Red Dwarf/Timeslides

Timeslides
Season 3, Episode 5
Airdate	December 12, 1989
Written by	Rob Grant, Doug Naylor
Directed by	Ed Bye
← 3x04 Bodyswap	3x06 → The Last Day
Red Dwarf — Season Three

Timeslides is the fifth episode of the third season of Red Dwarf, and the seventeenth episode overall.

Guest Stars: Robert Addie (Gilbert), Emile Charles (Young Lister), Simon Gaffney (young Rimmer), Stephen McKintosh ('Thicky' Holden), Koo Stark (Sabrina Mulholland-Jjones), Ruby Wax (Blaize Falconberger), Rupert Bates (Bodyguard), Richard Hainsworth (Bodyguard), Louisa Ruthven (Ski Woman), Mark Steel (Ski Man)

Plot Overview

While working in the ship's photo lab, Kryten has somehow animated the photographs that he was developing, so that they provide a window into the past.

Everyone has gathered to see the pictures. Kryten shows a photo of Rimmer's brother Frank's wedding, and Lister walks through the screen and into the picture. Rimmer's brother asks Lister to please get out of the picture. He's blocking the shot. But Lister is still marveling that he's in a picture, and isn't really Listening to Frank. That is until Frank starts hitting him in the stomach. Then Lister finds out that he can't leave the shot to either side. So he leaves the way he came in: back through the screen.

Kryten shows the next photo, a shot of Adolph Hitler at Nuremburg rally. Lister slips into this shot also. Kryten and the others are appalled to see Lister scuffle with Hitler, call him a nutter, and steal his briefcase. After Lister returns, they find that Lister has changed history: his face appears in a newspaper from that day.

Lister decides to use their time travel ability to give the idea of the tension sheet to himself when he was 17. Everyone goes with Lister this time into a picture of him performing on stage in a pub.

The band, Smeg and the Heads, is singing Lister's song "Om". When the young Lister has finished singing, our Lister brings him over to the table to meet everyone, and explain how the future turned out. The young Lister refuses to accept that the band didn't become famous rock stars, and the calls the elder Lister a "crypto-facist".

Eventually they leave the photograph and let the young Lister get on with his life. Shortly thereafter, Lister, Kryten, and the Cat disappear. Holly tells Rimmer that now it seems Dave Lister invented the tension sheet. He is featured on the television show Lifestyles of the Disgustingly Rich and Famous; and because he never signed up for Red Dwarf the Cat race never existed, and they never found Kryten. Rimmer is alone with Holly.

To remedy this situation Rimmer decides he will give himself the tension sheet. So he enters a boarding school photo, where he wakes a sleeping, eight-year-old Arnold Rimmer to tell him about the tension sheet. While he is explaining it, Fred Holden (in the next bunk) overhears them and starts asking questions, irritating the elder Rimmer. The adult Rimmer impatiently tells Holden to go back to sleep, and then finishes telling his boy-self about the tension sheet.

A gleeful Rimmer returns to the photo lab, bragging about how he will soon be ultra-rich. In short order Lister, Kryten, and the Cat return, but Rimmer does not disappear. Holly tells him that all he has done is set things back the way they were in the beginning: "Thickie" Holden invented the tension sheet.

Trivia

The Show

• Fred "Thickie" Holden, inventor of the tension sheet is married to Sabrina Mulholland-JJones, the Duke of Lincoln's eldest daughter.
• The only word in the song "Om", is "Om".
• The young Lister used the word "shady" to mean variously cool, weird, etc.

Allusions and References

• Kryten makes a joke (in bad taste) about the November, 1963 assassination of JFK.
• When a jubilant Rimmer returns from his old boarding school photograph, he sings If I Were a Rich Man, a song from the 1964 musical Fiddler on the Roof.

Memorable Moments

As the episode opens, we see the Cat playing tabletop golf and really ejoying it too. Lister on the other hand is not enjoying himself. He is bored with his life and is tired of playing silly games like tiddlywinks show jumping, unicycle polo, and Junior Angler (a fishing game for pre-schoolers). He says "I want to meet girls ... I want to make love."

The Cat's reply is, "Well Junior Angler's the best you're getting out of me, buddy!"

Quotes

• Kryten's definition of a pub:
  A meeting place where people attempt to achieve advanced states of mental incompetence by the repeated consumption of fermented vegetable drinks.
• After returning from the boarding school photo and setting history back the way it was, Rimmer discovers that he is no longer a hologram -- he is alive.
  Rimmer: Kryten, unpack Rachel and get out the puncture repair kit.

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