Red Dwarf: S04E06: Meltdown

The episode opens with a terribly boring story of Rimmer winning at Risk against one of his colleagues. Cat and Lister are bored to the point of exasperation when Kryten zips into the room using some sort of matter transporter. He beckons Lister to try it out with him and meet Cat and Rimmer in Starbug.

Unfortunately they materialise in the shower room. Kryten apparently forgot to engage the ‘depth function’. Lister insists that the walk to Starbug where the delectable Holly explains that the device can be used to hunt out oxygen rich planets within a 500 light year radius and allow them all to visit instantly.

Kryten does a quick scan and finds a planet 200, million light years away. He suggests that he and Rimmer go on to check if the atmosphere is breathable, if it is, they can send the paddle shaped transportation device back for use by Lister and Cat. Rimmer reluctantly agrees. However Rimmer points out that there is one flaw to the plan.

“No,” says Kryten, “I have taken your congenital cowardice into consideration.”
“I’m a Hologram, I can’t touch the thing!” Explains Rimmer.
“You do have a small physical presence.” Says Holly with a smirk and she reduces Rimmer to fit into his light beam unit (a gizmo that allows Rimmer to be transported). Kryten and Rimmer zip to the planet, which at first glance appears to be, like Earth. As Kryten returns the paddle they notice a pair of rather large Godzilla like creatures. They run off.

Lister and Cat bean down to the planet and right into a room with Hitler and two of his cronies. They beam out again as the two German officers’ point their guns. Unfortunately they beam themselves right into the fireplace and are captured. The transportation device is confiscated and Cat and Lister are thrown in a cell.

Kryten and Rimmer manage to escape the monsters only to be captured by Elvis and the Pope! Elvis points a machine gum at Kryten and tells him to go, “thataway“. When they get there, they are introduced to Einstein, Pythagoras, Marilyn Monroe and Stanley Laurel. Kryten works out that they are basically a group of animated wax dummy’s that have broken their programming and split into to groups, good and evil. The good, made up of philosophers, actors, musicians and academics, are at war with all the evil figures of human history such as Hitler, Caligula, and the Boston Strangler. There are few of them left, the goodies number only 20 and the baddies slightly more.

Rimmer sees his opportunity to become their leader. He will lead them to victory!

Lister and Cat are in a cell waiting for their execution when Abraham Lincoln is thrown in the cell with them! Lincoln is telling the same story to Lister and Cat. They are interrupted by Caligula and Rasputin who want to know how the transportation device works. Lister, Cat and Abe Lincoln trick the two baddies into materialising into a cupboard and make their escape to the goodies enclave.

Rimmer meanwhile is trying to know into shape the read-tag goodie army of twenty. He does however have a plan. By the time Lister and Cat arrive he has changed into a Generals outfit and is ready to lead them against Hitler and the other baddies.

There is however method to his madness. He sets the majority of his army against the baddies and gets Kryten and Queen Victoria to circle around the rear. We watch in dismay as Marilyn Monroe and Ghandi and the others are needlessly slaughtered against the baddie army. Queen V. however manages to break into the command centre and kill Hitler and his officers. Kryten then turns up the heating controls and the rest of the baddies melt!

This clever and fiendish plan succeeds, though later Lister, Cat and Kryten are, for the most point disappointed. Rimmer’s plan may have worked, but at the expense of all the wax figures. Not one survived.

Rimmer tries to defend himself, “You make it sound so negative Lister. The deranged menace that once threatened this world is now vanquished!”
“No it isn’t,” replies Lister, “you’re still here….. now all the corpses that litter that battlefield can just lie there safe in the knowledge that snuffed it under a flag of peace and can now happily decompose in a land of freedom. You Smeghead!”
“There really is no pleasing some people!” Says Rimmer.

Before they return to the ship, Lister asks for Rimmer’s light beam container. Holly obliges and Lister swallows the small container. “It’s alright,” he tells the rest of the crew, “He’ll come out in a couple of days. Does anyone fancy a Vinderloo?”

And there the show, and season four, ends to the sound of a terrible rendition of the title song done in the style of Elvis Presley.

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This episode review is © 1999 – 2019 Tony Fawl.
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