Red Dwarf/Bodyswap

Bodyswap
Season 3, Episode 4
Airdate	December 5, 1989
Written by	Rob Grant, Doug Naylor
Directed by	Ed Bye
← 3x03 Polymorph	3x05 → Timeslides
Red Dwarf — Season Three

Bodyswap is the fourth episode of the third season of Red Dwarf, and the sixteenth episode overall.

Guest Stars: Lia Williams (Voice of Carol Brown)

Plot Overview

Rimmer and Kryten are in the science lab. One of the scutters has gone mad and re-wired everything. They don't know what the auto-destruct is wired to. Rimmer tells Lister, "Don't touch anything."

Lister goes to get the Cat, and on their way back, he pauses to order a milkshake and a crispy bar. The food dispenser responds by activating the self-destruct countdown! They have only 15 minutes. Lister tries to cancel, but each time he tries, they lose another minute.

Only the captain or a senior officer can override the self-destruct countdown. Since they're all dead, Kryten gets the idea of doing a "mind swap" using the hologram disc of one of the senior officers.

Lister's mind is transferred onto a tape, while Executive Officer Carol Brown is placed in his body. She enters her abort code, but the computer refuses to accept it, and the countdown continues. Everyone cringes as doom approaches: 4... 3... 2... 1...

Thump: the sound of a plastic milkshake bottle and a crispy bar coming out of the food dispenser. As it turns out, there was no bomb for the self-destruct. Holly had gotten rid of it ages ago!

Back in their quarters, disaster averted, Rimmer convinces Lister that he is getting fat, and voluneers to mind swap with him. Through a strict regimen of diet and exercise Rimmer would return Lister's body to him fit as a fiddle, after 14 days. Lister agrees to the conditions and they swap.

However, once Rimmer is in Lister's body, he cuts off Lister's locks, takes up smoking, and neglects important personal hygene tasks such as looking after Lister's athelete's foot. And the strict diet never even had a chance! Rimmer gorges himself, feasting every chance he gets.

Lister (in Rimmer's hologramatic body) calls Rimmer to the scales. The body has gained two stone (28 pounds)! Not only that, Rimmer was wearing a girdle to hide the extra weight! Lister makes Rimmer swap their minds back immediately.

But when Lister wakes up the next morning, he is a hologram again. During the night, Rimmer has ordered Kryten to chloroform him, and swap their minds. Rimmer has fled the ship (with Lister's body) in Starbug. He is drinking, dancing, eating pastries, and generally doing a poor job of piloting the shuttle.

Cat and Lister give chase in White Midget. The chase ends abruptly, when Rimmer crashes Starbug into an asteroid. After that, they swap their minds back to normal.

In the closing scene, Lister is sitting in his bunk, recovering from wounds suffered in the shuttle crash. Rimmer's visage waltzes in, speaking with the Cat's voice. Rimmer is at it again!

Arc Advancement

Happenings

One of the Starbug shuttles is crashed (again).

Characters

• After being drugged by Kryten, Lister calls Kryten "Captain Chloroform".
• Kryten claims that he cannot disobey an order from any human, no matter how insane they are.

Trivia

Memorable Moments

• Executive Officer Carol Brown is surprised to be in Lister's body: "Something's wrong. Something feels different. Wait a minute, I never used to be a man!"
• A hologramatic Lister is playing Scrabble with the Cat. Cat comes up with the word "JOZXYQK", claiming that it is the cat word for the sound you make, when you get your sexual organs trapped in something.
• After Rimmer crashes the shuttle, injuring Lister's body in the process; it looks as though Lister's body is missing an arm:
  Lister (hologram): Me arm! You've lost me arm!
  Rimmer (in Lister's body): I've lost your watch too.
  (Rimmer seems to find the whole situation quite humorous)
  Lister (hologram): You think it's funny?
  Rimmer (in Lister's body): No, but this is ...
  Rimmer gives Lister an obscene gesture with both hands!

Quotes

• Upon realizing that the only people who can abort the self-destruct countdown are dead
  Holly: I suppose in many ways I should have updated the system, really.
• When Rimmer takes Lister's body and flees in Starbug, he leaves a message for Lister. Part of that message is:
  ... don't try and follow me, otherwise ...
  (raising a gun to his head)
  ... the body gets it!

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