Though he’s billions of light years away from the Earth he once knew, Dave Lister is – thanks to repeated stints in stasis booths – turning 50 years old. Kryten installs a microscopic monitoring device into Lister’s body to monitor his health, only for it to fail within minutes due to its outdated software. One software update later, the crew receives word that Jupiter Mining Corporation – the company that built and operated Red Dwarf – has been bought by a mega-conglomerate called M-Corp, which managed to buy Earth in the 26th century thanks to claiming everything, down to water, as its intellectual property. New supplies appear all over the ship, but as part of the M-Corp end user agreement, Lister will soon stop seeing anything that wasn’t made by M-Corp – his bed, his table, his beer, a hologram of his dead bunkmate, a creature descended from the ship’s cat, a sanitation droid…but M-Corp knows Lister needs friends and a home. And it will happily sell those things to him. If he can’t pay in cash, M-Corp accepts other forms of payment…such as taking years off of Lister’s life. Even if they can reach him in his new virtual reality world, Kryten, Cat, and Rimmer may not be able to set Lister free.
written by Doug Naylor
directed by Doug Naylor
music by Howard Goodall
Cast: Chris Barrie (Rimmer), Craig Charles (Lister), Danny John-Jules (Cat), Robert Llewellyn (Kryten), Helen George (Aniter), Ian Boldsworth (Steve), Oliver Maltman (Chippy), Phil Adele (Jim)
LogBook entry by Earl Green