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[opening credits & Red Dwarf theme]
[Black screen. Holly's face appears, floating in the middle of the otherwise black screen. (This is the old Holly, btw). He blinks a few times and begins.]
HOLLY: I am Holly, a computer with an IQ of 6000, whose currently stuck bumming around space with the last human being left alive--yes, it's my fault, I admit it, lay off won't you?--a hologramme of his dead bunkmate--again, my fault, get over it okay?--a creature who evolved from Lister's pet cat, and an android we picked up on a derelict who will, eventually, be responsible for my part getting written out of the show, all in a big red tin can of a spaceship that hasn't had a tune-up in three million years. To tell you the truth I'm not sure why I bother saving the human race somedays, you know? Oh well. On to the story.
[Belowdecks, somewhere on the Red Dwarf. Lister has commandeered the scutters into helping him put together some huge, shapeless mechanical contraption that he's obviously quite entranced by. Rimmer is standing to the side, against one wall, with his arms crossed.]
RIMMER: *smug* I don't care how many cans of Mexican beans you use to fuel that thing, Lister, I'm telling you it will never fly. Why I even bother watching you contrive these schemes is beyond me.
LISTER: [looks up from screwing something onto the machine and pulls a cigarette from behind his ear] It's 'cause you're bored, man. Could ya hand me that hammer?
RIMMER: [picks up a hammer, stares at it, hands it to Lister] But it's inane! I was meant for bigger things than this! Bigger, better things than slumming it through the galaxy with a man who chews his toenails!
LISTER: Right, it's finished. Where's the Cat?
RIMMER: How should I know? Probably prancing around the cargo decks looking for something to break.
LISTER: Guess he's gonna miss out on the greatest launch in history then! Unless he gets down here in five minutes...can ya get the word to him, Hol'? And Kryten?
HOLLY: [Blinks onto nearest monitor] Sure thing mate. [blink off again]
[Lister stands back and stares at his creation happily. A moment later the Cat walks in, followed by Kryten.]
CAT: What's the big idea, anyway? I was takin' a nap.
LISTER: Just want you to see this, that's all.
CAT: What is it this time?
LISTER: It's a racing pod. Like in Star Wars Episode One. I figured we could make another one and have little tournaments around the cargo bay.
CAT: [eyes machine] I hate to tell you this, buddy, but that does NOT look like a racing pod. I saw that movie too, and a pair of rockets packed to a garbage can is not going to fly.
[Kryten just smiles indulgently.]
LISTER: Oh ye of little faith. Watch and learn!
[Lister fiddles with a knob or two, flips a big button labeled 'ON' and stands back.]
[There's a huge explosion. All three crewmates are thrown against the charred, smoking wall, lying in what remains of the 'racing pod.']
MEANWHILE....
[All five Gundams are battling OZ troops. Enemy mobile suits shatter into pieces, lots of things blow up. Heero ponders the self-destruct button.]
HEERO: Omae o korosu! All of you!
WUFEI: Justice will be served!!! For Natakuuuu!
QUATRE: You really should have surrendered....
TROWA: I'm not THAT easy to kill....
DUO: Diiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[Suddenly a huge explosion wracks the very fabric of space and time, opening a rift in the universe in the form of an orange swirly thing in space. The entire battle is sucked into it. The ordinary mobile suits blow up, but the Gundams are made of stronger stuff, and survive the dimensional shift...so far.]
QUATRE: Where /are/ we?
WUFEI: What the hell was that?
HEERO: If that's a new OZ weapon, it's not something anybody ever brought up before.
DUO: I don't think we're in the colonies anymore, Toto. Er, Heero.
HEERO: Shut up, Duo.
[The Red Dwarf floats into visible range.]
ALL: What the hell is THAT?
BACK ON THE RED DWARF....
[Lister, Cat and Rimmer gingerly pick themselves up from the debris and look around.]
RIMMER: I never want to be the type to say 'I told you so,' but--well, yes I do. I told you so, Lister.
CAT: I hate to agree with goalpost head there, but this time--you blew a hole in my seventeenth-best suit!
LISTER: [looks forlornly at the remains of his pod] I know...sorry guys.
HOLLY: [appears in what remains of the broken monitor] Um, guys? I think you should come up and see this....
[They all go rushing to the bridge. Leaning close to the viewscreen, all their eyes get big and their faces twist up....]
RIMMER: What on earth is that?
CAT: A giant human-shaped robot thing in space!
LISTER: Don't look now, guys, but there's more of 'em. One...two...three...four...five? Five of them?
HOLLY: And lifesigns in every single one.
RIMMER, CAT, LISTER, KRYTEN: In /all/ of them?
HOLLY: That's right. Every single one. I hate repeating myself.
LISTER: Bad news...they've all got fancy guns.
RIMMER: You mean as opposed to us, with our garbage cannon?
KRYTEN: I've opened a hailing frequency. Hello...calling the pilots of the flying androids. This is the JMC Transport ship Red Dwarf--
[He is cut off as Heero's voice crackles over the speaker]
HEERO: Omae o korosu.
[Rimmer, Lister, Kryten, and Cat stare at each other.]
LISTER: What'd he say?
CAT: It sounded like "Oh my--" no, never mind. You don't want to know what I thought it sounded like.
RIMMER: It's probably something horrible, like "I'm going to kill you." Just shoot him down now!
LISTER: With what?
RIMMER: With the quantum torpedos!
KRYTEN: An excellent suggestion, sir, with only two minor drawbacks. One, we don't have any quantum torpedos, and two--
RIMMER: [interrupts] Yes, yes, right, whatever. So I suppose we just stand here and get blown up by C-3PO's big brother there?
[The speaker crackles again. This time it's Duo's voice buzzing across the comm.]
DUO: Hey, don't worry about Heero, he always gets like that when he's nervous. Mind if we come down and try to figure out what happened?
[Commercial break]
[Fade in. The RD crew and all 5 gundam pilots are in the lounge. Lister and Duo are happily babbling at each other over tall cans of JMC-issue beer. Trowa and Quatre sit on one side of the table, looking a little nervous. Wufei sits very stiffly, looking around in distaste at the mess of a ship. Heero stands against the wall, scowling, his arms folded across his chest. Rimmer is pacing.]
[Kryten enters with a tray of hors d'ourves, including little chocolate fingers arranged into the shape of a log cabin.]
LISTER: That looks delish, Kryten! Course we're gonna run out of those chocolate things if we keep feedin' 'em to people!
KRYTEN: I'm sorry sir, it was that or a Space Weevil.
[Everybody, but /everybody/, makes a disgusted face.]
RIMMER: Much as I hate to interrupt this little fraternity-party of idiots, [glaring at Lister and Duo], but we need to get down to the real issue here. Which is, as anyone can see--
HEERO: Where we are, and how to get back.
KRYTEN: Ah, yes. Well it seems to me that the most likely possibility is this: that the force of the explosion of Mr Lister's...forgive me, but racing pod...opened up a rift between dimensions.
LISTER: Oh! Kinda like that other time, when we ran into the female versions of ourselves and I had twins!
QUATRE: You do this sort of thing all the time?
CAT: Well, we've actually only flipped dimensions a couple of times. But blowing things up on accident and causing mass havoc? Sure, all the time.
HEERO: [looking interested] So we just blow up something else, and we go back home?
HOLLY: [appearing on monitor] It's not quite that simple.
HEERO: [quietly] Too bad.
WUFEI: What /do/ we need to do then?
HOLLY: Give me a break, fellas, I've only been working on this for half an hour. Just because I've got an IQ of six thousand doesn't mean I have an instant answer to life, the universe, and everything. You've got to give a guy a little time, haven't you?
KRYTEN: We need to find a way to duplicate the incident that caused the rift to begin with. Unfortunately, that was Mr Lister's pod racer experiment, and...
LISTER: And I can't remember what I used in it. That's what you're saying, isn't it?
RIMMER: What have I told you, Listy? Haven't I said it a million times? Deviation from official procedure endangers everyone!
DUO: [nudges Lister with his beer can] Are there any more of these?
LISTER: Sure, man, in the fridge, help yourself.
[Duo disappears in search of more beer.]
HOLLY: All right, listen, I've got it. [Everyone turns their attention to monitor.] All we have to do is recreate the Holly Hop Drive. We give it to the Gundam pilots, and they end up--
LISTER: [interrupts] They end up in a world with their female doubles, Hol. I don't think that's what they had in mind.
HEERO: [under his breath] Actually it sounds interesting....
WUFEI: [shudders] No, thank you.
DUO: [from offstage] KISAAMMAAAA!!!! HEERO!!
[Heero vaults the table and runs for the kitchen, followed the everyone else en masse. Duo stands in the middle of the kitchen with his gun out, pointed at a huge, slobbery, goopy creature that has just jumped out of the wastebasket.]
WUFEI & QUATRE: AAAAUGH!!
TROWA & HEERO: [stare and point guns at Thing]
LISTER: Oh, smeg...who let that thing in here?
WUFEI: You know it?
LISTER: Yeah, fraid so, it's a polymorph. It goes around eating people's emotions.
DUO: [backing away] Maybe Heero and Trowa should take care of it, then. If it gets them, we won't notice a difference.
QUATRE: Hey! Trowa has emotions!
TROWA: [blushes]
DUO: [shrugs] You should know. Anyways I'm not gonna argue about it with you while there's a seven-foot-tall killing machine waving tentacles at me.
[Polymorph lunges. Heero and Trowa shoot it, and it slithers back into the cracks in the kitchen.]
KRYTEN: Might I suggest we adjourn back to the other room, sirs?
[Everyone goes back out to the lounge again. Duo pauses long enough to grab another beer out of the fridge. So does Lister.]
RIMMER: Where...where did that come from...?
HOLLY: Lister's sock drawer. It's been sleeping there since we picked up the pod we got the first one in.
LISTER: /Holly/! You mean you couldn't have mentioned this some time earlier?
HOLLY: I didn't think it was important.
HEERO: So how do we kill it?
HOLLY: Well, that's the trick, isn't it? Its biology is a bit different from the last one. It doesn't work quite the same way.
LISTER: Holly...explain....
[commercial break #2]
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Copyright 2005