By a fluke the Red Dwarf crew cripples the Simulant ship, but before it is destroyed it transmits an "Armageddon Virus" into Starbug's navigation computer, leaving the ship locked on a suicide course straight towards a large volcanic moon. Kryten contracts the virus himself in order to try and formulate a software antidote.
Kryten's battle with the virus manifests itself as a Wild West–flavoured dream; he is the drunken and burnt-out Sheriff of Existence standing against the four Apocalypse Boys: Famine, Pestilence, War, and Death. To try and help Kryten to buy some time, the Dwarfers use an artificial reality machine to enter Kryten's Wild West hallucination. The Apocalypse boys render Lister, Cat, and Rimmer powerless, but it buys Kryten enough time to develop an anti-virus and release it against the Apocalypse Boys and the virus infecting the ship.
Starbug crashes into the surface of the moon, but the deletion of the virus allows the crew to take back control of Starbug and they blast out of the molten lava within seconds, before the ship melts. Starbug flies off into the setting sun and the Dwarfers "yee-haw" like cowboys.
Trivia
- Along with the episode "Back to Reality", "Gunmen..." is often voted "best Red Dwarf episode" in fan polls.
- This episode was Red Dwarf's highest accolade so far, winning an International Emmy Award for the 1994 Outstanding Popular Arts category.
- The International Emmy Award was presented to Robert Llewellyn (who played Kryten) in New York City by Hollywood veteran, Tony Curtis, who is reportedly a fan of the show.
- In the saloon a piano version of the Red Dwarf theme can be heard.
- This episode was filmed in Laredo; a small, privately owned, Wild West-themed resort town in Kent, England. The game with which the Dwarfers enter the battle is called "Streets of Laredo". This is also the title of a well-known song, sung by a young cowboy who's about to die from being shot.
- It was estimated in pre-production that the scenes in Laredo would take several days to film. However, the crew were informed by the BBC of impending time constraints and so squeezed seven days' worth of filming into a mere twenty-four hours.
- During filming of this episode, Janet Street Porter was Head of Art & Culture at the BBC (a post she didn't hold for very long due to public criticism) and she made no secret that she didn't like Red Dwarf. Street Porter received the ambitious script for "Gunmen..." late, and after reading it, sent out a memo that all production for this episode must be stopped immediately due to the fact she believed it too difficult to film, too costly and too time-consuming when the crew could be focusing on other shows. By the time the Red Dwarf crew received her memo, filming had already wrapped and even post-production already started.
- When the crew were horseriding, Craig Charles spurred on the horse on which Chris Barrie was riding with some force and enthusiasm. The horse resorted to running around fields in circles, and it reportedly took two hours to slow the horse down so that Barrie could get off. Ironically, before this incident Charles had never ridden a horse before and Barrie had claimed he was an accomplished horse rider. Barrie supposedly did not talk to Charles again for weeks, due to his anger at him over this incident.
- The working title of this episode was "High Midnight".
- In the original script for this episode, all scenes in Laredo were to be filmed at night and the Apocalypse Boys were to come for Kryten at midnight instead of noon. This proved too time-costly and the idea was scrapped.
- The lava Starbug crashes into was actually slightly liquified jelly.
- In the original script, Starbug was going to crash into the ocean instead of lava. However this was changed as it proved even more of a difficult shot for the effects team if Starbug was to crash into water then lava. The reason being apparently that the after splashing into the water, the bubbles were nearly as big as the model of Starbug itself.
- The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "A Fistful of Datas" features a similar scenario to this episode. In the A to Z of Red Dwarf, Patrick Stewart (Captain Picard) stated that he at first found Red Dwarf to be similar to Star Trek: TNG and tried to call his lawyers about it, but backed down after he watched it further. The segment with The Riviera Kid shooting the sign was shown immediately after Stewart spoke on this. Since then, Patrick Stewart has been a fan of Red Dwarf.
- Rimmer's alter ego, Dangerous Dan McGrew, was a character from a Robert W. Service poem, "The Shooting of Dan McGrew".
- The third episode with alternate end credits: The theme song is played in a Country/Western guitar style.
- While filming the scene where Lister comes off the VR machine at Kryten's insistence, Craig Charles injured his groin by forgetting to take that part off before walking away. This blooper can be seen on the Series VI DVD.
Plot Inconsistency
- Even though he acquired his hard-light drive in the previous episode, and was still using it by the end of it, Rimmer is shown in his soft-light form at the beginning of this episode. He is also never shown as a soft-light hologram after this one (Except during the different versions of Rimmer in the Rimmer Experience during the episode "Blue"). It is thought that Rimmer was made soft light to conserve Starbug's power for silent running, which was necessary at the beginning of the episode to hide from simulents.