Break a Red Dwarf Episode

[Moonlight]

Seems like a decent forum game. Take a Red Dwarf episode (or hell, the show itself) and make minor changes that completely ruin the plot – preferably by bringing into play previously established rules of the show that it chooses to ignore.

“Lister should just go back into stasis until they get to Earth” is preemptively banned from play.

I’ll start.

RIMMERWORLD: Rimmer, just turn yourself off and let them switch you on when they get there. Even if you’re afraid of not being turned back on, I’d be more scared of 600 years alone than death.

BLUE: More of a stretch, but couldn’t you make _another_ Rimmer? Presumably, you have a copy of his disc and it’s not like light bees were an especially rare technology.

Topic

[Ben Saunders]

STOKE ME A CLIPPER: Holograms are “practically indestructible”. Ace survives his encounter with a Bond pastiche and doesn’t have to go looking for a replacement.

FUTURE ECHOES: As the Red Dwarf approaches the speed of light, its mass increases exponentially. It eventually becomes so big it’s impossible to steer, so it smashes into a planet and everybody dies. Again.

[Dave]

TIKKA TO RIDE

After the paradox plays out and brings the crew back to life, they go back, recover the time drive and are once again only able to visit various eras of deep space. Then, inevitably, their future selves arrive again and the entire back half of Out Of Time plays out again. And again. And again.

[Dave]

OUROBOROS

When Lister encounters a Kochanski from an alternate universe, she has no idea who he is as they barely exchanged any conversation on the pre-accident Red Dwarf and worked completely separately from one another.

[GlenTokyo]

.

[Hamish]

OUROBOROS

When Lister encounters a Kochanski from an alternate universe, she has no idea who he is as they barely exchanged any conversation on the pre-accident Red Dwarf and worked completely separately from one another.

That said, Lister is able to rekindle his relationship with the parallel version of his rubber plant.

[Pete Part Three]

TIMEWAVE

Contains good jokes, thus spoiling its premise as an intentionally bad, critic-proof piece of television.

[International Debris]

TIKKA TO RIDE

When Kennedy shoots himself, the universe immediately does a weird whooshing thing, and time resets itself to an arbitrary point before Lister appeared at Idlewild Airport. Dallas is inexplicably larger than before (while taking up no more of the US’s land mass), and has a lot of random wind tunnels between streets.

TIMESLIDES

After Lister successful changes his past timeline, Red Dwarf completely disappears, having been flown far enough out of human space for safety and then blown up for safety.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

OUROBOROS

In the parallel dimension, with Kochanski in stasis Rimmer has help fixing the drive plate. Lister recognises it is a job too big for them both so calls for help, saving the ship. When our crew encounter the rip in the fabric of space time, nothing and no-one is on the other end of it. Lister thus fails to father himself and therefore doesn’t exist in our reality.

Lister not existing in our reality leads to our Rimmer having a different bunk mate and underling who doesn’t smuggle a cat onboard, so isn’t sent into stasis and who is competent enough to know that neither of them can fix the drive plate, calling for help and thus saving the ship.

No-one in either reality dies, only Lister (and subsequently the cat race) ceases to ever have existed here before.

[Dave]

BACKWARDS

The entire episode plot functions completely differently because it actually adheres to reverse-causality logic.

[Dave]

DIMENSION JUMP

Ace jumps to another dimension without travelling in time, and discovers that his counterpart died in an accident on a mining spaceship, where this dimension’s version of Spanners is also in stasis for some reason. Unable to free him, he jumps on to another dimension.

[Dave]

BACK TO EARTH

As a result of the joy squid, the crew experience things that actually make them happy.

[Renegade Rob]

DEAR DAVE

Lister whinges about the lack of human company, then immediately remembers he literally just encountered Irene Edgington and the citizens of India in 23 A.D. and proceeds to shut the fuck up.

THE END

The JMC assigns an actual engineer to repair a drive plate.

BACK TO REALITY

The Dwarfers learn from Kryten that they’re dealing with despair ink that’s possibly hallucinogenic and then after being sprayed with ink and waking up in a dystopia, immediately realize they’re in a hallucination while admitting that, yeah, it is a freaky coincidence that Hope defeats despair and the ship is actually called the Esperanto.

STASIS LEAK

In the past, Rimmer is visited by a hologram version of himself coming out of a table, which the past Holly immediately detects since Red Dwarf is what generates the hologram, and Hollister and the proper JMC authorities are notified.

QUEEG

Holly decides to be clever and awesome BEFORE almost killing Lister with a yellow cable.

MAROONED

Upon being hit by a meteor, Lister and Rimmer immediately signal for help well before crashing.

TIKKA TO RIDE

When they go back in time, they don’t randomly show up in the exact place and time to knock Lee Harvey Oswald out a window. Also, instead they might decide to just time travel back to Red Dwarf which presumably has enough curry lying around.

OUROBOROS

Lister realizes that flossing with wood glue already in his mouth is stupid and doesn’t do it, ultimately dooming Kochanski to die slowly in non-space.

EMOHAWK: POLYMORPH II

Lister honors the fucking agreement he made and actually sticks around for a bit in an otherwise nice village with reasonable GELF inhabitants.

[pendo86]

THE END
Lister gives up Frankenstein, doesn’t go into stasis and dies with the rest of the crew.

[Renegade Rob]

THE END

Following the radiation leak, Holly pilots Red Dwarf safely away from doing any damage to the rest of the solar system, but upon getting just out of range, fucking stops moving into deep space and just chills out nearby orbiting a moon or something. Also, not long after the accident, the JMC sends a retrieval team to get Red Dwarf back since it’s presumably a big investment.

BALANCE OF POWER

Rimmer uses the Black Card and Lister immediately respects it and relents.

THANKS FOR THE MEMORY

When the black box Holly recording says to not play the recording and Holly says he knows what he’s talking about, he actually decides to listen to himself. Alternatively, the Dwarfers realize burying the black box with a gravestone is stupid and just fire it into a sun.

BODYSWAP

Carol Brown, upon being booted up in Lister’s body, does what Rimmer has always feared and takes command after the bomb is revealed to not be a threat instead of just fucking off between scenes.

DIMENSION JUMP

The alternate Space Corps. realize sending their best pilot and experimental ship on a one-way trip to never return is inefficient and stupid and decide to keep Ace on the payroll because why the fuck would you banish your best pilot?

BACK IN THE RED

Upon being resurrected in deep space with a vastly altered ship, Hollister decides, “Hey why don’t we hear these guys out and not be dicks. There are clearly existent circumstances, and since they’ve been around maybe they can help us get our bearings.”

FATHERS & SUNS

Upon Rimmer inquiring if Chinese Whispers are racist, Kryten tells him to fuck off with that bullshit since it’s the future and that shouldn’t even be a consideration. But then the telephone C-plot doesn’t interfere with the climax to give Lister the idea on how to stop Pree, and the Dwarfers die as Red Dwarf flies into the sun as part of Operation: Sizzle.

LEMONS

Upon meeting Jesus, the Dwarfers follow up by asking what his last name is.

TERRORFORM

Rimmer isn’t randomly made flesh on his psi-moon, thus rendering him invulnerable to all the the Self-Loathing beast’s machinations.

Also, since Kryten is a mechanical intelligence with actual organic components, the Psi-Moon also uses him as a template.

Alternatively, Kryten doesn’t randomly know what a Psi-moon.

QUARANTINE

Dr. Lanstrom CAN shoot straight. Final episode of the whole show.

TIMESLIDES

Holly says the developing fluid must have mutated and everyone stops everything and asks follow-up questions. Because what? Is developing fluid alive like pneumonia?

CONFIDENCE AND PARANOIA

Rimmer adheres to his daily goal list, allowing him to decontaminate the ship in a timely fashion.

PARALLEL UNIVERSE

Upon doing the Holly Hop, Red Dwarf warps directly on top of its parallel counterpart instead of weirdly next to it, resulting in a Watchmen-esque explosion that kills both Red Dwarf crews.

Also, Lister doesn’t become magically able to give birth by being in a female universe, or even if he is, it’s reversed upon going back to his home universe, thereby averting his pregnancy.

TIMESLIDES

It doesn’t occur to Lister to walk into the projector screen, and they never realize they can use Timeslides to travel in time.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Also, instead they might decide to just time travel back to Red Dwarf which presumably has enough curry lying around.

Have you seen the Xtended version?

[Renegade Rob]

Of course. I get that they steal the curry from themselves which is why they don’t have it in the first place. But more to the point, they could have at least warped back to Red Dwarf before it got stolen just in general. Now let’s see if I can think of any more…

BETTER THAN LIFE

Lister and Rimmer DO manage to guess Holly’s news, even without any clues.

POLYMORPH

The Polymorph breaches the hull of its containment pod only to immediately suffocate because it still can’t survive open space.

JUSTICE

Kryten doesn’t let slip to Lister that there’s a pod on board and nobody screws down his diodes or calls him Frank.

D.N.A.

Rimmer announces to the D.N.A. Ship that they don’t want Glenn Miller and to go away, and the ship acquiesces and leaves.

CAMILLE

Holly, who’s presumably still projecting her AI into Starbug, notices right away when Kryten brings Camille in board that she doesn’t see anyone there, and Kryten and Rimmer immediately figure out she’s not what she appears.

THE INQUISITOR

The Inquisitor, manifesting as Lister and Kryten, is thereby convinced by their arguments since they’re being judged by themselves and would thus not doom themselves to oblivion.

Alternately, Kryten isn’t even judged because he’s a mechanoid, or even if he is judged and erased, wouldn’t have a different CPU ident in an alternate timeline and Holly immediately lets him in.

MAROONED

Starbug doesn’t happen to have random food items stashed on board and Lister dies.

JUSTICE

Lister, instead of miraculously deciding not to shoot the Simulant because of bullshit morality, tries to actually shoot the Simulant and blows himself up.

Alternately, when the Simulant chases the Dwarfers into the Justice Zone, at least one of the five people involved actually notices the red forcefield and AI announcement and adjusts their tactics accordingly.

WHITE HOLE

The Dwarfers, after all the Queeg shenanigans, conclude that Holly is still plenty smart and opt to not try and increase her IQ.

[si]

WHITE HOLE
The crew don’t increase Holly’s IQ, but have some toast instead.

WHITE HOLE
Kryten has seen a White Hole before, as have many others, and so knows precisely what to do, with no problems.

WHITE HOLE
Cat knows what it is.

[Hamish]

DIMENSION JUMP

The alternate Space Corps. realize sending their best pilot and experimental ship on a one-way trip to never return is inefficient and stupid and decide to keep Ace on the payroll because why the fuck would you banish your best pilot?

To be fair, Rob Grant does address this point in Backwards by having it be an act of defiance by Ace, Spanners, and Bongo.

And then he has Ace get killed in a horribly graphic way, because he’s Rob Grant.

[Dave]

RED DWARF SERIES VI-VII

Rimmer is constantly fretting that he’s left his special fucking lamp from The Beginning back on the lost Red Dwarf, and talks about little else.

[Dollar Pound]

Parallel Universe

the holly hop drive really is just a box with stop and start written on it

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Me2

Rimmer turns himself into a perfect square, with 4 equilateral sides and everything.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Marooned

The Skutters clean the scanner scope, so Holly doesn’t think she sees black holes, so the crew don’t crash on what is apparently a very heavily planet / moon filled region of space if it took Cat and Kryten weeks to find them.

Also, why did they fly off in different directions only to have a rendezvous point anyway?

[Dave]

KRYTEN

The Boys from the Dwarf encounter a mechanoid servant from another ship, Kryten, and proceed to treat him in exactly the same way as they do the skutters, like some lower-class mechanical device with no right to do anything but work for their benefit.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

KRYTEN

Kryten, unaware of the crash of that his crew are dead, doesn’t send a distress signal so never gets found.

[Dave]

BETTER THAN LIFE

The Boys from the Dwarf play a videogame that makes your dreams come true, and have a lovely time.

[Dave]

CASSANDRA

Kryten doesn’t figure anything out.

[Dave]

KRYTIE TV

When the Boys from the Dwarf start watching live television streams of oblivious women showering, Doug Naylor stops writing the episode, bins the script and writes something about time travel instead.

[Dollar Pound]

THE END

on his way to the stasis booth, lister falls down a manhole and lands on frankenstein

[Dollar Pound]

QUEEG

after holly reveals that queeg is a hoax, he morphs back into queeg, who reveals that the hoax was a hoax

[Dollar Pound]

TIKKA TO RIDE

lister dies from the beating

[Dollar Pound]

JUSTICE

lister dies from falling down a manhole

[Dollar Pound]

DEMONS AND ANGELS

the experiment to fix the triplicator works and they just use it to get loads of strawberries and stuff

[Joe]

TIKKA TO RIDE

The boys return to Earth in Lister’s time and then destroy the time drive.

[Dave]

TIKKA TO RIDE

The Boys from the Dwarf are dead, killed by their future selves from an alternate timeline. The show from now on follows those future selves as they gallavant around space and time, sharing experiences with history’s greatest monsters like the arseholes they are.

[si]

KRYTIE TV

When the Boys from the Dwarf start watching live television streams of oblivious women showering, Doug Naylor stops writing the episode[…]

…and writes Timewave.

[Flap Jack]

CONFIDENCE & PARANOIA

Confidence inspires Lister to take the chef’s exam again, and he passes and gets promoted. Paranoia tries to convince Lister that bringing back Kochanski would only lead to him being rejected and humiliated, but he eventually does it anyway. Lister falls into Rimmer’s switched holo-disc trap, but threatens to turn off Rimmer entirely if he doesn’t tell him where Kochanski’s disc is, and promises to run Rimmer and Kochanski at the same time. Upon being brought back as a hologram, Kochanski is immediately creeped out by Lister’s romantic intentions and resents being brought into this situation. She switches Rimmer off in favour of a higher ranking engineer, quarantines Lister, and starts to run Red Dwarf like Queeg v0. Confidence and Paranoia form a temporary truce and scheme to overthrow Kochanski so that they can get to Lister again, but are taken out by Stabbim the Skutter in the attempt.

ME²

Both Rimmers refuse to be turned off, and there’s nothing to be done about it because Rimmer is the highest ranking crewmember on the ship. Lister isn’t surprised by this because it’s been his issue for most of the series.

BLUE

They just make another Rimmer hologram.

THE PROMISED LAND

They get Holly to restore his last backup immediately after they boot him up.

[Flap Jack]

Wow, only just realised I copied one of Katy’s original examples. It obviously made a deep impression on me. Sorry!

I’ll do another, tangential one to make up for it.

STOKE ME A CLIPPER

Ace, realising he’s dying (again), travels to meet the Dwarfers, so he can use Starbug’s hologram suite to make a backup of himself, and restore to a new light bee.

Then, as thanks for the assistance, Ace helps solve the missing Red Dwarf mystery early, forgoing the need to go through any of that other series 7 bullshit.

The events of Back in the Red still occur when Red Dwarf is recreated by the nanobots, but the presence of the 2 extra Rimmers convinces Hollister that they’re telling the truth, and the gang keep their freedom, forgoing the need to go through most of that other series 8 bullshit.

Ace then departs to continue his life of superheroics. However, due to the change in leadership Holo-Rimmer is switched off in favour of George McIntyre. The rest of the series is then about the fully resurrected crew trying to find purpose in their new lives 3 million years after their original deaths, and the cast’s new relationship with nano-Rimmer. This is also where Kochanski comes in I guess (the original, but still Chloe Annett, still retconned dating history), and she and Lister can have some sort of meaningful interaction or whatever.

Eventually Red Dwarf is attacked by the ship-destroying microbes from Only the Good…, and nano-Rimmer dies trying to save the day. Rimmer is again resurrected as a hologram, at which point it’s revealed that the last Rimmer backup was the one made by Ace when he was saving himself. New Ace then uses his extreme situationally convenient expertise to MacGuyver the antidote to the microbe, and saves the ship.

At that point, Ace becomes a principal part of the cast, and insists that Red Dwarf go on a voyage to rescue the scattered crew members and generally be a force for good in the universe.

3 weeks into this, the others get extremely tired of New Ace’s righteous personality, and revert him to the next most recent Rimmer backup, which was made after their encounter with Legion.

Then Back to Earth, and the events prior to it and after it, happen in more or less the same way they always did – except in Fathers & Suns, the racism is now the whole episode.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

KT said break an episode, not fix 2 whole series with tiny logic tweaks! Get your shit together Flapjack and play the game right, jeez!

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

STASIS LEAK

The stasis leak preserves whatever it leaks into, but only what it has leaked into meaning at best the crew can only travel to the shower room or at worst every time they travel they can only travel to a small old naked man having a shower.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

FUTURE ECHOS

Once you break the light barrier, you start to hear future echos. Sounds from the future echoing back at you. The episode isn’t called Future Visions. Get a grip Grant Naylor for fuck sake!

[Dave]

THANKS FOR THE MEMORY

Immediately after watching the black box footage and discovering why their memories were wiped, the crew of Red Dwarf – being the exact same people who made the decision to wipe their own memories the first time around – make the same decision again, and wipe their own memories a second time. But this time they completely destroy the evidence, wait until their legs have healed, un-make the jigsaw and change all the calendars on board to make sure there are no giveaways for their mindwiped future selves.

[Dave]

BLUE

Lister is unsurprised to find that he doesn’t miss the now-departed Rimmer at all, as they never really got on.

[Pete Part Three]

BODYSWAP

Holly neglects to get rid of the bomb, so the ship blows up and everyone dies.

[Plastic Percy]

PARALLEL UNIVERSE

The pregnancy test is blue.

[Dave]

THE LAST DAY

Kryten gets news that he is being replaced by a superior model of mechanoid who is on his way to Red Dwarf and will arrive in 24 hours.

Everyone is really chuffed with the impending upgrade as Kryten is a bit crap. Within minutes they have him shut down and boxed up, and they never look back as they start a new era with Hudzen 10.

[Flap Jack]

KRYTEN

No distress call is received from the Nova 5, because Kryten was forcibly retired by Hudzen millions of years ago, and Hudzen was advanced enough to realise the crew were dead and so voluntarily shut himself down.

BACKWARDS

They arrive in the backwards universe, but have no corporeal presence because them changing the outcomes of events that have already happened is impossible.

BODYSWAP

Rimmer takes over Lister’s body, but Lister’s biological brain can’t be made digital (only copied) so it just remains dormant while Rimmer is in control. Lister is still aware of everything going on though, and is powerless to do anything as Rimmer overeats and overmasturbates.

THE LAST DAY

Red Dwarf receives a message telling them that their mechanoid is due for an upgrade, and that one will be shipped to them as soon as they sign a contract agreeing to pay DivaDroid 4,500 dollar-pounds a month plus a 30,000 DP down payment.

[Flap Jack]

Can’t believe we both did The Last Day at virtually the same time. Great minds, eh.

[Flap Jack]

OUROBOROS

Lister rescues Kochanski from falling endlessly in the infinite void between universes by shooting a harpoon through her leg. She dies nearly immediately from a combination of whiplash, shock and blood loss. Lister then disappears Back to the Future style.

EPIDEME

Epideme infects Cat and Kochanski as well as Lister – because it’s a more realistic virus that is capable of reproducing itself and transmitting itself through the air – and all 3 of them die.

[Renegade Rob]

THE INQUISITOR

The Inquisitor replaces Lister with an alternate Lister, who like the prime Lister, is also his own father. But when the Inquisitor kills the alternate Lister in cold blood, this creates a paradox since now the alternate Lister doesn’t live long enough to conceive himself with Kochanski in the tube, and the resulting paradox catches the attention of the Infinity Patrol who arrest the Inquisitor for time shenanigans and undo the whole episode.

ME2

Rimmer, remembering he can take the form of any other hologram from the events of Balance of Power, has one of his selves become Yvonne McGruder’s form, and with the sex relieving most of the tension, the two Rimmers form a lovely long-lasting relationship.

GUNMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE

The Simulants, instead of upgrading Starbug, abduct the Dwarfers and subject them to prolonged torture thanks to their vast food supplies which they use to keep their victims in a state of perpetual agony.

Alternately, Kryten’s subconscious converts the struggle into literally anything else for an an actual reason.

BACKWARDS

Upon entering the backwards universe, Starbug immediately reverses back through the time hole, but then goes through it again once back in the normal universe, and Starbug is just stuck in that loop forever.

JUSTICE

Upon arriving at the penal colony, the Dwarfers ask the AI about any other galactic civilization in its databanks, like where the prison ship was departing from, etc., and the helpful Justice AI directs them in the general direction of Earth and the remnants of humanity.

THE END

Red Dwarf is long decayed after three million years and Lister dies in stasis in the interim since it’s crazy that things would actually be functional and intact three million years later.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

BALANCE OF POWER

Lister actually passes the chef’s exam, because he isn’t an idiot.

WAITING FOR GOD

Once Lister reveals himself to the Cat Priest, the Priest, not believing Lister for a second, immediately murders him for blasphemy.

THANKS FOR THE MEMORY

Lister only wipes Rimmer’s memory of the event, so he, Cat and Holly can retain theirs, promising never to mention it around Rimmer ever again.

BACKWARDS

Holly doesn’t nose dive them into a time hole whilst pretending not to have any control over the situation.

DNA

The Cat touches nothing, presses nothing, and gets Kryten.

[Author]

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