Red Dwarf/Back in the Red (1)

Back in the Red (1)
Season 8, Episode 1
Airdate	February 18, 1999
Written by	Doug Naylor
Directed by	Ed Bye
← 7x08 Nanarchy	8x02 → Back in the Red (2)
Red Dwarf — Season Eight

Back in the Red (1) is the first episode of the eighth season of Red Dwarf, and the forty-fifth episode overall.

Guest Stars: Paul Bradley (Chen), David Gillespie (Selby), Mac McDonald (Captain Hollister), Karl Glenn Stimpson (MP Thornton), Kika Mirylees (Dr. Karen Newton), Andy Taylor (Counsellor McClaren)

Plot Overview

As the show opens, Lister and Rimmer are in a prison cell, and Rimmer is giving Lister the "silent treatment". Lister on the other hand is deliberately trying to provoke Rimmer into saying something -- anything at all. He bets Rimmer "20 big ones" that he can make him say something in the next minute. Rimmer doesn't actually agree; Lister just takes his silence to mean "yes".

He tells Rimmer the story of how he had once gotten into Rimmer's wallet and "borrowed" some money (for a pint), but that fails to get any reaction. Undaunted, Lister tells him that he went out with Yvonne McGruder before he did. He continues to goad Rimmer, saying that to this day he still has scars from the carpet burns she gave him. The lewd gestures and monkey mating noises that follow, are simply too much for Rimmer. He explodes, screaming, "WILL YOU SHUT UP!"

Flashback to three days earlier ...

Lister, Kryten, the Cat and Kochanski were just returning to a newly reconstructed Red Dwarf. Holly was back (in his male guise), and Lister's body had been returned to normal, but the ship, Red Dwarf, was still being processed by the nanobots -- it was many times larger than its proper size.

Starbug, gnat-like by comparison, was sucked into an air duct. With the nanobots working rapidly to shrink Red Dwarf back to its normal size, they were in grave danger of being crushed. After a much-too-close encounter with a giant rat (see Memorable Moments below), they were able to leave the air duct and go back out into a corridor.

As the cooridors shrank, they became too small for Starbug to fit through. The drive section, being the largest, was the first to go, followed by the mid section, leaving only the cockpit hurtling out of control. They finally crashed in a cargo bay with Starbug bursting into flames and exploding just after they had gotten clear. Then the fire crew arrived -- the entire Red Dwarf crew had somehow been reconstructed/resurrected by the nanobots along with the ship!

Lister is overjoyed. He knows them: Selby and Chen, his drinking buddies. His joy is short-lived though; Captain Hollister orders Thornton to arrest them for bringing stowaways aboard and for unauthorised piloting of Starbug. They have no memory of having died or being resurrected.

Lister is detained in his quarters pending trial. Holly (the three-million-year-old Holly) tells him that if he loses, he'll spend a couple of years in the Tank -- a secret prison facility on floor 13.

Meanwhile Karen, the ship's Chief Medial Officer, has heard a rumor (from the coffee machine on G-deck) that they are three million-years into deep space and that Red Dwarf has somehow been reconstructed according to its original design plans (before JMC made all its cutbacks). The captain confirms to her that they now have a quark-level matter/anti-matter generator, ship-wide bio-organic computer networking, and a karaoke bar on C-deck.

Back in detainment, Lister asks Rimmer to help him escape. Of course Rimmer refuses -- that is he refuses until Lister offers to help get him promoted. In return for Rimmer's assistance Lister will give him the crew's confidential reports: their strengths and weaknesses.

Elsewhere Dr. Lucas McCaren, the ship's chief psychologist evaluates Kryten. He takes Kryten's assertions that he was created in the future and that everyone has died and been resurrected to be the hallmarks of insanity. His final recommendation: Kryten should be restored to factory settings.

Rimmer, having accepted Lister's proposal to help him escape in return for being promoted, rumages through the wreckage of Starbug and retrieves the confidential crew reports. Also, quite by accident, he finds two vials of positive virii: luck and sexual magnetism. By infecting himself with a positive virus he will suffer its effects: luck or sexual magnetism until his body can fight off the virus. He chooses sexual magnetism (see the Quotes section).

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• We get our first good look at Red Dwarf since it was rebuilt by the nanobots in the series 7 episode, Nanarchy. In the original series (not the remastered versions) up to this point Red Dwarf had been long, but bloated-with-ore mining ship. After the reconstruction it looks like a sleek, red skyscraper with engines.
• The entire Red Dwarf crew is reconstructed/resurrected.
• Lister is arrested.

Characters

• Rimmer is reconstructed along with the rest of the Red Dwarf crew by the nanobots. He is the old, smeg-headed Rimmer, not the somewhat improved Rimmer who became Ace Rimmer in the Series 7 episode Stoke Me a Clipper.

Referbacks

• Lister tells Rimmer that the crew was killed by a radiation leak and then were resurrected.
• Rimmer finds vials of positive viruses in the wreckage of the crashed Starbug.

Trivia

The Show

• In the air duct Kochanski suggested that a turn at "epsilon 14" would take them back out into a corridor.
• At the Starbug crash in the cargo bay Selby and Chen admit that Lister's other drinking buddy, Petersen, is currently drunk.
• The Starbug crash damgaged the reconstructed Holly, leaving only the three-million-year-old, computer-senile Holly.

Allusions and References

• Lister tries to agitate Rimmer by telling him that he once got into his wallet and tried to use the money to buy a pint, but he claims the barman told him, "doubloons weren't legal tender anymore." Rimmer should have handed them in after the Spanish Armada.
• While the crew is in dire peril, Holly wants to play a guessing game. He has spent a week working out a clue: "Science-Fiction film, name of the ship, one word: Nostrilomo". This almost certainly a reference to the Nostromo in the 1979 film Alien.
• Lister begins to explain to Rimmer what happened to Red Dwarf; how it was destroyed, how everyone died, how they are now 3,000,000 years into deep space, and how they were resurrected by Kryten's nanobots. It sounds crazy, even to him, and he wonders if maybe he shouldn't just take the fifth.

Memorable Moments

• As the miniature Starbug flies through an air duct, the Cat deftly dodges a rat, which at their current scale is much larger than Starbug itself. Unfortunately another rat appears ahead, and the ship rams itself right up the rat's arse. The ship and the hapless rat fly together along the air duct. Holly pops onto his monitor and says, "Hope you don't get stopped by the cops. They don't like it when you're rat-arsed."

Quotes

• Rimmer uses the sexual magnetism virus, and it works superbly -- women are ogling him at every turn. Savoring the moment, he smugly says to himself, "The world loves a bastard!"

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