Smega-Drive
by Ganymede & Titan
Series VII - Epideme - All scenes
("RED DWARF" THEME)
- What is that thing?
- Astroglacier.
Allotropically modified, surrounded
by an envelope of luminous gasses.
Thanks! That's most helpful.
- What is it?
- To you, a big iceberg.
I studied them in my first year in the Corps,
but I've never seen one up this close before.
Isn't it incredible? Look at those
crystalline formations. They're faberoo!
You think all this sciencey stuff's
really interesting, don't you?
I bet at school you were always the one with the right
coloured pencils and the impossibly neat handwriting.
I bet even now you can probably tell us the average rainfall
of the oil-rich coastal lowlands of Venezuela.
No, I couldn't. I've no idea.
OK, 3.4 inches. So what?
Unlike you guys, my greatest accomplishment
isn't a line on a loo wall somewhere
marking my highest-ever pee.
I'll have you know, ma'am,
I too possess qualifications.
What qualifications have you got,
meat-tenderiser-head?
I'm a fully qualified Bachelor of Sanitation.
You may not know this, sir, but many years ago
I completed my course at Toilet University,
where I studied the lavatorial sciences.
Toilet University's just a piece of
software, it's part of your core program.
I still had to complete a written examination to indicate
the program was successfully installed.
It was most interesting. Did you know for instance that
the first siphon and valve flushing system
was patented in 1778 by Joseph Bramah,
whose U-bend curvature equations are still...
- Kryten.
- Yes, sir?
Can this story maybe wait?
Ideally, until after I'm dead.
Well, speaking personally, I hardly didn't get
no formal education at all.
- No kidding, Professor.
- No, it's true, bud.
That's why sometimes I don't know stuff,
like... well, practically everything.
- Was this because you brought yourself up, sir?
- Right. There was no one else around so I had to teach myself.
And seeing as I didn't know anything to begin with,
lessons were long and slow,
especially on Thursdays
when I had double nothing.
So what do we do about the ice?
Well, water supplies are low, ma'am.
If the ice is uncontaminated,
it might prove move useful.
- OK, standard SEP scan and log.
- Locking on. Scanning and logging.
- Extraordinary.
- What is it?
There's something's buried deep
in the heart of the astroglacier.
Some kind of object.
It's huge. Just processing.
- Well?
- It's a starship.
This place is harder to get into
than an airline Chicken Kiev!
It's the Leviathan, sir,
a 23rd-century JMC supply ship.
Engines are dead, power overload.
Looks like they were running from something.
Wait! I'm picking up a life sign.
- Are you absolutely sure?
- Certain.
I've never seen anything like this!
You weren't around
for my last party, were you?
Look at their twisted, tortured faces!
The sheer blind terror.
- (SCREAMS) Yaaaargh!!! Oh, my God!
- What is it?!
The back of my neck!
Great big gob of ice water!
It felt really horrible!
Went right down into my crevice.
Hey, guys, check this out!
There's a woman in there!
Just locating her JMC ident chip.
Caroline Carmen. According to the Psi-Scan,
she was once a supply officer on Red Dwarf.
I remember her. She got reposted at Titan.
- You knew her?
- Yeah, she made a pass at me once.
I don't believe you. A supply
officer would never go out with you?
She did, actually. In fact, me and Karen had
quite a thing going there for a really long time.
Caroline.
Caroline, yeah. Karen was my pet name for her.
- I don't believe a word.
- Caroline Carmen and me, believe it.
Sexually, we were just so compatible.
In fact, while I was dating her, the two women in the
quarters next door nicknamed her Carmen Moans.
- You could ask her if she was still alive.
- She is, sir.
The life sign appears to be
coming from this very spot.
Is it? Ah, well, she might not remember me
immediately. She might have amnesia.
- Amnesia?
- Yeah, ice does that. Gives you amnesia.
- Isn't that right, Kryts?
- Well, I don't recall hearing that, sir.
See? It's affecting him already.
OK, let's get her back to the 'Bug.
I've begun the water siphoning process
from the Leviathan. Any change here?
It doesn't make sense, bud. The ice won't melt,
and this room's hotter than an English beer.
He's right. The temperature's
been a constant 90 degrees,
and yet she's still
completely cold and unresponsive.
What about Miss Carmen?
I was talking about Miss Carmen.
It's as if the body's generating
the ice as a form of protection.
Maybe we should just laser it?
Recommend we wait until the chemical analysis
results are completed in the morning, sir.
Any hasty lasering could result
in lasting damage to the body.
Do you really think she's still alive in there?
She must be.
Ah...
Well, well, well...
This is a bit of a turn-up, isn't it, hey?
You just couldn't stay away, could you, Kris?
Hey, what are you doing? Hey wait... what you doin?
(LAUGHS)
And what makes you so damn sure I'm interested?
You dumped me, remember? You think you can just jump
in me bed and I'm yours?
Well, as it happens, you're right, but let
me tell you it was a pretty close thing.
Mmm. It's good to feel your
sweet breath on my neck again.
Oh, smeg! It's Kryten! It's Kryten!
Quick! Quick! Quick! In the shower! In the shower!
(GROANS)
Smeg!
- Yeah?
- Are you alone, sir?
- Yeah!
- Well, I just thought I'd come in and dust your quarters.
- It's two o'clock in the morning, man!
- Ah yes, well this is an emergency dust you see, sir.
My sensors have picked up vast quantities of dust
in this region, I simple must dust! Right now!
- I'll take the risk, man!
- I simply can't allow that, sir.
Ah, double bed mode. Hmm...
I'll just, ahem, dust inside your wardrobe...
Under your spare bunk duvet...
Hmm... In your other wardrobe...
Kryten, man, I'm trying to get some kip!
- She's in here, isn't she?
- I don't know what you mean, man.
(SQUEALS) You promised me you wouldn't
like her more than me, you promised!
Look, Kryten, listen, I um...
- Look, it's like...
- It's because she's got a better shaped head than me, isn't it?
Not again, man. No! No!
- It is!
- I like your head!
Not as much as you like hers!
What are you talking about? You've
got one of the all time great heads.
It's attractive, it's functional, it's almost
perfect for carving a Sunday roast!
She's in the shower, isn't she? Isn't she?!
- Who?
- Miss Kochanski! Who do you think? Madam Curie?!
What is all this noise about? I can't sleep!
Forgive me, sir.
Shame mode.
Excuse me, ma'am.
How the hell did you do that?
Of course! You slipped out through the vent
shaft and dropped into the corridor. Brilliant!
- What?
- You're a genius, an absolute genius!
- What are you doing?
- I'm unbuttoning your shirt.
- What are you doing that for?
- We've got a little unfinished business!
That was a long time ago.
Things are very different now!
Look, he's gone. Don't worry about Kryten.
Now come on, get your kit off
and I'll go slip into my Batman outfit.
You really believe in being direct, don't you?
Come on, rumpy-pumpy, Kris.
Let's hit the springs!
That's your idea of seduction, is it?
Well forget it, Lister, not if you were the last man alive.
- I am the last man alive.
- I rest my case.
What did I do wrong? What?
Oh, duvet...
Oh, my God! Caroline!
You've really let yourself go.
You're like the before bit
for about 900 Clearasil commercials!
Sorry!
(ALARM SOUNDS)
God! Ah!
God! God!
Oh! Are you all right, sir?
I've just been molested
by Tutankhamun's horny grandma!
Of course I'm not smeggin' all right!
Eurgh! The taste!
I need to go and gargle with a Toilet Duck!
She's dead, sir. And, curious, it appears
she's been dead for three million years.
If she's been dead for three million years,
where did the life signs come from?
Good point, sir.
And more to the point, where did they go?
(THUD)
- I feel really lousy.
- Oh you're probably just in shock. Don't be such a baby.
Miss Kochanski, ma'am, If I may say so your
bedside manner leaves something to be desired.
- Like what?
- Well, like a bedside manner!
You think I'm a hypochondriac?
You're a man, aren't you? I mean, you all get
the common cold and you think it's malaria.
And women, of course, are different?
They just have a different
perspective on pain, Kryten.
As would you if every summer you had to pour hot wax
on your crotch and rip out half your thatch.
He's right. I hate doing that.
- The tests are complete.
- (LISTER) And?
There's a foreign substance in your blood,
and, well, I recognise the DNA, sir.
- Is that good or bad?
- It's the Epideme virus, sir.
A man-made parasite created
as a rival to the nicotine patch.
Epideme was an intelligent organism, designed
to block all neural signals relating to nicotine craving,
but it in practice it also blocked the signals
telling the body it needed blood and oxygen.
Is that why the Carmen chick looked like the
centrefold from this month's "Playzombie"?
Precisely. It's virtually unstoppable. For
the first 48 hours, it consumes its host,
then hijacks the corpse
and goes looking for a new victim.
When it can't find one,
it freezes the body and waits.
- So the life signs on the Leviathan...
- Didn't belong to Carmen,
but to the parasite inhabiting her body...
which passed to you the moment she, well...
Slipped her mouth-meat down me gullet?
I've been tongue-hockeyed to death!
In 48 hours, I'm gonna be deader than a
Saturday night in Salt Lake City!
There is one option, sir. I believe you might
have a chance if you, well... reason with it.
- Reason with what?
- The virus, sir. After all, it is intelligent.
Kryten, are your neural circuits picking up
interference from the tumble-dryer again?
If we could patch in the universal translator,
it might just be possible to talk to it.
I believe it's your only chance, sir.
It's a long shot, I know, but if we can reason
with it, we might persuade it to leave.
- Now, remember, be charming.
- Be charming to my virus. Right.
- Patching in the UT.
- Aaand a great big "hi" to all of you out there in flesh and blood land!
And tonight, Dave Lister, assisting
vending machine sub-operative
and spice food connoisseur,
this is your death!
- Your line.
- I take it we're speaking with the Epideme virus?
Give that man an eyebrow!
Hey, I'm feeling generous. Give him two!
Well, maybe we should, um... can I, er...?
Dave, let's run down the rules.
If you win, you get to live.
If I win, you get to die and I take
all your knowledge when I kill you.
What, you absorb knowledge
from every person you kill?
So as you can appreciate killing you
ain't exactly a career highlight.
No offence but when you're a virus, there's not much call
for knowing how to open a lager bottle with your anus.
How can you justify
killing another living being?
How about that chicken you biryanied
last night? How can you justify killing that?
Me and the chicken, it was different.
How's that, David?
Well, I'm a person. It was a curry.
He died so you could go on living.
Is that so different from what I'm doing?
Of course it is! Totally! I'm a human being.
I have certain qualities
that elevate me above poultry!
- I can think. I can play the guitar.
- Better than a chicken? Are you crazy?
We're losing the argument, sir!
You better move on to another subject.
I'm the last guy alive!
- And that gives you more right to exist than me?
- Well, yeah, because...
Time for your species to check out, Davey.
Arrivederci, humies!
Oh!
David, come on.
You've got a virus. It's fatal. It happens.
Doesn't mean we can't be friends.
Don't touch that dial!
Sir, you know how you told us all to work
on a solution to Mr Epideme, no matter how drastic?
- Yeah, what have you got, Kryts?
- A solution, sir, but, er...
- What?
- It's too drastic.
- Tell.
- Well, what we thought was...
- You see...
- We want to cut off your arm.
- You what?!
- It's a stupid idea, I told you it was a stupid idea!
It was your idea!
- Are you saying I'm stupid?
- I'm not calling you stupid, shut up!
It's our only chance to save you.
It could be worse.
- What, you mean I could be planning a career in archery?
- You could be dead.
Now, you said you'd consider anything. Well, this is it.
Can I have some details? Something a little bit more
inspiring than "Can I hack off your limb?"
The plan is to inject anti-virals in a
precise pattern through your body,
forcing Epideme into your arm.
And then you cut it off. Great plan (!)
What choice have I got?
OK, but make it my left arm, OK? 'Cause
my right arm does all my favourite things.
- OK, sir.
- Let's go! Chop-chop!
Sorry.
(WHIZZING)
Injecting anti-virals.
OK, virus heading north.
Grid coordinate 109.4.
- The pancreas.
- 104.2, on my mark. Mark.
And heading for the left shoulder, 309.0.
No, no, no, no!
308! 308!
It's heading away from his left arm.
406.9... .8... 406.5...
Virus heading into his right arm.