PICTURES

Kryten (Robert Llewellyn), Kochanski (Chloe Annett) and the Cat (Danny John-Jules) are shocked to discover that the nanobots have resurrected the crew of Red Dwarf. (from: 'BACK IN THE RED')

Lister (Craig Charles), Kryten (Robert Llewellyn), Kochanski (Chloe Annett) and the Cat (Danny John-Jules) make their escape from Red Dwarf with Dibbley disguises, not knowing the truth of their situation. (from: 'BACK IN THE RED')

One size fits all... Captain Hollister (Mac McDoanld) is given some welcome relief from his anal complaints with help from Rimmer (Chris Barrie) and his own confidential files. (from: 'BACK IN THE RED')

Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) has really screwed up this time. Pete the sparrow has suddenly become a lot more vicious and the posse are on the menu. (from: 'PETE')

EPISODE GUIDE

BACK IN THE RED: Starbug flys through Red Dwarf's massively oversized hanger and into a vent. Suddenly the crew realise that Red Dwarf is shrinking around them. Lister then appears in the cockpit and shows the crew his body, its back to normal. The nanobots' molecular process obviously just takes a little time to restore things to their natural state. The crew therefore need to get out of the vent before it reaches normal size and Starbug is crushed, not an easy job when they suddenly find themselves stuck in the backside of a rat. Finally, they smash out into the landing bay with only the front section remaining. Quickly they evacuate, just before Starbug is finally blown to pieces. However, the day's surprises don't end there. They are confronted by Lister's old friends Chen and Selby (Peterson was too drunk to make it). The nanobots have not only reconstructed Red Dwarf, they have resurrected its crew as well.
The crew are overjoyed until Captain Hollister arrives and orders them to be put under arrest for stealing Starbug and smuggling aboard stowaways. Lister is taken back to his original bunkroom by MP Thornton and left prisoner, but he isn't alone... Rimmer is here, and he is alive since he has been resurrected. Happily, he tells Lister that he faces two years in the brig for his crimes. Holly confirms this, telling Lister about "The Tank", an awful penal colony and its less than desirable occupants. Lister tells Rimmer they must find the nanobots to corroborate their story but his pleas fall on deaf ears.
Meanwhile, Hollister and Doc Newton are concerned that Red Dwarf appears to be three million years away from Earth and back to its original specifications, either that or the coffee machine has been spreading idle gossip, they can't tell until they reboot Holly. Almost as strange as that is the anatomy of the Cat, who has six nipples and a toe-tapping pulse rate which Hollister finds particularly groovy.
After failing to appeal to Rimmer's good side, Lister appeals to his nasty and conniving side, promising information on the crew's personal files in exchange for his help. Rimmer agrees and sets out for Starbug where he finds the files and also the vials of sexual magnetism and luck viruses (from 'Quarantine') Rimmer is particularly pleased with the former, and its effect on the female members of the crew. It appears the world truly does love a bastard!
Meanwhile, things are getting from bad to worse for Kryten. First there is a session with the ship's "psychiatric counsellor", Dr. McClaren, who doesn't seem totally convinced that Kryten was built several years in the future and that he himself was recently resurrected after being dead for several million years. Kryten's emotions and human traits are also worrying, so much so that the counsellor recommends him to be restored to factory settings. Before that there is a medical, and Kryten is shocked to find he has been classified as a woman thanks to his lack of a penis! Forced to share a cell with Kochanski, she tells him he must resist having his settings restored and tells him a way to be more confined in front of Red Dwarfs officers by imagining them on the toilet... Kryten has a little trouble with this concept and when they confront him about restoring his settings, the only we he can answer to the negative is to first hold them at gunpoint and make them all sit on toilets. Worried by the droid’s state of mind, the crew immediately repair his corrupted files and restore his factory settings using a Data Doctor and he becomes a sanitation droid programmed to serve once again.
The only one without troubles is Rimmer, who is more than happy with his improved sexual magnetism and knowledge of the crew. He immediately wins over Hollister with his safety ideas concerning drive plates and recognition of the Captain’s piles problem, who immediately invites him to dinner in his quarters. Following an initial review in which the crew of Starbug are told they will be put under the influence of a mindscan to test their defence, Rimmer goes to the imprisoned Lister and tells him that he might as well forget about getting out of there, Rimmer has no intention of risking his promotion prospects. Lister is disgusted, but he did manage to quickly touch the top of the virus bottles, giving him enough luck virus to correctly guess the security codes that will ensure his escape.
A trip to Kochanski's quarters soon reunites the two, and Lister even managed to save a little sexual magnetism virus for the occasion...unfortunately the luck virus cures Kochanski's resulting lust induced attack. They get the Cat and then try to find Kryten, but are shocked to find him sounding more like Noel Coward than their favourite droid. Realising they need to escape quickly, the crew don 'Duane Dibbley' disguises featuring false teeth and wigs which (along with some cleaver distractions from Holly) help fool the MP Thronton Lister manages to corrupt Kryten's files again and the droid is back to his corrupted self once again. However, as they head to the landing bay, Kochanski keeps getting the feeling that their escape is too easy...
Meanwhile, Rimmer is at dinner with the Captain and senior officers fully charged with sexual magnetism. Unfortunately, it means none of the ten or so women, including Doc Newton, have any self control and after ten rather violent sexual encounters in the pantry, Rimmer really needs to regain some dignity with an injection of anaesthetic to his groin... What shocks him more is Hollister's mention of the ongoing trial. He reveals that Lister, Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat are all under the influence of mind altering drugs and although they think they are escaping Red Dwarf, they are simply on an Artificial Reality machine and are being monitored to see if their actions match their defence.
So back in Cyberspace, the crew enter Blue Midget blissfully unaware that their every move is under surveillance. And the Cat is blissfully unaware that the ultra sexy ground controller who he has falling in love with is not real. It kinda makes the subsequent (but still impressive) tap dance with Blue Midget seem almost pointless.... The crew realise something is wrong when their conversation is somehow edited to remove any reference to Rimmer. He has gone to the AR machine to quickly remove all trace of his guilt in reading the confidential files but his dodgy editing has alerted the crew to the truth of their predicament. When the Cat makes a leap of amazing deduction to find the exit to AR, they know they're not in the real world and the crew come back to reality.
Immediately they face off with Rimmer...well, except Kochanski who wants to rip his trousers off. Rimmer quickly swigs the luck virus, he's had enough sex to last him a lifetime... The crew realise they'll have to convince Rimmer to come with them, although he still dreams of being and officer and knows his career will be over if he escapes with them. They finally convince him with the promise of his own seat in the cockpit and five buttons to play with. So now when the crew head to Blue Midget and escape, it must be reality this time. Especially since that ground controller is damn ugly. But once again, they are mistaken, Holly realises that this is all a trick instigated by Red Dwarf's original Holly (also resurrected by the nanobots, up to full intelligence) and that they are all in Artificial Reality still. And that includes Rimmer, who was drugged by the Captain the second he started to become highly resourceful and intelligent.
In the real reality, Hollister has watched all these events with the newly rebooted Holly and concludes that although the crew's story about the nanobots is actually true, they have been found guilty on a new charge of reading the crew's confidential files which still gives them a sentence of two years in The Tank. Upon exiting AR, the crew are arrested and the Luck virus confiscated. However, Lister keeps the sexual magnetism virus and finds it very useful in The Tank... And Rimmer realises this too when he finds himself surrounded by a group of male prisoners with lust in their eyes....

CASSANDRA: Dejected with his prison life, and with Holly's continued assertion that he'd be much better off as a dog, Lister takes the computer's advise on a suitable past time and joins a group called The Canaries. He assumes from Holly's description that it's the prison choir, but Rimmer knows differently and is more than keen to set him straight. It turns out that the Canaries are a rudimentary squad of inmates sent into the most dangerous, unexplored environments and required to simply see if they can stay alive and therefore judge whether the area is safe for more important persons to enter by simply not dying. Rimmer smiles as he informs Lister how with his lack of experience, he's as good as dead...and then Lister ruins his fun by informing Rimmer that he's signed him up as well, along with the rest of the posse.
Hollister gives the Canaries their first brief, to explore the wreck of the crashed S.S.S. Silverberg which is sunk at the bottom of a deep ocean moon. There are no living crew members, nor any signs of bodies or remains so Hollister wants to know why. When the crew arrive, they soon find the ship's mainframe, a computer called Cassandra who claims to be able to predict the future. She tells the crew that the ship's bulkheads have broken and the Silverberg is in trouble. All the Canaries will be dead within one hour... except for Rimmer, who will be dead in twenty minutes. Only Kochanski, Kryten, Lister and the Cat will survive. Rimmer refuses to believe that can be the truth, despite the posse’s assurances that based on their experiences with future echoes that the future can't be changed. Rimmer, however, thinks he can cheat death. Cassandra knows that Rimmer dies, but doesn't know who Rimmer is. Therefore Rimmer convinces an unwitting supervisor to don his uniform. Bang on time, the supervisor dies exactly how Cassandra described. Rimmer is delighted, but Cassandra reaffirms that only Kryten, Kochanski, Lister and the Cat survive. Whether or not she was referring to him before, he will not leave the ship alive.
Still determined to cheat death, Rimmer tries to escape but ends up trapped in the hold with Kochanski when the bulkheads break. Going back to Cassandra, he asks to know the exact circumstances of his death. She tells him that he will be shot with a harpoon by Lister after he finds him making love to Kochanski...to which Rimmer is understandably a lot happier than he was a few minutes earlier. Kochanski is less than excited, but despite her better judgement feels sorry for Rimmer and ends up in bed with him. But just as he is about to do the deed, Lister arrives with a harpoon gun aimed at Rimmer
However, he doesn't kill Rimmer. He tells them that Kryten has worked out the answer. Rimmer is, in fact, not going to die but he was led to believe so in the hope that he'd sleep with Kochasnki. Cassandra plotted to bring them together in the hope that they'd bring misery upon Lister. Why? Because she knows her own death, and that Lister will kill her. Kochanski is very, very pleased that Kryten thought of it. Although Rimmer wishes the mechanoid could have taken just five minutes longer... Lister heads to the mainframe and confronts Cassandra. She tells him that the future cannot be changed and that he will kill her. But Lister refuses in an attempt to prove that free will does exist and that the future can, in fact, be altered. As he leaves the room, however, he inadvertently sets of a chain reaction which destroys Cassandra, exactly as she prophesied.

KRYTIE TV: Sometimes it's hard to be a women.. especially when you're a sanitation droid only classified as female due to your lack of genitalia. Kryten just can't live with the regime of skipping, nail painting and hot soapy showers with the rest of the female contingent of The Tank... But things aren’t much better for the men, either, especially Rimmer who's constant run of bad luck continues when he wins a holiday and the lottery seeing as that was three million years ago and it's probably a little to late to claim his prize now. Also disturbing is the package from Peterson to Lister, it turns out that his guitar was found in Starbug's wreckage. However, Rimmer is saved from having to commit a suicide bid by the fact that the instrument's strings have been removed by the wardens.
Lister's other news is that he is lodging and appeal which could benefit all the posse, so Rimmer goes on a one man 'sucking up' regime with the prison wardens in a bid for freedom. On the crew's next suicide mission for the Canaries, Kryten tells the others about his experiences. But strangely all they want to hear about is the shower... Kill Crazy and the Cat are keen for the droid to video the proceedings, but Rimmer objects as it could damage the appeal. However, the inmates gang up and reprogram Kryten. So on the next movie evening, Rimmer and Lister watch in horror as the usual B-Movie presentation is interrupted by "Krytie TV", a three hour goggle fest in the showers on a pay per view basis. Soon the corrupt droid is richer than Donald Trump and Rimmer despairs for the state of the appeal.
Very soon Kochanski finds out what's been happening and falls out with Lister (pretty unfairly, he points out, seeing as it was the worst three hours of his life... he only had one choc ice in the interval!) Kryten is subsequently thrown out by the ladies and put in with Rimmer and Lister. He tells them that the girls reprogrammed him and then tells Lister that Kochanski has got back together with her ex-boyfriend. And so Lister decides to do the manly thing and mess up her date. On Kryten's advise and with the droid's help, he trashes he date's room with (among other unpleasant items) biscuit crumbs, a handily placed onion sandwich and Christian rock music. However, then Kryten reveals that he hasn't been reprogrammed, and Lister's exploits are part of a 'prank' programme on "Krytie TV"...and that room wasn't Kochanski's boyfriend's, but the prison governor’s (a rather violent man named Ackerman.) Rimmer and Lister rush to clean up and save their appeal. Thankfully, they are successful... until Lister reveals the appeal wasn't actually about getting them freedom, instead it was a plea to allow prisoners to have guitar strings. Rimmer despairs but Lister promises he'll make up for the favour. Heck, he'll even write a song especially in his honour!

PETE: Rimmer and Lister are called before Hollister for their latest escapade, humiliating Ackerman. The problem with prison is that there is nothing to do and their little pranks are the only thing keeping them sane. Hollister isn't sympathetic, and orders them to play a game of basketball against the prison wardens. The Dwarfers don't want to lose so, naturally, they decide to cheat. A quick squirt of a viagra like drug does strange things to the guards, and makes it strangely difficult for them to run around a basketball court... Unfortunately, Holister also drinks some and after seven uncomfortable hours orders Rimmer and Lister to go on potato peeling duty.
Lister hatches yet another scheme to help them. This time he'll send Bob the Skutter back to the medical bay, but instead of viagra he'll get a programmable virus. Theoretically, he and Rimmer can program it to remove the skins off potatoes. Their duties could be finished in a matter of minutes. It's all a complete success... until the virus infects them and begins to 'unpeel' their clothes and body hair... A naked Lister and Rimmer appear before Hollister and accidentally infect him with the virus. He sends them to The Hole for two months. Its basically like solitary confinement, except they are together with a man who calls himself the Birdman who has been there for years with his only companion, a bird called Pete. It's going to be a LONG two months.
Meanwhile, the rest of the Dwarfers carry on their Canary duties as per normal. They are sent to the S.S. Mary Celeste, a ship where previous Canary squads have disappeared to try and find out why. There they find all the previous squads apparently frozen in time and the time stick, a devise capable of freezing and altering time. Kryten theorises mishandling it was what trapped the previous squads (although Holly assures the crew it's because they're mimes) Kryten further suggests they can use its powers back on Red Dwarf. Their two year prison sentence could pass by in minutes. When the Cat runs into some trouble in the canteen, the argument passes by faster than they can blink. Kryten freezes the crew of Red Dwarf, leaving himself the Cat and Kochanski free to go around the ship as they wish.
Bob the Skutter comes through, freeing Rimmer, Lister and The Birdman from The Hole. Reunited, the posse revel in their new found freedom. Unfortunately, the excitement is just too much for poor Pete who dies from shock. No matter, with a quick flip of the time stick they can make the bird young again. Unfortunately, Kryten slightly messes up the settings and makes the bird very young... in fact he de-evolves it by several thousand years. Before you can say 'Jurassic Park', a giant Tyrannosaurus Rex is standing over the crew with a hungry look in his eyes...
Obviously running seems like the best move, unless Kryten can reverse the process. But once the T-Rex swallows the time stick, the crew flee the relative safety of a sealed storage room. However, the beast is close and the best idea is from Rimmer who believes suicide to be a good option. However, unfortunately for the posse it is Lister who has the next idea. If the T-Rex wants to eat, it can eat all the curry and roughage the posse can find until it excretes the time stick.
The plan seems like a good idea... until the time stick is accidentally activated and unfreezes the rest of the crew. Immediately the crew of Red Dwarf leap into action and sedate the dinosaur leaving Lister and Rimmer to once again go in front of Hollister. He is not amused having watched close at hand as the T-Rex went through a nasty bout of diarrhoea, and sends them off to get the time stick and sort out the mess by evolving Pete back to his normal form.
Back in The Tank, Kryten introduces Kochanski to Archie, his newly made penis. Unfortunately, Archie has a mind of his own and proceeds to cause havoc when the Canaries are sent into the cargo hold to deal with the T-Rex. Rimmer and Lister succeed in screwing up the mission totally and losing the stick to Kill Crazy, before going in front Hollister displaying quite the strangest behaviour he has ever seen (more side effects from mis-handling the time stick) But eventually they manage to steal back the devise from Kill Crazy and use it on Pete. Amazingly, the process works perfectly. Pete is once again a sparrow and The Birdman is restored.
Rimmer insists on finally having the time stick destroyed... it was a shame he didn't notice that giant dinosaur egg first, however. And when the new baby T-Rex hatches soon afterwards and runs amok in the officers quarters, Hollister is the one in for a nasty surprise...

ONLY THE GOOD...: Probation has its highs and lows for the crew. For Rimmer, it allows him to finally get into the echelons of command by being personal slave to a sick Captain Hollister, whilst for the Cat it means little more than a bad back. But things are going to go amiss for the whole posse. First Rimmer makes a lifelong enemy of the vending machine and then Lister decides to give Kryten some advise about how to treat Kochanski when she’s having her periods...
So maybe that "Have a fantastic period!" banner wasn't such a hot idea, now Kryten wants revenge and he manages to steal the Hooch supply of Baxter, the most fearsome of The Tank's inmates, and hide it in Rimmer and Lister's bunkroom. The boys don't find out until Holly casually pops up to tell them about the imminent inspection... Unfortunately, Lister's idea of getting rid of booze is to drink it and it only takes a couple of swigs for Rimmer and Lister to be stoned drunk. Ackerman is not amused when he comes to inspect their cell and send them to the medi-bay to recuperate. Realising his mistake, Kryten decides the posse will now have to try and escape the Tank seeing as their results of their actions will be catastrophic both in terms of their probation and the state of their faces once Baxter has had a quiet word concerning the loss of his booze. Kryten and Kochanski quickly fake illness to get to the medi-bay, the Cat has less joy and ends up having to dress as a nurse to make his escape.
The posse head for the landing bay, but meet a nasty surprise in the shape of a disintegrating corridor. Red Dwarf has been infected by an organism which is eating the entire ship. The posse decide to sacrifice their rescue and warn the crew, who immediately abandon ship leaving the inmates of the Tank to die in the ship. Kryten comes up with a solution, maybe the virus can be tailor made into an antibody by a quick trip into a parallel dimension. It's stupid, but it might just work. He opens up a portal, but only Rimmer gets through before the machine breaks.
Rimmer is quite pleased with the new reality, he's the captain of Red Dwarf and Hollister is his servant. However, it's obvious he's not fit for command so heads off to the ship's scientist (a very clever version of the Cat, this must be a different reality!) He gets the antibody and when the portal is reopened, goes back. But he's in for a nasty shock., the crew have already passed through to a new dimension and as soon as Rimmer got back the machine exploded. Alone on a flaming ship, Rimmer is at the mercy of his mortal enemy, the dispensing machine... and that antibody has reverted back to being a virus once through the portal. Even running can't save Arnold Rimmer now and one explosion later, the Grim Reaper is upon him. Every dog has his day, but it's not Rimmer's because instead of being resigned to fate he kicks the Grim Reaper in a place nobody was really expecting. Only the good die young, and that definitely excludes Rimmer... Now he is the last human, left alone on an exploding ship three million years from Earth.... THE END... THE SMEG IT IS!

BEHIND THE SCENES

OTHER DWARF DEVELOPMENTS

© 1999 sculder_mully@oocities.com

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