Category: Season 04

Genetic Profile: At long last, the guys finally encounter a real live alien ship – or a ship from Earth that’s advanced enough to be alien. The skeletal remains of one otherwise human-looking crew member has two hideous bird-like heads. Lister and Cat find a strange control room, the controls of which Cat immediately takes it upon himself to play with. This has some nasty consequences when the room turns out to be a device for resequencing DNA, and it turns Lister into a hamster, and then a chicken. Kryten and Rimmer arrive to help, and Kryten figures out how to return Lister to human form. Krtyen is then accidentally turned into a human himself, his greatest wish. Rimmer starts trying to find some cells of his dead body aboard Red Dwarf so he can reclone a body for himself, while Lister is having to explain every little detail of human lifestyles to Kryten, including why the rectal recharge socket doesn’t work, and why one should never get a double Polaroid over an electrical appliance. In testing the DNA resequencer before running Kryten through it, Lister’s mutton vindaloo is transformed into a mutant vindaloo big enough to eat anyone who’s ever eaten any form of curry…

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

Guest Cast: Richard Ridings (D.N.A. Computer voice)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

The Sentence: Lister, whose head has been embarassingly enlarged by a bad case of space mumps, wonders why Cat and Rimmer haven’t been round to see him, when Kryten inadvertently tells him about the escape pod that the ship has picked up, which contains either a security guard or an inmate of a spaceborne prison whose residents revolted against their keepers, and Rimmer starts the pod’s cryogenic thawing process in the off-chance that the vehicle contains a friendly human female, which, as it turns out, it doesn’t, although Lister and the others don’t realize this as they’ve gotten underway to the aforementioned penal station just in case their new passenger turns out to be a homicidal maniac, though they’re not counting on the station’s Justice Computer which metes out punishment appropriate to the crimes it discovers in its subjects’ memories after a mind scan, and this is certainly bad news for Rimmer, who is sentenced to life behind bars for the disregard of safety regulations that led to the death of the entire crew of Red Dwarf, but Kryten manages to plead Rimmer’s case to the Justice Computer and gains Rimmer’s freedom so they can all head back to the Starbug, which, in case you forgot, is where they left an escape pod to thaw out, which it has done, releasing a crazed homicidal simulant in the process.

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

Guest Cast: Nicholas Ball (The Simulant), James Smillie (Justice Computer voice)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Chain of Events: Kryten commits the most heinous, criminal act ever done aboard Red Dwarf – he manages to bring Talkie Toaster, Lister’s mortal bread-heating enemy, back online. Not without reason, though – Kryten thinks it may be possible to use the same repair method to help Holly regain her IQ of 6000 at the cost of reducing her operational lifespan. The procedure works all too well, leaving Holly with a vast wealth of genius and only three minutes in which to use it. To make matters worse, Red Dwarf is nearing a white hole which is emitting time, creating disjointed pockets of events that haven’t happened yet, have already happened, and may not happen at all. Holly’s solution is to plug the white hole up by altering the orbits of a few nearby planets using a nuclear warhead as the cue ball, but Lister insists on making the shot himself.

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

Guest Cast: David Ross (Talkie Toaster)

LogBook entry by Earl Green

Recipe For Kippers Vindaloo: In some alternate universe, there exists one Arnold Rimmer – an incredibly nice, well-liked guy with guts, bravado, skill, decency, an actual sex life, and the nickname “Ace.” (Keep in mind, this is an alternate universe we’re talking about here.) Ace signs up to test a new spacecraft developed by the Space Corps which can break the dimension barrier and send him into parallel universes, and winds up slamming right into Starbug, which is carrying Lister and the others to a fishing trip they’re dreading due to the presence of their dimension’s Rimmer. Ace feels it’s the right thing to do to help the Starbug crew out when they crash into the ocean of a nearby planet, and all of them develop an immediate rapport with Ace, with the exception of Rimmer, who’s just pissed off because no one’s ever treated him with the kind of respect and admiration Ace has earned. Ace saves the entire crew and returns to Red Dwarf with them when Cat requires emergency surgery. The “real” Rimmer is determined that either he or Ace has to go. Whether you’ve smoked him a kipper or not, Ace Rimmer is back for breakfast in Emohawk: Polymorph II.

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

Guest Cast: Robert Llewellyn (Bongo), Kalli Greenwood (Mrs. Rimmer), Simon Gaffney (young Rimmer), Hetty Baynes (Cockpit Computer)

LogBook entry by Earl Green