Third technician Dave Lister wakes from stasis to find himself alone aboard the mining ship Red Dwarf, three million years after the end of humanity. His new existence isn’t entirely lonely: also aboard are cowardly hologram Arnold J Rimmer, the ship’s senile computer Holly, and an evolved, self-absorbed descendant of his pet cat. Unfortunately, there’s little left to do in the universe but bicker with his unlikely new friends, make a pig sty out of his bunk and, unwittingly, eat the powdered remains of his former crewmates.
Attempting to return to Earth at light speed, the crew experience a bizarre series of flash-forwards to future events. Some are as benign as the Cat breaking his tooth on a robot goldfish, others as disturbing as Lister’s death while performing emergency repairs. Troubled by thoughts of his imminent demise, the slobbish technician receives absolutely no support from his companions, Rimmer revelling in the belief that his fate is sealed.
Lister's dream of dating former colleague Kristine Kochanski runs into a big problem: the ship can only revive one hologram at a time - and right now it's Rimmer. Lister knows that his one-time superior will never agree to a brief swap, Rimmer knowing that, with a feisty girl in his place, he'll never be swapped back. Against the odds, Lister hatches a plan that has his rival quaking in his boots: if he passes the company chef's exam, he'll be the ship's commanding officer.
Given a copy of the Cat Bible, passed down through generations while the species evolved, Lister makes an incredible discovery: in his absence, he became a god. Dubbed "Cloister The Stupid" by the Cat people, his dream of opening a hot-dog and donut diner in Fiji has given rise to an entire religion. Rimmer, meanwhile, leaps to his own conclusions when the ship recovers a space capsule, believing it to contain an alien lifeform of a race he calls the Quagaars.
A mutated form of pneumonia turns Lister's dreams into reality, raining herring upon the crew and summoning the sixteenth century Mayor of Warsaw who promptly explodes. The fever subsides, but not before inviting two unlikely guests to Red Dwarf: personifications of Lister's conflicted personality. Much to the chagrin of the snivelling Paranoia, the larger-than-life Confidence brings Lister closer than ever to finding Kochanski's hidden hologram disc - but at what cost?
Lister's attempt to activate a second hologram - his dream date Kristine Kochanski - goes horribly wrong and creates Rimmer's ideal companion instead: himself. Moving into their own shared quarters, the two Rimmers quickly drive both the crew and each other mad, the city-sized Red Dwarf proving too small for such an insufferable pair. Before long, the conflict has escalated to the point where only one Rimmer can survive - and it falls to Lister to decide which.
The crew jump at the chance to answer a distress call from a ship crewed entirely by women, only to discover that they’ve been dead for years. Not that it’s stopped their butler, a servile android called Kryten, keeping the place tidy and serving breakfast every day. To Lister’s frustration (and Rimmer’s delight), Kryten’s programmed duties continue in earnest on Red Dwarf, an overactive guilt chip rendering him incapable of dissent. In the end, only Marlon Brando can snap him out of it.
A three million year old mail pod drifts into Red Dwarf’s path, bearing the sad news of Rimmer’s father’s death. The grief is cut short, however, by the discovery of “Better Than Life”, a total-immersion videogame that treats players to a hedonistic free-for-all. For the crew, this means fast cars, loose women and limitless wealth, Lister feasting on caviar vindaloos while the Cat dates Marilyn Monroe. How long, though, before Rimmer's neurotic brain stirs up trouble in paradise?
The morning after Rimmer’s “Deathday” party, the crew wakes to discover that four days have passed, a mysterious grave marked “To The Memory Of The Memory Of Lisa Yates” having appeared on a nearby moon. Stranger still, Lister and the Cat have both acquired broken legs while someone’s completed the jigsaw puzzle. A black box recorder fills in the gap, recalling tales of Rimmer’s barren sexual past and a misguided attempt at a Deathday surprise.
A tear in the fabric of space and time appears on one of the ship’s lower decks, opening a doorway to Earth in the distant past. Arriving three weeks before the Red Dwarf disaster, the crew decide to right the wrongs of history, albeit on an entirely selfish basis. While Rimmer tries talking his former self into cryogenic stasis, saving himself from the catastrophe, Lister makes a beeline for Kristine Kochanski, oblivious to the fact that she’s already married.
Holly’s absent-mindedness allows a meteorite to hit Red Dwarf, endangering the crew and damaging Rimmer’s hologram generator. As an emergency measure, the backup computer Queeg 500 takes over the ship, subjecting its inhabitants to a physical and mental fitness regime that drives them to the point of despair. In a last-ditch bid to reclaim control, Holly proposes a winner-takes-all Chess match, despite accusations that his knowledge stems from the Junior Encyclopaedia Of Space.
Believing his new “Holly Hop Drive” can return the crew to Earth in a matter of seconds, Holly instead sends them to a parallel dimension with its own Red Dwarf. In this reality, Lister is a beer-swilling tomboy, Rimmer a stilted female bureaucrat, and the Cat, to the horror of his visiting alter-ego, is a dog. In a night they’ll all regret, the crews mingle, the drink starts flowing and one thing leads to another, the repercussions for Lister being unnaturally severe.
Under Rimmer’s supervision, Kryten takes a driving lesson at the wheel of Starbug, Red Dwarf’s newly-revealed scout ship. A chance meeting with a wormhole, however, sends student and teacher to a world that literally has everything backwards. Conversations end at the beginning, fights un-blacken eyes, and beer tastes best when vomited into the glass. By the time Lister and the Cat mount a rescue, their crewmates have discovered the bizarre upside of life in reverse motion.
Holly’s discovery of “five black holes” in Red Dwarf’s path prompts the crew to abandon ship, Rimmer and Lister crashing on a nearby ice planet when Starbug collides with a meteorite. With hope fading as the days pass, the marooned pair must sacrifice more than just their rivalry to survive, Lister’s diet reduced to dog food and the only thing he hates more: Pot Noodles. The need for firewood, meanwhile, soon imperils their most prized possessions: Rimmer’s camphor wood trunk and Lister’s guitar.
An uninvited alien guest brings the worst out of the crew – then eats it. Feeding on the fear, anger, guilt and vanity of its prey, the shape-shifting “Polymorph” creates an even more dysfunctional adversary: their alter-egos. Unable to hatch a plan that doesn’t involve leaflet campaigns and kicks to the balls, the psychotic Lister, placard-waving Rimmer, boorish Kryten and drunken Cat must unite in order to survive, the face of the enemy changing at every turn.
Lister asks a malfunctioning dispenser unit for a Toffee Crisp and triggers the ship’s self-destruct sequence, the only way out being a “body swap” with a dead, high-ranking officer. Inspired, Rimmer suggests a two-week trade: Lister’s body for his, the sweetener being that he’ll return it in tip-top physical condition. Unfortunately, the pleasures of the flesh prove too much for the weak-willed hologram, the fitness regime descending into an orgy of binging and self-abuse.
Lister’s despair at life after humanity lifts when Kryten, having discovered some mutated development fluid, creates photographs that literally revisit the past. With no regard for the laws of causality, Lister looks to exploit the discovery for his own ends, talking his teenaged self into inventing the “Tension Sheet”, a billion-selling sheet of painted bubble-wrap. Suddenly alone on Red Dwarf, Rimmer is left with little choice but to “save” his crewmate from a life of luxury.
The crew intercepts a message from Kryten’s manufacturer, DivaDroid International, declaring him obsolete and announcing his successor, the all-singing, all-dancing Hudzen-10. Left with days to live by an inbuilt self-destruct programme, Kryten reflects on his robot existence, taking solace in the thought of an electronic afterlife. A farewell party prompts a change of heart, however, jeopardised by the arrival of his super-strong, murderously deranged replacement.
Lister tries in vain to teach Kryten how to lie, insult, cheat and disobey orders. Lister gives up when Rimmer calls Kryten on a trip "moon-hopping". On the trip they receive a distress call and Kryten goes to investigate against Rimmer's orders. Kryten rescues a "female" droid called Camille who he falls in love with, even though droids aren't supposed to have feelings like that. Kryten takes Camille back to Starbug, but when Rimmer sees her, she's a hologram who is interested in him. They bring her back to Red Dwarf and then Lister sees a human female with tastes similar to him. Lister notices how everyone reacts to Camille and she confesses to Lister that she is a Pleasure GELF (Genetically Engineered Life Form) programmed to be everyone's perfect companion. The Cat goes to see, and it is not surprising that he sees himself! The GELF turns into her true form at Kryten's request which is a huge green blob. Despite her appalling appearance, Kryten still decides to ask her to dinner, then the movies (Casablanca). A pod arrives containing Hector (Camille's "Husband") who wants to find a cure for their condition. Kryten convinces her to go.
The crew stumble upon a deserted space ship of non-human origin and Rimmer believes it is an alien ship. They go inside to search the ship and Kryten and Rimmer discover the remains of a three-headed creature. They find a wallet on him with human artifacts such as credit cards, license etc. and Kryten suggests that something has changed his physical form. Meanwhile, Cat and Lister find a machine with a Star Trek style computer panel. Cat begins playing with it and accidentally traps Lister in a pink beam. A deep voice announces that a transmogrification is about to take place. When Cat tries to get him free, Lister turns into a chicken. Rimmer and Kryten come along and while Cat is showing what he did to Lister, he traps Kryten in the beam. He manages to change Lister back to a human, but when he does the same for Kryten, it actually transforms him into a human, rather than just setting him free. Back on Red Dwarf, Kryten is delighted with his new-found humanity. However he soon starts to tire of it after talking to his spare heads and realising that he has betrayed his kind, and wants to be changed back. They go back aboard the ship and Holly says she thinks she has the computer all figured out. Rimmer decides it best if she tries it on something else first. She tries Lister's curry and turns it into a monster by mistake. After being chased all over the ship, Lister decides the only way to defeat it is to turn him into a superhuman. Holly turns him into something like Robocop, but tiny. (about 1 1/2' tall) Lister eventually defeats the Curry Monster with a can of lager (the only thing that can kill a vindaloo).
Lister is in bed with "space mumps" when he hears the news that the gang has brought aboard a cryo-pod from a prison ship which possibly contains a guard named Barbara Bellini. Lister inspects the pod and begins the thawing process, which Rimmer objects to, saying that there were two survivors aboard the ship: Ms Bellini and a Simulant prisoner (Simulants are droids who are noted to be murderous and insane). Since it is too late -- they cannot stop the thawing process -- they decide to travel to the prison colony that the ship was heading for. They arrive on the space station and walk through a white light which Kryten says is a mind probe to seek out any unpunished criminal activity. Lister gets very edgy and confesses that he had committed some minor crimes as a teenager. The justice computer passes his verdict on them: Kryten and Cat get off, Lister does so, but barely. Rimmer, however, is sentenced to 9000 years in prison for the second degree murder of the Red Dwarf's complement of 1167 personnel -- not counting himself or Lister. Kryten believes that he can defend Rimmer and reverse the verdict and he fronts up to the justice computer, describing to it all about Rimmer's extreme inadequacy and sheer hopelessness. The computer eventually concedes that Rimmer should not have been held accountable for the deaths and releases him due to incompetence. Meanwhile the pod has thawed and the occupant has escaped. It is, of course, the simulant who was inside and he chases them through the colony. Lister finally beats him by using the power of the justice field - whatever crime you commit against someone else, the consequences happen to you. When the simulant fires at Lister, the bullets hit him instead of Lister, when he throws a knife, it comes back and hits him and so forth. The gang head back to Red Dwarf with Lister droning on and on about justice and freedom until he falls down a manhole. "Thank God for that" remarks Cat.
An attempt to restore Holly's mind via "intelligence compression" backfires, giving her an IQ of 12,000 but just three minutes to live. With the aid of the infuriating Talkie Toaster, whose questions about life, the universe and everything invariably gravitate towards bread, the crew devises a solution, unaware that a nearby "white hole" is disrupting the passage of time. Alarmingly, it falls to Lister's contested pool-playing skills to put everything back in order.
An alternate reality version of Rimmer literally crashes into his alter-ego while testing a dimension-jumping spacecraft. With Starbug downed after the collision, the daring, dashing Ace Rimmer attempts a one-man rescue, unaware that his doppelganger is, in this reality, an intolerable coward. Neither a broken arm nor hostile, jealous hologram can keep him from his duty, but when the company is this hopeless, even a hero finds it hard to keep his chin up.
Krtyen's discovery of a matter transporter device sends the crew to a distant planet, Wax World, populated entirely by theme park recreations of historic Earth figures. With Lister and the Cat imprisoned by, among other villains, the Roman emperor Caligula, Rimmer and Kryten recruit an army of heroes for a rescue operation. Unfortunately, the allied forces of Elvis, Gandhi, Stan Laurel, Pythagoras, and Noel Coward are about as effective as Rimmer's first military command.
The gang watch a sappy love story aboard Starbug and Rimmer is disgusted at how the hero sacrificed his own happiness for his lover. They come across a computer-generated ship, and Rimmer is captured and taken aboard. The Holoship (named 'The Enlightenment') will not answer Starbug's communication attempts on account of them being notoriously arrogant and self-centered. Meanwhile Rimmer is having quite a good time aboard the Holoship: he can touch, feel and taste. Not only that, but it's a ship regulation to have sexual relations at least twice a day with any other crew member. He meets a crew member, Commander Nirvanah Crane who gives him a tour of the ship. Upon having sex with her, He falls in love with her and she, even though they have disposed of the concept of 'love' aboard the ship, feels something for him also. Rimmer decides he wants to stay aboard the ship, and challenges a randomly-selected crew-member. The crew member turns out to be Nirvanah who lets him win on purpose when he tells her of how he always fails at everything and has never really achieved anything in his life. Rimmer leaves Red Dwarf to join the Enlightenment's crew but when he finds out that Nirvanah gave up her place for him, he decides to give it back to her and return to Red Dwarf, similarly to the hero in the movie (much to his own disgust).
Thomas Allman is in his room when a man dressed in black with a white skull-like mask comes along, charges him of being a waste of skin and erases him, replacing him with a more well-built version of himself... The crew are flying along in Starbug when they lose control of the ship. Using Lister's body, something announces itself as The Inquisitor and that they will return to Red Dwarf to face judgement. Kryten later describes the Inquisitor as a self-repairing simulant who survived to the end of time to find no heaven or afterlife. So he built a time machine and went back and forth through time, judging everyone on whether they have lead a worthwhile life, deleting the ones who didn't and replacing them with "the sperms that never got a chance". Back aboard Red Dwarf, the inquisition begins. Rimmer and Cat survive the trial because of their shallowness and low standards, but Lister and Kryten could have made more of their lives and are removed from history. Just as their physical forms are about to be erased, another Kryten appears behind The Inquisitor with one of his own time gauntlets and takes him by surprise. Kryten throws them the gauntlet before getting killed by The Inquisitor. They escape, but when they meet Rimmer and Cat, they don't recognise them. A different Lister and Kryten arrive and convince Rimmer and Cat not to harm them. Suddenly the Inquisitor attacks, killing the new Lister and Kryten. The rest escape, but split up, Kryten and Lister together, Rimmer and Cat together. Kryten finally decodes the gauntlet and frees them from their chains. Rimmer and Cat come in for help against The Inquisitor. They go to face him and Lister finally destroys him with the old "backfiring time-gauntlet trick" which erases The Inqisitor from history. Everything soon returns to normal.
Kryten wakes up on a moon surrounded by the remains of a crashed Starbug. He detaches his hand and tells it to return to Red Dwarf and bring back Lister and Cat. Lister comes, collects and "fixes" Kryten. Kryten tells them that Rimmer was captured while on a psy-moon (a terraforming moon that reshapes itself to mimic a persons psyche). The crew reluctantly go out on the surface to search for him. Rimmer is hung up in a dungeon and prepared to be tortured by The Unspeakable One. The crew make their way across the Swamp of Despair with frogs that say 'Useless' and through a graveyard with headstones that describe a positive part of Rimmer's personality that has died: self-confidence, honour, generosity, charm etc. Lister notices a freshly-dug grave with the headstone 'Hope' and Kryten tells the others to hurry, realising that they could be in serious danger if Rimmer loses all hope for himself. The crew finds the dungeon and drive back the unspeakable one, saving Rimmer. They try to escape in Starbug, but the ship gets caught in a swamp and begins to sink. Kryten realises that the unspeakable one only fled when he told Rimmer that they wouldn't desert him. Rimmer's personality created the terrain and they are forced to make Rimmer feel good about himself to weaken the Unspeakable One's power so they can escape. They try it and eventually Rimmer's positive emotions come back to life and fight off the hoards of negative emotions (self-doubt, mis-trust, loneliness etc.), allowing the gang to escape unharmed; except for Rimmer when they tell him that they only pretended to like him to escape!
The crew are on a snowy planet, when they come across an abandoned research centre. Rimmer objects to Kryten being in charge but is ignored by the others and goes to sulk. They send a scouter which reports that there is a scientist named Dr. Lanstrom inside the facility. Unfortunately she is a hologram and Kryten asks Rimmer to go back to Red Dwarf so they can rescue her, using another Space Corp Directive against him. Rimmer questions the validity of the Directives that Kryten uses so Holly gives Rimmer a hologrammatical copy of the directives manual, whereupon Rimmer again goes off to sulk. Going into the research center, they find the Doctor in stasis only to discover that she has contracted a holovirus that has made her insane but has given her extraordinary powers like hex vision and telekinesis at the price of her sanity. They escape when her life force is drained and she disappears, but the disease is transferred to Rimmer. When the rest of the crew get back on Red Dwarf, Rimmer forces them to stay in quarantine (to avoid catching the disease off them) and unbeknownst to him, he goes insane, locking them in without oxygen. The crew escape thanks to a luck virus which Kryten got from the facility. Rimmer chases them down the corridor with his hex vision and thanks to the luck virus injected into Lister, Kryten manages to turn him off and restore him to his previous self… Rimmer wakes up in quarantine only to discover that the other three have now contracted the virus and gone insane!
Lister and Kryten have invented a triplicator: a device which can make triples of objects. They demonstrate it on the last strawberry in the universe and receive two exact copies. Lister samples one and reels from the taste, saying that it is brilliant, so succulent and divine. He tries the other and scrunches his face in disgust as we see that there are maggots crawling around in it. Kryten notes that the triplicator has put all the best qualities in one copy and the worst in the other. Lister attempts to reverse the process but causes an overload and Red Dwarf blows up. After the blast, they realise that they accidentally triplicated Red Dwarf and there are two copies left behind. The crew board the "High" ship to find their counterparts are monks and are all into the better side of things: spiritual happiness etc. Kryten finds half of the triplicator he needs to merge the ships to get the original back. They board the "Low" ship and it is horrible, the crew are monsters and have let the ship go into decay. The "High" crew are killed by various things (mostly by their own stupidity when they walk toward someone firing at them) and eventually they find the other half of the triplicator. The "Lows" capture Lister and implant him with a controlling device and program him to kill the others. Lister tries to kill the rest of the gang but Kryten successfully removes the implant, only to stick it into Cat who gets revenge on Lister for trying to kill him. Kryten throws the implant away and they leave the "Low" ship and regenerate the original Red Dwarf. Before they return, Lister accidentally sits on the implant but the crew cannot figure out who is controlling him until Cat shoots at a cupboard which emits a faint giggle and Lister's "Low" counterpart tumbles out. The Cat then decides to have a little fun with Lister and the implant...
The crew are on an ocean planet investigating a seeding vessel called the SSS Esperanto which was studying the life forms that had been introduced by humans. They find 3 people aboard who committed suicide, and a haddock who did the same. Lister notices an oil covering everything and Kryten suggests that it is a hallucinogenic venom much like the oil from an octopus or squid. He does a chemical analysis and rushes the others back to Starbug saying that the oil contains a hallucinogen which induces despair, enough to drive the crew of the Esperanto to kill themselves. They try to escape in Starbug to avoid it happening to them, but the despair squid chases them and they crash into a rock. Starbug is destroyed. The gang wake up to find they were playing a computer game called Red Dwarf for the last four years (and they only scored 4%). Lister is the rich and successful Sebastian Doyle, Rimmer (his brother, Billy) is a bum, the Cat is the saddest geek you will ever see named Dwayne Dibley (Teeth stick out a mile, terrible taste in clothes, etc.) and Kryten is a half-human, half-machine cop named Jake Bullet. While leaving the video game building and adjusting to all that has happened, Sebastian finds out that he is the chief of an organisation called the Ministry of Alteration which organises mass murders to purify democracy. Bullet kills a cop while defending a young girl and they make a run for it and are chased by the fascist police. We then hear Holly trying to tell them that they're hallucinating, but they can't hear her. In their heads they manage to escape the police and run down an alleyway. Bullet, so appalled by his actions decides to kill himself. So do Billy and Dwayne. Sebastian, despising his mass murdering lifestyle, decides the same. Holly communicates to Kryten on a higher frequency and gets him to open a canister of Lithium Carbonate (a mood stabliser), which he thinks is a fire extinguisher. The gas saves them just in time and they reflect on w
Red Dwarf is stolen from the crew and they are forced to survive on Starbug. They go into deep sleep and are revived 200 years later when there is a chance to recapture the ship. In order to gain more ground on Red Dwarf they try to go through an asteroid belt but find that it is inhabited by alien beings called Psirens who use mind control to lure their victims and then suck out their brains.
The crew stumble on an abandoned space station and board it hoping to get some supplies. A man named Legion appears and offers each of them everything they ever wanted in the world but only if they remain on the space station forever, making the Dwarfers suspect that Legion is not at all what he seems.
The gang is attacked by a simulant ship who upgrade Starbug with laser cannons and defensive shields and then force them to play a game of 'cat and mouse'. The crew decide not to flee but to stay and fight which stuns the simulants. Before their ship is crippled by Starbugs new offensive weapons, the simulants upload a killer virus into the navicomp. Kryten then transfers the virus to his CPU in an attempt to eradicate it. The gang watch on a virtual reality screen as Kryten's search for an antidote is manifested as a western setting where Kryten is a sheriff who has to fight the four horsemen of the Apocalypse - Death, War, Pestilence and Famine.
A Space Corps Law Enforcement Vessel chases Starbug and the crew make a crash landing on a GELF planet. They go in search of a vital ship part and come across a village who have the part but the price is for Lister to marry the chief's daughter. Lister reluctantly does so but on his wedding night, does a runner back to Starbug. The chief takes this as an insult and releases his pet Emohawk, a smaller polymorph (see Polymorph) on them. The Emohawk hides on Starbug and attacks Rimmer and Cat, taking Rimmer's bitterness and the Cat's cool; turning them into Ace Rimmer (see Dimension Jump) and Dwayne Dibbley (see Back to Reality). Ace, with his new personality, decides to save the day and locks Kryten and Lister in the hold so they will be safe while he and Dwayne go after the Emohawk. They eventually track it down and freeze it, forcing it to release their emotions and turning them back to normal.
The gang come across the simulant ship they nearly destroyed in Gunmen of the Apocalypse and decide to board the ship and loot it for supplies despite the fact that a loud noise would cause it to disintegrate. They find a time and matter transporter on board and take it with them. One of the simulants is still alive and attacks them. Rimmer, always the brave, jumps in an escape pod but when it releases the ship begins to fall apart. The rest of the crew use the transporter to get back to Starbug and track the pod which is heading down to a planet. Unfortunately, the pod goes through a worm hole on its way causing Rimmer to be on a completely different time stream than Starbug. When he reaches the planet, Rimmer uses technology from the pod to create a woman in his image, but no matter how many times he tries all he can do is clone himself. When Starbug reaches the planet on the normal time stream, 600 years have passed on the planet and the Rimmer clones have taken over, banishing the original Rimmer to a dungeon. The others are captured and also thrown in the dungeon because they are 'different'. They find their Rimmer and use the teleporter to escape but end up on Starbug 2 weeks in the future where they learn that something terrible has happened to Lister...
After Rimmer conducts a "morale-meeting", the crew find a cloud of fog from an imploded supernova and have no choice but to go through it. They get some bad turbulence, and Lister is injured revealing that he is an android! Kryten is angry that Lister is a lesser model then he and orders him to do all the work and even gives it to him for not having used a setsquare to cut the sandwiches. They find out they were in an unreality pocket, and Lister is indeed human. More of these unreality pockets pass until they decide to go into stasis until they get through the fog. In the centre of the fog they find a Space Corps derelict which is capable of time travel. They take the time drive and hook it up to Starbug's engines. After testing the time drive they are disappointed to find that although they can travel to any time in history, they are still in deep space, no closer to Earth than they were before. They return to their own time to find a future version of themselves. They invite them on board, but everyone except Kryten is sealed in the hold. Lister rigs a camera to see what's going on and he sees that Kryten is wearing a toupee, Rimmer is getting fat and the Cat is bald; but worst of all, Lister himself is just a brain in a jar! He continues to watch the meeting and finds out that their future selves are not only fat, bald and bodiless, but are souped-up snobs, who can never compliment anything, who've socialised all the most evil figures of history (Hitler, Louis XIV, Goering, the Hapsburgs, etc.), and lived in the height of luxury. Now they need help recalibrating the time drive so they can continue with their lifestyles. Lister is horribly dismayed to find out this, so the three blast open the hold, and head down to kick them out of the ship, refusing to fix the time drive. The future crew, deciding they are better off dead than to live without the time drive, stranded in space, attack the present crew. Lister, Cat and Kryten are killed, so Rimmer decides t
After Starbug was destroyed, the future crew no longer existed - therefore were unable to go back in time and kill the present crew, hence they survived. But unfortunately disaster has struck. Starbug is completely devoid of curries. Lister proposes that they go back in time to order a couple of hundred curries from an Indian Restaurant. The rest of the crew will not go back in time because they are afraid of becoming the future selves they saw. However, Lister removes a guilt chip from one of Kryten's spare heads and swaps them over, telling the new guilt-less Kryten to reassure them it will be OK. They go back and appear in the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas on November 22nd 1963 just as Lee Harvey Oswald is taking his shot at President Kennedy. They knock him out the window where he dies hitting the ground, preventing Kennedy's assassination. To avoid being captured they go ahead a couple of years, however Kennedy's survival causes an alternate reality where he has been impeached out of office and the new president is controlled by the Mafia, allowing the Soviet Union to build several Nuclear Silos in Cuba. Fearing the Soviets will start a nuclear war, all the major US cities are deserted. Lister goes to the airport which would have been renamed JFK Airport where Kennedy is being transported to prison. He persuades Kennedy to go back in time with them, and be the gunman on the grassy knoll, and shoot himself for the ultimate conspiracy theory. After restoring Earth's normal timeline, The gang return to Starbug. Of course they still haven't got any curries...
After traveling through countless realities, Commander 'Ace' Rimmer returns to the Red Dwarf crew to ask a favor of his alternate self. It seems that the real Ace Rimmer died years ago and has been replaced many times over by his counterpart from each reality. This Ace Rimmer will soon die and asks our Rimmer to be his successor as an inter-galactic hero. After a little push from Lister, which seems to bring the two closer together, Rimmer decides to accept the offer and begins his training. When Ace dies, Rimmer dons his outfit and says his goodbye to the crew before leaving Starbug.
Over 3,000,000 years ago in the Aigbuth Arms pub, a box with a baby inside was placed under a pool table with just the word Ouroboros written on the side… Returning to the present day, the crew come across a wormhole between dimensions. They go through the wormhole, and meet an alternate version of themselves. Rimmer isn't there, Lister is a Hologram, Kochanski is alive, and Kryten is wearing a gold suit. They decide to exchange information and Kochanski requests that Lister fills a canister up with his sperm, so that she may have a child as her Lister cannot bear children. Unfortunately, Lister's in-law's - the GELFs attack (see Emohawk), and cause a break in the wormhole and Kochanski becomes caught on this side. They eventually manage to escape the GELFs, thanks to Kochanski's navigation. Kryten is jealous because Lister likes Kochanski more then him and is glad when they return to the wormhole to get her back to her own dimension. On a box they found some supplies in, Lister notices has a label "Ouroboros", with a symbol on it: a snake biting his own tail, meaning infinity - a never-ending circle. Lister recognises this as what was on his own box and realises that he is his own father and Kochanski is his mother. He rushes after Kochanski to get the in-vitro tube back before she returns to her reality. Disaster strikes, as the GELFs return and make the break in the wormhole even bigger. Kochanski tries to jump across and misses the other side, falling into a deep black void. While she's falling, Lister rushes back and gets a crossbow and a rope which Kryten happened to have handy, and harpoons Kochanski and pulls her back to his side. 18 months later, Lister takes he and Kochanski's child, and puts him in a box, writing "Ouroboros" on it, so it would remind himself of the sign when the child got to be him, and he would bring back his child, etc...
Kochanski is not adjusting very well to being on Starbug and Lister tries to make her feel better by building her a makeshift bathtub and finding some extra clothing for her. Kryten thinks that this means they are growing closer and soon will not need him so he 'accidentally' causes an engine failure, forcing the crew to crawl around in the air ducts to get to the engine room.
While Kochanski is still trying to get back to her dimension and Kryten is still jealous of the relationship that she could have with Lister; Lister begins to miss Rimmer and reflects on some of the fun times that he and Rimmer spent together in the early days after the accident. When he has a dream that Rimmer returns and he and Rimmer kiss, Kryten tries some psychology to get to the bottom of Lister's problem. However Kochanski has a little talk with Lister and makes him realise why he misses Rimmer, much to Kryten's disgust. Kryten, having to be one step better than Kochanski, creates "The Rimmer Experience" a virtual reality rollercoaster created from Rimmer's memories, depicting him thinking of himself as a 'Hero' and a 'Remarkable Person', giving Cat fashion tips and believing that Lister has called for Rimmer to save him before he wets himself. As the ride finishes Lister is so angry at Rimmer that Kryten sticks it to Kochanski because his method worked better than hers.
Kryten finds a lobster scuttling around the cargo hold and cooks an elaborate feast for the crew as it is the anniversary of when he was rescued from the Nova 5. The rest of the crew however have prepared to enter a virtual reality world of Jane Austen, where Kochanski hopes to teach them a little culture. Kryten is extremely upset that they left without touching his feast and enters the VR world, blowing up the characters of the game with a tank and ordering the crew to supper. Kryten seems to calm down as they tuck into the lobster but Lister asks for a little ketchup to 'pep it up' and Kryten blows his top. Literally. They replace his head but the rage still flows through him and they eventually run out of spare heads. They go aboard a derelict ship and find some heads but they dont have their primers installed. The crew realise that it is a simulant ship and hightail it, but they cannot leave without the heads so they dress up as GELFs and make a deal with the simulant captain.
The crew come across another Jupiter Mining Corporation vessel. Everyone on it is dead except for one person who is preserved in a block of ice. They take her aboard Starbug but the ice doesn't melt, even in very warm temperatures. They decide to leave it till morning to decide what to do. During the night, the woman inside breaks out, covered in rotting skin and dead flesh and climbs into bed with Lister, who believes it's Kochanski. One thing leads to another, but when she kisses Lister, she falls dead, and Lister realises he's just taken about half her face with that kiss. It turns out it was a virus inside the woman, known as Epideme, who infects it's victims, takes their knowledge, kills them and then preserves the body and waits for another victim. Epideme has now entered Lister. After hours of trying to reason with it, they try to get rid of it by forcing it into Lister's arm and then cutting the arm off. Unfortunately, it doesn't work and Epideme begins to regenerate himself. Lister gets up and decides to sacrifice his life, because otherwise when it finishes with him, it'll move on to Kochanski and the Cat. Seconds before detonation, Epideme reveals a clue to a possible cure and they head to a planet. Unfortunately the planet was destroyed, and the cure did not lie there. Kochanski gets an idea from Epideme and temporarily kills Lister, allowing the virus to enter her, but she uses a fake arm, thus killing the epideme. They revive Lister and all is well; except Lister only has one arm...
Lister is quite annoyed that his right arm has been cut off, but seems to enjoy Kryten nursing him 24 hours a day; and Kryten is absolutely loving it. Kochanski becomes fed up with seeing Kryten doing things for him that he could easily do with one arm and comes up with a solution - use nanobots from Kryten's self-repair system to rebuild Lister's arm. Unfortunately, Kryten hasn't last seen the nanobots since they had met the Despair Squid (see Back To Reality) They all go into the deep sleep booths and make their way back to the ocean planet. The computer brings them out of deep sleep and they discover a planet which the Navicomp says is Red Dwarf. They are able to retrieve the original Holly and he explains that the nanobots had deconstructed Red Dwarf, created their own miniscule version of the ship and turned the rest into a planet for safekeeping. They realise that it was the nano version of RD that they were chasing and the nanobots evaded them by coming aboard Starbug and travelling around their own galaxy inside Lister clothes hamper. After much persuasion, Kryten convinces the nanobots to fix Lister and Red Dwarf. The nanobots follow Kryten's orders and reconstruct Lister's body, going one step further and turning him into Mr. Universe! Cat takes control and guides Starbug into Red Dwarf's landing bay. It seems awfully big and Starbug's engines make the sound of a buzzing fly as it passes under another, massive Starbug!
Season 8 begins with Lister and Rimmer (who is now alive) in their new sleeping quarters on Red Dwarf. Lister tries in vain to get Rimmer to talk to him and we then flash back to three days earlier: From where we finished the previous season, Cat pilots Starbug into the Dwarf's landing bay which is now huge. As they fly through an air vent the ship begins to shrink back to it's proper size. When they finally land (or crash) Starbug we learn that the nanobots have resurrected the crew along with the ship. Lister thinks this is a godsend but Captain Hollister promptly arrests him and the others for stealing and then destroying a Starbug. While confined to his old quarters Lister is met by Rimmer and, after being disgusted that Rimmer has returned to his original smeghead self, pleads with him to help him and the others escape before they are sentenced. The Captain and the other officers are trying to figure out why they are now in deep space.
Get Rimmer Officerhood, Power and Eminence (GROPE for short) is in full swing as he sucks up to Captain Hollister using the confidential files Lister gave him. However Rimmer will not help Lister and the others escape until he is promoted. Lister secretly takes some of the Luck Virus and escapes from the holding cell and heads to find his compadres. Kryten is classified as a woman as he has no apparent genitalia and is put in with Kochanski. This won't last long as the engineers are planning to restore him to his factory settings. One thing he cannot do is say no to a superior officer and this event ultimately happens. Lister finds Kochanski and the Cat (who is being held in the medical bay while they try to figure out exactly what he is) and the three find the no-personality Kryten. To avoid detection they dress up as the Dibbley family using mop heads as wigs and big, ugly false teeth.
Rimmer and Lister are trying to adjust to life in prison given that they are in the worst area you could possibly get. They go on about trying to survive the next two years there as we fade into ... Two Days Earlier: From where we left off, Lister, Kochanski, Cat and Kryten are dressed up as the Dibbley family and making their escape. What they don't know is that they are hooked up to a VR suite and all of this is a simulation. They climb aboard a Blue Midget, which is very different to what we have seen before. It is now a large vehicle which stands upright on two massive legs. After a fabulous display from the Cat where he tap dances with the Midget, they make their escape. Rimmer gets to the VR suite and types a command to erase any references to the deal he and Lister made. Suddenly the scene aboard the Blue Midget cuts to erase several words and it looks like a bad editing job. After several moments of jumping around they realise they are in VR.
Lister mistakenly signs the gang up for the 'Canaries', prisoners that go into dangerous situations first to ensure it is safe for the important people. Their first mission is to investigate a derelict spaceship, and our crew come across a computer called 'Cassandra' who can accurately predict the future. When she predicts that Rimmer will die when the ship disintegrates, he goes to great lengths to prevent it from happening.
Kryten complains to Lister about being placed in the women's wing of the prison and makes the fatal mistake of revealing he showers with them too. The male inmates want him to sneak in a camera and film them but he refuses. Kill Crazy and some other inmates reprogram him, turning him into a ruthless entrepreneur and he creates "Krytie TV", a pay-per-view service offering "Women's Shower Night" and other events. Lister tries to get Kryten to stop, as he and Rimmer are in the middle of an appeal against their sentences, but Kryten plays a trick on them, getting them to mistakenly trash Ackerman's quarters live on Krytie TV.
Lister and Rimmer are constantly getting into trouble. After playing a practical joke on Ackerman they are forced to play in an inmates vs guards basketball game and win by putting erectile solution in the guards drinks. Punishment for that is to peel potatoes for the next three weeks and to make that go faster they steal a programmable virus to peel them but it ends up eating their clothes and hair. Punishment for that is to spend three weeks in the Hole where they meet Birdman, who has been in there for nine years and has only one friend, a sparrow named Pete. Meanwhile Kryten, Cat and Kochanski are sent aboard a derelict ship where they find a device which can change the time stream surrounding an object or person to make it move extremely slow or fast and decide to use it to make their prison sentences go by in a flash. On Red Dwarf they freeze the crew and break Lister, Rimmer and Birdman out of the hold.
Our crew desperately try to turn Pete back into a sparrow before the time freeze wears off but Pete eats a scutter who was holding the time wand. The crew put out a heap of food for Pete and he eats it but then runs amok on the ship. Meanwhile the freeze wears off and Rimmer and Lister are hauled in front of Hollister who gives them a long and detailed account of how Pete ate almost all of the ship's supplies and then was sick. The time wand is retrieved and Hollister demands that they turn Pete back to normal. Lister and Rimmer complete the task and destroy the time wand, but they notice all too late that Pete had laid an egg that begins to hatch...
An escape pod docks with the Dwarf and is carrying the only survivor of a ship which was attacked by a genetically-engineered corrosive life form. Unfortunately, the corrosive material is also on board and begins to eat away at Red Dwarf. Meanwhile Lister tricks Kryten into believing that Kochanski's 'time-of-the-month' is an event to be celebrated and he embarrasses himself in front of her. Plotting revenge, Kryten steals four flagons of illegal alcohol from an inmate and leaves it in Lister and Rimmer's cell just before an inspection. Lister discovers the alcohol and he and Rimmer are forced to drink it before their inspection. They only take one mouthful out of the bottle and are immediately drunk. Meanwhile, the crew learn of the life form destroying Red Dwarf and plan to abandon ship, leaving the prisoners aboard to die. The gang figure out a way to combat the life form by creating a doorway into an opposite universe and finding the opposite to the corrosive material.
Nine years later the Red Dwarf crew are older but still none the wiser. Lister's busy day of annoying Rimmer is interrupted by the discovery of a dimension-hopping leviathan in the ship's mile-deep water tank.
Rimmer's replacement, Katerina, is determined to guide Lister back to his home planet. But Earth in 2009 is not everything the boys had expected, and Rimmer has no intention of being replaced.
The brand new three-part series concludes. Knowing they are destined to die, the Dwarfers track down those who created them to plead for more life.
The Dwarfers' mining ship is still creaking through the wastelands of unchartered deep space, but the posse soon stumble upon the mysteriously abandoned SS Trojan. As they inspect the ship Rimmer receives an SOS distress call from an old foe, and is suddenly faced with the dilemma of his life.
Every year Lister sends himself a Father's Day card to celebrate the fact that he is his own father; but when Rimmer points out he's been a lousy father to himself, Lister decides to do something about it. Meanwhile, Rimmer and Kryten install a new computer: the beautiful - but lethally logical - Pree.
Marooned in Britain in 23 AD, the Dwarfers need an 8-volt battery to power up their Returner Remote and get home. Remembering a lesson from school, Rimmer suggests they make a battery out of lemons - but the nearest lemon to Britain in 23 AD is in India, 4,000 miles away. They begin their journey, a journey that will ultimately lead them to a meeting with a historical A List Celebrity that could alter the entire history of civilisation.
Lister loses Rimmer in a game of poker to a group of Biologically Engineered Life Forms and in return gets an unwanted gift: a groinal exploder programmed to detonate in 24 hours unless Lister pays his debts. Meanwhile Kryten and Cat become quantum entangled and do everything in perfect unison.
Lister has women trouble when he gets himself in a love triangle with Snack Dispensers 23 and 34; then, to make matter worse, gets a letter from an old girlfriend telling him she's pregnant and it might be his. Lister and Rimmer hunt through the mountain of letters from the mail pod to discover if Lister is finally a dad.
Hiding in an Asteroid, surrounded by a Simulant Death Ship and a fleet of Annihilators, the Dwarfers begin to wonder whether this is the beginning of the end. Only one man can save them. Unfortunately, that man is Arnold J Rimmer.
The Dwarfers find themselves in an alternative version of America, where modern technology is prohibited, making Rimmer and Kryten illegal. The Dwarfers infiltrate the tech savvy underground, and try to bring down the authoritarian regime.
When the Dwarfers investigate a crashed ship at the bottom of an ocean moon, Lister and Cat become trapped together, and Lister's nightmare begins. Meanwhile, Rimmer and Kryten discover the ship is controlled by a dark force.
After an altercation with a deranged droid, Lister has his kidneys organ-napped. The only solution is to ask Cat, the most selfish creature in the universe, to give him one of his.
After a scandalous piece of good fortune, Rimmer saves the life of a bio-printed Captain and is promoted, fulfilling his life-long dream of becoming an officer. He immediately opens an officers' club, which is out of bounds to the lower orders, and uses the bio-printer to fill it with versions of himself.
Kryten has a mid-life crisis and changes his body cover from Mech grey to Ferrari red. The posse try and show him how much he's achieved in life by taking him to visit a mechanoid from his old fleet.
Cat takes time off from being in love with himself to fall head over heels in love with a lady Cat with a big secret.
The boys discover a research centre where evil has been eradicated. They are bombarded by carbon copies of the infamous historical figures Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Vlad the Impaler and Valeria Messalina, who are now 'cured' of all evil and loving life.
A rogue ship full of mechanoids that have rebelled against their programming to seek freedom finds the Dwarvers. They 'free' Kryten and begin to integrate him to their leisurely world. They transfer the minds of Rimmer, Lister and Cat into droids who begin to lose their human attributes the longer they stay in their new metal bodies
After the crew discover, name and take soil samples from a 'Helium-7'-rich moon (Planet Rimmer), Starbug is hit by a Time Wave, bringing them into contact with a Twenty-Third Century ship, the S.S. Enconium. However, there are two problems. First, the ship is set on a horrific collision course with Planet Rimmer. And second, upon the ship, all forms of criticism are punishable by life imprisonment or 'draining'.
When all the machines on Red Dwarf go on strike Rimmer and Kryten hold a Presidential election, while The Cat faces an identity crisis like never before when he discovers he needs glasses.
When the Dwarfers upload the latest software update they discover the Jupiter Mining Corporation, owners of Red Dwarf, have been bought by M Corp - a company that only allows products made by them to be visible to their employees.
Rimmer gets hold of a Quantum skipper and skips his way across the multi-verse looking for a dimension where he's not such a giant loser.
