Lister
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Captain's
Comments:
Has requested sick leave due to diarrhoea on no less than 900 occasions.
Left his previous job as a supermarket trolley attendant after ten years
to avoid being tied down to a career. Promotion prospects - zero.
As one might have expected from the infant Lister, he was not so much 'born'
as 'found'.
He was discovered in a cardboard box beneath a pool table in the Aigburth
Arms public house, Liverpool at approximately six weeks of age.
He was adopted by a Mr and Mrs Wilmot, but his stepfather died when Lister
was six. (Note: To get away from the young Lister? I don't think we can
rule this out.) By the age of 11, Lister was living with his grandmother
- a rotund lady with a penchant for head-butting French teachers.
Lister's early friendships - most notably with "Duncan," whose
family fled to Spain after their father pulled a bank job - seem to have
encouraged the criminal side of his personality. Most people steal towels
from hotels, Lister stole a bed; he was also repeatedly caught scrumping
for cars. (Note: Why does he never steal soap, or clean socks?)
Education was limited to 97 minutes in art college. (Note: Actually adequate
time to cover what is otherwise a 3 year syllabus.) Previous work experience
includes playing gigs as worse-than-Steps rock band 'Smeg and the Heads,'
and parking trolleys at a Megamart.
During a drunken pub-crawl based on the Monopoly board, Lister somehow ended
up on Mimas in a gingham dress and fishing waders sporting a worrying rash
and a passport bearing the name Emily Berkenstein. He spent the next months
living in a luggage locker. (Note: If he can fold himself that small, I
should have had him cleaning the ship's ducts.)
Joining the Space Corps in the hopes of finding free passage home, Lister
discovered that Red Dwarf would not reach Earth for four and a half years.
He smuggled a Cat into the ship's air ducts in order to take advantage of
the statutory punishment - 18 months in stasis. (Note: They used to call
it suspended animation, until somebody pointed out that some technicians
were never really that animated in the first place.)
A cadmium II leak killed the crew shortly thereafter. (Note: See my report
on the incompetence of 2nd Technician Arnold Rimmer, files 5 through 948)
Lister was revived after the radiation half-life had faded - approximately
three million years later. (Note: He prefers to count it in ice-ages, that
way it's only four.)
During the subsequent five years, Lister was joined by Rimmer, a hologramatic
version of his former bunkmate, Holly, the ship's senile computer, a life-form
evolved from his cat, Kryten, a rescued series 4000 mechanoid, and a version
of navigation officer Kristine Kochanski from a parallel dimension. (Note:
Order industrial strength paracetamol.)
Skipping through some fairly grotesque occurrences (including the worst,
and messiest, case of space mumps ever recorded), and the rather bizarre
fact that Lister is his own father (with his ex-girlfriend Kochanski emerging
as his Mom), Lister was partially responsible for a nanobotic rebuilding
of the Red Dwarf ship - which he had carelessly mislaid - and its crew.
(Note: This means me.)
Lister is currently serving two years in the ship's brig for misuse of confidential
files. He is sharing a bunk with the resurrected Arnold Rimmer. (Note: Talk
about hard time!)
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Rimmer
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Captain's
Comments:
There's a saying amongst the officers: "If a job's worth doing, it's
worth doing well. If it's not worth doing, give it to Rimmer." He
aches for responsibility but constantly fails the engineering exam. Astoundingly
zealous, possibly mad, probably has more teeth than brain cells. Promotion
prospects - comical.
Rimmer is the youngest of four brothers
- the others being John, Howard and Frank, all of whom are high-flyers
in the Space Corps - and seems to have been the victim of some extraordinarily
psychotic parenting. His father was a half-crazed military failure, who
made up for his own inadequacy (being one inch below Corps regulation
height) by stretching his sons on a rack. (Note: By the time Frank was
11 he was 6'5".)
His mother seems to have spent a great deal of time with more successful
officers in positions that would baffle most balloon-modellers, (Note:
Contact Rimmer's mother, mention you're a captain) and Rimmer divorced
his parents at the age of 14, only retaining access to the family dog
every fourth weekend.
Graduating from Io House (the boarding school which enforced his wearing
of boxing gloves while in bed), Rimmer enlisted in the Samaritans. In
one morning, six people committed suicide, including a wrong number who
only called for the cricket scores. (Note: The papers dubbed the day 'Lemming
Sunday.') With a maintenance course from Saturn Tech under his belt, Rimmer
elected to enrol in the Space Corps and work his way up the ranks.
Rimmer entered the Corps at the level of third technician, and managed
to climb the ladder all the way to... well, second technician. (Note:
I owe Todhunter $£10 on that bet.) He has taken and failed the astro-navigation
and engineering exams 13 times - the most fascinating of which resulted
in him writing 'I am a fish' 400 times on his paper. (Note: Send the paper
to Dr. McClaren for psych evaluation.)
Despite this failing, Rimmer continued to lie to his mother. While his
father suffered a series of strokes (Note: Accusations that this was caused
by Rimmer's perpetual failure are unfounded), he told her that he had
reached the position of 'Rear Admiral Lieutenant General.' In reality
he was still making sure the vending machines didn't run out of fun-size
crunchy bars.
At best an incompetent fool, it was Rimmer's failure to repair a drive
plate correctly which caused the cadmium II leak that killed the ship's
crew. (Note: Drag Rimmer over the coals for killing me.) He died also,
but was revived as a hologram to keep surviving crew member Dave Lister
sane. (Note: Check Holly's sanity chip.)
Rimmer's personality was replicated exactly. His fascination with 20th
century telegraph poles, his love of Hammond organ music and morris dancing
and his enthusiasm for war-based board game Risk continued. (Note: As
did his curious pride for his swimming certificates.)
Ironically, Rimmer's life has improved immeasurably since he died. He
had sex for a second time (Note: Apparently the woman, Nirvanah Crane,
was in no way hampered by mental illness. Can this be right?) and was
posthumously promoted to officerhood. (Note: Although I'm not entirely
sure that Second Tech David Lister - current occupation 'bum' - is permitted
to promote within the field.)
Rimmer was last seen heading off into the big black, replacing his heroic
counterpart 'Ace' when the latter was mortally wounded. His inability
to tell the ignition from the ejector seat may hamper his chances as a
hero for infinite dimensions. (Note: Make a new bet with
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Kryten
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Originally
a service mechanoid aboard the Nova V, Kryten inadvertently killed the
entire crew and crashed the ship when he decided to give the main and
back-up computers a good soapy clean. The three other survivors of the
crash - mapping officers Jane Air, Tracey Johns and Anne Gill - perished
soon afterwards, but Kryten did not appear to notice and kept feeding
and dressing them regardless.
His first arrival aboard Red Dwarf was short-lived - his willingness to
serve was so abused by Rimmer that Kryten rebelled, took Lister's space
bike and fled into the night. Soon afterwards he was found to have crashed
into an asteroid. Lister toiled to fix the droid, but was unable to fully
restore his original personality. (Or his accent, which altered from upper-class
English to Canadian.)
Despite being voted 'the big-eared, ugly one' by his other spare heads
(all of which would later be destroyed by a nega-drive blow-back), Kryten
attracted the attentions of Camille, a pleasure GELF whose love Kryten
would sadly lose to her husband, Hector.
Maintaining a staunch belief in Silicon Heaven, Kryten continues to take
lessons from Dave Lister in lying and rudimentary insults. He has also
mastered pomposity if he does say so himself - although when ambivalent
he does have the look of a dog chewing a caramel toffee. He has also -
and quite by accident - begun to exhibit a possessive jealousy towards
Kristine Kochanski over Lister.
All these character flaws - of which Kryten had become rightly proud -
were nearly lost when his corrupted files were repaired by Red Dwarf scientists
and the Data Doctor program. However his ability to display ambivalence
came through, re-corrupting his circuitry and returning him to the messed-up
mech he was.
Harbouring a desire to be human, Kryten was lucky enough to get his wish
when his part-organic brain allowed his DNA to be transformed. Discoveries
of non-functional nipples, mediocre visual functions and disturbing underpant
activity, however, forced the mechanoid to rethink his position and change
back.
Kryten's more unfortunate features - his obsessive mothering and a head
shaped like a novelty condom - came from his designer, Professor Mamet,
in a mockery of John Warburton, the fiancée who jilted her. He
also had a furious temper, prompting Mamet to give Kryten and his kind
nega-drives in which to store their negative emotions.
Kryten is currently serving time in the brig on floor 13. He is in the
women's wing, sharing a cell with Kochanski - the decision having been
taken that his lack of male genitalia automatically categorise him as
female.
Operational notes: Kryten has attempted to create himself a penis, nick-named
Archie. It was last seen scurrying towards Hollister's office. I think
Kryten's sentence is about to get longer...
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Cat
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Captain's
Comments:
When David Lister broke quarantine and smuggled a black cat named Frankenstein
aboard Red Dwarf his plan to skip six months' work by being imprisoned
in stasis was almost flawless. Apart from that whole 'cadmium II leak/crew
wiped-out' thing.
The heavily-pregnant
cat, safely sealed in the ship's cargo hold, gave birth to litter after
litter which, after three-million years, evolved into a humanoid life-form:
Felis sapiens.
(Note: The key moment in cat civilisation was apparently not the discovery
of fire or the wheel, but rather the automatic trouser-press.)
The cats' religion was based around a god named 'Cloister' who saved Frankenstein
- the holy mother - by being frozen in time, allowing the cat's virgin
birth to continue unhindered. (Note: 'Virgin birth' my butt! It was a
big black Tom on Titan.) Their image of heaven - Fuchal - features Lister's
Fijian dream to set up a hot-dog and donut diner.
A holy war followed between that cats who believed the donut diner hats
should be red and those who thought they were supposed to be blue. (Note:
They were actually supposed to be green.) As the war subsided, the two
factions fled Red Dwarf in two arks in search of Fuchal. Sadly their guiding
star-chart was in actuality Lister's old dirty laundry list, and the first
ark flew straight into an asteroid.
Left behind were the sick and the lame, the dying. The Cat was cared for
by a blind cat priest after his parents - a cripple and an idiot - passed
away. The Cat was later adopted by David Lister as a replacement for Frankenstein.
(Note: The cat seems unfazed by meeting his people's deity, perhaps because
his supposed 'god' is often to be found trimming his toe-nails with his
teeth.)
The Cat was predominantly self-educated, (Note: Particularly hard were
Thursdays, when he had double nothing) and has managed to avoid 'the W
word' (work) almost entirely. Until his imprisonment, that is, when he
was put to rock duty. (Note: This actually only entails changing rock
records on the ships' PA system every 45 minutes.)
The Cat owns an extensive wardrobe and harbours a severe desire to get
close to real, actual women. (Note: His recorded dreams include one which
featured himself, three girls and a family-sized tub of banana yoghurt.
I have yet to recover this from Dr McClaren.) On several occasions the
Cat has been transformed into his alter-ego, Duane Dibbley, a pointless
loser whose overbite could open beer bottles. (Note: He does, however,
continue to carry a triple-thick condom, just in case - apparently his
enthusiasm has not been dampened by the ineffectiveness of his extra-strong
spot-cream.)
'The Cat' remains otherwise un-named. (Note: Claims that his middle name
is 'Superficial' have proved to be false.) Amongst his most distinguishing
features are pointed teeth, colour-co-ordinated internal-organs and six
nipples. (Note: Apparently the female of the species is extremely easy
to please in bed.)
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Holly
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Red
Dwarf's on-board computer, and the inventor of the new decimal sound 'Hol
Rock'. Despite an original Operational IQ of 6000, Holly had always been
quirky - during the astro-navigation exam Holly instigated urine testing
in case any urine attempted to cheat - but he is now a fully-fledged sufferer
from computer senility.
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Holly
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Holly's first love
was a Sinclair ZX81, but she was cheap, stupid and she wouldn't load -
not for him, anyway. He later fell for Hilly, his female self from a parallel
universe whom he encountered when he invented the Holly Hop Drive. Indeed,
he fell so badly that he chose to take on her face in a head sex-change
operation. (This would remain until the nanobots restored his core program.)
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