Post by Deleted on May 1, 2017 4:37:46 GMT
***Taken from Wikipedia and edited by me***
The main setting of the series is the eponymous mining spaceship Red Dwarf, which is 6 miles (9.7 km) long, 4 miles (6.4 km) tall, and 3 miles (4.8 km) wide and is operated by the Jupiter Mining Corporation.
In the first episode set sometime in the late 22nd century, an on-board radiation leak of cadmium II kills everyone except for lowest-ranking technician Dave Lister, who is in suspended animation at the time, and his pregnant cat, Frankenstein, who is safely sealed in the cargo hold.
Following the accident, the ship's computer Holly keeps Lister in stasis until the background radiation dies down – a process that takes three million years. Lister therefore emerges as the last human being in the universe – but not alone on-board the ship. His former bunk mate and immediate superior Arnold Judas Rimmer is resurrected by Holly as a hologram to keep Lister sane. At the same time, a creature known only as Cat is the last member on board of Felis Sapiens, a race of humanoid felines that evolved in the ship's hold from Lister's cat, Frankenstein, and her kittens during the 3 million years that Lister was in stasis.
During the second series, the group encounter the service mechanoid Kryten, rescuing him from a long-since crashed vessel. Initially, Kryten only appeared in one episode of series two, but by the beginning of series three he had become a regular character.
At the end of series five, Red Dwarf itself is stolen by persons unknown, forcing the crew to travel in the smaller Starbug craft for two series, with the side-effect that they lose contact with Holly. In series seven, Rimmer departs the crew to take up the role of his alter ego from a parallel universe, Ace Rimmer, whose name has become a long-standing legend and a legacy passed down from dimension to dimension. Shortly afterwards, the crew encounters a parallel version of themselves from a universe in which Kristine Kochanski, Lister's long-term love interest, had been put into stasis at the time of the leak and so became the last remaining human. A complicated series of events leaves Kochanski stranded in "our" universe, where she is forced to join the crew. At the end of series seven, we learn that Kryten's service nanobots, which had abandoned him years earlier, were behind the theft of the Red Dwarf at the end of series five.
At the beginning of the eighth series, Kryten's nanobots reconstruct the Red Dwarf, which they had broken down into its constituent atoms. In the process, the entire crew of the ship – including a pre-accident Rimmer – are resurrected, but the Starbug crew find themselves sentenced to two years in the ship's brig (at first, for crashing a Starbug and bringing on board Kryten and Cat as stowaways, but later for using information from the confidential files). The series ends with a metal-eating virus loose on Red Dwarf. The entire resurrected crew evacuates save the original Dwarfers. In the cliffhanger ending, Rimmer is left stranded alone to face Death (and promptly knees him in the groin and flees).
Nine years later, the four are once more the only beings on the ship. Rimmer is again a hologram, Holly is offline, and Lister is mourning Kochanski, lost to him out of an airlock some time previously. A chance to get back to Earth through a dimension warp presents itself. Although it is not quite what it appears to be, it gives Lister new hope when he learns that Kochanski is still alive after all.
The tenth series sees Lister still travelling with Rimmer, Kryten and Cat in Red Dwarf, in hopes of eventually locating Kochanski or returning to Earth, whichever comes first.
Cast and their characters
Dave Lister, played by Craig Charles, is a genial Liverpudlian and self-described bum. He was the lowest-ranking crew member on the ship before the accident. He has a long-standing desire to return to Earth and start a farm and/or diner on Fiji (which is under three feet of water following a volcanic eruption), but is left impossibly far away by the accident, which renders him the last (known) surviving member of the human race. He deeply enjoys Indian food, especially chicken vindaloo, which is a recurring theme in the series.
Arnold Judas Rimmer Bsc Ssc ("Bronze swimming certificate" and "Silver swimming certificate"), played by Chris Barrie, was the second-lowest ranking member of the crew while they were all alive. He is a fussy, bureaucratic, neurotic coward who, by failing to replace a drive plate properly, is responsible for the Red Dwarf cadmium II accident that kills the entire crew (including himself). Nevertheless, Holly chose him to be the ship's one available hologram because he considered him the person most likely to keep Lister sane. During Series VII, Rimmer leaves the dimension shared by his crew mates to become the new Ace Rimmer. Along with the Red Dwarf ship and its crew, Rimmer is resurrected at the start of Series VIII by nanobots. He comes face to face with Death at the end of the series, whom he kicks in the groin. From the Back to Earth specials onwards, he is once again a hologram (it is never made clear if this is the nanobot created Rimmer or the original Rimmer, having returned to Red Dwarf).
The Cat, played by Danny John-Jules, is a humanoid creature who evolved from the offspring of Lister's smuggled pet cat Frankenstein. Cat is concerned with little other than sleeping, eating and fawning over his appearance, and tends not to socialize with other members of the crew. He becomes more influenced by his human companions over time, and begins to resemble a stylish, self-centered human. It is later revealed that, unlike his human companions, he has a "cool" sounding pulse, six nipples and colour-coordinated internal organs.[30]
Kryten, full name Kryten 2X4B-523P (played by Robert Llewellyn from series III onwards, and as a one-off appearance in series II by David Ross), was rescued by the crew from the crashed spaceship Nova 5 in series II, upon which he had continued to serve the ship's crew despite their having been dead for thousands or even millions of years. Kryten is a Service Mechanoid and when first encountered by the crew, he was bound by his "behavioural protocols", but Lister gradually encouraged him to break his programming and think for himself. His change in appearance between the two actors is explained away by an accident involving Lister's space bike and Lister having to repair him.
Holly, the ship's computer, (played by Norman Lovett during series I, II, VII and VIII and Hattie Hayridge in series III to V). Holly has a functional IQ of 6000, although this is severely depleted by the three million years of run time and lack of repairs. Holly is left alone after the radiation accident that kills Rimmer and the rest of the crew except for Lister and the Cat. The computer had developed "computer senility" before the radiation accident, rendering it functionally inert. The change in appearance for series III is explained by Holly having changed his face to resemble that of a computer from a parallel universe "with whom he'd once fallen madly in love".
Kristine Kochanski (originally portrayed by Clare Grogan before Chloë Annett took on the role from series VII) was initially a Red Dwarf navigation officer whom Lister had a crush on (later retroactively altered to be his ex-girlfriend) and whose memory he had cherished ever since. In one episode, the crew happens upon an alternative dimension where Kochanski survived the Red Dwarf cadmium II accident. She joins Lister and the crew after the link to her own dimension collapses. By the first episode of the Red Dwarf: Back to Earth specials, Lister believes her dead, but it is later revealed that Kryten (the sole witness to her "death") had lied to Lister. Kochanski had instead fled the ship in a Blue Midget when it became clear Lister's complete lack of self-respect and indulgence on excesses was slowly killing him, which greatly depressed her. Lister is advised by fans of the television series to find her in "the next series" and to make amends(The character does not, however, ultimately appear in the 10th series).