Season 2 "Like life, only better!"
2.4 "Stasis leak"
Three million years in the past, we see Rimmer reporting Lister to Captain Hollister, for having induced a hallucinogenic fit in the former by way of cooking him a breakfast with Titan mushrooms, also known as "freaky fungus". Rimmer is not happy with the captain's sentence of two weeks' PD (Paint Duty: painting the exterior of Red Dwarf), and says so, earning himself eight weeks of the painting detail! As Lister goes to get the spacesuits, Rimmer is greeted by what he takes to be a hallucination, but which is in fact himself from the future telling him that he is going to try to save him from his imminent death.
Back in the present, Lister is reading Rimmer's diary, having found a photograph in Kochanski's quarters, which shows Lister getting married to her. Lister deduces that the only way this can happen is that they go back to the past. Reading Rimmer's diary, he comes across the passage where Rimmer describes the appearance of the future Rimmer, and decides to go looking for the stasis leak alluded to by the future Rimmer. Finding it, they go through, and do indeed find themselves in the past. Unfortunately, they emerge in the shower-room, and when they try to take something back with them into the present, they find it disintegrates. So it becomes clear that it is now impossible for either to save the one they love most --- for Lister that's Kochanski, for Rimmer of course there's nobody but Arnie! --- without killing them. The plan has hit, as they say, something of a snag.
Back in the present, Lister tells Rimmer he is going to go back and stay with Kochanski until the crew are wiped out, three weeks hence. Rimmer is not happy to be left alone, but then Lister comes up with a better idea: there is a spare stasis booth on Red Dwarf, and if they can convince someone to go into stasis, they would survive the accident. Back in the present, they could revive them and that would be that. Rimmer of course wants to bring himself back, and Lister naturally goes for Kochanski. When they wake the next morning Rimmer has already gone back to the past to get a head start on them, and try to convince his own past self to go into stasis. Lister and the Cat follow him, with Holly as a watch on Lister's wrist.
Back in the past, Lister sees again his old mate Petersen, who can't understand why Lister is so delighted to see him, and blows his chance with two women the catering officer was sizing up. The Cat, exposed to the delights of women for the first time, is confused, but willing to learn... Rimmer meanwhile is setting himself up to contact his past self, but things do not go as well as he would have liked, especially when he tells his past self "I've come to warn you. In three million years you'll be dead!"
"Will I really?" sneers his past self. Unable to convince him, the future Rimmer goes off, and Captain Hollister arrives, dressed as a chicken for the fancy dress party that night. Rimmer, however, labouring under the misapprehension that he is still seeing illusions, insults him and earns himself eight
years PD!
Lister, trying to contact Kochanski, learns that she is on planet leave, and heads down to the Ganymede Holiday Inn, where he finds to his dismay that she is already married! He is about to go when Kochanski comes out and invites he and the Cat in, and Lister meets his alternate self, who has married Kochanski. The other Lister tells him that in five years time they find a way to come back again, and that it does eventually work out. Disappointed but not crushed, Lister goes back to the ship. There he finds Rimmer, still trying to convince his past self that what he says is the truth.
But for the past Rimmer, things get out of hand when not only the Lister from the future and the Cat join the future Rimmer, but the Lister who married Kochanski arrives, with Chrissie in tow, and is joined by the Rimmer from that dimension! Mental breakdown is the order of the day, but Rimmer in any dimension should be used to those!
QUOTES
Rimmer relates how he experienced a “voyage to Trip-Out City”
RIMMER: “And on the morning of February the 26th, at 0800 hrs, did engage in conversation with second technician Rimmer, Arnold J.--”
CAPTAIN: “For crying out loud, Rimmer!”
RIMMER: “--the outcome of which was a proposal by the aforementioned Lister to the aforementioned Rimmer to cook him breakfast.”
CAPTAIN: “Okay, I'm getting the picture.”
RIMMER: “Breakfast comprised of two eggs, three rashers of bacon, a grilled tomato, two sausages, a small portion of fried potatoes... and a large quantity of mushrooms. Having consumed this repast, Second Technician Rimmer, Arnold J. experienced what can only be described as a voyage to Trip-out City. To wit, a major hallucinogenic fit.”
CAPTAIN: “Lister, is this true?”
LISTER: “No, sir. I'm sure it was only one egg.”
RIMMER: “The aforementioned Rimmer, to wit, me, then attended inspection parade. He was totally naked except for a pair of mock-leather driving gloves and some blue swimming goggles. Under the influence of this psychedelic breakfast he went on to attack two senior officers, believing them to be giraffes who were armed and dangerous.”
CAPTAIN: “You'd better have a good reason for this, Lister.”
LISTER: “I have, sir.”
CAPTAIN: “Why'd you do it?”
LISTER: “I thought it'd be a laugh.”
Lister curls up with a very good book…
RIMMER: “Good book?”
LISTER: “Yeah, it's alright.”
RIMMER: “I didn't think you read.”
LISTER: “Not much, but this is good.”
RIMMER: “What is it?”
LISTER: “It's your diary.”
A wise old Cat saying…
CAT: “There's a wise old Cat saying which I think applies in this situation. It goes: "What are you talking about, dog-breath?"
Holly tries to blag his way through an explanation of what a stasis leak is
LISTER: “Alright, Hol. Listen, what's a stasis leak?”
HOLLY: “Um, well, very, very basically, putting it as simply as I can for your average layman to comprehend, a stasis leak is a leak, right, in stasis, hence the name "a stasis leak."
The in-lift safety routine
HOSTESS: (on video) “Welcome to Xpress Lifts, descent to floor sixteen. You will be going down two thousand, five hundred and sixty-seven floors and, for a small extra charge, you can enjoy the in-lift movie "Gone With the Wind." If you look to your right and to your left, you will notice there are no exits. In the highly unlikely event of the lift having to make a crash-landing, death is certain. Under your seats you will find a cassette for recording your last will and testament, and from above your head a bag will drop containing sedatives and cyanide capsules.”
What is it?
CAT: (to RIMMER) “What IS it?”
RIMMER: “It's a rent in the space-time continuum.”
CAT: (to LISTER) “What IS it?”
LISTER: “The stasis room freezes time, you know, makes time stand still. So whenever you have a leak, it must preserve whatever it's leaked into, and it's leaked into this room.”
CAT: (to RIMMER) “What IS it?”
RIMMER: “It's a singularity, a point in the universe where the normal laws of space and time don't apply.”
CAT: (to LISTER) “What IS it?”
LISTER: “It's a hole back into the past.”
CAT: “Oh, a magic door! Well, why didn't you say?”
Rimmer wonders...
RIMMER: “I wonder if we can bring anybody back?”
LISTER looks around, then picks up a bar of soap. They step back through the hole. LISTER opens his hand, to reveal a handful of three-million-year-old dust.
LISTER: “Not unless we want them to be turned into powder.”
CAT: “Who were you thinking of bringing back?”
RIMMER: “Me.”
CAT looks at the handful of dust and smiles wickedly.
CAT: “Let's do it!”
Rimmer thinks he may surprise Lister
LISTER: “Where are you coming from, Rimmer? You don't even like me.”
RIMMER: “Don't I?”
LISTER: “No.”
RIMMER: “Fine.”
LISTER: “You don't though, do you? You don't even like me.”
RIMMER: “That's what you think, is it?”
LISTER: “Yeah."
RIMMER: “I will tell you something that will probably stun you rigid.”
LISTER: “What?”
RIMMER: “You're right. I don't like you.”
Cat has his first real experience of women
CAT: Waaaooow! I've never been this close to women before! It makes me wanna
do something. I don't know what it is, but I want to do a
lot of it!”
Future Rimmer tries to warn his past self about his coming fate…
RIMMER: “No, look. I'm you from the future. I've come to warn you, in three million years you'll be dead.”
PAST RIMMER: “Will I really?”
RIMMER: “Yes. Unless you do something about it now.”
PAST RIMMER: “Well, what do you suggest, give up white bread? More roughage!?”
The old airline problem persists. Sort of.
SUITCASE: “Have you seen a man who's lost his luggage, about 5 foot 10, mousy hair?”
CAT: “No, I haven't.”
SUITCASE: “Oh, no. I bet they've sent him to the wrong bloody airport again!”
And Cat tries to save a lady from her foxfur stole
CAT: “Aaargh! Dog! And he's trying to strangle that woman!”
CAT grabs the a spray-bottle of mineral water from a passing robot waiter, and starts attacking the fox fur. The flabbergasted woman, believing herself to be under attack by a (tastefully dressed) madman, flees. CAT shakes the piece of fur by the throat, then jumps up and down on it.
CAT: “Don't worry, madam -- his strangling days are
over!”
Lister is heartbroken
LISTER: “Why do women always leave me for total smegheads? Why do they dump me for men who wear turtleneck sweaters and smoke a pipe? I mean,
natural yoghurt eaters! Reliable, sensible, dependable, and lots of other words that end in "-ible." He's obsessed with house-prices, and spends half his life in antique fairs looking for bargains and drinking wine. It's never beer, is it, it's always wine! "What do you want on your cornflakes, darling?" "Oh, I'll have some wine, please!" Smeg!
He leans against a wall, bitter and angry. CAT taps him on one shoulder.
CAT: “You can tell all that, just from a photograph?”
Holly recalls a doomed love affair from his past…
HOLLY: “I was in love once -- a Sinclair ZX-81. People said, "No, Holly, she's not for you." She was cheap, she was stupid and she wouldn't load -- well, not for me, anyway.”
Cat tries to sort out the identity crisis
CAT: (gesturing with a purloined leg of chicken) “If he's you and you're him, and you're him and he's him -- am I still me? Who's eatin' this chicken? What the hell is going on??”
Too many doubles
PAST RIMMER: (losing it fast) “THREE Listers!! Splendid!!! Perhaps Lister here would like to go over to the fridge and open a bottle of wine for Lister and Lister!!!! Rimmer here doesn't drink, because he's dead, but I wouldn't mind a glass!”
TIME FOR A BREAK?
One of the biggest risks, they say, about going back in time is changing your own past and thereby altering your future. But just as important is the possibility that you might meet yourself, because the laws of physics state, apparently, that no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time, and if two versions of one person come together, well nobody knows quite what would happen, as it’s never occurred and is unlikely ever to, but in theory it’s usually seen as very bad news for the entire universe.
Here both Rimmer and Lister seek to alter the timeline, the former by saving himself so as not to be dead anymore (surely he’s learned from his experiences with his copy in "Me2" that two Rimmers is not good for anyone, especially him?) and the latter to try to rescue the love of his life. Neither seem concerned with the damage this might do to the timeline.
Had they watched a single episode of
Star Trek (any of the franchise) they would have known that to even alter the past in tiny ways can mean that you get back to your own time and find things have changed in enormous ways. Even Homer Simpson learned this. Didn’t stop him of course, but then that’s Homer for you. You would think Lister and Rimmer, or at least one of them, would have more sense. Well, maybe not, but surely Holly would have been expected to have raised some objection, being the supposedly logical one? One thing is certain: if Kryten were here he would have much to say on the subject. Then again, his protestations usually went unheeded and the boys did as they liked.
Of course, trying to convince your former self that you are from the future is tricky at the best of times, and definitely not advisable when said former self is just recovering from a severe bad trip, as they know from Rimmer’s diary entry. Lister, of course, is driven by the photograph he has found which shows him married to Kochanski, and is at this point a lot more reckless than he will eventually become, but either way it’s a crazy errand. Does he really think Kochanski will want to live with him in a world where he is, literally, the only man? She was not that into him in the first place --- their affair didn’t last long and broke up acrimoniously. Would she be happy spending the rest of her life with him in deep space, salvaging wrecks and annoying Rimmer?
Perhaps a better plan would have been to have convinced himself --- or, if you want to be selfless and altruistic about it, Chrissie --- to jump ship at the next opportunity, before the accident. They have, after all, something like three weeks before the crew are wiped out, and Kochanski is on planet leave. Why not make it his mission to ensure she never rejoins the ship, even if he has to imprison her in the hotel till Red Dwarf has left orbit, at which point she will be unable to rejoin the vessel until its next stop, if at all. And three weeks from now, she’ll be much happier and realise why he did what he did.
But if Rimmer’s plan is selfish it does at least have some small chance of coming off, while to call Lister’s half-baked is being extremely kind. He obviously has not thought it through, has in fact not used his brain but another part of his anatomy to do the planning, and can see no further than saving the girl. What happens after that? Hey, we’ll just see, won’t we? He hasn’t taken into account that he could be responsible for driving her mad. When she realises all her friends are dead, the Earth probably a wasteland if it hasn’t been destroyed by now, and she is irretrievably stranded in space with a man she once used to go out with but never really loved, well who wouldn’t crack? Lister only made it through because he is such a slob he really couldn’t be bothered to get upset about what he had lost, and concentrated on what he had gained, basically a whole ship to himself. Almost. But few if any of us could see the silver lining in that particularly dark cloud.
This is the first, but not the last, of the time travel episodes in the series. Of course, they’re seldom if ever taken seriously and the time travel method used gets progressively sillier, but then you wouldn’t want anything else from Red Dwarf now would you? It also gave the writers that chance that every author who envisages backwards time travel relishes, the opportunity for their characters to meet famous or infamous figures from history. Mind you, Grant and Naylor often manage this without the benefit of time travel, but then, such was the genius of this writing partnership that they could envisage things others could not even dream about.