Red Dwarf/Camille

Camille
Season 4, Episode 1
Airdate	February 14, 1991
Written by	Rob Grant, Doug Naylor
Directed by	Ed Bye
← 3x06 The Last Day	4x02 → D.N.A.
Red Dwarf — Season Four

Camille is the first episode of the fourth season of Red Dwarf, and the nineteenth episode overall.

Guest Stars: Judy Pascoe (Mechanoid Camille), Francesca Folan (Hologram Camille), Suzanne Rhatigan (Human Camille), Rupert Bates (Hector)

Plot Overview

As the show begins, we see Lister trying to teach Kryten to lie: to say (for instance) that a banana is a female aardvark. After some progess, they move on to insults. Due to Kryten's subservient programming, if he tries to call Mr. Rimmer a smeg head, he can only just barely force out the words "Smeee Heee".

Later while Kryten is taking Rimmer asteroid spotting, they discover a crashed ship on a doomed planet. Rimmer orders Kryten not to search for survivors, but Kryten goes down anyway.

An irate Rimmer calls Lister to complain. "He's got mad droid disease! He kept waving a banana in front of me, and calling it a female aardvark!"

On the planet Kryten finds a survivor, another merchanoid: a female series 4000 GTI! He falls in love with her (a compabability factor of 93.75%).

When he takes her back to Starbug, Rimmer sees her instead as a female hologram, who like him is also a 2nd technician and thinks he's charming.

Back aboard Red Dwarf, Lister sees her as a human female,very much to his liking. But when Rimmer and Lister talk to her at the same time, her secret is exposed. She is a pleasure GELF. Each person perceives her differently. They perceive her as the object of their own desires.

Camile comes to Lister's quarters and apologizes to everyone. At Kryten's bidding, she turns into her natural form, an amorphous, green blob. To spare her feelings, Kryten asks her on a date. "Parrot's Bar on G deck ... eight o'clock", he says.

They have their date, they dance, they take a ride in Starbug, and they watch Casablanca together. Their evening is interrupted when Camile's "husband". Hector, comes looking for her.

When Camile is leaving to be with Hector, Kryten paraphrases Rick's words from Casablanca, "We'll always have Parrot's."

Trivia

Allusions and References

• This episode is loaded with references to the 1942 film Casablanca.
• Reference is also made to Admiral Lord Nelson's "I see no ships" statement in the 1801 Battle of Copenhagen.
• Lister calls Tales of the Riverbank - The Next Generation a classic.
• At one point when Lister is trying to sweet talk Camile, he says, "I've seen every episode of St. Elsewhere."
• When Lister and Rimmer are both talking to Camile at the same time, Rimmer insists that Camile loves Reggie Wilson and Hammond organ music.
• After seeing Camile in her natural, blob-like state, Kryten points out that Camile still looks better than Carl Maulden.
• After Kryten sets up a date with Camile, Lister notes that when Steve McQueen met the blob (in the 1958 science-fiction/horror film The Blob), he tried to kill it.

Memorable Moments

The Cat has heard that when anyone looks at Camile, they see the object of their desires. So he hurries to the medical bay to see for himself. When he gets there, he is stunned! He is so in love with himself, that he (the Cat) is the object of his own desires!

Quotes

• Kryten asks Camile, "What is that fragrence? It smells divine." Flattered, Camile responds with a smile, "WD-40".
• What Rimmer thinks of Kryten: "I think you look like a giant, half-chewed, rubber tipped pencil."
• After Cat sees what Camile really looks like he says, "She looks like something that dropped out of the sphynx's nose."
• Kryten (paraphrasing the film Casablanca):
  I'm no good at being noble kid, but it's pretty obvious the problems of two blobs and a droid don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy cosmos.

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