Red Dwarf/Legion

Legion
Season 6, Episode 2
Airdate	October 14, 1993
Written by	Rob Grant, Doug Naylor
Directed by	Andy DeEmmony
← 6x01 Psirens	6x03 → Gunmen of the Apocalypse
Red Dwarf — Season Six

Legion is the second episode of the sixth season of Red Dwarf, and the thirty-second episode overall.

Guest Stars: Nigel Williams (Legion)

Plot Overview

Starbug is still 24 hours behind Red Dwarf. Supplies are running short. Kryten says, "We've recycled the water so often it's beginning to taste like Dutch lager." They have no meat, and space weevils have gotten into their corn supply.

Kryten has cooked a meal for Lister, secretly featuring a rat-sized space weevil as the meat. He garnishes it and serves it to a blissfully unaware Lister, who has no problem gobbling it down.

The Cat calls a "swirly thing" alert, because he "smells" something wrong out there. Rimmer, smeghead that he is, insists that they go to blue alert, even though everyone who could possibly be concerned by a blue alert are already present.

They are enveloped in an energy field and transported to an abandoned military research base. Even though there are no life signs initially, they meet an entity who calls himself Legion. With very little in the way of a preamble, Legion updates Rimmer's hologram projector from "soft light" to "hard light". A "hard light" hologram can do everything that a normal human can do, including touch things. Outwardly though, Rimmer appears unchanged, except that his uniform is now blue instead of red.

Rimmer invites Legion to join them on their journey back to Earth, but Legion has other plans. He intends to keep them at the base for the rest of their lives. He shows them to their rooms. He has outfitted each room to the precise tastes of its occupant. For Lister this means: Sugar Puff Sandwiches, two dozen eight-packs, and a spare pair of sneakers in the ice-box.

Although their accomodations are execellent, a gilded cage is still a cage, so Lister devises a plan from the movie "Revenge of the Surfboarding Killer Bikini Vampire Girls." Unfortunately Legion knows about that particular movie, and is ready for the attack. In the scuffle that follows, Legion's mask is knocked off, and we see that his face is a composite of Lister, Rimmer, the Cat, and Kryten.

Kryten determines that Legion is a gestalt entity that combines their memories and personalities into a composite consciousness. He is an experiment in collective intelligence. Originally he was made up of geniuses. He created great works and flourished, but one by one they all grew old and died, leaving him as nothing. Nothing that is until they arrived.

Kryten asks for Lister's permission to test a supposition. Lister agrees and promptly has a chair broken over his head, rendering him unconscious. Kryten also knocks out the Cat. However, repeated attempts to knock out Rimmer fail, because he is now a "hard light" hologram, and nothing can hurt him. So at Kryten's bidding, he reaches into himself and turns himself off, leaving Kryten as the only conscious being in the room.

Now that he is made up of only Kryten, Legion is compelled to help Kryten take the others to Starbug and help them escape. As Legion is helping Kryten, he asks if Legion ever invented anything that could help them get back to Earth.

Later aboard Starbug we see that they have assembled a fully functional "star drive" that can get them back to Earth in nanoseconds. Kryten activates the unit. It levitates promisingly into the air, accelerates, moves wildly about the room, and then crashes through the hull and out into space never to be seen again. They forgot to bolt the semgging thing down!

Arc Advancement

Happenings

This episode marks the first time the word Dwarfer is used in an episode.

Characters

When they first meet the gestalt entity Legion...

• he upgrades Rimmer's hologram projection unit (light bee) to "hard light", meaning that Rimmer can now touch things and do anything a normal human can do with the added bonus that he is now virtually indestructible.
• he removes Lister's swollen appendix.

Referbacks

• After Legion upgrades Rimmer's hologram projector to "hard light"; and Kyrten realizes that Rimmer can now touch things, he says, "Puncture repair kit on standy, sir.", in reference to Rachel, Rimmer's inflatable sex doll.

Trivia

Allusions and References

• Both Kryten and Legion mention Lister's dislike of Doug McClure movies.
• When issuing his "ultimatum", Rimmer asks Kryten to broadcast on all known frequencies and in all known languages, including Welsh.
• As he is about to cower in the back, Rimmer mentions George S. Patton.
• Kryten lists the 23rd century scientists who were involved in the collective intelligence experiment: Heideger, Davro, Holder, and Quayle.
• In response to a doubtful Rimmer, Kryten says, "Just because I look like Herman Munster's stuntman, doesn't mean to say I can't appreciate art."
• Whilst trying to impress Legion, Rimmer pretends that they frequently contemplate Caravaggio's art.
• Kryten's list of eating techniquies include Jovian Boogle Hoops and Mercurian Boomerang Spoons.

Memorable Moments

Legion has prepared a 24th century Mamosian banquet for them. Everyone is trying to impress Legion so they can convince him to come back to Earth with them. So when it comes time to eat, and the only eating implements are Mamosian anti-matter chopsticks; nobody is willing to admit that they don't know how to use them. The only advice that Kryten can offer is that under no circumstances should they allow live sticks to touch.

The meal begins. Legion uses the chopsticks to levitate food through the air with finesse, right to his mouth. Kryten tries to follow suit, but is clearly having some difficulty. Unable to bring the food all the way to him, he begins to chase the food through the air with his mouth.

The others activate their chopsticks, and enjoy even less success than Kryten. Attempts to use more power cause the chopstick's energy fields to strain, shooting food through the air, hitting Rimmer. As they try harder, food soars through the air out of control, hitting them and falling on.

Quotes

Something is coming at Starbug. Rimmer has already been a pain in the arse and made them go to blue alert, and then ...

Rimmer: Step up to red alert.

Kryten: Sir, are you sure? It does mean changing the bulb.

Reviews

• Overall Grade: no reviews yet
• Review Breakdown: A+: 0 A: 0 A-: 0 B+: 0 B: 0 B-: 0 C+: 0 C: 0 C-: 0 D: 0 F: 0