'Give & Take' by Doug Naylor

Rimmer is investigating some strange energy signatures on B Deck when he is distracted by a procrastinating lift in Shaft 14; instead he wakes Lister from a two-day hangover with the news that Red Dwarf is approaching a derelict space station, which is about to be destroyed by an approaching asteroid storm. Together with Cat and Kryten (the latter with no memory of Rimmer, until he reinstates his files on ‘Captain Bollocks’), the lads head off in Starbug to see what they can salvage. Splitting up, Cat and Lister ponder the skeleton of an engineer who seemingly stabbed himself in the back, while Kryten and Rimmer discover that the station hosts an Asclepius robot, a high-tech medibot from the late Twenty-Third Century; they reactivate what they take to be the robot, unaware that they have in fact revived a mobile food dispenser named ‘Snacky’... Meanwhile, Cat and Lister are ambushed by the real Asclepius, who has gone completely and murderously insane; the bonkers bot knocks them out, straps them to gurneys and then organ-naps Lister’s kidneys. Rimmer and Kryten come to the rescue, and after blasting Asclepius, the medibay and Lister’s stolen kidneys, they rush their comrades back to Starbug, escaping just as the asteroid storm destroys the station, and Asclepius with it. Back aboard Red Dwarf, Rimmer continues to mistake Snacky for ‘Asclepius’, and takes some psychology counselling. In the medibay, Lister learns the bad news: not only has he lost some of his favourite organs and is now being kept alive with an implanted dialysis MTK chip, he now has to ask Cat, the most selfish creature in the universe, to donate one of his kidneys. When Cat refuses, Kryten tricks him into believing that he needs one of Lister’s kidneys instead; once Cat signs the consent form, the Dwarfers turn to Snacky to perform the complex DNA-rewriting operation – only to learn that he is just a snack-bot. Recalling the dead engineer on the station, Lister considers cloning himself; however, Snacky explains that the deceased was working on a time-travel experiment when his future-self arrived with a warning that it would lead to his death – which it then did, when he killed himself (sort-of). A convoluted plan is hatched: Snacky uses the engineer’s designs to reprogram a Stasis Booth into a time-machine, so that the gang can go back in time and steal kidneys from Lister’s past self; by chloroforming the younger Lister, they will be able to transplant his kidneys into the older Lister, replacing them with the MTK chip, and then leave him in Rimmer’s bunk, where he will think he has been asleep with a two-day hangover. The plan actually works, with the help of the lift in Shaft 14, who hides them from past-Rimmer during his investigation of B Deck, and with Lister now fixed, the gang return to the future… A while later, Rimmer enters the lift, which is cross that it didn’t get the promotion it was promised in exchange for helping hide him and the others; to Rimmer’s dismay, the lift tells him it has been rewired by Snacky – and in revenge it takes him on the ride of his life!


Chris Barrie (Arnold J. Rimmer), Craig Charles (Dave Lister), Danny John-Jules (Cat), Robert Llewellyn (Kryten), Mark Quartley (Snacky [Voice]), Tobias Wilso (Snacky [Body]), Oliver Mason (Asclepius [Voice]), Jami Reid Quarrell (Asclepius [Body]), Daniel Barker (Lift [Voice])

Directed by Doug Naylor

Produced by Richard Naylor and Kerry Waddell
Executive producers Simon Lupton, Henry Normal and Doug Naylor
Co-produced by Baby Cow Productions and Grant Naylon Productions for Dave / UKTV

TX: (Dave)
6th October 2016 @ 9:00 pm

Notes:
*Featuring Dave Lister, Arnold Rimmer, Cat and Kryten

*Although this epsiode was scheduled for television broadcast on the 6th October 2016, it was released a week earlier for 'on demand' audiences via the UKTV Play platform