Starbug Spotting

Since its introduction in Series III, Red Dwarf’s shuttle craft Starbug has become almost as iconic as the eponymous ship itself, spawning t-shirts, models, playsets, televised competitions and even a giant life-sized version as part of an elaborate ad campaign. Both its interior and exterior have changed dramatically in looks over the years, and it’s established almost immediately that there are actually multiple Starbugs in existence, allowing us to headcanon away those inconsistencies with relative ease.

When a new set was built for Series XI, a knowing reference to this was included as part of the set design, with the ship’s interior baring branding that reads “Starbug 19”. But is this number accurate? Does it correlate to the number of Starbugs we’ve seen on screen, or was it chosen arbitrarily for the purposes of the gag? Let’s investigate, as we delve through the episodes to tally up just how many times the ship’s been destroyed and then reappeared, and track some of the changes and features which are unique to each iteration.

1. Backwards

The very first Starbug we see is the one that Kryten uses to take his driving test in Backwards. It’s on screen for less than four minutes before it’s flown through a time hole and crashed into a big lake. The last we see of it is when it’s beneath the surface, being menaced by unrealistically gigantic fish, before Rimmer and Kryten escape on the handy inflatable dinghy that must have been among the emergency supplies on board. Lister is later able to track the wreckage down by homing in on the flight recorder, but that’s the full lifespan of what’s technically the only original version of the show’s most iconic shuttle craft.

That said, we know there’s at least one other variant that the crew have used off-screen prior to the events of this episode, as Kryten learned to fly in the identically-controlled Starbug 2. We don’t know for sure whether these lessons took place after Kryten joined our crew, or whether he started learning in his prior life on the Nova 5 or the SS Augustus. It’s up to personal interpretation as to whether Starbug 2 is completely identical to the craft we know as Starbug other than the registration number, or whether the Starbug 2 is a whole different model to the Starbug 1, and it’s just the controls that are the same. If Kryten first learned to fly whilst crewing a more advanced, high budget ship than the Dwarf, it’s possible he had access to a much swankier transporter, which would explain his initial struggles to adapt to Starbug 1.

2. Backwards – Marooned

The very second Starbug we see is the one that Lister and Cat use to rescue Kryten and Rimmer in Backwards. Note how the number on the door that separates the cockpit from the unseen mid-section changes from a 1 to a 2. This particular model was fitted with a cloaking device, something which was never used again after this episode, despite its inherent usefulness. It would no doubt have come in handy whilst hiding from the likes of the Centauri in Beyond a Joke or the Feral King in The Promised Land, or when under attack from Simulants or future selves. One can only conclude, therefore, that the cloaking device was unique to this particular ship, and not a standard feature for all Starbugs. An optional extra, perhaps, that the JMC were too tight to fork out on for every member of their fleet.

It was a huge shame, then, that this particular Starbug was hit by a flaming meteorite and crashed into an ice planet just one episode later. It’s not explicitly confirmed, but we can safely assume that this Starbug was a write-off – the terrain and weather conditions made it near impossible to dig the ship out of the snow, and at the end of the episode it looks very much like Lister is gathering up his things and heading out, ready to head back to the Dwarf on Blue Midget, and leaving the uniquely souped up shuttle craft to gather ice.

3. Bodyswap

Starbug appears in just three episodes of its debut series, but it gets destroyed every single time. The latest short-lived Starbug is half-inched by Rimmer-in-Lister’s-body, and suffers an almighty and destructive crash following the rest of the crew’s pursuit. Even the interior is destroyed in this crash, so it seems unlikely that the ship was ever recovered; we see Blue Midget returning to Red Dwarf alone afterwards. Poor old Starbug The Third – there’s less than two minutes between its first and last appearance on screen, but at least it lived its best life, taking part in one of the show’s greatest ever effects sequences, and even getting to show off with a barrel roll in the meantime.

4. Camille – Terrorform

So after our crew managed to wreck three separate Starbugs in as many episodes, they must have started using a model that was made of stronger stuff. After some relatively uneventful voyages in Camille, Justice and White Hole, it does suffer an almighty crash in Dimension Jump. But for the first time, it survives, possibly thanks to Ace’s intervention, and it duly returns to Red Dwarf. Next up, the crew gather around Starbug’s navicomp in Meltdown, although they don’t actually use it to fly anywhere, before more successful trips in Holoship and The Inquisitor. It was all going so well until an accident in an unknown location at an unknown time with an unknown cause, later revealed to be a consequence of a psi-moon reshaping itself to mimic Rimmer’s mental state. Typical.

5. Terrorform – Back to Reality

And so Cat and Lister once more set out in a new Starbug to rescue Kryten and Rimmer after they crashed the last one. The Starbug introduced in Terrorform has a significant feature that hasn’t been seen on any other models on screen – it’s fitted with caterpillar tracks, so that it can travel across land. They were able to navigate most of the psi-moon’s terrain, but not the swamp, forcing the crew to make use of a rowing boat, which may well have been stowed on board for emergency use, like the motor-powered one used in Backwards. The ‘Bug was also susceptible to quicksand, and damn near became the second casualty in one episode, before it escaped following a four-way hug.

In fact, this particular Starbug was the first to survive its screen life intact. It was used in each remaining episode of Series V without incident, other than the huge crash and subsequent explosion we witnessed in Back To Reality, which was later revealed to be merely an hallucination. After returning to the real world, we last see this Starbug hitting the retros on its way back to Red Dwarf. If it did get destroyed, as the vast majority of its siblings did, then we didn’t see it on screen.

6. Psirens – Back in the Red (Part One)

Now, according to Prelude to Nanarchy, the crew never made it back to the Dwarf after Back To Reality, with Kryten’s nanobots having escaped and transformed it into a planet before they can get there. But this can’t be the case; surely the Starbug that the crew wake up on in Psirens is a different model to any that we’ve seen them use before, as the interior is so vastly different. The cockpit has doubled in capacity, the mid-section is much bigger, and it even leads off into a separate kitchen area, which would have been damned useful in Marooned. Perhaps this suddenly spacious spaceship is a later model – maybe even the Starbug Mark 2 that Kryten learned to fly in – that presumably must have just been at the back of the cargo hold, out of sight for the previous three series.

As the saying goes, this Starbug is built to last, sustaining the crew as their makeshift home for fourteen full episodes, during which time it’s rarely off screen in one way or another. It’s improved further by the kindly Simulants in Gunmen of the Apocalypse, upgrading the drive interface and the engines, as well as arming it with laser cannons. And it crashes more times than a ZX81: hit by a giant flaming meteorite in Psirens; submerged in lava in Gunmen; shot by a Space Corps enforcer and subsequently crashed into a GELF moon in Emohawk. It ultimately survives each time, before the thing is blown up completely by the crew’s future selves at the end of the series.

But it got better. The resultant paradox undid that timeline, restoring the ‘Bug, and as an extremely tenuous consequence, the ship’s cargo deck was enlarged by 212%. We also learned that Starbug (or at least this type of Starbug) is modular, with the entire rear section able to be detached. [Well, this is where we learn this if you class the Xtended versions of the episodes as canon; we learn it much later if you don’t.] And once again there are further upgrades during the series, when Epideme gives Kryten a method of making the ship 300% faster.

There’s very little in the way of crashes in Series VII, possibly thanks to the influence of a competent navigation officer in Kochanski, who gets them out of dangerous scrapes in Ouroboros, Blue and Beyond a Joke. But alas, nothing lasts forever, and the longest-serving Starbug is finally seen off in the opening episode of the following series, crushed to death in Red Dwarf’s rapidly shrinking corridors and spectacularly exploded.

7-12. Only The Good…

With Starbug’s starring role coming to an end, we barely see it in Series VIII, with a leggy CGI Blue Midget and various generic shuttle ships preferred on the rare occasions that anyone is seen leaving the mothership. But then you wait all series for a Starbug and six come along at once, when the resurrected crew are forced to abandon ship. We see a total of six Starbugs flying off into the distance, along with fourteen Blue Midgets. Assuming the number of evacuees is in the vicinity of the 1,169 crew members that Red Dwarf initially had, that’s around 58 people per shuttle craft, each of which can only comfortably accommodate four or five. So there must have been more escape ships, and presumably more Starbugs were among them, we just don’t see them on screen.

13. Trojan – The Promised Land

And so we move on to the Dave era, which was much lighter on visual effects for its first couple of iterations. The closest Back To Earth gets to featuring Starbug is customising a green Smart car, while there are two fleeting appearances in Series X: it takes them to the eponymous Trojan and back in Trojan, and is seen parked at the BEGGS’ settlement having been lost in a poker game in Entangled. Blue Midget is the default for the rest of the series, but Starbug is back in a big way in the following series opener Twentica, with an all new interior that’s clearly got the same vibes as all previous Starbugs, even if the actual details are vastly different.

The iconic ship’s full time return is heralded in the traditional manner, with an almighty crash within the first few minutes. But it survives, and successfully returns home to become a regular fixture in the series once more, even utilising its submarine mode (previously only seen at the start of Back To Reality) to reach the eponymous wreck in Samsara. That would have been handy in Backwards. It goes on to appear in every episode of Series XI with relatively little incident, other than Butler’s well-meaning sabotage in Krysis. We don’t see the interior beyond the cockpit until Can of Worms, where the signage in the rear section reads “Starbug 19”. While this is only the 13th iteration that we’ve seen on screen (and only the seventh that our crew have been seen to use), there is that big old nine year narrative gap between Series VIII and Back To Earth, during which time anything could have happened.

The ship continues to play a prominent role at the start of Series XII, appearing in each of the first three episodes before taking a back seat for Byte Two. It’s evident from Cured that the crew have been using this particular model for a while, with it being run down to the extent that it requires a special improvised start up procedure, and lacks the ability to turn right. Meanwhile, Siliconia shows us that it’s equipped with a fairground style grabbing claw. It then has a starring role in The Promised Land, where we learn not only that it has a hybrid engine and a hover mode, but that it’s modular, with the entire rear section able to be detached. [Well, this is where we learn this if you don’t class the Xtended versions of the episodes as canon; we learn it much earlier if you do.]

14. The last bit of The Promised Land

It’s not entirely clear how the above Starbug ends up returning to Red Dwarf – Holly vaguely says “I’ll come and get you”, but we don’t really see what he does to drag the engine-less, fuel-less semi ship through space. Either way, it’ll never fly again, thus becoming at least the sixth Starbug that the crew are confirmed to have destroyed. But they didn’t wait long before hopping in their (minimum) eighth iteration, using it to attack the Feral Cat ship, resurrect Kryten, and return Luna, Sol and Peanut home. It’s only on screen for a few minutes, but that’s just enough time to see that this particular Starbug has an monitor on which one of the “power output level” read-outs is labelled “G&T”. So it’s our favourite one. In a lovely bit of attention to detail, you can just about see in one brief shot that a sign on the wall in the mid-section has been updated to read “Starbug 20”.

If and when there are new episodes of Red Dwarf, and if and when Starbug features, we’ll assume that it’s this one unless told otherwise. So, that’s fourteen Starbugs seen on screen in total, with eight of them being used by “our” crew. Well, technically we do see one additional Starbug – the future selves’ one in Out of Time – but as that’s just our Starbug fifteen years later, in a timeline that no longer exists anyway, we won’t include it in our totals. We’re also going to assume that the one from the AA adverts is the standard Dave era iteration. So not quite twenty; whether the crew’s televised adventures run for long enough to reach that golden figure on-screen remains to be seen, but we’re only a handful of crashes away…

Thanks to Quinn, Moonlight and Andrew Orton for corrections.