Red Dwarf Favorites: Bodyswap

Welcome back sci-fi fans to Day 3 of Red Dwarf Favorites as we jump into Series 3.  With the complications of losing Norman Lovett to the Scottish Isles so he could no longer be the ship's A.I. and re-introducing Kryten from Series 2 as a reoccuring character we press on into the deep black.  This is Bodyswap.

Nope, still don't get the appeal to "Friends" at all.

Rimmer: Look, I know it's a stupid idean and there's a high chance of you being a spoiling vegetable for the rest of your life, but if the rest of your life 's only 30 seconds, what the hell?




During a scrolling of Series 3, Kryten crashed his space bike and was repaired but brought back his neuroses of being second class, Lister had given birth cesarean to his twin boys Jim and Bexely and handled them over to his parallel double, their mother to raise them and Holly missing his female doppelganger changes sex to still run the ship but now as a blonde and quite female.

One of the ship's on-board repair drones known as a Skutter has gone completely crackers and proceeds to rewire the ship.  Rimmer and Kryten (Robert Llewellyn of The Corner House, Smith & Jones, Junkyard Wars, Batteries Not Included and Carpool)  are busy double checking and cross indexing every circuit when they realize they cannot find the auto-destruct sequence for the ship and therefore have no control of the bomb going off.  

Awkward silences.

Holly (comedian Hattie Haydridge of Comic Relief, Saturday Live, Jonathan Creek, Lexx and It's Kevin) the ship's A.I. is bibbling on as per usual and makes you question how he/she can even run the basic fundamentals of this complex ship, let alone have a few working brain cells since going senile.  As the auto-destruct gets triggered thanks to Lister ordering a milkshake and a crispy bar the crew scramble to get the bomb deactivated when Kryten suggests using the same technology to create a hologram and swap Lister's mind with one of the dead crew to order self-destruct off.

Later that night Rimmer is just concerned about Lister's lack of diet, health and horrendous habits that he suggests they swap bodies for two weeks while Rimmer gets Lister fit and trim.  Haven't experienced touch, taste or smell in 3 million and 3 years, Rimmer's senses are a bit overwhelmed and well...  the diet and fitness program goes a bit off.  Chastised by Lister now wearing Rimmer's holo-body, Rimmer promises to buckle down.

Tempted by all the sins of the flesh again, Rimmer fails to follow through and the two swap bodies back.  Lister is coughing from all the cigars, booze and food Rimmer has made him ingest and tells Rimmer that will NEVER happen again.   Lister wakes the next day to find himself back in Rimmer's holo-body as Rimmer hijacked Lister's.  Can he convince the rest of the crew to catch Rimmer and swap them back?

Bodyswap was the first episode they could not film in front of the live audience because of Chris Barrie and Craig Charles had to dub their lines over each other talking and make sure it matched up with the difference in speech patterns.  A scene that was taped but deleted was Kryten comes to the sauna with a huge pile of food at Rimmer's(in Lister's body) request and a gag was Kryten had a lighter attachment in his index figure to light Rimmer's cigar. During the lighting and rechecks on equipment Llewellyn's suit became so sweat ridden that his own sweat short-circuited the wires to the lighter and every time they went to ignite the coils he was shocked mildly.

Charles Atlas diet plan.