1. Psirens (29' 06")

07/10/1993

Jenny Agutter (Professor Mamet) Samantha Robson (Pete Tranter's Sister) Anita Dobson (Captain Tau) Richard Ridings (Crazed Astro) Zoe Hilson (Temptress) Liz Anson (Temptress)

Red Dwarf is stolen from the crew and they are forced to survive on Starbug. They go into deep sleep and are revived 200 years later when there is a chance to recapture the ship.  In order to gain more ground on Red Dwarf they try to go through an asteroid belt but find that it is inhabited by alien beings called Psirens who use mind control to lure their victims and then suck out their brains.

One of the people in the Psirens' hallucinations is called Captain Tau, which is also the name of the Captain of Red Dwarf in the American Pilot episode. Season 5 saw an increase in viewers, so the BBC asked Rob Grant and Doug Naylor to write a sequence which would introduce new viewers to the show. The amnesia sequence at the beginning was written due to the request.  The loss of Red Dwarf and subsequently the loss of Holly were written as a way to reduce the cast members on the show. The producers argued the idea down to two expendable characters, Cat and Holly. It was eventually decided that Holly would get the axe as most of her lines could be given to Kryten.  This episode was omitted from the first run of repeats due to the fact that Craig Charles was in jail on rape charges (later proved to be totally unfounded) and it was felt that some of his raunchier scenes with Pete Tranter's sister weren't appropriate.  Anita Dobson was offered the part of Captain Tau when Rob Grant and Doug Naylor approached her partner Brian May to play Lister's guitar-playing hands double. Although May couldn't make it, Grant and Naylor were astounded when Dobson agreed to appear. They regretted that if they had known, they would have wrote something more substantial for her.

2. Legion (28' 28")

14/10/1993

Nigel Williams (Legion)

The crew stumble on an abandoned space station and board it hoping to get some supplies. A man named Legion appears and offers each of them everything they ever wanted in the world but only if they remain on the space station forever, making the Dwarfers suspect that Legion is not at all what he seems.

Rimmer's hardlight hologram body was originally going to be used only for this episode where the dwarfers dine with Legion, but it was decided to keep the concept in place for the rest of the series as the writers were sick of having to write scenes for Rimmer where he is unable to touch or feel anything. The hardlight body provided a long term solution which enabled Rimmer to be more useful to the crew. Lister has his appendix removed by Legion in this episode, even though in Series II's 'Thanks For The Memory', we learn he already had it removed when he was younger. Doug Naylor explains this in his novel 'Last Human' where it is said that, due to a freak of nature, Lister was born with two appendixes.

3. Gunmen of the Apocalypse (28' 55")

21/10/1993

Jennifer Calvert (Loretta) Denis Lill (Simulant Captain/Death) Imogen Bain (Lola) Steve Devereaux (Jimmy) Robert Inch (War) Jeremy Peters (Pestilence) Dinny Powell (Famine) Stephen Marcus (Bear Strangler McGee) Liz Hickling (Simulant lieutenant)

The gang is attacked by a simulant ship who upgrade Starbug with laser cannons and defensive shields and then force them to play a game of 'cat and mouse'. The crew decide not to flee but to stay and fight which stuns the simulants. Before their ship is crippled by Starbugs new offensive weapons, the simulants upload a killer virus into the navicomp. Kryten then transfers the virus to his CPU in an attempt to eradicate it. The gang watch on a virtual reality screen as Kryten's search for an antidote is manifested as a western setting where Kryten is a sheriff who has to fight the four horsemen of the Apocalypse - Death, War, Pestilence and Famine.

The credits for this episode feature a music-only "wild west" version of the "Red Dwarf" theme. Gunmen of the Apocalypse is the only individual Red Dwarf episode to have won an award. It won an International Emmy award for Popular Arts in 1994 which it shared with an episode of Absolutely Fabulous.  During the saloon bar scene, you can hear the show's theme music playing in the background.

4. Emohawk - Polymorph II (28' 28")

28/10/1993

Ainsley Harriott (GELF Chief) Steven Wickham (GELF Bride) Martin Sims (GELF) Hugh Quarshie (Computer voice) Danny John-Jules (Dwayne Dibley) Chris Barrie ('Ace' Rimmer)

A Space Corps Law Enforcement Vessel chases Starbug and the crew make a crash landing on a GELF planet. They go in search of a vital ship part and come across a village who have the part but the price is for Lister to marry the chief's daughter. Lister reluctantly does so but on his wedding night, does a runner back to Starbug. The chief takes this as an insult and releases his pet Emohawk, a smaller polymorph (see Polymorph) on them. The Emohawk hides on Starbug and attacks Rimmer and Cat, taking Rimmer's bitterness and the Cat's cool; turning them into Ace Rimmer (see Dimension Jump) and Dwayne Dibbley (see Back to Reality).  Ace, with his new personality, decides to save the day and locks Kryten and Lister in the hold so they will be safe while he and Dwayne go after the Emohawk. They eventually track it down and freeze it, forcing it to release their emotions and turning them back to normal.

Danny John Jules had such a problem remembering his list of things to bring, they had to write them down and stick the list to the lunchbox he carries as Dwayne. After being inundated with requests from fans to bring back the three most popular characters, The Polymorph, Ace Rimmer and Dwayne Dibley; Rob Grant and Doug Naylor decided to merge them into one story, making this the ultimate sequel episode.

5. Rimmerworld (28' 34")

04/11/1993

Liz Hickling (Rogue Simulant)

The gang come across the simulant ship they nearly destroyed in Gunmen of the Apocalypse and decide to board the ship and loot it for supplies despite the fact that a loud noise would cause it to disintegrate. They find a time and matter transporter on board and take it with them. One of the simulants is still alive and attacks them. Rimmer, always the brave, jumps in an escape pod but when it releases the ship begins to fall apart. The rest of the crew use the transporter to get back to Starbug and track the pod which is heading down to a planet. Unfortunately, the pod goes through a worm hole on its way causing Rimmer to be on a completely different time stream than Starbug. When he reaches the planet, Rimmer uses technology from the pod to create a woman in his image, but no matter how many times he tries all he can do is clone himself. When Starbug reaches the planet on the normal time stream, 600 years have passed on the planet and the Rimmer clones have taken over, banishing the original Rimmer to a dungeon. The others are captured and also thrown in the dungeon because they are 'different'. They find their Rimmer and use the teleporter to escape but end up on Starbug 2 weeks in the future where they learn that something terrible has happened to Lister.....

Many people believe that the final scene where the Future Rimmer mentions that something terrible has happened to the Future Lister is a reference to what we discover in "Out Of Time", but there is actually a deleted scene where after the Dwarfers leave the Future Lister returns to the Future Dwarfers, having simply been on the toilet! Hopefully this will be on the Series VI DVD!

6. Out Of Time (aka Present from the Future) (28' 40")

11/11/1993

After Rimmer conducts a "morale-meeting", the crew find a cloud of fog from an imploded supernova and have no choice but to go through it. They get some bad turbulence, and Lister is injured revealing that he is an android! Kryten is angry that Lister is a lesser model then he and orders him to do all the work and even gives it to him for not having used a setsquare to cut the sandwiches.  They find out they were in an unreality pocket, and Lister is indeed human. More of these unreality pockets pass until they decide to go into stasis until they get through the fog. In the centre of the fog they find a Space Corps derelict which is capable of time travel.  They take the time drive and hook it up to Starbug's engines. After testing the time drive they are disappointed to find that although they can travel to any time in history, they are still in deep space, no closer to Earth than they were before.  They return to their own time to find a future version of themselves. They invite them on board, but everyone except Kryten is sealed in the hold. Lister rigs a camera to see what's going on and he sees that Kryten is wearing a toupee, Rimmer is getting fat and the Cat is bald; but worst of all, Lister himself is just a brain in a jar!  He continues to watch the meeting and finds out that their future selves are not only fat, bald and bodiless, but are souped up snobs, who can never compliment anything, who've socialised all the most evil figures of history (Hitler, Louis XIV, Goering, the Hapsburgs, etc.), and lived in the height of luxury. Now they need help recalibrating the time drive so they can continue with their lifestyles.  Lister is horribly dismayed to find out this, so the three blast open the hold, and head down to kick them out of the ship, refusing to fix the time drive. The future crew, deciding they are better off dead than to live without the time drive, stranded in space, attack the present crew.  Lister, Cat and Kryten are killed, so Rimmer decides to save the ship by destroying the time drive. However at the same time, One of the Starbugs shoot at the other and it is destroyed....

The original ending for this episode had the crew celebrating Rimmer deleting the future crew by destroying the time drive, but Rob Grant and Doug Naylor preferred a cliffhanger. The ending can still be seen on the Smeg-Ups video In total there were four choices of endings: the one we get and the one mentioned above, plus one where Rimmer destoys the Time Drive but is killed by the explosion that it causes (his light bee gets damaged), and also one where the gang finds Red Dwarf.