Smega-Drive
by Ganymede & Titan
Series 2 - Better Than Life - All scenes
(DRAMATIC "2001"-TYPE MUSIC)
Three million years from Earth,
the mining ship Red Dwarf.
Its crew: Dave Lister,
the last human being alive;
Arnold Rimmer, a hologram
of his dead bunkmate,
and a creature who evolved
from the ship's cat. Message ends.
Additional,
Loneliness weighs heavily on us all.
Personally, the only thing that keeps me going
is the thought that we are over 60 billion
miles away from the nearest Berni Inn.
For a mild stomach upset, take one teaspoonful.
For acute indigestion, take two.
Well, a highly enjoyable meal all round.
Obviously, you can't expect perfection first time,
but I was quite delighted with
the way my dumplings went down.
Rimmer, real dumplings, proper dumplings,
when they're properly cooked to perfection,
proper dumplings should not bounce.
True, but compared to what I thought
they were going to be like, they were quite... superb.
- So, how's the Cat?
- He's just sleeping off the stomach pump.
He'll be all right. The lamb was a bit of a flop, though.
The lamb? Everybody thought
the lamb was the cheese!
And that lemon meringue pie man, what was in that?
- I thought you liked that. You brought some back?
- Yeah, I wanted to try some out on my athlete's foot.
It's not easy, Lister, cooking... when you're dead,
you don't exist,
and you're made entirely of light.
That's your excuse for everything isn't it? Being dead?
I'm just trying to rehabilitate myself,
trying to do the everyday normal things
that most living people take for granted.
- You've got the skutters to help you.
- What? Pinky and smegging Perky?
What use are they?
It's like giving Blind Pew contact lenses.
- They only do what you tell them to.
- Ah, but they don't do they?
You say, "Keep an eye on that lamb,"
and they do, they sit there for three hours and watch it burn.
So, they've got no emotion, have they?
It's not built into their software.
Have you seen their broom cupboard?
It's full of pin-ups of John Wayne.
That cannot be right can it? Piled this high
with Film Fun magazines.
That's not the way spanners behave in my book.
Oi. What's happening, dudes?
- Hi, Hol.
- Guess what?
- (BOTH) What?
- Go on, have a guess,
- What is it vaguely about?
- No clues, just have a guess.
I knew you wouldn't get it.
- The post pod's arrived,
- What, the mail?!
It's been tracking us since we left Earth. Now we've turned round it's caught up.
Do you mean it's taken three million years?!
Yeah, that's about average
for second-class post.
(CAPS BANG)
See what I mean?
(HOLLERS LIKE RED INDIAN)
There's everything here, all the mail,
entertainment cassettes a new batch of movies!
Yo, the new Friday 13th movie,
Friday 13th Part 1,649.
Look, Casablanca! They've re-made Casablanca.
Philistines! I mean how could you remake Casablanca?
The one starring Myra Binglebat
and Peter Beardsley was definitive.
Yeah, I saw that one. Knockout.
"Of all the space bars in all the worlds,
"you had to re-materialise in mine."
Look, a cassette of a whole year of Earth news here.
And two seasons of Zero-G football?
- I'll see you in the spring.
- Uh-uh-uh. What are total immersion video games?
Where?! Oh, these are brilliant!
You can't get hold of these for love nor money.
These are like Venus' arms.
These are like Brooke Shields' buttocks.
- What are they?
- Well, they're computer games, aren't they?
But electrodes are inserted
into your frontal lobes and hypothalamus, right?
So, you actually feel
as though you're really, really there. Yeees!
Fine. Holly, there's something here for you. It's a video letter.
Bung it on.
- Strike a light! It's Gordon.
- Who's Gordon?
The the 11th Generation Al computer aboard
the Scott Fitzgerald. He's got an IQ of 8000.
All right, Hol? It... It's Gordon.
Awesome, his intellect, I tell you.
Just sending on the latest move in our chess game.
My move is pawn, right? That's the little
knobbly ones down the front...
Pawn to King 4. Your move.
Well, I'd better sign off now.
See you, Hol. Bye.
H... How do you turn this off, then?
You were playing postal chess with him, were ya?
Well a chance to lock horns with an intellect of that calibre, I'd be a fool not to.
Pawn to King 4, eh? He's a sly one.
- So, who's winning, Hol?
- Well, he is really.
That was the first move.
- Me... Me..Me... You... Me...
- It's all junk mail, yours, you know?
Me... Me... Me...
You send off for every bit of rubbish going you do.
Just so you have some mail to open.
Me... Me...
"Please rush me my portable
walrus-polishing kit.
"Four super brushes that will clean even
the trickiest of seabound mammals."
"Yes, I am over 18, although my IQ isn't."
Me... Me...
Smeg! Outland Revenue.
Oh-oh-oh-oh! Outland Revenue.
8,500?!
8,500?! That's a lot of tax, isn't it, Lister.
How on Titan are you going to pay for that, eh?
I'm not. It's yours.
What?!
No. This is wrong. It's wrong. It's well wrong, Lister.
Relax, it doesn't matter now. They're not going to catch you now, are they?
What do you mean? Just because we're three million years
into deep space and human species is extinct?
That means nothing to these people. They'll find us.
- God, I'll be worrying about this all the time now.
- Me... Yo, another one for you.
"Rear Admiral Lieutenant General Rimmer"?!
That's from my mother.
Rear Admiral?
Every time I take an exam. I tell her I've passed.
It's getting embarassing now. I should be commander and chief of the whole universe.
- Do you want me to open it?
- Open it.
"Dear Rimmer..." Is this from your mum?
That's Mumsie.
This handwriting's terrible.
"I hope this epistle finds you adequately healthy
"to discharge your duties..."
Y'know, maybe I shouldn't
read this deeply personal stuff.
- Just get on with it.
- "I write to..." I can't read that.
Oh, "I write to inform"... "I write to inform you
that your father is dad."
Well, of course he is.
Maybe it's "your father/dad".
- "Dead".
- I can't make it out.
- My father is dead.
- What?
My father is dead.
Oh, yeah, it's an "E"!
That's what it is. Your father's dead, Rimmer!
Oh, eh. Sorry.
Is that all she says?
Just that he passed away peacefully in his Jeep.
Sleep.
- Can't sleep?
- Hmm.
- (SIGHS) No, me, neither.
- Hmmm.
I remember when my dad died you know. I was only six.
I got loads of presents off everyone
like it was Christmas.
I remember wishing a couple more people would die,
so I could complete me Lego set.
My grandma tried to explain, you know. She said
he'd gone away and wasn't coming back.
So, I wanted to know where like. you know?
She said he was very happy and he'd gone
to the same place as me goldfish.
So, I thought they'd flushed him down the bog.
I thought he was just
round the U-bend, you know?
I used to stuff food down
and magazines and that for him to read.
They took me to a child psychologist in the end.
cause they found- they found me with my head down
the bowl reading him the football results.
I knew he was dead.
I mean, they're all dead, aren't they?
But it's just, getting that letter makes it seem
like it happened yesterday.
- You never said much about him.
- No.
- You must have been pretty close.
- Close?
- Sorry. Very close.
- Close?
I hated him.
I detested his fat, stupid guts,
the pop-eyed, balding git.
- Eh?
- He always wanted to join the Space Corps,
be an officer, but they wouldn't take him
because he was an inch below regulation height.
One inch.
I had three brothers.
When we were young, he bought
a traction machine so that he could stretch us.
By the time my brother Frank
was eleven, he was six foot five.
Every morning, he'd measure us.
If we hadn't grown, back on the rack.
Sounds like he had a screw loose.
I don't think he had one screw fully
tightened, to be perfectly honest with you.
He had this fixation that we all
had to get into the Space Corps.
At meal times, he'd ask us questions
on astronavigation.
- If we got them wrong, no food.
- God, Rimmer. How did you cope with that?
I didn't. I nearly died of malnutrition.
I had no idea. I thought you adored your parents.
- When I was 14, I divorced them.
- What?
I took them to court.
I got paid maintenance until employment age
and access every fourth weekend to the family dog.
So, why are you so completely blown away
about him dying, then?
Oh, it doesn't mean to day I didn't respect him, didn't
look up to him. It was only natural. He was my father.
There's nothing natural
about your family, Rimmer.
It's just... I always wanted just once,
just once, for him to say to me, "Well done".
- For what?
- For something, for anything.
I wanted him to be proud of me,
just once. And now...
(CAT) Aow! My stomach has been pumped,
and now I'm hungry.
Hey, there you are!
Hey man, I'm so hungry, I just have to eat.
Rimmer's dad's died.
I'd prefer chicken.
Good evening. Here is the news
on Friday, 27th of Geldof.
Archaeologists near Mount Sinai have discovered
what is believed
to be a missing page from the Bible.
The page is presently being carbon dated in Bonn.
If genuine, it belongs at the beginning
of the Bible, and is believed to read...
"To my darling Candy.
"All characters portrayed
within this book are fictitious.
"and any resemblance to persons living
or dead is purely coincidental "
The page has been universally
condemned by church leaders.
Europe. A terrorist representing the Revolutionary Working
Front, a fanatical left-wing group dedicated to the abolition...
- Listen...
- Pause!
About your father. If it's any help,
he's in the ground now.
Sure, it's bad news for him, but on the other hand
but it's party time for all the little worms.
There's just no consoling him.
Rimmer, listen. Me and the Cat, we're gonna go and play a TIV.
Wondered if you wanted to come?
Oh, come on. Holly says he can key you in.
No?
- Play.
- (TV) ... of the middle-class was arrested today.
The man, Henri Leclerc, was attempting
to poison the mineral spring in France,
which is the source of all the world's Perrier water.
Had he succeeded, experts believe the middle class
would have been wiped out within three weeks.
Techno news. The new sensation
sweeping the solar system
is the total immersion video game
Better Than Life.
Using the new Sensolock feedback technique,
Better Than Life is able to detect all your desires and fantasies
and then make them come true.
So great is the appeal of Better Than Life, when one store
in New Tokyo ran out of stocks,
rubber nuclear weapons had
to be deployed to disperse the crowds.
Sport. England's underwater
hockey team's tour of Titan...
- Better Than Life it is!
- Brilliant!
(CAT) Let's play!
Key me in, Holly.
(SEAGULLS CALL)
What sort of game is this?
It's incredible. It's just like being here.
(LISTER) Yes!
# Boop-boop be doo #
That's what's-her-name,
the actress from the 20th century.
Er... Mary Magdalene.
It's Marilyn Monroe, you gimp.
I think she fancies you.
What does that prove? She's not blind.
Hey, baby. I'm a little busy right now, I'll catch you later, OK?
It's absolutely incredible.
Look! Look!
Excuse me, excuse me. You're probably really busy, but could I just say
but you are my all-time favourite fascist dictator.