| THE END First broadcast Monday 15th February 1988, BBC2 |
| SERIES ONE |
| The End Future Echoes Balance of Power Waiting For God Confidence And Paranoia Me2 |
"To Ganymede and Titan, yes sir, I've been around..." Meet David Lister, third technician on the Jupiter Mining Corporation ship Red Dwarf. Lister is bored, which goes some way to explaining why he's content to obstruct a superior technician by humming, clicking and being quiet. Said superior technician is Arnold Rimmer, a man who, despite holding the vastly superior rank of second technician, doesn't yet outrank the service robots, who aren't given the menial tasks that Rimmer performs because they have a better union. Rimmer has grand ideas for himself, however. He plans to pass his engineers exam tomorrow, although he does have a tendancy to flunk examinations - last time, he wrote 'I am a fish' four hundred times, then passed out. Lister finds it impossible to get on with him, because Rimmer's such a smeghead. Even Todhunter agrees. Back in their bunkroom, Rimmer won't let Lister do anything, be it watching McIntyre's funeral on the vidscreen or playing his guitar. He's not too keen on Lister breathing, either. The reason - Rimmer's preparing for his exam, his 'revision' consisting of copying the contents of the textbooks onto various parts of his anatomy. When Lister questions his methods, Rimmer bemoans how difficult it is for him to become an officer, due in part to him not having the right background, and having the wrong parents - his own. Lister however, has a plan of his own. He's been saving all his wages - hence his lack of new socks, soap or deoderant - and once he's completed two more trips aboard Red Dwarf, he's going to buy a farm on Fiji, get a sheep and a cow, and breed horses, however improbable. Tall animals may be a necessity, as Fiji is now three feet below sea level. The ship's computer, Holly, appears on the screen to invite everybody to the 'Welcome Back George McIntyre' reception, where Lister unites with friends and drinking partners Chen, Selby, and the super-intelligent Peterson. Flight Co-Ordinator George McIntyre has returned, despite being dead. He is a hologram; an exact - if intangible - computer generated copy of his original self, the large letter 'H' on his forehead being the only indication of his hologramatic status. As the reception ends, and preparations are made for the disco, Captain Hollister informs the crew that Holly as sensed a non-human lifeform on board - and it's not Rimmer. The next morning, as Rimmer revises his 'notes' and leaves for his exam, Lister opens an air-vent to reveal the non-human lifeform in question - it's his cat, Frankenstein, and she's very heavily pregnant... Rimmer's exam gets underway, and it's clear that he doesn't know a thing. He struggles with his paper, until he finds a question, the answer to which he knows is on his right forearm. As he pushes up his sleeve, he is greeted with a sweaty, blotchy mess, and an equally sweaty, blotchy left hand. In desperation, he slams his hand down on to his answer paper, puts his name to his hand print - and keels over. Lister arrives in the Drive Room, having been called to the Captain's office, flirting with Console Officer Kristine Kochanski along the way. Hollister calls Lister over; he knows about the cat, thanks in no small part to a photograph Lister has taken of himself with Frankenstein, which he has sent to be developed in the ship's lab. The Captain wants the cat cut up and tests run on it, but as he's unlikely to put the cat back together, Lister refuses to reveal it's whereabouts. As a result, he is sentenced to eighteen months in Stasis; a form of suspended animation. As Todhunter accompanies him to his punishment, Lister encounters a barely conscious Rimmer, who remarks that he thinks he did "quite well". Then Lister steps into the stasis room... Todhunter: "The stasis room creates a static field of time. See, just as X-rays can't pass through lead, time cannot penetrate a stasis field, so although you exist, you no longer exist in time, and for you, time itself does not exist. You see, although you're still a mass, you are no longer an event in space/time. You are a non-event mass, with a quantum probability of zero." Lister: "Oh, simple as that, eh?" |