'Timewave' by Doug Naylor

Rimmer stakes a claim on a planetoid rich in Helium 7, unsurprisingly naming it ‘Rimmer’. A solar storm sends the gang racing back to Red Dwarf, but while en route Starbug is caught in a timewave, a temporal and spacial anomaly caused by a black hole. After the timewave spits out the S.S. Inconium, a human vessel that has been displaced three million years in time, the gang realise it is on a crash course with planet Rimmer – unless the ship’s course is altered, the crash will ignite the Helium 7 and destroy everything in the vicinity. Learning that on the Inconium the act of criticism is illegal, Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten resolve to be extra-careful with what they say. Starbug docks with the ship, which the gang find full of terrible art, produced by a crew that believes in freely expressing themselves without fear of scorn or ridicule. After meeting the bizarrely-dressed Captain Ziggy, Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Kryten visit the mess hall, and promptly criticise the inept waitress working there. The lads try retreating to Starbug, but are arrested by the Crit Cops for illegal castigation; they are thrown into the ship’s brig, along with a fellow prisoner who has been imprisoned for tutting. Scraping some Helium 7-rich soil from Lister’s boot, Kryten combines it with the isotope collection stored in his arm to cause an explosion that blows off the prison door; unfortunately, this alerts the Crit Cops, who take the gang away for “draining”. One of the cops gets angry and inadvertently criticises the law; he enjoys the experience so much that he agrees to help the Dwarf posse escape… but they just get caught again, and taken to the Criticism Extraction Room. Here Rimmer is subjected to the removal of his ‘inner-critic’, to be stored in a secure glass cylinder; however, Rimmer’s inner-critic escapes, manifesting itself as a creepy, facially-scarred version of his host. Lister and Cat criticise inner-Rimmer for his failure to make Rimmer live up to his potential, allowing Rimmer to re-absorb him. Captain Ziggy is so impressed with this that he repeals the criticism law, instructing his crew to resume their proper jobs on the ship. With the S.S. Inconium now safely on a corrected course, Ziggy rewards the Red Dwarf crew with a gift: his best painting of a space-ship; but when Lister remarks how crap the picture is, a furious Ziggy reinstates the criticism law, forcing the lads to make a very hasty exit…


Chris Barrie (Arnold J. Rimmer), Craig Charles (Dave Lister), Danny John-Jules (Cat), Robert Llewellyn (Kryten), Johnny Vegas (Crit Cop), Jamie Chapman (Ziggy), Paul Leonard (Guru), Amrita Acharia (Waitress Greta), Joe Sims (Tutt Johnson)

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)
26th October 2017 @ 9:00 pm

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

*Although this epsiode was scheduled for television broadcast on the 26th October 2017, it was released a week earlier for 'on demand' audiences via the UKTV Play platform