Smega-Drive
by Ganymede & Titan
Series VI - Legion - All scenes
("RED DWARF" THEME)
Ten o'clock changeover. Anything to report?
We're still lagging behind Red Dwarf, sir,
almost 24 hours behind, now.
Other than that, it's been a moderately quiet shift,
except for one small shock a couple of hours ago when we
noticed an alien invasion fleet off the starboard bow.
Thankfully, it turned out to be one of Mr Lister's
old sneezes that had congealed on the radar screen.
- How are we fuel-wise?
- Unchanged for today, sir.
However, the supply situation
grows increasingly bleak.
We've recycled the water so often,
it's beginning to taste like Dutch lager.
- We're OK for food though, aren't we?
- Confidentially, sir, no.
We've no meat, no pulse and hardly any grain.
Worse still, the only Liquorice Allsorts left are those
only little black twisty ones that everybody hates.
If that weren't bad enough, space weevils
have eaten the last of the corn supply.
So what's under the grill?
Space weevil.
You can't serve space weevil, Kryten.
I mean, not even Lister with his single remaining
taste bud will knowingly sit down and eat insectoid vermin.
Well, let's face it, it's practically cannibalism.
But it's incredibly nutritious, sir.
After all, it is corn-fed.
- You'll never get him to eat it.
- Trust me, sir. They say "the first bite is with the eye"
It's all down to presentation.
Et voila!
- Changeover. Anything new?
- Nothing much.
Electrical storm, alien war fleet -
false alarm - the usual stuff.
Look at the state of this place!
Why can't you ever clean up before we swap over?
What the hell is all this down
the back of my chair? Peanuts?
No, I've been trimming my verrucas.
You have personal habits
that would make a monkey blush!
You really think I'm psychotically
disgusting, don't you? They're peanuts, OK?
- Real peanuts?
- Yeah.
Where'd you get them?
Derelict a couple of months back.
I found them in the dead captain's old donkey jacket.
Don't look at me like that!
You enjoyed that mint imperial, didn't you?
- And where did you get that?
- He was sucking that when he got shot.
I had to prise his jaws
open with a car-jack.
You think I'll buy
anything you say, don't you?
Well, wrong, buddy! Now get outta here.
I gotta keep my eyes skinned for that asteroid shaped
like a dancing moose you told me about yesterday.
- Hi, honey, I'm home.
- Supper, sir, and tonight's movie.
I'm sorry, sir, it is another Doug McClure.
Please don't hit me.
- What's this?
- Sir?
Raw carrot?
Kryten, you know
how I feel about fresh vegetables.
They're for health psychos, vitamin freaks,
people... who exercise.
I'm sorry, sir.
- Is everything OK, sir?
- No, it's not.
Some smegger's filled in
this "Have you got a good memory?" quiz.
But that was you, sir, last week. Don't you remember?
- Was it?
- Mmm. Look.
Nobody else spells "Thursday" with an "F".
I can't help it. I went to art college.
How's supper, Listy?
It's delicious. Didn't think we
had any crunchy king prawn left.
I hate to go all technical on you, but all hands on deck, swirly thing alert!
- Where?
- It's not on the radar yet, but I can smell it.
- Nothing here.
- Nothing on long range.
Sir, is it possible
you could have made a mis-smelling?
Listen, butter pat head,
my nostril hairs are vibrating faster than
the springs on a Spaniard's honeymoon bed!
I'm telling you,
something's out there!
Don't get your double-helix in a strict.
No one's questioning your nasal integrity.
- Go to Blue Alert.
- What for? There's no one to alert. We're all here.
I would just feel more comfortable ifI know we're all
on our toes because everyone's aware it's a Blue Alert situation.
- We all ARE on our toes.
- May I remind you about Space Core Directive 34124?
34124 - "No officer with false teeth
should attempt oral sex in zero gravity."
Damn you both all the way to Hades.
I want to go to Blue Alert!
OK, OK.
Thank you. A bit of professionalism.
Wait! I've got something. I'm punching it up.
Too small for a vessel. Maybe some kind of missile?
It's impossible to
tell at this range.
Whatever it is, they clearly have a
technology way in advance of our own.
So do the Albanian State
Washing Machine Company.
- Step up to Red Alert!
- Sir, are you absolutely sure?
It does mean changing the bulb.
There's always some excuse, isn't there?
Range 15,000 gigooks and closing.
- Direct collision course. Suggest evasive action.
- Engaging re-heat.
It's still with us!
It's some kind of heat-seeker we can't outrun it.
That's it. We're deader than tank tops.
Suggestions?
Sir, may I recommend I load myself
into the reverse-thrust tubes
and you use my body as decoy fodder.
This of course will leave me splattered across deep space
and unable to complete today's laundry,
for which I apologise in advance.
Kryten, stop your blathering
and get in the damn tube.
Kryten, sit down.
I'm not doing me own smeggin' ironing.
Look, maybe we can reason with it.
Open communication channels, Lister.
Broadcast on all known frequencies,
and in all known languages, including Welsh.
This is acting senior officer Arnold J Rimmer
of the Jupiter Mining Corporation
transport vehicle Starbug.
Now hear this, 'cause it's only coming once.
We surrender, totally and without condition.
Thank you for listening.
Oh, additional. Sorry to take up
your valuable time. Sorry. Thank you, sorry. Bye.
Bye. Sorry. Thank you. Bye.
Rimmer, you've got a longer yellow streak
than a stampede of diuretic camels.
Know this about me - like General
George S Patton, I believe in reincarnation.
It is my firm conviction that
in all my previous lives I've been a soldier,
a bold warrior soul, who tragically in this incarnation
has been given the body of an abject coward.
So excuse me, gentlemen, while I have a humiliating
panic attack under the scanner table.
- Here it comes!
- Five gigooks to impact.
Hang on to your wage packets!
The controls are down!
- What on lo was that?
- Some kind of suction beam. We're being dragged down.
- Fire up the retros.
- Dead.
- Auxiliary power?
- Dead.
- Joystick?
- Dead.
The entire panel's deader
than flares with pockets in the knees!
I've located the beam's source. I'm punching it up.
So, what have we got?
Well, it seems we were snared by some
kind of malfunctioning guidance beam
designed to help
docking supply ships.
- We've shut it down and we're free to leave.
- Anyone around?
- No life signs. Nothing.
- The ident computer is stubborn as a mule.
All I could get from it's pesky little ROM was
something about classified military research.
Wouldn't give me any details, but
listen to some of physicists involved -
Heidegger, Davro, Holder, Quayle -
some of the most brilliant minds of the 23rd century.
Whatever they were cooking up here, it
must have been something pretty special.
- Anything we can salvage?
- There must be something we can swipe.
Well, gentlemen, our strategy is clear.
Let's tool up and go shopping.
- What? Anything?
- I'm not sure. Something.
It's almost off my nasal spectrum.
(WHOOSH)
- (RAPID BLEEPING)
- Strange. A life reading.
Why didn't it register before?
(URBANE VOICE) Welcome, my friends. It has been
many centuries since I last had visitors.
You, of course, are Kryten.
And you are Rimmer, the hologram. May I?
Now then... Yes, of course.
Primitive.
So basic.
You'd better have a mighty damn fine
explanation for what you've just done, m'laddio.
Forgive me. I merely converted your
projection unit from soft light to hard light.
Hard light?
I've got a body? I can touch? Feel?
Puncture repair kit on standby, sir.
- But how?
- I created the hard light drive years ago.
My mind is not all that it once was.
- You, my friend, are Lister.
- How come you know who we are?
- You are in pain. Here.
- Nah, just a bit of Bangalore belly.
No. It is something more serious. May I?
OK.
Your appendix.
As I thought,
you were on the verge of peritonitis.
Cheers, man.
- And you are the Cat.
- You come anywhere near me, buddy
you'll be wearing them bowels
as a bobble hat.
You're all tired and in need
of nourishment. Come, let us dine.
- What is your name?
- Call me... Legion.
- (CHAMBER MUSIC)
- Please, make yourselves comfortable.
Legion, these statues,
you sculpted them yourself?
Years ago. I was... a different person then.
According to my connoisseur chip, they fulfil
all ten requirements for being masterpieces.
- You have a connoisseur chip?
- Just because I look like Herman Munster's stunt man
doesn't mean to say I can't appreciate art, sir.
- I shall return with the feast.
- Can I eat? I mean, in this body, is it possible?
Mr Rimmer, in a hard light body,
you can do anything a human can do,
with the added bonus that
you are practically indestructible.
I can't be hurt?!
Your pleasure and pain responses remain
the same, but you cannot come to harm.
Excuse me.
His cellular structure is unique - genetic strands I've
never seen before - part living tissue, part mechanical.
We've got to persuade him to come with us.
He'd get us back to Earth in weeks!
And what a team we'd make. Legion, with his
scientific genius, intellect, culture and sophistication,
and us with... with...
With our Red Alert bulb.
Let's flag down a black cab and head for Real Street here.
This Johnny won't come with us.
He'd never fit in. Can you see him joining in our late night sessions of "Pin The Pointy Stick On The Weather Girl"?
True, but once he's signed up and we're off in the big
black, it'll be too late for him to change his mind.
All we have to do is create the facade that
we're not the uncouth morons you are.
Here is the feast. It is a traditional
24th-century Mimosian banquet.
How absolutely divine, Le-gion.
Although I must say,
our souls are already gorged, fit to burst
with the feast of art laid out on your walls.
I wasn't aware you have an interest in art, Mr Rimmer?
Many's the night we while away the
wee hours contemplating a Caravaggio.
Discussing it's shape,
themes and form.
The pointy-stick game doesn't get a look-in anymore.
Marvellous! Now, this three-dimensional
sculpture in particular is quite exquisite.
Its simplicity, its bold, stark lines.
- Pray, what do you call it?
- The light switch.
- The light switch.
- Yes.
- I couldn't buy it, then?
- Not really.
I need it to turn the lights on and off.
It's a pity, because if it wasn't a light switch,
in many ways it could be considered a masterpiece.
Kryten, please join us. Mimosian cuisine
is quite acceptable for mechanoids.
Indeed. It has long been a dream of mine
to sample its unique flavours.
Let the meal begin.
I'm sorry. Of course. Not all of you
can use Mimosian anti-matter chopsticks.
I'm fully versed, Legion.
For my cooking duties, I'm programmed to be
proficient in all known off-world eating techniques,
including Jovian boogle hoops, and the
often-lethal Mercurian boomerang spoon.
- But the others...
- Anti-matter chopsticks?
- We use 'em all the time.
- Can't even remember what a fork looks like.
Don't let a few congealed custard
stains down Lister's long johns
delude you into thinking
we're not sophisticated.
The trick is, of course, to never,
ever, under any circumstances,
to allow live sticks to touch.
But, of course, we all know that.
- Well, bon appetite. Tuck in, Listy.
- No, no. After you, man.
Wouldn't hear of it.
Sir, you're creating a reverse field, try and
keep the electron flow in the same direction.
How do you land the damn stuff?
Simply invert the ionic phase
in the downpulse of the field margin.
I was with you all the way up to "simply".
Like so.
Sir, the glass is fixed to the table.
It's Mimosian telekinetic wine.
- So, how do you drink it?
- You simply will the liquid into your mouth,
and then you telepathically
decide on its flavour. Thusly...
Ah! Delicious.
Kryten, help me!
- Cat, that's mine!
- I can't help it, bud!
- Somehow we've crossed wavelengths!
- It feels like you're pulling my teeth out!
- Try swallowing it!
- I have! Three times!
My friends, I sense you are trying
to impress me. There really is no need.
Legion, may I be frank?
It's not often we meet an individual who we feel
could improve our already pretty damn fine top-notch team.
But in you, we feel we have. In all our travels,
we've met precisely 31 individuals. Three. One.
and we've never felt moved
to invite a single one to join our crew.
True, most of them wanted in
someway to suck out our brains