
Kryten still alive - Is Kryten destined to go to Silicon Heaven
or can he lie his way round the new mechanoid?


                        Red Dwarf IV

1:Camille
Begins with Lister trying to teach Kryten how to call a banana
'the Bolivian Navy on manoeuvres in the South Pacific', i.e.
how to lie. Later, while flying Bonehead around in Starbug,
Kryten detects an emergency signal leading him to a crashed ship
containing a 'female' mechanoid. Kryten falls in love with the
new mechanoid and is very surprised when Rimmer expresses an interest.
Lister finds the mechanoid is not what she seems however.

2:D N A
After encountering a ship from Earth many years after Red Dwarf left
the crew find a machine which can alter people by changing their
DNA. It changes Kryten into a human, but he can't handle having
a penis with 'the last chicken in the shop look'. Holly reckons she
can transform him back into a mechanoid, but they try it out on
Lister's curry, producing the Mutton-Vindaloo monster. Last time
it was hors-d'ouvres (Polymorph), but this time it's lunch that
wants to kill them. The only thing that can kill a curry is....

3:Justice
While Lister has Space Mumps and a head the size of the Goodyear Blimp,
the rest of the crew discover an escape pod which contains either
a female prison guard or a crazy replicant who could quite easily
dismember them all. They travel to the penal colony which was the
original destination of the ship from which the pod came. On arrival
they are all scanned for evidence of crime and Rimmer is accused
of over 1000 counts of murder (everbody on board Red Dwarf except Lister).
kryten tries to prove him innocent on the grounds that he is a dork
who could not have been responsible. Meanwhile, what of the pod
and it's sinister contents.

4:White Hole
Holly is getting more and more stupid. An experiment to compress
her intelligence but shorten her life span seems to work. It increases
her intelligence to over twelve thousand, but how much time has she left.
When things start going strange with time, the crew realise they are
approaching a White Hole. Holly gives them the coordinates to
play pool with planets to plug the White Hole, but Lister insists he
can play the shot better. Will Dave pull off a trick shot and save them
all. If he does none of the events in the episode will have happenned.
If he doesn't they're all DEAD.

5:Dimension Jump
At eight years old Arnold Rimmer was kept down a year at school.
In consequence he became the hottest test pilot in the Space Corps.
But this is a different universe. When the scientist in that Universe
build a Dimension Jump ship Ace Rimmer sets off in search of who
knows what. What he meets on Red Dwarf convinces him he has to keep 
going on through the universes looking for a man worse off than the
Rimmer on the Red Dwarf. Smoke him a kipper, he'll be back for breakfast!

6:Meltdown
In the research lab, Kryten finds a transport device that can take them
to the nearest earthlike planet. The planet they find on trying out
this device is at war. A war between, on one side, Abraham Lincoln,
Einstein, Pythagoras, Elvis Presley and Stan Laurel, and on the
other, Hitler, Goering, the Emperor Claudius and the Ku Klux Klan.
They can only be waxdroids who have broken their programming.
Arnie takes over the war for the good guys and turns Mother Theresa
and Mahatma Ghandi into part of the dirty dozen. The war is over
but has anyone really won?


			Red Dwarf V
1:Holoship
The crew encounter a holoship, crewed by holograms who all have
sky-high IQs and egos to match. Rimmer decides this is the place
he wants to be. He must fight an intellectual battle to win his
place and grafts part of the minds of Red Dwarf's original crew to
do it.

2:The Inquisitor
A possibly mad and very powerful mechanoid decides that Kryten and
Lister have not lived up to their full potential. They are therefore
scheduled for deletion from the universe so that more worthwhile
versions can take their place. The old backfiring Time-Glove trick
saves their lives because the mechanoid believes Dave is selfish.

3:Terrorform
Rimmer's mind forms the basis of the terrain of a Psi-Moon. The Swamp
of Despair and other such places hide the graves of his self-respect,
charm and confidence. The only way the crew can get off the moon
is to convince Bonehead that they love him. Is even life worth this?

4:Quarantine
While investigating a distress call, the crew finds a research lab
that contains various viruses. Rimmer is infected with a holo-virus
which causes him to wear Army boots and a Gingham dress while talking
to a penguin hand puppet called Mr Flibble. The king of the Potato
people won't allow the rest of the crew out of quarantine so
they use the luck virus they found to escape and try to kill Arnie.
The luck wears off so theymerely cure him instead of killing him.

5:Demons and Angels
Playing around with the transporter from Meltdown, the crew destroy
the ship, but create two new copies with all the best attributes
in one and all the worst in another. they hae to board both ships
and regain the pieces of the triplicator before the ships half-life
elapses and they disintegrate. While on the BAD ship, Lister is taken
over by an implant and tries to kill the rest.


6:Back to Reality
While investigating a partly destroyed spaceship from Earth on an Ocean
world, the crew are apparently killed by a Giant Squid. Then they
wake up in a Total Immersion Video Game room to find they've been
playing the ever-popular Red Dwarf for the past four years
(only scoring 2% in all that time). Kryten is a half-human traffic
cop, The Cat is a sad-act weirdo with no looks who wears nylon
shirts and platic sandles, Dave is head of the Ministry of Alterations
(who alter people from live to dead for the fascist government) while
Rimmer is Dave's alcoholic, drop-out half-brother.


                        Red Dwarf VI

1:PSirens
Lister is revived after 200 years in hibernation aboard Starbug. He
gradually recalls himself as a slobby space bum who believes he is
a master of the guitar. It appears our heroes have lost Red Dwarf.
Or rather, Red Dwarf has been stolen. They have been chasing it for 
those two hundred years and now have the opportunity to catch up
by going through an asteroid field which Red Dwarf had to go around.
Unfortunately the asteroid field is infested with PSirens, beings
who emulate the Sirens of Greek legends with their Psi Powers
and then suck your brain out through a straw. One of them pretends
to be Dave Lister. How can the rest tell which is Dave and which
is the PSiren? Who is the slobbiest, and who can play the guitar?

The rest of the season will continue the search for Red Dwarf.

2:Legion
The crew are out of food, almost out of fuel, and therefore in trouble.
When they are captured by a strange energy force and taken aboard a strange
space lab, things begin to look up. Their host gives Rimmer a solid body,
and the rest of them a good meal, when they can figure out the antigravity
chopsticks. But the following day, things begin to go wrong, when their
host doesn't want them to leave. Can the dwarfers overcome a being with
greater intelligence, strength and knowledge than themselves? Only
if he turns out to be not what he seems.

3:Gunmen of the Apocalypse
Lister is playing an artificial reality game when Starbug runs into 
a rogue simulant zone. He must stop his fantasy just when it's
getting interesting (i.e. he's about to get laid) so that they
can go onto silent running to avoid simulants. Unfortunately
the don't manage to avoid them. Just to add spice to the fun,
the simulants upgrade Starbug with weapons and so forth, but they
follow Cat's plan (NO, I don't believe it) and attack the ship.
When it's obvious their going to die, the simulants infect Starbug's
Navicomp with a copmuter virus. To defeat the virus and regain
control of Starbug, Kryten deliberately infects himself. The rest
of the Dwarfers join his dreams via the artificial reality console
to help him fight the virus in a make-believe western world. Can they
give Kryten enough time to build a dove program, or will the Gunmen
of the apocalypse ride them out of town?

4:Emohawk; Polymorph II
Starbug is damagedbecause Rimmer is a smeghead. Landing on a small
moon, the Boys from the Dwarf have to trade Lister's hand in marriage
to a troll-like GELF for a vital piece of equipment. Absconding before
consummation of the marriage, Lister is follwed by the GELF leader's 
Emohawk (a tame polymorph - tame to him that is). The polymoprph
sucks Rimmers bitterness and Cat's cool out, leaving them as
two old friends. Can Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibley defeat a polymorph,
or will Duane do something dorkish and kill them all?

5:Rimmerworld
While looting the simulants' ship from epsiode three, Rimmer flees
in an escape pod from the battle with the remaining simulant.
Unfortunately for him, the pod heads through a wormhole which means the
rest of the crew will take 600 years to find him. On following him through,
Kryten, Dave and Cat find their worst nightmare - Rimmer produced clones
of himself to populate the planet - they are sentenced to death
for the heinous crimes of being brave, charismatic and sane.

6:Out of Time
The crew head into an unreality minefield to try and loot a spaceship
which contains a time travel device. Just after reaching the ship
and taking the time machine, another Starbug appears - it contains a
fat Rimmer, a fat, bald Cat, Kryten with a rug and Dave in a jar
(or rather, what remains of Dave, in a jar). The older versions
are time travellers on good terms with Hitler and Louis XIV.
"Better Dead than Smeg" says Rimmer as they decide not to allow their
future selves to duplicate the time machine and get threatened
with oblivion. Cat, Lister and Kryten all buy it just before Arnold
blows up the time machine followed by Starbug being destroyed.
(Or did they?) (End note is "To Be Continued...")

Final Comments, and analysis of Season VI:

The final season to date was a rehash of many of the episodes seen
before. It was well done however, and the self-reference only made
things funnier. Here's some links with past episodes:

1: PSirens - begins with Dave coming out of stasis - cf I/1:The End.
2: Legion - Rimmer's hard light drive means he can touch things,
particularly Rachel the inflatable doll - mentioned in III/5:Timeslides
and II/3:Thanks for the Memory (called Inflatable Ingrid).
3: Gunmen of the Apocalypse - cf II/2:Better Than Life with the
Total Immersion Videogame.
4: Emohawk; Polymorph II - cf III/3:Polymorph - the creature,
IV/5: Dimension Jump - Ace Rimmer and to V/6:Back To Reality - Duane
Dibbley.
5: Rimmerworld - cf V/3:Terrorform - "it's Rimmer's mind out there,
expect sickness".
6: Out of Time - cf V/6:Back To Reality - what is real and what is
fantasy? Did Starbug go through any of the second half of the 
episode, or is it just another unreality pocket? If you watch the 
effects closely, there is an indicator of a boundary just before the 
crew start dying.

Season VII is supposed to be going to production soon, but in a recent
interview Grant Naylor weren't sure where they were going to go with
the story. There is also the problem that Craig Charles (Lister) has been
arrested and charged with rape. There has been no word of the date
set for the trial, Recent reports suggest that he has been released
on bail to fulfil contractual obligations. Whether this includes
filming Red Dwarf VII is not known.

(9th Jan 1995)

This guide compiled by A.A.Adams
aaa@dcs.st-and.ac.uk