Category: Season 03

Holly thinks she’s spotted five black holes, and the guys split up and evacuate Red Dwarf in case it’s not small enough to escape the black holes’ gravity. Lister and Rimmer set out in Starbug, while Kryten and Cat depart aboard Blue Midget. En route, Starbug crashes onto an icy moon, and it’s unlikely to be found before the meager supplies on board are gone. Faced with the grave choice of eating either a pot noodle or dog food to survive, Lister begins to lose hope and body heat. He asks Rimmer to sacrifice some of his worldly goods to serve as firewood – and Rimmer, naturally, refuses. Lister therefore sacrifices some of Rimmer’s worldly goods anyway.

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Ed Bye
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: none

LogBook entry by Earl Green

A spacecraft tumbles through space adrfit, its cargo of highly dangerous life forms having escaped. The genetic mutant that has freed itself seeks out the mentally unstable and the flat-out-neurotic, so naturally it homes in on Red Dwarf in short order. It changes its shape to hide and then to paralyze its victims with fear while it drains their negative emotions. It manages to infiltrate Lister’s dinner, but it then induces paralyzing fear by turning into a monster which fits the rough identikit picture of Lister’s worst nightmare, and drains all the fear from him. Rimmer, Cat and Kryten, after subduing the now-fearless Lister, set out after the creature, but it manages to snare each of them, removing Kryten’s politeness, Cat’s sense of style, and Rimmer’s aggressiveness. Lister is left in a state of suicidal kamikaze bravado; Kryten is a tactless, insulting jerk; Cat has changed into some comfortable rags and gotten well sloshed; and Rimmer wants to try to negotiate with the alien, or, failing that, launch a ship-wide campaign to non-violently protest its presence.

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Ed Bye
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: Frances Barber (Genny), Simon Gaffney (Young Rimmer), Kalli Greenwood (Mrs. Rimmer)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

A malfunctioning skutter starts rewiring Red Dwarf, resulting in a malfunctioning everything, including the self-destruct system which could be connected to anything by now. As it so happens, the destruct system starts counting down when Lister orders a candy bar from the vending machine. Using a “mind swap” to load the personality of one of the ship’s long-dead senior officers doesn’t work, which is just as well – the destruct system countdown was activated by the vending machine, but not the explosive device itself. Rimmer later gets the idea of using the same procedure – the one with the mind swap, not the bomb – so he could occupy a physical form for a brief period, promising to get Lister’s body into shape before returning it to its rightful owner. As it turns out, Rimmer has been missing all the excesses of the flesh that holograms don’t get to enjoy, and when Lister demands his body back, Rimmer isn’t quite ready to return it.

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Ed Bye
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: none

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Lister is approaching suicidal levels of depression and boredom with his life aboard Red Dwarf, venting his loathing for life upon Cat and Rimmer. Meanwhile, in the ship’s photo lab, Kryten is developing photos of a party aboard the Nova 5 when he finds that they have sprung into motion. Repeating the same experiment with other pictures, he finds that the lab’s developing fluid has mutated over three million years, and can now bring photos to life. He then uses a slide projector to create life-size pictures that anyone can walk into, interacting with the subjects of photos from any era of history. Lister decides to go back and visit himself as a dismal rock-star-wannabe teenager, taking with him a sample of one of the future’s most profitable inventions – a Tension Sheet (a square of air-bubble packing material painted red with “Tension Sheet” written on it) – in the hopes he can pry his junior self away from “the Om song” long enough to get him to register the Tension Sheet as his own invention and get rich. When Lister disappears, it becomes apparent that he has changed his own future and become a millionaire who never signed aboard Red Dwarf. But Lister’s non-existence also erases the Cat and Kryten from the present, and Rimmer is left with Holly. Rimmer decides that it is his duty as a complete and utter bastard to set history to rights, unaware that this will bring his greatest wish to fruition – Rimmer will once again occupy a tangible body!

written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
directed by Ed Bye
music by Howard Goodall

Guest Cast: Robert Addie (Gilbert), Rupert Bates (Bodyguard), Richard Hainsworth (Bodyguard), Emile Charles (young Lister), Simon Gaffney (young Rimmer), Stephen McKintosh (Thicky Holden), Louisa Ruthven (Ski Woman), Koo Stark (Lady Sabrina Mulholland-Jjones), Mark Steel (Ski Man), Ruby Wax (American Presenter), Adolf Hitler (himself)

LogBook entry by Earl Green