A chance run-in with a particularly nasty breed of simulants called exponoids becomes a momentary hostage crisis. Lister has to trade a piece of arcane time travel technology – which has been propping up Starbug’s pool table – to get Rimmer back. But once armed with time travel, the exponoids go back in time to rewrite human history, outlawing any post-steam-powered technology and forbidding scientific research. Great scientific minds are either locked up, or simply never come into being. Kryten and Rimmer run the risk of being discovered. A dying man hands some kind of electronic component to Lister and tells him to take it to the hostess of a local speakeasy; there, Lister and the others find that science and technology still happen here, but in secret…and Lister has been given a piece of a weapon that could set history straight.
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), Kevin Eldon (4 of 27), Lucie Pohl (Harmony), David Sterne (Einstein Bob), Sam Douglas (Bouncer), Rebecca Blackstone (Big Bang Beryl), Kyle James (Nearly Dead Guy), Suanne Braun (Cpt. Dorothy McCutcheon), David Menkin (Lt. Clarence O’Neal), Alexis Dubus (3 of 63)
Notes: Kevin Eldon was one of the regular cast members of BBC2’s sci-fi comedy Hyperdrive, a show which many saw as the BBC’s attempt to recapture the Red Dwarf audience at a time when Red Dwarf had been out of production for several years. He also voiced a character in the Doctor Who radio project Death Comes To Time.
LogBook entry by Earl Green