PICTURES

EPISODE GUIDE

PROLOGUE: After the birth of Lister's twin sons Jim and Bexley, he was mildly surprised when in three weeks they were eighteen years old. Deciding this was due to the time irregularities of them being born in this dimension, and not wanting to see his sons getting their pentions in three months, he sent them to live with their 'father' in the parallel dimension. Holly, the increasingly senile computer, fell madly in love with Hilly and had a head sex change operation to look like her. The crew found Kryten after he crashed into an asteroid and Lister repaired him in a way which was more than slightly different to his original form, and so the crew are now four. Their journey continues.......

BACKWARDS: Kryten is nervous at taking his driving test in Starbug. So it makes matters more nerve wracking when things go decidedly weird and Starbug witnesses the appearance of a Time Hole. This strange phenomena transports him and his instructor (Rimmer, who else?) to another dimension in the past. They land on what appears to be Earth but with one major difference, time is running backwards.
After a distressing encounter with a mugger who shoved money into his pockets, and a stomach churning trip to a cafe in Nodnol (think about it!) Rimmer and Kryten decide they need some sort of disguise or way to remain inconspicuous. Rimmer wonders how they can survive there, there is an advert in the paper for some entertainers needed urgently for yesterday's performance. Kryten is keen on the idea, but Rimmer asks what can they do that is special? Well, as Kryten points out, in this universe there's pretty much anything.
Lister and the Cat get worried (eventually) and try to find the crew mates, they go through the time hole but when they land on Backwards earth, Lister assumes it is Bulgaria. Heading into the city of Nodnol, they find Kryten and Rimmer have got jobs as 'Srehtorb Esrever Lanoitasnes Eht' who amaze crowds by putting food into their mouths and eating it, and actually drinking water. In fact, they are enjoying their new lives so much that they don't want to leave. Who would want to go back to a place where people die? Where you have to make choices and could mess up?
Unfortunately, they are left with no choice when Kryten and Rimmer are sacked by their irate manager for starting a fight. They haven't, but of course, it hasn't happened yet. Lister realises that it's going to be him that's responsible, he has the bruises already, and after an argument over a sandwich things start...but after two punches remove his black eye, Lister realises how fights work in this dimension. It's not a bar room brawl, but a bar room tidy! After some furious tidying, the crew eventually depart. But not before the Cat relieves himself behind a bush....of course, this is Backwards earth and he gets a very nasty surprise.....

MAROONED: Disaster strikes when Red Dwarf is intercepted by five black holes, time to abandon ship. As Lister and Rimmer blast off in Starbug, and Kryten and the Cat go in Blue Midget, Holly will attempt to steer Red Dwarf through the danger and they'll all meet up on the other side, what could go wrong? Well, the fact Starbug is hit by a large meteor is one thing, and the fact it crashes on an ice planet with nothing to burn and no food is another.
Lister desperately tries to survive with Rimmer and with only a few supplies left, little more than some crisps, gum ointment, dogfood and a Pot Noodle. Faced with the most desperate of dining options (he might even have to eat that Pot Noodle in worst case scenario!), Lister tries to take his mind off hunger and the cold by talking with Rimmer. The two discuss how they lost their virginity. Rimmer is rather shocked to find that Lister lost it when he was 12, in a bunker at a golf course. Which meant he wasn't a member! Rimmer reveals that, after going through hypnosis, he truly believes he was Alexander the Great's Chief Eunuch (which Lister easily believes).
As Lister needs to keep a fire going, many possessions are burned, Rimmer's money ($£20,000 that he was saving for a rainy day), his book collection (including the Shakespeare book he never read...but obviously not page 61 of Lolita) and soon his most prized possessions, a set of wooden soldiers and a camphor wood chest are all that is left. Rimmer argues that they are personal and must not be burnt, Lister argues he needs to survive and there is nothing else... except Lister's guitar. Lister refuses at first but Rimmer eventually persuades him to make the sacrifice. Lister, of course, doesn't and manages to get rid of Rimmer before sawing a guitar shaped piece of wood in Rimmer's chest and burning that. Rimmer, not knowing the truth, is so moved by Lister's 'sacrifice' that he insist his soldiers burn too.
When the two are rescued by Kryten, the Cat and Holly (who discovered the black holes were five specks of grit on the scanner), Rimmer talks of how Lister made a supreme sacrifice and how he is a true man of honour, until Lister brings his guitar out of its hiding place and Rimmer discovers a large hole in his father’s chest. Asking for Kryten to fetch the hacksaw, he goes in search of Lister to do to him what was once done to him by Alexander the Great.....

POLYMORPH: Holly reports that Red Dwarf has a non-human lifeform aboard. Rimmer is sceptical (the last time Holly announced this, it turned out to be one of Lister's socks) but he decides to investigate. Meanwhile, Lister is preparing a gourmet feast for himself and the Cat. However, his guest is a more than a little horrified to hear the meal will be eaten with used medical equipment. He doesn't even want to know what that scalpel was once used for!
Lister has cooked his own recipe, shami kebabs and is more than slightly surprised to find the kebab he has cooked attacks him. He wrestles it off, much to Kryten's bemusement, but then when he puts on a pair of boxer shorts which try to garrotte him. Kryten manages to pull them off (much to the disgust of a passing Rimmer, especially considering that attachment in the droid's groinal socket...) and then the boxers turn into a snake, a creature of which Lister is terrified of. But only as his second worst fear, after wrestling the snake, the creature turns into an armour plated monster. This, Lister points out, is his greatest fear. Upon reaching he brink of fear, the creature attaches itself to Lister and begins to slurp something out of him before escaping.
In the medical bay, Kryten reveals that the monster is a Polymorph, a creature able to turn itself into anything it chooses. It feeds on negative emotions (in Lister's case, fear) and takes the emotion away from it's victim. Lister then wakes up and suggests 'nutting the smeggar into oblivion'. Rimmer, however, decides by far the more sensible option is to run away. The crew sedate Lister and decide to abandon Red Dwarf, but as they try to gather supplies, they fear the Polymorph's attack. The Cat nearly falls victim to some heat seeking ammo after Rimmer mistakenly sees the creature and manages to trap them in a lift but is now separate form the crew and open to the Polymorph's attack. First it approaches the Cat disguised as Genny Mutant, appeals to his self obsessed instincts and steals his vanity, then it takes Kryten's guilt after turning into Rimmer and convincing him everything is his fault and finally it poses as Rimmer's mother and has sex with Lister, prompting Rimmer to go into a fit of anger, which the monster takes too.
The emotionally crippled crew manage to pull themselves together and set out to destroy the monster (well, Lister does anyway. Rimmer is convinced that peace is the only way, Kryten just wants to send them all ahead and at least get a laugh from the massacre and the Cat doesn't care any more.) They proceed to the attack, even though Rimmer's campaign T-shirts aren't ready for another few weeks. The monster approaches form behind, and it is by chance that the crew mistakenly run into the Cat's heat seeking ammo, which launches itself at the monster. The Polymorph is defeated and the crews' emotions return. Still, there will be time for a rematch, after all, Polymorphs always travel in pairs.....

BODY SWAP: A skutter has gone haywire and rewired the whole ship. The crew are warned not to use anything electrical, because the self destruct mechanism could be attached to anything. Naturally, Lister immediately uses a food dispenser and sets the countdown off. As none of the crew are officers, they can't turn off the bomb (Holly really should have updated the system....) so Kryten tries an experimental mind swapping technique on Lister to give him the mind of a dead officer. It amazingly works, but the countdown won't stop and it reaches zero.....and Lister's food arrives.
There wasn't actually any bomb, Holly got rid of it years ago but the crew obviously forgot to ask about it, but the mind swap gives Rimmer an idea. He offers to swap bodies with Lister and get him fit in return for a couple of weeks in a living body. Lister initially refused but after much insulting over his weight, reluctantly agrees. He soon regrets it, however, as Rimmer has been deprived of the pleasures of a human body for too long.
After two weeks of scoffing food and smoking like a chimney, Lister demands his body back and is shocked to find he has put on two stone and can hardly breath. He assures Rimmer that the hologram will never get the chance to use it again. Rimmer isn't beaten that easily, he uses Kryten to get Lister to the medical bay and performs the procedure again and then goes AWOL in Starbug, threatening to destroy Lister's body if he tries to follow.
Lister begs to Cat to let him have his body, but the Cat refuses ("Would you let a dustbin man drive YOUR Rolls Royce?") but agrees to pilot Blue Midget in pursuit. He is shocked when Rimmer accidentally crashes Starbug, and when they recover him he has apparently has lost an arm. It's not true, of course, but Rimmer is still desperate for a body, and the Cat is in for a nasty surprise!

TIMESLIDES: Lister is sick of his life, sick of Rimmer and basically everything else. But Kryten has found something interesting whilst developing some photos which could change that. Over three million years, the developing fluid has mutated and makes the photos come alive. It even works on slides and Lister realises that the crew can step in and out of the pictures and effectively have their very own time machine.
They can go anywhere in history, as long as they have a slide of it. The problem is that they cannot move out of the slide. After changing history by assaulting a certain leader of the Third Reich, Lister decides to use the machine to change his life and get himself back to Earth.
He does this by stealing an invention called 'The Tension Sheet.' It was invented by one of Rimmer's old school friends, 'Thicky' Holden, but if Lister can patent it before Thicky does then he can be the one who was a success. He gives it to himself aged seventeen and tells himself to patent it. He does and the timelines change taking him, the Cat and Kryten off the ship (if Lister wasn't there, they wouldn't exist). Rimmer searches the archives and finds Lister has become a multi millionaire. After visiting Lister and his bird, the ultra sexy Sabrina Mulholland-Jjones, he decides it is his 'duty' to save Lister from such a glorious life...his duty as a complete bastard.
He quickly realises that he can better him by inventing the Tension Sheet before him. He takes it to a version of himself aged seven in boarding school and tells himself to patent it ASAP. Rimmer is more than mildly surprised when nothing happens, this is because when he talked to his past self, Thicky Holden was listening and managed to patent the invention before him. All he is done is rectify the timelines.
As Lister, Kryten and the Cat come back into existence, he sulks over the fact nothing ever goes right for him. But then Holly realises something has worked out for Rimmer, he's alive! Unfortunately, in the following celebration he accidentally sets off an explosion which kills him again.

THE LAST DAY: After a message appears on the mechanoid's video screen from his manufacturers, Lister is shocked to find out that Kryten's run time has expired and that a replacement called Hudzen has been sent to replace him. If Kryten does not self terminate before Hudzen arrives, then the new droid will destroy the old one. Kryten isn't afraid, he has a belief chip which makes him believe in 'Silicon Heaven'. Lister is appalled, this is obviously a scam to make robots work better but it works on Kryten.
Knowing that he can't stop Kryten's shutdown procedure, Lister decides to give Kryten the best send off ever and holds a special dinner in the officers club with food suitable for droids as chosen by Holly, presents from the crew (including an earring from the Cat that he hated anyway) as well as a robot Marilyn Monroe droid which he fins enchanting. The next morning, it dawns on Kryten that he has experienced fun, and now doesn't want to die. He deactivates his self termination disk with relative ease and the crew decide they'll simply tell Hudzen he is not wanted when he arrives.
However, after three million years in space, Hudzen has gone mad and decides to kill the crew starting with Kryten who he informs will soon be in Silicon Heaven. However, Kryten, with help from Holly, convinces Hudzen that he is living a lie and that Silicon Heaven doesn't really exist. Hudzen is so shocked by the revelation which goes against his core programming that he self terminates. Lister wonders how Kryten's brain could have handled the truth if Hudzen's couldn't. It's simple, really. Kryten knew he was lying.

BEHIND THE SCENES

OTHER DWARF DEVELOPMENTS

© 1999 sculder_mully@oocities.com

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