Season 3

The Red Dwarf crew stumble further into deep space, facing an emotion-sucking polymorph, a psychotic mechanoid and a version of Earth where time runs backwards.

Episodes:

On The DVD (Buy The DVD)
  • Cast Commentary
  • "All Change" Original Documentary
  • Deleted Scenes
  • Smeg Ups
  • Hattie's DJ Diary
  • Tribute to Mel Bibby
  • "Food" Featurette
  • Backwards - Forwards
  • Trailers
  • Raw FX Footage
  • Isolated Music Cues
  • Talking Book Chapters
  • Photo Gallery
  • Weblink
  • PLUS Hidden Easter Eggs
  • And Collector's Booklet

The Last Day

A message pod reaches Lister from Diva-Droid International, manufacturers of Kryten and the 4000 series of mechanoids. It announces that Kryten is outdated and should shut himself down, as his replacement will arrive the next day. Kryten resigns himself to his fate, telling Lister he's going to his reward in "Silicon Heaven". Lister tries to tell him there's no such place, to no avail. Lister then decides to throw a last-day party for Kryten. Kryten, waking the next morning with a hangover, realises that he has had fun for the first time, and decides not to go quietly after all. When the new mechanoid, Hudzen, proves to be dangerously insane and tries to kill everyone, Kryten shuts him down by telling him that silicon heaven doesn't exist.


Quotes

Hudzen: No such place as Silicon Heaven? Then where do all the calculators go?


Still on the subject of Silicon Heaven:

Kryten: Surely you believe that God is in all things? Aren't you a pantheist?

Lister: Yeah, but I just don't think it applies to kitchen utensils. I'm not a frying pantheist!


Then, a little further into the conversation:

Lister: Is Silicon Heaven the same place as Human Heaven?

Kryten: Human Heaven? Goodness me! Humans don't go to Heaven! Someone just made that up to prevent you from all going nuts.


Trivia
  • Robert Llewellyn made a brief, unmasked, appearance as Jim Reaper, the Diva-Droid executive.
  • The plot to this episode, as well as the title, is similar to the Jack Nicholson movie The Last Detail.


Plot Inconsistency
  • When sitting at the table, Kryten states that he doesn't eat and he doesn't drink. In Backwards, just a few episodes before, Kryten is shown drinking a glass of water and eating an egg. This can only be resolved if he meant he doesn't need to eat or drink.
  • After Kryten tells Hudzen that there is no Silicon Heaven, he states to Lister that he was lying. This is inconsistent because in the next episode Camille Kryten is first learning to lie (and having a hard time with it, too).
  • Kryten says to Lister Aren't you a pantheist? to which Lister gives a reply which confirms he is but every other time throughout the entire series Lister's religion is mentioned it says he's an atheist sometimes even the ultimate atheist, however this may just be to prove his point by saying that it doesn't apply to kitchen utensils 'I'm not a FRYING-pantheist!!'

Timeslides

The episode opens with Lister in an uncharacteristically depressed mood; he tells Cat and Rimmer that he hates his life on Red Dwarf. During the conversation, Rimmer reminisces about a former schoolmate, Thickie Holden, who despite being one of the stupidest boys in class went on to earn an immense fortune with an invention called the "tension sheet".

Meanwhile, while working in the ship's darkroom, Kryten discovers that a mutated batch of developing fluid produces photographs that are windows to the past, and slide projections that one can step into (albeit only within the confines of the photo). After a quick trip to Frank Rimmer's wedding and to an Adolf Hitler speech, Lister goes back in time and changes history by giving Thickie Holden's invention to his 17-year-old self. This creates unforeseen changes in the present; Cat and Kryten disappear, leaving Arnold Rimmer alone with Holly. Rimmer visits Lister, hoping to persuade him to come back to Red Dwarf; Lister, however – now living in a mansion with a supermodel – fails to recognise him, and tells the butler to throw him out.

Rimmer then decides to go still further back in time to give the idea for the tension sheet to his childhood self first. Rimmer's plan is foiled when Thickie Holden overhears Rimmer's conversation with his younger self, and takes the invention for himself. Upon returning to the present, everything is put back exactly the way it was - with the sole exception that Rimmer is now alive, not a hologram. Delighted, he rushes out into a corridor and accidentally blows himself up.


Memorable Quote

Rimmer contemplates returning to the past to retrieve Lister from his new life of luxury as the inventor of the Tension Sheet.
Rimmer: I'm going in to rescue him.
Holly: (blankly) Rescue him.
Rimmer: It's my duty. . .my duty as a complete and utter bastard.


Production Notes
  • Craig Charles wrote, produced and performed three musical numbers in this episode: "Bad News" (the instrumental to which Kryten is dancing), "Cash" and the infamous "Om" song.
  • "Om", played by Lister's old band, Smeg and the Heads, featured Jeff Walker and Bill Steer of the grindcore band Carcass (Charles wrongly thought they were members of Napalm Death, according to the Series III commentary).
  • Charles's brother, Emile Charles, portrayed the young Lister in this episode.
  • Kryten refers to going to 1963 Dallas for the Kennedy assassination. This relates to the future episode in Series VII, "Tikka to Ride".
  • Graham Chapman agreed to play a guest role as a television presenter in this episode, but died before filming began; Ruby Wax took the part instead.


Plot inconsistencies

  • There is no explanation, nor does it make sense, for Rimmer to be alive after he changes history. There is a fan theory that due to seeing a future version of himself as a hologram when he was a child when he went back in time in the earlier episode Stasis Leak he believed the story and put himself into stasis however that is not confirmed anywhere in the series.
  • There is no reason for Rimmer to remain after Lister escapes into an alternate life; Holly originally brought him back to keep Lister sane, so he should disappear, like Cat and Kryten.
  • When the crew is in Lister's past, Kryten doesn't seem to know what a pub is until it registers. In Backwards, a few episodes before, Kryten knew what a pub was.
  • Kryten doesn't look like his previous self in his birthday picture which is presumably taken aboard the Nova 5, where three women are dancing behind him (presumably Miss Jane, Miss Tracy, and Miss Anne, from the "Kryten" episode).
  • There is also no reason for Rimmer to remember Lister and the others after they disappear, as he never met any of them.

Bodyswap

A malfunctioning skutter runs amok and rewires the ship's self-destruct system, which Lister then inadvertently activates while trying to order a milk shake and a crispy bar. As the auto-destruct can only be over-ridden by a senior officer, Kryten performs a mind-swap, and the mind of Executive Officer Carol Brown is temporarily placed into Lister's body. After the crisis is resolved, Rimmer tries to convince Lister to swap bodies with him: he will be able to enjoy the benefits of having a tangible body again for two weeks, while he exercises and gets Lister back into shape. However, he is unable to resist the pleasures he has been denied for so long, and eats, drinks, and smokes so much that Lister, appalled, demands his body back after just one week. Rimmer, enlisting Kryten's reluctant help, chloroforms Lister, reacquires his body, and absconds in Starbug with a full freight of junk food. When the others give chase, Rimmer crashes into a rocky planet and Lister gets his body back.

At the end of the episode, Rimmer comes in looking stunned and tells Lister, in Cat's voice "I was asleep, OK, when plastic Percy puts a sponge on my face and out go the lights!" Cat then enters carrying a heaping dinner plate and says in Rimmer's voice – before he commences gorging – "Just one night, I promise!" This is the second time Cat is speechless, as in the final line of dialogue in "Backwards" ("Don't ask").

Notes
  • This episode also coined the word Jozxyqk (pronounced Jozitzk'h) as a sound made when sexual organs become trapped in something. The word features during the scrabble game between Cat and Lister.

Production Notes
  • This episode has the only mention of the ship White Midget. This was a mistake on the part of the writers. In the Remastered version, Lister's voice is dubbed over so he says "The Midget" instead of "White Midget". Originally the new smaller ship that would be used was White Midget, a similar version of the Blue Midget, but the producers then invented Starbug which would be bigger and allow for more room to film inside.

Polymorph

Holly detects a non-human life-form aboard ship. The crew are skeptical (the last time this happened, it was one of Lister's socks), but for once she is right. A genetic mutant – a polymorph, or shapeshifter – emerges from a mysterious space pod. This creature, the product of genetic manipulation, is an emotional vampire that can change into anything, be it animal, vegetable or mineral. It invades Red Dwarf, and it begins to feed on the emotions of the crew. First, it appears to Lister as a shami kebab and sucks out his fear, turning him into a violent maniac. It goes on to feast on Cat's vanity, transforming him into a hopeless wino. Next, it dines on Kryten's guilt, leaving him uncaring and cynical. Finally, the polymorph assumes the shape of Rimmer's mum, seduces Lister, and sucks out Rimmer's anger, leaving him a nerdy, bespectacled pacifist. The emotionally crippled Dwarfers retain enough of their senses to seek out the creature and, by luck, to destroy it in a final confrontation in the cargo hold. After they destroy it we find out that the pod contained two polymorphs...

Production notes
  • This episode was the only episode to feature a warning about the episode's content immediately prior to airing. This warning is preserved in the DVD release.
  • Actor Chris Barrie (Rimmer) had to wait over 10 minutes to deliver his punchline in the Kryten/Lister boxershort scene — the audience's laughter made it impossible for him to be heard.
  • There appear to be two alternate endings in existence: in one, the second polymorph is seen to have assumed the likeness of Lister as it follows the other Dwarfers out of the cargo hold; in the other, it bounces down the corridor in the form of a beach ball, and an on-screen message reads as follows: EPILOGUE — The 2nd polymorph, which was much less intelligent than the 1st, stowed away in Lister's clean underpants drawer... where it died of old age many years later.
  • In the scene in which the crew are searching for the polymorph, Kryten speaks in an English accent, as opposed to his usual American/Canadian accent, saying 'It's here', and 'somewhere'.
  • This is an obvious parody of the first movie in the Aliens series featuring a Xenomorph.
  • Error: when Rimmer, Cat and Kryten are going down the lift into the cargo bay, they are lined up from left to right: Kryten, Rimmer, and Cat. A few minutes later, without seeing them move, Cat is on the left, Kryten in the middle, and Rimmer on the end.

Marooned

Holly orders the evacuation of the ship as Red Dwarf is approaching not one but five black holes. Lister and Rimmer head one way in Starbug, while Kryten and the Cat go the other in Blue Midget, to rendezvous with Holly and Red Dwarf on the other side. However, Starbug is hit by an asteroid and crashes on an ice planet, with little food and hardly any firewood. When supplies run low, Lister tries to burn Rimmer's collection of 19th century war figures. He burns £24,000, but then Rimmer tries to burn Lister's guitar, Lister asks for a "moment alone". Lister cuts a silhouette of his Les Paul into Rimmer's camphor wood, snaps it and puts it in the fire. But then, Rimmer returns....


Trivia
  • The working title of this episode was "Men of Honour".
  • Rimmer can be seen operating the console to send an SOS message, despite being a hologram. He also appears to have a sense of smell, when he recognises the smell of burning camphor wood. The operating console that Rimmer used could be hologrammatic (although there is no telling if there is an "H" on it, it could be on the front). Rimmer's sense of smell is also shown briefly in "Kryten" where his eyes are watering over the smell of Lister's boots.
  • Even though Starbug crashed in the backwards reality the episode before this one and it was never shown if they retrieved it, Starbug is actually shown here. It could be Starbug 2, but even after it crashed in this episode, it is still shown in subsequent episodes.


Plot Inconsistency
  • When Rimmer is discussing how he lost his virginity, he states it was with a girl named Sandra. In "Thanks for the Memory", Rimmer said he had sex once, and it was with Yvonne McGruder, however it is likely that he was lying as every other reference throughout the entire series backs up the claim his only sexual encounter was with Yvonne McGruder. Of course, as the words he uses referring to his tryst with McGruder are "made love", it's possible that, in his system of values, there's a difference between "having sex" and "making love".

Backwards

The episode opens with Lister and the Cat discussing the relative sex-appeal of cartoon characters Wilma Flintstone and Betty Rubble. The crew of the Red Dwarf wind up travelling through a time hole (first Kryten and Rimmer, followed by Lister and the Cat) and end up landing on a planet which turns out to be a version of Earth in which time runs backwards. This is explained to be because of Earth's timeline reaching the Big Crunch and subsequently running backwards until it reaches the creation of Earth. Everyone speaks and moves in reverse (the Red Dwarf crew still continue to speak and do most things forward, although they discover that some things — like eating and drinking — occur backwards for them). In addition, written words and numbers are reversed. The crew spend three weeks in "Nodnol" in the year 3991 (London, 1993). Rimmer and Kryten quickly discover that everything is backwards, and use it to their advantage, getting jobs as a Vaudeville act called "The Sensational Reverse Brothers" (as the backwards people would consider their forwards actions as 'backwards'). However, Lister and Cat do not catch on right away, and believe that they are in Bulgaria. Lister and Cat discover a "Reverse Brothers" poster and go off and attempt find them.

They eventually track down Kryten and Rimmer at the club where they work, whereupon Lister finally discovers that everything is backwards. However, Kryten and Rimmer are quite content on this planet because people do not die, there is no crime, war is a good thing, and diseases make one better. Lister comments that people would consider St. Francis of Assisi a petty minded sadist who went around maiming small animals and Santa Claus an evil old bastard who goes down people's chimneys and steals all the children's favourite toys. Lister tries to convice them to come back, but they intend to stay. Right after their show, the club owner fires them for starting a fight. Kryten argues that they have not started any fight, but, as Lister has just "uneaten" someone's pie, they discover that the bar is a mess, and they realise that they did start the fight, but it has not happened yet. Lister gets punched in the face, leading a barroom brawl (or rather, a "barroom tidy") and a huge fight breaks out in reverse, restoring everything to its original state.

They eventually realise that they cannot stay in a backwards Universe, and go back to board Starbug, only to discover that another downside is that the toilet arrangement can be extremely disturbing for someone who was born in a forwards Universe (as the Cat pops up from behind a bush, and is too shocked to say anything except "Don't ask", much to the amusement of Rimmer and Lister).


Opening Crawl (Text)

This was one of two episodes to parody the Star Wars opening crawl, the other episode being "Dimension Jump". The titling explains the changes that were made going from series two to three, however, the scrolling was sped up faster than someone could actually read.

The following text of the opening crawl is taken from a Red Dwarf FAQ created by the newsgroup alt.tv.red-dwarf:

Three million years in the future, Dave Lister, the last human being alive, discovers he is pregnant after a liaison with his female self in a parallel universe. His pregnancy concludes with the successful delivery of twin boys, Jim and Bexley. However, because the boys were conceived in another universe, with different physical laws, they suffer from highly accelerated growth rates and are both eighteen years old within three days of being born. In order to save their lives, Lister returns them to the universe of their origin, where they are reunited with their father (a woman), and are able to lead comparatively normal lives. Well, as normal as you can be if you've been born in a parallel universe and your father's a woman and your mother's a man and you're eighteen years old three days after your birth. Shortly afterward, Kryten, the service mechanoid, who had left the ship after being rescued from his own crashed vessel, the Nova 5, is found in pieces after his space bike crashed into an asteroid. Lister rebuilds the 'noid, but is unable to recapture his former personality. Meanwhile, Holly, the increasingly erratic computer, performs a head sex change operation on himself. He bases his new face on Hilly, a female computer with whom he'd once fallen madly in love.


Trivia
  • Rob Grant appears in this episode as the man smoking the cigarette.
  • A hidden backwards message was placed in this episode.
  • This episode marked the first appearance of the transport shuttle Starbug, which replaced the Blue Midget for Series III. Later, two whole series of the show (Series VI and VII) would be based aboard Starbug.
  • On the Series III DVD this episode can be played in reverse.
  • A rather unknown joke in this episode is when the four protagonists are sitting in the make-up room, and the show runner bursts into the room and shouts at them backwards. When put forward, his words are: "You are a stupid, square-headed, bald git, aren't you, eh?! I'm not pointing at you, I'm pointing at you, but I'm not actually addressing you. I'm addressing the one prat in the country who's bothered to get hold of this recording, turn it round, and actually work out the rubbish that I'm saying! What a poor, sad life he's got! Frankly, your act's crap, anyway. Anybody could have done it! I hate the lot of you! Bollocks to you!!"
  • This is the only reference to there being two Starbugs until Series Five in which one is destroyed and another is used by Lister to find Kryten.
  • This is the first look at Rimmer as a different hologram. The "H" on his head is slightly smaller and has a holographic effect, unlike the silver effect of his previous one.
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