Red Dwarf: S06E06: Out of Time
This was the last show in the series, and boy, was it a cliffhanger!
The show opens with a dissertation from Rimmer who has decided that it was important for the crew to meet once a week to discuss problems and get things off their chest! He begins by telling them that Lister is a gerbil face, Cat is a git and the he wants desperately to fry Lister. He then closes the meeting.
Kryten, Lister and Cat talk about how life on Starbug has become boring and predictable. 
Suddenly they run into a stellar fog (tightly packed particles from an exploded supernova). There is a small explosion and Lister is rendered unconscious. They take him for an examination and Kryten finds to his disgust, that Lister is A ROBOT! Cat points out that he would have known if Lister as a robot because of his smell.
Kryten is convinced that Lister IS a robot. Kryten revives Lister and tells him that he is technically his a subordinate (only a 3000 series). This means that Lister should do the laundry from now on and that Kryten should get the front seat in the cockpit! Kryten gives Lister some Laundry and then asks him to bring refreshments.
Back in the ships cockpit however, it soon becomes apparent that they are travelling through pockets of unreality. Lister wasn’t a robot, it just seemed that way. Kryten puts Rimmer, Cat and Lister into suspended animation for three days so that they will be able to pass through the unreality fields without suffering.
Once they get through, they find a derelict spaceship from the 28th century which is capable of time travel. 
The crew all died when contracting a virus from a trip to the 20th century. As they died, they programmed the ship to go into deep space so as to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.
They are intrigued by the Time drive. They install it in the Starbug and decide to go to 1421 (august 17th). They travel back to 1421 but find of course that they are still in deep space – in the 15th Century!
They determine that the drive is next to useless, but if it were coupled with a faster than light drive, they could travel to any point in the universe. Cat notices that there is another ship close by. It is another Starbug, complete with the future Rimmer, Lister, Cat and Kryten.
Kryten tells Lister, Cat and Rimmer to go to another room and invite their future ‘ selves (from 15 years in the future) on board. A more gruesome bunch you never saw! Cat was an ugly bald dude, Rimmer had a big beer belly but still the same poor attitude, Kryten had become more shallow and looked like a sixties reject. But Lister, now Lister was cool! Apparently he had suffered an accident in his past and was now reduced to a brain in a large pickle jar! It was still possible to talk to him but probably a little disconcerting.
Lister, Rimmer and Cat eventually join their future selves and are each singularly unimpressed. They also learn that their future selves are slobs and that they are pally with such notorious persons as Hitler and various other un-savoury personages. This particularly annoys Lister who then learns that their future selves want to continue their frivolous exploits by examining the calibration on their time drive. He refuses and throws them off the ship!
Their future selves have no intention of being deprived of the opulence and luxury that the time drive has given them. They fire a warning shot. Kryten tells the rest that their future selves’ ship is greatly superior in terms of firepower, than their own. But when Rimmer suggests that they fight their way out! Lister and Cat agree.
Unfortunately, this time, they are killed off one by one as Starbug suffers terrible damage from the future Starbug. In the end, Rimmer is the only one left. He runs off to destroy the Time Drive before he himself is killed when – Our Hero’s ship is blown to smithereens!
At this point the show, and the series end!
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This episode review is © 1999 – 2019 Tony Fawl.
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