Kryten
The boys on the Dwarf receive a distress signal from a mechanoid named Kryten--the ship he was on, the Nova 5, had crashed, killing the male members of the crew but sparing the three females, and could the Dwarf please bring them medical supplies? The boys are of course ecstatic at the prospect of seeing women for the first time in three million years, and readily agree. (It is at this point we learn the secret about Arnie's second pair of socks.) Rimmer, posing as "Captain A.J. Rimmer, Space Adventurer" leads the crew on board the Nova 5, intent on charming the women out of their pants--only to discover (to put it bluntly) that Kryten is the android version of Norman Bates, and the women are merely skeletons propped up in chairs.
Kryten is brought back on board the Dwarf. Rimmer, capitalizing on Kryten's slave-like programming, insists on Kryten earning his keep. Lister disagrees, and shows Krtyen movies like "The Wild Ones," and "Rebel Without a Cause" in an attempt to make him rebel. Which, of course, he finally does. The last time we see Kryten, he's dressed in leather, driving Lister's space bike on an exploratory mission in the bowels of the ship, and then to the great beyond...
Episode Quote: "'Mister Arnold' isn't his name. His name's 'Rimmer.' Or 'Smeghead.' Or 'Dinosaur Breath' or 'Molecule Mind.' And on a really special occasion when you want to be really mega-polite to him, Kryten, we're talking MEGA-polite, in those exceptional circumstances, you can call him 'Arse-hole.'"
Better Than Life
After three million years, the post pod arrives. Rimmer receives a letter from his mom informing him that his father had died. Also in the mail was a copy of the Total Immersion Video Game, Better Than Life. Once you are hooked up to BTL, it makes all of your innermost desires come true. The boys can't resist, and find themselves in a world of their own design--Lister has a vibrating leopard skin waterbed in the shape of a guitar, Cat has a wardrobe that crosses an international time zone, and Rimmer--well, Rimmer has another liaison with Yvonne MacGrouder. Everything is going well until Rimmer's diseased brain, unable to cope with nice things happening to him, infects the program...
Episode Quote: "Real dumplings, proper dumplings, when they're properly cooked to perfection, proper dumplings, SHOULD NOT BOUNCE."
Thanks for the Memory
At his death-day party, Rimmer gets so drunk as to tell Lister the number of times he
has made love, and why he is so depressed about it. He agonizes over his loneliness and
lack of a sex life, and falls asleep crying in his bunk.
The next morning, the boys discover that mysteriously four days have disappeared and the
ship's black box is missing. Off they go to find it...it was buried in a grave on a small
planetoid, amist what looks like giant footprints. The tombstone reads: "To the
Memory of the Memory of Lise Yeats." Plugging in the black box, they get the whole
story...
Episode Quote: "All your ingredients are wrong, right? You're slobby, you're undisciplined, you're the only man ever to get his money back from the Odor-Eater people... but people like you! That's why you're a triple fried egg chili chutney sandwich."
Stasis Leak
While exploring Kochanski's quarters, Lister happens upon a picture...a WEDDING picture, featuring Kochanski standing in between two men. He is one of those men! He doesn't remember taking this picture. Therefore, Lister thinks, he must go back in time. He remembers an episode back before the accident when Arnie "hallucinated" his own head coming up through a table and talking to him, telling him that there was a stasis leak on Floor Sixteen. It must have been Rimmer's hologram from the future! The boys head down to Floor Sixteen, and sure enough, there is a strange barrier that opens into the shower room of the Dwarf six weeks before the crew got wiped out. Rimmer runs off, intent on convincing himself to go into stasis, thereby saving his own life. (Apparently Rimmer doesn't remember what happens when there are two of him.) Lister finds out that Kochanski is on planet leave, and heads down to the Ganemede Holiday Inn to find her...already in the Honeymoon Suite...
Episode Quote: "If he's you and you're him, and you're him and he's him, am I still me? Who's eating this chicken?"
Queeg
Holly's mind seems to have been slipping lately; he keeps making mistakes, loses Rimmer's legs, and nearly kills Lister by electrocution. Lo and behold, a second computer personality rears itself: Queeg 500, the Red Dwarf backup computer. He's programmed to take over the ship if the primary computer endangers the crew. Holly is thereby demoted to night watchman, and Queeg takes over. The ship is put to rights--everything is cleaned, fixed, repaired, and running smoothly...except for one thing. Queeg runs exactly by the book, and forces the boys to work for their keep. Lister, Cat, and Rimmer don't particularly appreciate this, considering they get extremely little in return for so much work,; so they convince Holly to challenge Queeg for control. And so it boils down to a single game of chess for the fate of the crew....
Episode Quote: "If it's not serious when one's genitals go wandering off on their own, I'd like to know what is."
Parallel Universe
This is the absolute funniest episode of Red Dwarf ever! This ep starts off with the music video "Tongue Tied" by The Cat, which, incidentally, was in the UK top 40 when it first came out. (In the show, though, this whole sequence is a dream of the Cat's.)
Holly invents the "Holly Hop Drive," which can transport the Dwarf to any other point in space instantaneously. The coordinates are set for Earth...only somehow the Dwarf ends up in a parallel universe. There is another Dwarf out there, exactly the same, except it has a female crew! Our boys go over to the other Dwarf and meet their female opposites: Deb Lister, Arlene Rimmer, Hilly, and Dog. So they all decide to go down to the disco for a drink while Holly and Hilly try to fix the Hop Drive. Deb and Dave spend the evening getting drunk, and Arlene attempts to seduce Arnie, treating him the same way he treats women(as an alien species that needs to be conquered by trickery). Arnie ends up running away and hiding in fear once Arlene steps out to get some sexy videos. (She thought that seeing two men together might turn him on.)
Next morning Dave wakes up in Arlene's bunk...next to Deb. He and Deb apparently had a drunken night of passion. Their talking is interrupted by the Rimmers walking in, and Arlene expresses her nasty desire that Lister gets pregnant. Not Deb Lister, mind you, but DAVE Lister. Apparently in their universe, it's the men who give birth to the babies. And as the boys are in the girls' universe, the latter's physical law applies. Dave Lister could be a mother! There's no time to lose, though, the boys have to get back to their Dwarf or they won't be able to use the Hop Drive. So Lister leaves the woman who could be the father of his children.
Back on board his ship, Lister takes a "Colour Pregnancy Test". Arnold remembers that picture from the future that mysteriously appeared while the Dwarf was traveling at light speed (see "Future Echos") of Lister with two babies. Lister must have had twins! As Lister protests the test begins to change color...
Episode Quote: "Oh, great news, excellent news, Listy!...I'm going to be an uncle."