Information Red Dwarf Episode Guide and Gallery series 7-9

[michaellevenson]

Series 7.
37. Tikka To Ride.
After defeating their future selves , you'll have to watch to find out how, the Starbug vessel that our heroes are confined to until they locate Red Dwarf , has undergone changes as the timelines adjusted themselves. Disaster! All the Indian curry provisions have been destroyed. Lister can't function without vindaloo. They still have the time drive, Lister suggests they go back to Earth and buy years and years supply of curry. By chance they end up in Dallas 1963, overlooking the parade where JFK will attend. Unfortunately their arrival in a book repository has forced JFK's assassin to miss. Unfortunately because, JFK a womaniser and possibly under Mafia influence doesn't die and therefore history is altered. Our heroes time jump forward and discover America has been compromised as a result of JFK's continuing Presidency. Russia has a missile base in Cuba. The only way to rectify this is to assassinate JFK in 1963 as was meant. Lister and Co. visit JFK in prison and persuade him to help them restore his place in history as an icon, by assassinating himself, maybe by firing from a grassy knoll !!

 

[michaellevenson]

38. Stoke Me A Clipper.
Super hero Ace Rimmer is back, the dimension jumping all round handsome, brave, fearless.....what a guy!!
Ace comes on board Starbug, but is injured, dying, yes a hologram can die, his " light bee" that buzzes inside him projecting his image is damaged. But this ISN'T the Ace Rimmer they met before. As each Ace dies he dimension jumps to the next reality to pass the baton so to speak to the next Rimmer. Each Arnold Rimmer turns into the next Ace. And now it's our Rimmer's turn. Lister can't help but laugh, Rimmer a hero!!, no chance. Ace trains our Arnie to be the new Ace, then Ace expires. In a moving scene Lister reassures Rimmer he can do it, Rimmer accepts and leaves the crew. He's gone! Out into the black yonder to be the next Ace Rimmer. As he leaves he says the traditional Ace farewell,
" smoke me a kipper I'll be back for breakfast " Our Rimmer gets it a bit wrong, see episode title for what he says.

 

[michaellevenson]

39. Ouroboros.
Starbug comes to a tear in the fabric of space, a rip, where two dimensions meet. On the other side of rip is another Starbug and crew, Kryten, Cat, a hologram of Lister, OF LISTER?! Yes he died in this reality, so who went into stasis? Christine Kochanski that's who, Lister's girl.
She briefly crosses into our Starbug to ask Dave to donate sperm, she obviously can't have a kid with her hologram Lister. But an attack by GELFS, genetically engineerd life forms, means the rip between dimensions closes. Kochanski is here to stay, replacing Rimmer as the Dwarfers 4th member. If this wasn't enough, there's a startling revelation that the sperm in the invitro tube becomes Lister! He is his own father! Lister knows he was found abandoned as a baby in a box marked ouroboros, He always was told whoever abandoned him couldn't decide whether to call him Rob or Ros , but Kryten points out Ouroboros is the name of everlasting batteries. Lister takes the baby , in an ouroboros box , back to the pub where he was found under a pool table, the continuous circle is complete, Lister , his own father.

 

[michaellevenson]

40. Duct Soup.
Kochanski is struggling to settle in this reality. Being bunked near creaking rattling pipes in her quarters doesn't help. Lister offers to swap rooms with her and Kryten realises Kochanski is special to Dave, and he is jealous. Kryten accidentally while doing the laundry overpowers the electrics and the ship powers down. With the doors sealed everyone has to crawl miles through the air ducts to reach the engine room. We discover Lister is claustrophobic, which Kryten didn't realise, if he did he wouldn't have DELIBERATELY blown the power to stop Lister getting ideas about spending a night with Chrissie.

 

[michaellevenson]

41. Blue.
Rimmer is back he enters Lister's room, Dave has missed him, they snog, lovingly, then Lister WAKES UP......just a dream.
Lister is feeling a bit down, he misses Rimmer. Kochanski shares some of her wisdom, a bit of psychotherapy, and Lister feels a bit better. This enrages the increasingly jealous Kryten, who counters with psychotherapy of his own.
Rimmer kept diaries of every adventure on Red Dwarf, but his written entries twist everything to make it appear that he always saved the day. Kryten creates a virtual reality experience using holograms to recreate a number of previous encounters the crew experienced as Rimmer said they happened. After Lister enters virtual reality and watches scene after scene of Rimmer the hero commander of Red Dwarf saving the day, Lister says " I never want to see that cheating lying scumbag again " Kryten overjoyed, " more effective than your psychobabble Miss Kochanski "

 

[michaellevenson]

42. Beyond A Joke.
Kochanski wanting to educate her crew members takes them to Jane Austen World, a virtual reality hologram experience. This annoys Kryten who has spent hours preparing a lobster gourmet meal. Kryten borrows a WW2 tank from another virtual reality game and appears in Austen World, fires , blows everything up, thus forcing everyone to the dinner table. Lister mistakenly asks for ketchup, this blows Kryten's mind, literally his head explodes. The crew have to find someone to repair him. Meanwhile a rogue Simulant alone on a ship raids Starbug and kidnaps the remains of Kryten, and gets his mechanoid, Able, to repair him.
It seems Kryten and Able are brothers, same model, but Able is a junkie, abusing his mechanical body with Otrazone a toxic substance. That's because Able knows why he and Kryten and all other series 4000 mechanoids were created, and the truth is hard to take. Kryten and Able were created as jokes, mother- clucking , ridiculously comical droids, based on the characteristics of the creator's boyfriend, who dumped her, and she created the 4000 series to get revenge. This is hard to take indeed.

 

[michaellevenson]

43.Epideme.
A corpse frozen in a block of ice is discovered on a crashed ship. Inside is the body of a long long dead Red Dwarf officer Carolyn Carmen. Taken aboard Starbug, the ice begins to thaw suspiciously quickly, the corpse is alive. It gets into bed with Lister and kisses him, then dies. The corpse was contaminated by the Epideme virus, an intelligent deadly virus that kills its host quickly, then freezes the body until it can hunt for the next victim. Lister doesn't have long to live. It's defeated but at the cost of Lister's right arm, cut off by Kochanski after Epideme was cornered in the arm.

 

[michaellevenson]

44. Nanarchy.
Lister has a false arm made by Kryten, operated by mental powers by the wearer, but it's a struggle to use. Kochanski wonders why the nanobots inside Kryten can't make Lister a new arm from exsisting tissue. Kryten's nanobots, tiny microscopic robots that repair Kryten's systems. But they apparently left Kryten's body a long time ago, about the same time as Red Dwarf mother ship disappeared. Detection device discovers them, they are inside Starbug in a MINIATURISED Red Dwarf. They stole Red Dwarf, miniaturised it, and have been flying around in Starbug, from their perspective, a macro sized universe, that's why the Dwarfers could never catch up with it. A sandstorm swept planetoid is located, and the reading says it's comprised of Red Dwarf matter, the original ship the rest of it the nanobots didn't need, reduced to constituent atoms, sand, on this planet. To show penitence and hoping for forgiveness the nanobots agree to recreate the ship, and give Dave a new arm by being injected into his body to create new arm tissue. For series 8 we have Red Dwarf back, better than ever.

 

[michaellevenson]

Series 8.
45./46/47.- Back In The Red (parts 1,2,+3)
1.The nanobots have rebuilt Red Dwarf and Lister, Kochansi, Kryten and Cat find that the nanobots have not only rebuilt the ship, the nanobots have resurrected the crew and they find themselves in big trouble, as they find themselves standing trial for a series of crimes. Among the revived crew is Rimmer, alive , a different Arnie, with no knowledge of the adventures of the Dwarfers. All the crew and officers alive again and wondering where they are. Lister tries to persuade Rimmer to allow him to escape and to track down the nanobots, the only way for Lister to convince Rimmer is by helping Rimmer gain promotion by sharing the confidential info on the Red Dwarf officers he acquired during these last years.
2.
Rimmer begins his scheme to get promoted, and he begins to impress Captain Hoillister , Kryten is reprogrammed and has his factory settings restored. And Lister , Kochanski and Cat set out to escape and search for the Nano Bots.
3.
We discover the Dwarfers are in a hallucinogenic unreal situation. They were all unknowingly given drugs to believe they are awake and attempting to escape, including Rimmer, he was given a drug too when Captain Hollister became suspicious of his new found personal knowledge that he was using to get up the ladder of promotion. By observing how the Dwarfers react thinking the situation is real, Hollister concludes that the guys were being truthful about everyone's reincarnation by nanobots, but nevertheless they are sentenced to two years in the ship's brig for misuse of confidential information. Kryten mentally clings on to all he has learnt from being a crew member of Red Dwarf and rejects the attempt to restore factory settings. He too is in the brig, and reclassified as a woman.

 

[michaellevenson]

48. Cassandra.
Lister, Kochanski, Rimmer, Kryten and Cat begin their two year sentences in The Tank, the ship's jail. Lister volunteers the group for The Canaries without realising they're a squad of prisoners who lead any ground force into dangerous situations. On a crashed ship with no survivors they meet Cassandra a computer that can predict the future. She predicts Rimmer's death. But Rimmer surmises that Cassandra can only know who is Rimmer by the name on their Canary jackets. So if he can swap jackets he should be okay. If only it was that simple.

 

[michaellevenson]

49. Krytie TV.
Kryten lets slip that as he is now classified as a woman he has to endure the boredom of girls shower night. Watching the girls sud themselves in the showers. A group of unscrupulous crew members kidnap him, alter his program and turn him into a sort of television boss. In the cinema of the ship it's, " Shower Night Special- a pay per view event." Kryten in the girls showers will stare at the floor, until the cinema goers fill up collection buckets. Then he'll stare at the showering girls , his optics relaying the image to the cinema. Krytie TV grows and in a you've been framed type show Lister and Rimmer are conned into vandalising a senior officer's room 5 minutes before he returns with a date.

 

[michaellevenson]

50/51. Pete ( parts 1+2)
1.
After playing a practical joke on Warden Ackerman, Lister and Rimmer along with Kochanski, Kryten and the Cat are forced to take on the guards led by Warden Ackerman in a game of basketball. When they spike the guards' juice with a drug which gives them erections for 7 hours, Lister's and Rimmer's punishment is to peel all the potatoes for 2 weeks. Kryten, Kochanski and Cat investigate a derelict spacecraft, where they discover "The time Wand" a time device.
2.
Lister and Rimmer are in a special part of The Tank, punishment for using a bacteria to help them peel spuds. The bacteria eats the potato skins rapidly, unfortunately it is quick spreading and ended up eating their clothes, and when appearing before Captain Hoillister naked the bacteria jumped onto Hollister and attacked him, leaving him bald. Meanwhile the time wand the others discovered on a ship has been brought on board and accidentally freezes the crew. This wand can speed up time and and is proposed by the Dwarfers that it can speed up their 2 year prison sentence. The wand sends out a time reversal field and a pet bird belonging to The Birdman, a prisoner in the Tank, is engulfed in this time field and turns into a dinosaur. So a T Rex is loose on board, not exactly something that'll help getting their sentence reduced.

 

[michaellevenson]

52. Only The Good.
A escape pod containing a "Microbe", a genetically-engineered virus that eats metal and programmed not to harm glass, has arrived on-board "Red Dwarf" and begins to eat away at the ship. Left aboard to die, Rimmer, Lister, Cat, Kryten, Kochanski and Holly believe their only chance at finding an antidote is in a mirror universe where everything is opposite. Rimmer is sent in, hoping for success before Red Dwarf is destroyed by the Microbe. Rimmer gets the antidote, but on returning to Red Dwarf everyone is gone , escaped into the mirror universe, leaving Rimmer on a disintegrating ship, alone, about to die. He receives a visit from a cowled figure carrying a scythe, Death is here to collect him.....until Rimmer knees him in the crutch.

Last BBC episode.

How did this situation resolve itself. To this day we don't know. From series 9 onwards the hologram Rimmer is back, is it the original Rimmer back from being Ace, or the series 8 human Rimmer now a hologram ? It is an in- joke , a tease by writer Doug Naylor that we don't know how the situation is resolved.

 

[michaellevenson]

Ten years after series 8, channel DAVE stepped in and produced/backed this three part story, after the BBC showed no interest in making more Red Dwarf.
Series 9.
53/54/55. Back To Earth (parts 1,2,+3)
"Part One" begins on Red Dwarf nine years after the events of Series 8, Kochanski is apparently dead, and Holly is out of commission because Lister left a bath running in the officers' quarters for nearly nine years and the Skutters still have not finished drying him out. The original hologram Rimmer has re-joined the crew after temporarily leaving to become the new Ace Rimmer in series 7 with no explanation of what became of the Series 8 human Rimmer. This has become in running in- joke for series 10 onwards, how did the non hologram Rimmer in series 8 save the day, or did he die and is the Rimmer here a hologram of that Rimmer, with the original still out there somewhere dimension hopping.

The crew have noted water supplies are low, and discover the cause—a giant squid in their water tank—after they go to investigate. After they barely escape from the encounter with their lives, the squid proceeds to vanish, and Katerina Bartikovsky a former Red Dwarf science officer, materialises. Informing Rimmer he is to be switched off in twenty-four hours, she uses the ship's equipment to analyse the leviathan's DNA and manages to turn a mining laser into a dimension cutter, in the hope of opening up a portal so that Lister can find a mate and restart the human race.

"Part Two" begins with the discovery that the Red Dwarf crew inhabit an "invalid dimension". Zeroing in on the nearest valid reality, the portal sucks the crew to Earth in 2009, only to find that in this world, their adventures have been turned into a fictional television show called Red Dwarf. As a result of the discovery they quickly accept that they themselves are merely fictional characters, and find a DVD of the "Back To Earth" special. They are alarmed to discover that they are to die at the end of the final part. They resolve to track down their creators and plead for more life. While on a bus, Lister meets two kids who are fans of the show and who reassure him that, despite all of his faults, he is a heroic and cool character to them. They also share a theory about Kochanski's fate - since Kryten was the only person who actually witnessed her supposed 'death', it seems likely that Kochanski simply tired of Lister and left Red Dwarf with Kryten telling Lister she had died to spare his feelings. Lister later confronts Kryten about this and Kryten admits that the children are correct. Bartikovsky informs Rimmer that it is not wrong to kill a hologram, so he pushes her under a bus.

In "Part Three", the crew track down actor Craig Charles on the set of CORONATION STREET ask him to reveal the location of their creator. After they locate him, the Creator reveals that he intends to kill off the crew, having tired of them, but he is himself killed by a now-keen-to-remain-alive Lister. Shortly afterwards, the crew discover that they are in a shared hallucination caused by a female relative of the despair squid seen in s05e06 ,that uses joy, rather than despair, to subdue victims. Kochanski appears before Lister, tempting him to remain behind, but having discovered his Kochanski may still be alive in his own reality, he chooses to wake up and return with the others. As the crew head back to their sleeping quarters, Cat admits that he brought the female despair squid to Red Dwarf with the intention of eating it, and they reflect on the ridiculous idea that anyone could consider them fictional characters.

The creator of Red Dwarf tires of his creation and decides " it's time to die fellas"

DAVE the satellite channel have continued to make Red Dwarf, series 10 onwards to come on next thread.

 

[michaellevenson]

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