With cheat book in hand and his trusty droid by his side, Lister of Smeg (Craig Charles) prepares to receive his ill-gotten reward from the Queen of Camelot (Sarah Alexander). (from: 'STOKE ME A CLIPPER')

Before the accident, Lister (Craig Charles) watches on as Rimmer (Chris Barrie) attempts to rally support from Kochanski (Chloe Annett) for his latest useless proposal. (from: 'OUROBOROS')

She can't sleep, there are trainers in the fridge and there isn't a pot of cottage cheese in sight. Kochanski (Chloe Annett) is finding life tough and Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) isn't helping. (from: 'DUCT SOUP')

Dinner is served.. Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) gets his point across to the crew who are in the AI suite's newest environment, Pride and Prejudice Land (from: 'BEYOND A JOKE')

Kochanski (Chloe Annett) and the crew watch on as Lister (Craig Charles) trys to reason with deadly Epideme virus (Gary Martin) in a hope of saving his own life. (from: 'EPIDEME')

With the help of Kryten (Robert Llewellyn), Lister (Craig Charles) begins to adjust to having life without an arm, with disastrous results. (from: 'NANARCHY')

EPISODE GUIDE

NOTE: Sections in italics refer to scenes only found on the Red Dwarf VII: Xtended videos and not in either the TV edition or usual video release.

TIKKA TO RIDE: A few weeks after Starbug was destroyed by the crew's future selves, Lister sets the scene by explaining Starbug's future selves actually destroyed themselves by killing the present crew due to a paradox and so therefore Starbug has been restored and brought back to the point before they met their future selves (simple, eh?). However, this has had a devastating effect on Lister's curry supplies which were destroyed in the explosion.
However, the restoration of Starbug means that the Time Drive is still back on the ship where the crew took it from originally. Lister has developed a scheme to retake the Time Drive and use it to go back to Earth (amazing how it suddenly developed faster than light capabilities...). Rimmer, Kryten and the Cat are against the plan (otherwise they might turn out like their future selves) but a quick swap of Kryten's heads and the removal of his guilt chip and behaviour protocols gives Lister the backup he needs to convince the crew to follow him.
This also means Kryten has no guilt and no experience with the Time Drive so when the crew try to go back to the twenty third century, they find themselves in Dallas, 1963 and in the Texas Book Depository.... after a quick set of deductions they realise they have just intruded on the assassination of JFK and they bumpy landing was explained by them pushing Lee Harvey Oswald out of a window before he fired the shots. The crew are cornered by the FBI but escape to 1966 where JFK has been impeached after a scandal and the Mafia run America. The Cubans have allowed the Russians to build a missile base. The world is on the brink of nuclear war and America's cities are deserted.
Lister resolves to change things but is not helped by a guiltless Kryten who, upon asked to find food, barbecues a dead civilian. After some pitiful attempts to rectify their mistake, Lister decides that the only way to sort out the mess is to employ a second gunman to stand behind a grassy knoll in the near vicinity of the book depository and fire the shot....so he goes to prison and the arrested JFK and asks him to kill his past self and restore his respect in history. After all, the conspiracy theorists will never guess that one! The world is restored, but Lister still doesn't have a curry and the crew make their feelings of the subject very evident....
Some time later on board Starbug, as Rimmer is putting Kryten through some rigorous voltmeter testing, Lister is suddenly enlightened as to why there was no debris in the explosion. Obviously the curry wasn’t destroyed and was in fact stolen by him in the future. To Rimmer's annoyance he uses the drive and gets the curry but not before Rimmer has the last laugh by sealing Lister in the front of the ship and sending it off into deep space....

STOKE ME A CLIPPER: In a parallel dimension, Ace Rimmer is battling Nazis and freeing a princess from the evil Captain Voorhese and a band of Nazis but in the process of escaping an exploding plane on the back of a crocodile, he is shot and forced to jump to a nearby dimension before he is weakened beyond the point of no return...guess whose dimension he reaches! Lister is, at that moment, indulging in a little indiscretion with the Queen of Camelot on the AR simulator after using, much to Kryten's disgust, a book of cheats and hopefully some whipped cream if he can find it.
Lister is therefore a little upset when Ace's arrival knocks out power to his groinal attachment. However when they realise who it is the crew's anger is forgotten in favour of a happy reunion, all except for one. Rimmer is not pleased to see Ace (they only have 3000 vomit bags on board ship) but Ace is persistent and wants to speak to him in private. It turns out that this is not the Ace Rimmer they met previously, but the latest in a long line who is, in fact, a hard light hologram like Rimmer himself.
He tells his more weasely counterpart that he is dying and that he wants Rimmer to become the next Ace in the line, but Rimmer is less than happy of having to become a man who looks like a reject from a gay pride disco! Luckily (with some help from Lister) Ace convinces Rimmer to allow him to train him and he sets out to release the cougar in Arnold, but all Rimmer can manage is a hamster. Eventually Ace decides the time has come, he gives Rimmer his wig and tells him he must convince his ship mates that he is Ace and so complete his own transformation.
After Lister disguises himself as a knight of Camelot and duels Rimmer, Rimmer is finally convinced that he is brave and decides to follow Ace's footsteps. When Ace dies, Lister pretends it was Rimmer and so the crew hold a funeral for him. Rimmer still has cold feet but Ace has left one final sign, a graveyard of the millions of Rimmers who became Ace. So finally, new Ace takes his place and leaves his crew mates forever (well, as long as he can work out the flight controls from the ejector seat). With a final farewell he departs Starbug for an alternative dimension...Stoke him a Clipper, he will be back for Christmas!

OUROBOROS: Back in 2155, we see a box put under a pool table...the box says 'OUROBOROS' on it and contains a small baby... Many years later, that baby, now Dave Lister, is having trouble staying sane. The fact he has mistakenly attached a roll of dental floss to his teeth and is wearing a pink dressing gown and bunny slippers isn't helping either. However, all that is put on hold when the Cat spots a big wibbily wobbly thing coming towards the ship. It transpires that it is a tear between two dimensions, a doorway through which the crew can pass and meet alternative versions of themselves. They go through and are confronted by another Cat, Kryten and a hologramitic Lister.
It turns out that in their dimension, Lister died in the accident which wiped out the crew of Red Dwarf after Kochanski was put in stasis for taking care of his cat. What this means is that they have another crew member....a fully human Kristine Kochanski and Lister isn’t in the best attire he wants to meet her in. Things look up when she expresses a desire to have children...but then she presents him with a tube and a request for sperm. However, the arrival of a GELF ship breaks up the conversation and Kochanski ends up on the wrong side of the dimensional tear when it closes. Stuck on 'the dustbin with thrusters', she has to put up with Lister and the Cat's lust and Kryten's hatred of her 'in and out bits'. She is a valuable asset, however, and when the GELFs return (who are being commanded by Lister's jilted GELF bride) she gets them out of the scrape.
However, she wants to go back to her ship and away from 'Priscilla Queen of Deep Space' and so when the chance arises, and the dimensional linkway reopens nothing Lister can do will stop her. However, when they swap supplies with their counterparts, Lister spots a box saying 'OUROBOROS' and realises the child he helped Kochanski conceive is himself. He is his own father, and Kochanski is his ex-girlfriend and his mum!
He runs after Kochanski to get the tube containing his own embryo, but the GELFs return and this time Kochanski is stuck on their side of the gateway permanently. Many months later, Lister is born and his 'father' takes him back to the Aigburth Arms using the time drive, telling him it is a paradox from which the human race will never die out. He writes 'OUROBOROS' on the box and then leaves it under the pool table...

DUCT SOUP: Everyone is having a bad night. Lister is too hot and Kochanski is going crazy being stuck in the room next to the squeaky pipes. She tries to console herself with Kryten, but the jealous mechanoid only wants her to stop looking at Lister like he was a tin of cottage cheese. Meanwhile, after deciding he can't sleep, Lister has gone to the laundry room with the Cat and they are having a good night watching Kochanski's knickers spin-dry in the washing machine.
To Kryten's displeasure, Lister begins to get closer to Kochanski by sorting out her pipes and giving her a new uniform,...but suddenly the power goes out and the crew find themselves stuck in Lister's quarters and unable to open the doors to get to the cockpit. The only way through are through the miles of pipes and ducts inside the ship and so the crew set off towards the engine room. In this time, they all find out a lot more about each other. Lister reveals how he developed his fear of claustrophobia after an unpleasant experience of being trapped in a crate in his childhood and Kochanski mistakenly reveals to Kryten that she makes a sound like a rusty gate when she makes love. Kryten doesn't mind (he files it under 'S' for 'So funny you'll laugh until you're sick'). Lister also relates stories from his childhood orphanage, and Kochanski reveals that despite her seemingly refined exterior she went through a period off the rails. She puts it down to leaving cyber-school and realising the Earth didn't revolve around her, which the Cat agrees with. After all, it must obviously revolve around him!
However, their troubles can only get worse with the constant washing systems meaning the pipes get flooded with water and then dried. It is all becoming too much, especially when Kryten works out Starbug is heading straight into a nearby sun. Luckily, Lister discovers how to reach the exit by using the backwash to their advantage, but they only end up back in the sleeping quarters where they begun.
It is only when they decide all is lost that Kryten reveals that he didn’t lock the doors and he only took them through the pipes so that Lister and Kochanski would learn enough about each other to be put off one another. Whilst Lister and Cat prepare some electro leads for connection to Kryten's nipple nuts, Kochanski takes out her frustration on the mechanoid's head with a spanner.

BLUE: Kryten is suspicious when Lister reveals an intention to cut down on curry, it must be something to do with 'she who must be drooled over'. And as if the extra laundry and strange lingerie weren't enough, she keeps taking the salad cream out of the fridge! However, an emergency soon stops his moaning. Starbug is about to hit the tail of a comet and if they don't get through, Kochanski won't be able to get back to her own crew. Although Kochanski advises against it in the interests of safety and not turning out like potato salad, Lister decides to chance it but only manages to damage Starbug so badly that Kochanski doesn't make it to the rendezvous point.
The explanation Kryten offers is that Starbug was carrying too much weight, so Lister and the Cat decide to dump some rubbish. However, Lister won't throw anything away because it reminds him of the 'fun' he used to have with Rimmer back on Red Dwarf such as playing 'the locker room game' whereby they would open the lockers of the dead crew and keep what they found. Kryten concludes that Lister is, in fact, missing Rimmer and when Lister has dreams about being reunited with the man with the most flared nostrils in the world, laughing and joking with him and then passionately snogging him, he is forced to put himself forward for psychiatric help from the mechanoid.
It is actually Kochanski who manages to get through to him by concluding that, despite the fact he hated him personally, he respects the way Rimmer tried to keep him sane. However, Kryten has a far better solution. Using Rimmer's diaries, he constructs the 'Rimmer Experience' on the AR machine. It is a museum of everything to do with Rimmer and it is sickening. It portrays him as a courageous leader and the other crew members as complete idiots. However, it is the sickening song which proclaims Rimmer's greatness with Lister hates the most and he and the Cat conclude they never want to see that weasely maggot ever again, which is exactly what Kryten was intending.

BEYOND A JOKE: Kryten has been busy for three days to prepare a lobster for the celebration of the anniversary of when the crew found him aboard the Nova 5. However, Lister and the crew have other plans. Kochanski has found a copy of 'Jane Austin World' for the AR machine and wants to show it to Lister and the Cat to try and get them educated. Kryten is appalled that Lister would rather go with Kochanski than him and so sets out to ruin everyone’s night. The crew enter Pride and Prejudice world. Lister and the Cat are introduced to Mrs. Bennett and her daughters whilst Kryten attempts to kill as many of them as possible by use of a blow pipe. However, when that doesn't work he decides to import a tank from a war game and blows up the entire Bennett family.
Now that the crew have his attention they sit down to eat dinner, which turns out to taste awful. However, things really come to a fore when Lister asks for ketchup and in disgust and anger, Kryten blows his top, literally. Without a head, Kryten can't operate so Lister and the others set out to salvage one from a nearby ship. However, there is a Simulant aboard and Kochanski and the Cat have to disguise as GELFs to get past him and get the mechanoid heads. However, whilst they were doing this, Starbug was ransacked and Kryten's body has been stolen.
The Simulant takes Kryten to Able, another Series 4000 mechanoid who he has aboard his ship. Able is completely mad after becoming addicted to a droid corrupting drug called Ultra Zone. He repairs Kryten and the two realise they are technically brothers, but Kryten is appalled by the state of the other droid who can't even remember his name without two minutes of thinking. Meanwhile, Lister and co. are in hot pursuit of the Stimulant’s ship and manage to fool him into beaming aboard Starbug. However, before he is defeated he lets a secret slip to Kryten about his creator, Dr. Mamet which sends the droid into shame overload. The crew defeat the Simulant before he can do any more damage and he is sent back to his ship.
Able is brought abroad Starbug and promises to try and give up Ultra Zone, but Kryten has nearly been destroyed by the truth. He tells Lister that the Series 4000 mechanoids were built after Mamet had been jilted at the altar, so they were made in the image of her ex-fiancé as ugly, 'mother clucking' and neurotic and that he is nothing more than a joke. Lister persuades him that thanks to his corrupted files, he is beyond a joke, and has become more than a laughing stock.
However, as the crew try to hide form the Simulant, Able unwittingly leads the Simulant back to Starbug. Kryten believes him to be a traitor and a failure but he is wrong. Able throws away his life to save all on board Starbug by using Kryten's negative energy as a weapon against the Simulant. Able is killed when the Simulant commits suicide and blows up his ship. Kryten gets back to his normal self and in the AR machine, Lister is about to find out that Curry World is a little hotter than he remembers. But hey, it was only a joke on Kryten's part!

EPIDEME: The crew are in luck to discover a huge astro glacier nearby and so can get more supplies of water, but are surprised to find that there is actually as ship incarcerated in the ice. The ship (called the Leviathan) has been lying frozen for many years and the crew are dead, except for one person. She is a supply engineer who used to work on Red Dwarf called Caroline Carmen. She is alive, but totally frozen in a block of ice. The crew take her back to Starbug but are unable to thaw her.
That night, however, the ice cracks and the zombiefied Carmen stalks the corridors searching for Lister. She finds him in bed and gets a lot closer than Lister would like (had he not thought it was Kochanski finally coming to her senses). They are interrupted by Kryten, who thinks Lister is with Kochanski, but then she walks into the room and everything gets confusing (especially when Lister subsequently comes on to her thinking that it was her who was trying to sleep with him.) When Carmen appears again, she gets what she wants and Lister is forced to kiss her. Then suddenly she dies leaving Lister horrified at having been molested by Tutankhamun's horny grandmother! Kryten concludes that she was carrying a virus which was keeping her alive by creating an ice field around her and that virus has now been transmitted to Lister.
This, in fact, the Epideme virus. It was meant to stop smoking addictions but cutting off the nicotine in peoples' blood, but in practice it also cut off their oxygen supplies and killed them. It is intelligent, however, and so Lister has the chance to try and talk it out of killing him (rather unsuccessfully. Although the virus does concede it won't be much use for it knowing Lister's skill of how to open beer bottles with his anus). However, Kochanski has an idea. If they can force the virus into Lister's arm and the amputate it, they can destroy the virus. Lister agrees, but on the condition it is his left arm which they cut off. However, this too does not go according to plan when Epideme decides to infiltrate Lister's right arm instead. Lister wakes up to find the arm which he does all his favourite things is gone, and Epideme is still alive in his body.
As a last ditch effort to save the Cat or Kochanski from a liaison with a zombiefied version of himself, he attaches a bomb to himself and sets the timer. However, Epideme stops him by mistakenly revealing the planet which the cure is on.
The crew race there but find it empty, Epideme has tricked them and Lister is close to death. Kochanski has a plan, but she has to stop Lister's heart to do it. Then he becomes a zombie and bites her arm, thus infecting her with the virus. Before it can spread and to the horror of Kryten and the Cat, she then cuts her own arm off, destroying the virus. It was, in fact, Caroline' Carmen's arm injected with blood and adrenaline. Kryten is impressed, and Lister is quickly resuscitated. But despite beating the virus, now he has lost his arm. TO BE CONTINUED...

NANARCHY: Life without a right arm is getting Lister down, but at least he is only half crap at the guitar now. Kochanski thinks Kryten should teach Lister to fend for himself rather than rely on him (especially when she learns he is on 24 hour wipe alert...) However, Kryten's attempt at a prosthetic limb is sadly inadequate since it has a mind of its own and can't be controlled. The Cat's attempts at counselling don't work either, only depressing Lister further. Kochanski then remembers that Kryten has something which could help.
The droid contains a number of nanobots, tiny creatures which can deconstruct and object into its component atoms and then rebuild the atoms into an all new structure. They usually repair circuit boards, but they could theoretically work on Lister too, copying his tissue and building a new arm. It could work, if Kryten had any nanobots. He actually lost them on the S.S.S. Esperanto, which was just before they lost Red Dwarf. However, the crew all decide it's worth trying to find and so they fire up the engines to retrace their steps back to the Esperanto, going into another 200 year deep sleep for the journey.
However, they are awoken early when Starbug's scanners detect something strange ahead. Apparently a rather large planet in their way is actually Red Dwarf. When the crew explore it further, they realise it is littered with debris from the ship. They collect some of it and go back to Starbug. One item in particular interests Lister, an old watch he once used to contain a portable version of Holly. To his delight, he turns it on and is greeted by the male version of Holly. He explains everything. It turns out that Kryten's nanobots rebelled against him and whilst the crew were on the Esperanto, they stole Red Dwarf. First they deconstructed it into its component atoms and then created a sub atomic version of the ship for themselves to pilot. They converted the rest of the atoms into the planet. Holly seems in perfect order (as far as senile computers go) and is even able to shed light on the location of the sub atomic version of Red Dwarf.
As Starbug was chasing its vapour trail for 200 years, the nanobots would have searched for a place where they couldn't be scanned. The only place where this could happen would be on Starbug itself and so Kryten scans the interior of the ship. To their amazement, the crew find the nanobots inside Lister's laundry basket. Immediately Kryten sets them to the task of giving Lister a new arm and restoring Red Dwarf. However, it is the nanobots who appear to get the last laugh by creating a completely overlarge Lister. And when the crew subsequently fly through the hanger bay doors of the newly built Red Dwarf, they find the ship massively oversized for Starbug...

BEHIND THE SCENES

OTHER DWARF DEVELOPMENTS

© 1999 sculder_mully@oocities.com

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