Ok, so Lister lied about passing the chef's exam, but thoughts of a resit are furthest from his mind when Red Dwarf stumbles upon a pod drifting in space, which Rimmer tells Holly to salvage, believing it to be a stasis capsule carrying a dormant member of an alien race. Rimmer even invents a name for this race – Quagaars – and convinces himself that they can give him a new body. After a cursory inspection, Lister discovers that the capsule is actually nothing more than a jettisoned Red Dwarf garbage pod (with the writing partially obscured), but he decides not to tell Rimmer because, as Holly says, "It's a laugh, innit?"Lister learns more about the Cat people's god, "Cloister the Stupid" who was "frozen in time" to save the Cat race, and informs the openly skeptical Cat "I am your God." Later, the Cat, who is known to go "investigating", goes off on one of his excursions, and Lister follows him, deep into the cargo hold. There Lister discovers an old blind cat priest — the only one of their race left other than Cat — who is dying and proclaims that he has lost his faith, feeling that he has wasted his life following Cloister. The priest takes his hat off, asking Cat to burn it (which Cat puts on his head and lies to him, telling him, "It's burnt"). In his final moments, Lister shows up and convinces the priest that he has led an admirable life and has served Cloister well, and as such will reach 'Fuchal', the Cat equivalent of Heaven. Lister takes the hat back from Cat and puts it back on the priest's head. Convinced by this "miracle", the cat priest joyously exclaims, "This is the happiest day of my—" and dies.
Back in the observation room, the quarantine period is over. Lister opens the pod and pulls out a discarded chicken carcass, which Rimmer proclaims to be the preserved remains of a Quagaar warrior who "must have looked something like a roast chicken..." He then begins to look doubtful; the credits roll; and suddenly the music stops and the picture freezes, as Rimmer yells, "It's a garbage pod! It's a smegging garbage pod!"