The End
The premiere episode. All of the necessary components are established: we learn that Lister is a slob, Rimmer hates Astronavigation Exams, and that there's a cat wandering the air ducts on board the ship. We also meet Lister's love Kristine Kochanski for the first time, and hear about his plan to buy a farm on Fiji, get a sheep and a cow, and breed horses. Alas! Captain Holister discovers that Lister has been hiding Frankenstein the (pregnant!) cat and orders Lister into stasis when he won't give her up. When Lister revives, it is three million years later. The crew was killed by a radiation leak, leaving Lister companionless with the exception of a dead Rimmer (brought back by Holly, the ship's computer, as a hologram) and a creature that evolved from Frankenstein's kittens. Now, if they could only figure out a way to get home...
Episode Quote: "I'm not an insubordinate man by nature. I try to respect Rimmer, but it's not easy because he's such a SMEGHEAD!"
Future Echoes
Strange things start to happen when The Dwarf suddenly hits light speed. The crew starts seeing bits of the future: the Cat breaks his tooth, a picture of Lister with two babies, Lister age 171. Then Rimmer seeing Lister die while working with the Navvy-comp! Lister tries to change the future...right until Holly calls him up to the Drive Room--the Navvy-comp's overheating and needs to be disconnected manually...
Episode Quote: "You can't whack Death on the head!"
Balance of Power
Lister is finally getting sick of Rimmer lording his superior rank of 2nd Technician over him: Rimmer has hidden Lister's cigarettes, and will give Lister only one cigarette for each day Lister obeys him; Lister asks Rimmer if he can run Kochanski's hologram for only four hours so he can go out on a date with her, but Rimmer refuses. So Lister decides to take matters into his own hands and pass the Chef's exam, making him an officer. Rimmer of course tries to prevent this (the extremes he goes to include switching his physical disk with Kochanski's, giving him her form housing his mind and trying to convince Lister to throw in the towel. Lister of course sees through this). Lister finishes the exam and goes to get his score, Rimmer waiting impatiently over his shoulder...
Episode Quote: "How did you do, Lister?"
Waiting for God
Cat is kind enough to furnish Lister with some old Cat books to smell in his spare time--including the Cat Bible, which explains the origins of his race. When Holly translates the Bible, Lister learns that his act of saving Frankenstein (The Holy Mother) has made him the Cat's God. His idea of going to Fiji and opening a donut and sausage diner shop has become the Cat's image of heaven.
In the meantime, The Dwarf has picked up a strange-looking pod. Rimmer studies it (from a safe distance, of course) and decides that it belongs to an alien race called the "Quagaars." He waits impatiently for the pod's quarantine period to be up so he can open it and inspect its contents...
Reading through the Cat Bible, Lister finds that there was thousands of years of holy wars over whether the donut diner hats on Fushal (the Cat's interpretation of Fiji) were to be red or blue. Most of the Cats were killed fighting about it...the rest loaded themselves onto arks and flew off in search of the Promised Land, with Lister's laundry list to guide them. (The Cats thought it was a star chart.) Lister, revolted by the idea of being a religious icon, finds he must play the part of God to a blind Cat priest found dying in the bowels of the Dwarf....
Episode Quote: "It's a garbage pod!.....It's a smegging garbage pod!"
Confidence and Paranoia
Lister sojourns up to the officer's quarters to check out Kochanski's effects and dream recorder. (She dreamt about him three times, incidentally.) What he didn't know was that those quarters hadn't been decontaminated. Lister comes down with a bad case of mutated pneumonia. This pneumonia makes any hallucinations Lister has "solid." After the mayor of Warsaw spontaneously combusts in the corridor and fish begin raining from the ceiling of Lister's quarters, Lister hallucinated two men in the drive room: his Confidence and his Paranoia.
Rimmer realizes that Lister won't be better until both Confidence and Paranoia are gone; prying Lister away from Confidence, however, is extremely difficult. Confidence keeps complimenting Lister, telling him how wonderful he is...and helping him figure out where Rimmer hid Kochanski's hologrammic disk. Paranoia, on the other hand, has been moping around the drive room. Moping, that is, until the medical unit (which is supposed to be healing Lister) is found smashed, and Paranoia is nowhere to be found...
Episode Quote: "What do you mean you 'killed him, chaa chaa chaa??'"
ME2
In the last episode when Lister (aided by Confidence) recovered the cache of hologrammic disks Rimmer had hidden, Lister loaded up Kochanski's disk; to his dismay, Rimmer had switched Kochanski's disk with his own! Now there are two Rimmers running around Red Dwarf.
Rimmer and Rimmer move in together into the quarters next door to Lister's. While helping him move, Lister happens upon a copy of Rimmer's death video. He views it in secret and learns that for some reason Rimmer's last words are "gazpacho soup." This puzzles him mightily; especially after our Rimmer refuses to reveal his secret.
The new Rimmer has taken it upon himself to drive the old Rimmer to succeed. Eventually, though, Rimmer being who he is, they get into a fight; it escalates to the point where Lister gets fed up enough to shut one of them off. With a few lines of "Ippy Dippy My Spaceshippy" the original Rimmer is chosen for wiping. (The new Rimmer, of course, is thrilled and lords it over the other.) Our Rimmer, therefore, in full dress uniform, reports to the Drive Room to be wiped. Before he goes, though, he agrees to explain all about "gazpacho soup," only to learn that Lister has tricked him into revealing the "gazpacho soup" secret...the other Rimmer was already wiped!
Episode Quote: "Stop your foul whining, you filthy piece of distended rectum!"