Season 2

Everything to do with Season 2 of Red Dwarf...

Three million years from Earth, 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.

Episodes

• Kryten
• Better Than Life
• Thanks for the Memory
• Stasis Leak
• Queeg
• Parallel Universe

On The DVD (Buy The DVD)

• Cast Commentary
• Deleted Scenes
• Smeg Ups
• Original Trailer
• "Red Dwarf A-Z" Documentary
• Doug Naylor Interview
• "Alternate Personalities" Featurette
• Tongue Tied - Uncut
• Raw FX Footage
• Isolated Music Cues
• Talking Book Chapters
• Photo Gallery
• Weblink
• PLUS Hidden Easter Egg
• And Collector's Booklet

Queeg

Holly's increasing fallibility results in him being replaced by the backup computer, Queeg 500, named after a character from The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. The crew, initially pleased at the efficiency of their new AI, soon grow dissatisfied, as Queeg requires them to work hard and follow the Company's regulations to the letter. Holly, prevailed upon by the crew to return, challenges Queeg to a chess match to determine which of them will run Red Dwarf. Queeg wins easily, and declares that Holly is to be wiped immediately from the ship's systems. However, Holly returns, and explains that the Queeg incident was merely an elaborate April Fool's Day prank.


Trivia

• Charles Augins, who played Queeg, was also the choreographer for the "Tongue Tied" segment in "Parallel Universe", and was featured in the music video that accompanied Danny John-Jules's commercial release of the song.
• Rimmer's story about Porky as a ring leader of a gang intent on eating him for survival draws similarities to Lord of the Flies.
• "Inflatable Ingrid", only mentioned in this episode, is for some unknown reason changed to "Rachel" in later episodes.
• Rimmer, when he quotes Holly, doesn't quote him word for word the first time. Rimmer says "no need to panic everyone, I've got it in hand". Holly says it the other way.
• Despite the Cat not being a registered person aboard Red Dwarf, as stated in Quarantine, his personality is recorded on a hologramatic-data.
• When the meteor hits the ship at the start of the episode, Rimmer, being a hologram, should fall through the table, rather than fall on top of it.
• Holly singing as he appears to be erased is a homage to HAL 9000's demise in Arthur C. Clarke's Space Odyssey saga.

Parallel Universe

Holly invents the Holly Hop Drive (a box with Start and Stop on it), which is theoretically capable of taking Red Dwarf back to Earth immediately. The device malfunctions and Red Dwarf is catapulted into a parallel universe where society developed along matriarchal lines. Rimmer, Lister and Holly all have female counterparts here; to the cat's disappointment, however, his own counterpart turns out to be a dog. Rimmer fights off aggressive sexual advances from female Rimmer, while Lister wakes up in bed with female Lister, hung over and vaguely recollecting having sex the night before. Due to a difference in reality laws of physics, Lister ends up becoming pregnant with twins Jim and Bexley.


Trivia

• This was the first episode not to have opening titles and the only one not to have an on-screen name.
• Cat watches a dream on the dream recorder at the beginning of the episode, of himself singing and dancing with Lister and Rimmer as backing singers. This was released as the single Tongue Tied in October 1993, and it reached no.17 in the UK music charts.
• The song playing in the disco is the instrumental to Tongue Tied. In the remastered version of this episode the song is replaced by heavy rock music.
• This Episode marks the first time Cat calls Rimmer and Lister by there Actual Names (In the scene where he's looking for his double).

Production Error

• When Deb and Dave Lister are talking in the sleeping quarters of the female ship, the certificate on the wall in behind Dave says "Arnold Rimmer" when it should say "Arlene Rimmer".

Stasis Leak

Holly detects a stasis leak on Level 16. Stepping through the leak transports the gang back to three weeks before the accident that wiped out the crew. Lister is determined to solve the puzzle of a picture he found of himself and Kochanski getting married in her quarters, while Rimmer is more concerned with ensuring he goes into stasis and survives the accident. Lister initially has the same idea for Kochanksi, but there is only room for one in the remaining stasis booth... Chaos ensues as several alter egos of the characters from different timelines end up back on Red Dwarf.


Trivia

• The "Crowne Plaza Midland Holiday Inn", in Manchester, was used as "The Ganymede Holiday Inn". Due to time and budget constraints, the Red Dwarf crew were forced to film around genuine visitors that were booking into the hotel.
• This episode is the only one that fades out in a blurred vision, as if it were all a dream of Rimmer's. Perhaps the whole thing was meant to be a dream sequence.
• In series 2 there is a big inflatable Banana beside Rimmer and Lister's sleeping quarters door so in the episode 'Stasis Leak' they go back before the crew there killed in that episode Rimmer walks into there sleeping quarters and the Banana is there but the Banana should be there after the crew is killed.
• The consistency from the future episodes is lost in this one when we notice that in the future episodes, some of the characters have changed.
• Older Lister tells Younger Lister that he will go through a cosmic storm and then a Parallel Universe, and rematerialize on Earth in 1989. Only one of these things happened, the Parallel Universe. Earth in 1989 could have referred to the "Backwards" episode, however the year in that episode was 1993.
• The tune playing in the Ganymede Holiday Inn is 'Tongue Tied' from later episode 'Parallel Universe'

Thanks For The Memory

It is Rimmer's death-day, and a party is arranged for him on a convenient planetoid (obviously he wants to celebrate his death to a great degree). Back on Red Dwarf, he drunkenly confides to Lister how many times in his life he has had sex. Naturally, it isn't many times at all. It's once. And she was drunk, and later revealed to have had concussion from being hit over the head with a winch, thinking Rimmer was someone else called Norman. Lister feels bad, and decides to do something about it, but a more worrying problem arises the following morning when he and Cat each wake up with a leg in plaster, Lister's jigsaw puzzle has been magically solved and four days have disappeared from Holly's memory banks, his star charts messed with, as well as four pages from Lister's diary. Rimmer suspects aliens, but things aren't quite as they may seem. When they find Holly's missing black box, they watch the videos of what happened over the missing days...

After Rimmer confides in Lister, he tells him about his long desire to be loved. Lister and Cat go to the hologram simulation suite where Rimmer's hologram is generated. Lister uploads 8 months of his memory when he was going out with Lise Yates into Rimmer's memory. Rimmer wakes in a jubilant mood from what he thinks was a magical 8 months of his life. However, Rimmer later discovers the letters that Lise wrote to Lister during those 8 months and it is revealed that he never experienced them at all, Rimmer is distraught and wants to erase the last 4 days. They bury the black box on the planetoid they found, and in the process Cat and Lister drop gravestone on their feet, explaining their plaster casts. Lister rips the pages out of his diary for the last 4 days, and the episode finishes with Lister completing the jigsaw puzzle.


Trivia

• When Lise Yates is being recorded, she at first says "I love you Dave". When Lister records it for Rimmer, she says, "I love you Rimmer", and not "I love you Arnold".
• Much of the last season's things, like his "Gazpatcho Soup" words, are shown on the monitors in the Hologram Simulation Suite
• The Hologram Simulation Suite looks different in this episode than it does in the Queeg episode

Better Than Life

A post pod that has been chasing Red Dwarf for three million years has finally caught up to deliver the letters, and Rimmer receives a large tax bill from Outland Revenue, along with a letter from his mother informing him that his father is dead. To cheer him up, Lister and Cat invite Rimmer to play the total-immersion computer game "Better Than Life", where everyone's deepest desires come true. Everything goes well until Rimmer's mind begins rejecting the good things that are happening to him, and starts producing progressively horrible fantasies – seven kids and a mortgage, a leg-breaking Outland Revenue agent, a tarantula crawling up his leg – until the whole crew find themselves buried up to their necks in sand with their faces smeared with jam, about to be eaten by ants. At this point, Holly, apparently, ends the game; however, when they get back to their quarters, the tax collector emerges from a locker and breaks Rimmer's thumbs.


Triva

• This is the first time that Rimmer's middle name, Judas, is revealed. We also first learn Rimmer's true feelings for his father; he hates him, but still longs for his respect.
• In a bit of inconsistency, we see Rimmer touching an autograph book and different stuff and later see Lister mention, almost with surprise, that Rimmer can touch things, when he actually saw him touch things earlier, to which Rimmer replies, eyebrows raised, 'I know. Why do you think I was so late?' Suggesting that him and Yvonne McGruder had sex in the car 'Twice in one lifetime? I'm turning into Hugh Hefner.'
• We also hear Lister talk of his own father's death, although he later claims to have been abandoned as an infant. It is assumed he is talking about his adoptive father.
• This episode gave its name to the Red Dwarf Fan Club's quarterly magazine, Better Than Life.
• It also gave its name to the second Red Dwarf novel.
• The Game, a 1991 episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation shares a similar plot to this episode.
• This episode makes reference to the mermaid problem, by putting the fish half on top. Right before this is revealed, Cat pulls out a photo and kisses the top half, and licks the bottom, presumably kissing the woman and licking the fish (like food), but when it's revealed, one realises that he was kissing the fish and licking (simulating cunnilingus) the woman.
• Marilyn Monroe makes her first of three appearances in Red Dwarf, in the Cat's CGI fantasy. She would return as a mechanoid in "The Last Day" and as a wax-droid in "Meltdown".
• This is the first time we see Yvonne McGruder, who is mentioned in the next episode.
• When Lister and The Cat ride away on the motorbike, someone says "Roll it fucker!", although it is hard to hear.

Kryten

The crew of Red Dwarf receives a distress call from a mechanoid named Kryten. He informs them that three women of the crew of the Nova 5 have survived a crash. However, on arrival the crew, who took special effort to look their best to meet the girls, are shocked to find Kryten has been looking after, clothing and feeding three skeletons ever since the crash many years previously. Eventually they take Kryten back to Red Dwarf; Rimmer then gives him a list of chores to do while Lister attempts to teach him to rebel against Rimmer by making him watch the films Rebel Without a Cause and Easy Rider. It seems Lister's attempts are unsuccessful — until Kryten paints a picture of Rimmer on a toilet in his admiral uniform, throws a container of liquid (including the contents) onto his bed and insults him while doing so. He then dresses up in leathers and borrows Lister's space bike.


Trivia

• David Ross played Kryten in this episode; however later in the series when the character returned he was played by Robert Llewellyn. Ross later appeared in the Series IV episode "White Hole", as the voice of Talkie Toaster.
• Parts of storyline and dialogue from this episode were later included in the Red Dwarf Radio Show (an audio version of the book Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers), voiced by Chris Barrie who plays Rimmer in the TV series.
• At the beginning of this episode, Rimmer is seen learning Esperanto (via the audiolingual method), with little success. This might be an homage to science fiction author Harry Harrison, whose influence is evident on the show, and also made a lot of references to the language.
• As Kryten is escorting the three aboard his ship, they pass a hanging plant. Rimmer accidentally brushes the plant's leaves, disturbing them slightly (being a hologram, Rimmer is supposedly unable to touch real objects).
• Before boarding the Nova 5, Rimmer asks Lister to refer to him in front of the women as "Ace". Ironically, this is a clear link to Ace Rimmer (who hadn't been introduced to the series at that point), a version of Rimmer from a different dimension, who Rimmer comes to hate.
• In the DVD commentaries, Norman Lovett comments on a conversation he had with David Ross over lunch. In particular, Norman remembers David asking him whether he was "legit" (i.e. has Norman ever been involved in a stage production?) Norman was somewhat furious over the question. He will recall the conversation again during the series VIII DVD commentaries.
• First appearance of Kryten, who wasn't originally intended to become a main character (this is why he leaves at the end of the episode)
• This is the first episode where we see Rimmer actually touch something. Normally, Rimmer should be able to touch hologrammatic things, but the admiral's hat he is wearing isn't marked with an H and he is still able to touch it.