The best episodes of Red Dwarf
Ranked by viewer rating, highs first. Lit marks on the season rail place this list across the run. Vote on a placement to back it or contest it.
- 01
Lister wants Holly to load Kochanski's hologram up as a 2nd hologram, Rimmer decides that another hologram of himself would be much better and hides Kochanski's record tapes.
- 02
Kryten, Red Dwarf's on board mechanoid, rescues a female droid - Camille - from a crashed vessel. She's a 4000 series just like him, only a GTi model with realistic toes and a slide-back sunroof head. Kryten finds himself falling in advanced mutual compatibility on the basis of a primary ident (what humans call "love at first sight") only to find that true advanced mutual compatibility never runs in a non-glitch, bug-free way.
- 03
In a universe almost identical to our own, another Arnold Rimmer exists. A test pilot in the Space Corps, he is charming, popular, brave and modest. After his test craft breaks the speed of reality, he finds himself face to face with his counterpart aboard Red Dwarf.
- 04
Rimmer is taken prisoner inside his own mind and ends up being stripped, oiled, manacled, licked, chained, taunted, humiliated and nearly has a knobbly thing the size of a Mexican agarve cactus jammed up where only customs men dare to probe.
- 05
Rimmer is transmitted from Red Dwarf to the advanced Holoship "Enlightenment" which contains the cream of the Space Corps. Everything he has dreamed of exists on this ship. Can he earn a commission to join this fantastic vessel?
- 06
The Inquisitor roams through Time weeding out life's wastrels and deleting the worthless - the Red Dwarf crew are in big, big trouble.
- 07
After an encounter at a viral research centre, Rimmer forces the crew to spend twelve weeks in quarantine. But who's watching the watcher?
- 08
Trapped aboard a disintegrating ship, Rimmer abandons his crewmates, taking the only remaining escape pod. As he accelerates towards a nearby wormhole, he discovers the pod has no steering controls.
- 09
Holly regains her genius level IQ and for reasons best known to herself powers down the ship, leaving the crew drifting helplessly towards a White Hole. Will Rimmer sacrifice his hologramatic life to save the rest of the crew?
- 10
The crew of Red Dwarf discover an abandoned space ship on an ocean bed but suddenly the salvage operation doesn't sound quite so sexy when they realise all of the occupants of the vessel committed suicide. Attack by a gigantic sea monster makes escape the favourite option.
- 11
When an identical ship materialises alongside Starbug, the crew are alarmed to receive an SOS call from themselves fifteen years into the future.
- 12
Kryten discovers his built-in expiry date is almost up and he has less than twenty-four hours to live. The crew are determined to give the mechanoid the best night of his life. For the first time, he experiences true pleasure and wants to delay his ascent into Silicon Heaven, the resting place for all electrical appliances. Then his replacement shows up..
- 13
Innate justice does not exist anywhere in the known universe except, that is, for Justice World, an abandoned penal colony equipped with a "justice field" which inflicts the consequences of a crime on its perpetrator. The innocent have nothing to fear. Rimmer is in big trouble.
- 14
A matter transporter whisks the crew to Waxworld - a giant theme park, where the waxdroids have broken their programming, and are running amok. Hitler, Caligula and the Boston Strangler lead an army of darkness against the forces of Elvis, Gandhi and Stan Laurel.
- 15
After picking up a distress call, Lister, Rimmer and Cat get all spiffed up expecting to met the first women they have seen in who knows how long. A surprise is in store for all of them.
- 16
The crew goes on a bender on a small moon, after they return Rimmer gets depressed about his love life. Lister then shares one of his memories with Rimmers hologram tape and has Holly set Rimmer up so he thinks it is his memory.
- 17
In pursuit of the stolen Red Dwarf, Lister and Co are attacked by Psirens - creatures who lure space-farers to their deaths with a lethal combination of telepathic manipulation and scanty clothing.
- 18
Kryten contracts a deadly computer virus, and Rimmer and Co are forced to enter his electronic mindscape. They find themselves in a wild west town, facing a gunfight against metaphysical gunslingers.
- 19
The Dwarfers need replacement engine parts from the fearsome stomach-churningly ugly "Kinitawowi". But the GELF tribe are interested in only one trade: Lister must marry the chief's daughter.
- 20
Rimmer's much more dashing alter ego, Ace Rimmer, arrives on Starbug terminally wounded. He asks Rimmer to take his place as the swashbuckling guardian of the Universe. Reluctantly Rimmer has to turn him down as he's too busy cataloguing his shoe collection.
- 21
Lister finds himself missing Rimmer - until Kryten takes him on "The Rimmer Experience", a virtual reality ride featuring highlights of the departed crewmember's much-loathed life.
- 22
On board the mining ship Red Dwarf deep in space are Dave Lister and Arnold Rimmer. Two crew members that are the exact opposite of each other. Dave, a carefree slob and Arnold a neat, precise Smeghead. After a accident to the ship where Lister is the only survivor, things start getting interesting. With Holly, the ships computer that has a IQ of 6000, Dave is about to discover life as he never imagined.
- 23
Rimmer talks Holly into telling him the information that Captain Hollister put into Lister and his personal files. Holly informs Rimmer about a unidentified object heading for Red Dwarf and Rimmer brings the pod on board. Lister follows Cat to see where he goes when he disappears off the ships sensors.
- 24
Lister goes down to a lower deck that Rimmer was supposed to clear of radiation and ends up sick. Because of the sickness, two personalities of his manifest as solid forms. One as Confidence and the other pure Paranoia.
- 25
The crew gets a mail pod from Earth, Rimmer gets bad news. The pod also contains a video game called "Better Than Life" and they try it out.
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