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"As the days go by, we face the increasing inevitability that we are alone in a Godless, uninhabited, hostile and meaningless universe. Still, you've got to laugh, haven't you?"
— Holly
British Fantastic Comedy (1988-1993; 1997-1999; 2009-present) about an enormous interstellar mining ship (the titular "Red Dwarf"), the crew of which has been almost completely wiped out by a radiation leak.
Almost.
One man remains alive: a chicken-soup-machine repairman named David Lister (born 2155 A.D, although this is debatable as at least 3 other birth dates appear in the TV, plus several other references that make it impossible for Lister to be born in 2155) from Liverpool, who was sentenced to be put in suspended animation for six months as punishment for bringing a female cat on board illegally (and, in the novelization at least, only signed onto the Jupiter Mining Corporation vessel initially to get back to Earth after being stranded on one of Saturn's moons after a drunken bender).
During Lister's time in the stasis booth, incompetent Second Technician Arnold J. Rimmer (B.S.C., S.S.C), Lister's bunkmate/superior officer (and all around smeghead), failed to replace a faulty drive-plate in the ship's engine system, which floods the ship's entire crew decks with lethal Cadmium-2 radiation, killing everyone on board except for Lister (and the cat which survived in the cargo hold). The ship's AI, Holly, sends the ship immediately out of the solar system, until the radiation reaches safe levels. Unfortunately, that takes three million years.
To keep Lister sane, Holly creates a hologram of the despised (and now deceased) Rimmer. After a few days, the pair discover the Cat, the last(ish) known member of his race Felis sapiens (which evolved from the pregnant cat that got Lister put in suspended animation in the first place).
Lister decides that he wants to return to Earth, despite the fact that no-one aboard knows if the human race still exists, and despite the problem that the journey back will take another three million years at sub-light speed (even turning the ship around at near lightspeed will take 400 years according to Holly).
In the second season (Series II), the crew of Red Dwarf discover another ship, but the skeletonized crew are all long dead, and are being "attended to" by a cheerfully-ignorant android butler, Kryten, who is obsessed with cleaning (as he was programmed to be). (With a great deal of effort and coaching from Lister, he eventually develops other character flaws as well, such as the ability to have a "lie mode".) A few more seasons down the road, Rimmer's hologramatic existance is upgraded from "soft light" to "hard light" by advanced science, giving Rimmer a nigh-invulnerable material body (he still stays the same neurotic coward he was before, though). During the seventh season (Series VII), Lister's former Love Interest, Officer Kristine Kochanski, arrives from an Alternate Universe. Throughout all of this, the group does not so much explore the cosmos as wander fecklessly through it.
Despite what it sounds like, this was essentially just another British comedy about amusing characters bickering amongst themselves, similar to The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, but with a fair amount of monsters, Time Travel and the like thrown in. The plot of the show grew convoluted and unwieldy, but since the show was never about its plot it survived.
The writing was snappy, as is typical of virtually every British Sit Com, but the programme's creators Rob Grant and
Doug Naylor ended their writing partnership after the sixth series, and subsequent novels and episodes were not as well-received.
Red Dwarf and Firefly share the setting-feature of having no aliens, both being set in a universe where all life in the universe was terrestrial in origin. In place of aliens, they substituted mutations, various types of androids ("mechanoids"), a variety of genetically (mis)engineered life forms (GELFs), and pretty much every time travel, alternate universe or different reality plot they could fit in. It was also extremely low-budget, but very popular, with an annual US Public Television marathon during PBS' fund-raising drive, numerous DVD collections, two tapes of outtakes, several tie-in books (including quizbooks and script collections), and a series of novels (which split into two continuities itself after the show's creators ended their collaborative partnership).
A three-part, Post Modern, movie-length sequel Back To Earth was recently aired across the Easter Weekend of 2009 on digital channel Dave, putting an end to the complete lack of any new TV or book output since 1999. Giving rise to hopes and speculation that the series might be revived. Which it was, with confirmation of such on early October of the same year.
This program provides examples of:
- Aborted Arc
- Absent Aliens
- Abusive Parents (Rimmer. When he was 15 years old, he went to court and divorced his parents.) (For more details, see entry for that trope.)
- Age Appropriate Angst
- A Glass In The Hand (once Rimmer became a Hard Light hologram, he could vent his frustration on inanimate objects)
- Alternate Continuity: The novels. Also, two radically different endings exist to the final episode Only the Good.... The one that was broadcast was actually the alternate ending, while the first one, where Rimmer successfully saves Red Dwarf from the metal-eating nanites, was the original ending but only exists in the DVD extras. It is unclear if Back to Earth follows storywise from the broadcast ending or from the original ending.
- And the real kicker? The companion book to Series VIII states Rimmer's battle with the Grim Reaper is a metaphor for his struggle to regain consciousness, leaving plenty of room for speculation. It also states another ending - involving Ace Rimmer - was planned. And the Series VIII DVD booklet lists no less than four endings, of which three were filmed.
- The Ace (Ace Rimmer. What a guy!)
- Actor Allusion: Back to Earth does it. The crew meet Craig Charles, who plays Lister, and Rimmer asks for his own sitcom (Chris Barrie starred in The Brittas Empire).
- Cat's 'Do I dance?' from Parallel Universe might be an example.
- Adaptation Distillation (the novels turn an episodic TV series into a sprawling adventure)
- Adaptation Decay (the US pilot stripped Lister of his disgusting habits and Book Dumb, while making Rimmer nothing more than his annoying bunkmate, Flanderising two well-developed characters)
- Adolf Hitler (in Timeslides, appears As Himself in a post-titles guest star credit, to the amusement of the audience).
- Also one of the evil team in Meltdown, referenced in Backwards and the corrupt future crew are apparently good friends of the Hitlers in Out of Time.
- A God Am I (Subverted in Waiting for God: Lister is treated as a god ("Cloister the Stupid") by a priest of the cat-race and attempts to explain he isn't. He fails.)
- After The End
- AI Is A Crapshoot (Holly's IQ is, purportedly, 6000. ...Well there's a 6 in it anyway. Then again, s/he is 3,000,000 years old and gone a bit... peculiar.)
- Aliens And Monsters
- All Just A Dream: Sort-of, the plot of Back to Reality and Back to Earth.
- Almighty Janitor: Lister deliberately avoids doing smart or ambitious things in case he might risk his carefree life. He's in fact pretty smart and capable when he tries.
- Alternate Universe
- Americanitis (The American adaptation, which didn't last past its two(!) never-aired pilot episodes.)
- Perhaps it's just as well. From an article this troper read somewhere it sounded like most of the episodes they came up with were just slight touch-ups of existing ones, the ones remembered most clearly being redone versions of The Last Day and Camille.
- Apparently the original cast refer to the American version as 'White Dwarf', given that the actors playing The Cat and Lister (black and mixed-race respectively in the UK cast) were white.
- And Then I Said
- Anti Hero
- Arbitrary Skepticism
- Armchair Military (Rimmer)
- Ascended Extra (Kryten, Kochanski, and Captain Hollister)
- Asymmetric Dilemma
- Attending Your Own Funeral (Rimmer)
- A Wizard Did It
- Back To Front (The episode Backwards
lost won awards. Well, it should have.)
- Baleful Polymorph: The Cat after becoming Duane "Duke of Dork" Dibbley as part of a series of Involuntary Transformation scenes of the appropriately named Emohawk: Polymorph II. Subverted and inverted with Rimmer - Ace being brave and selfless by contrast to normal Rimmer.
- Bar Brawl (Except it's a "bar room tidy". Unrumble!)
- Also, the real bar room brawl in Gunmen of the Apocalypse
- Barrier Busting Blow
- Batman Gambit: Kochanski of all people in Beyond a Joke. She instructs Cat to turn Starbug so it flies away from the Centauri which Kryten is on. The ship's pilot, a Simulant, after realising they're not giving chase and actually fleeing, assumes they've planted a bomb on his own vessel. Cat and Lister are fooled too.
- Battle Butler (Kryten in later seasons, although he is programmed never to take a human life. When he is forced to shoot a man to save a child, his guilt chip goes into overdrive and he attempts to commit suicide.)
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Rimmer spends the first few minutes of Only the Good... complaining that Hollister doesn't see him as officer material. He has a run-in with a vending machine which states that one day they'll meet again and it will destroy him, and Rimmer snarks that on that day, he'll be ship's captain. By the end of the episode, everyone higher ranked than him had been evacuated making him the highest ranked person on the ship, and as he tries to figure out how to save himself, the machine attacks. It's not certain how he fared.
- Big Damn Heroes
- Bond One Liner (Played For Laughs with Ace Rimmer.)
- Born In The Wrong Century (Rimmer)
- Brain In A Jar: Lister's evil, corrupt future self from Out of Time; the jar has his dreadlocks Sellotaped to the glass.
- Brain Uploading: All holograms, and also the episodes Thanks for the Memory and Body Swap.
- Brainy Specs (Geeky genius-Rimmer wears glasses after his mind patching in Holoship. Similarly in Polymorph, after the chameleonic lifeform has drained away all of Rimmer's anger, he turns into an ultra-pacifist liberal sporting hornrimmed glasses and a goatee and proposes to hit the monster with "a major leaflet campaign".)
- Also, in White Hole, they were originally going to make Holly bald with tea-shades, after her IQ goes to 12,000.
- Breaking The Fourth Wall: A possible example. It's not clear when Cat surmises that the Dog wants to eat him (Parallel Universe) whether he's addressing the camera or not.
- But then, in the first two series, the Cat had a habit of speaking his thoughts out loud in an un-self-conscious manner. Apparently, that's what the Cat's people did.
- Captains Log
- Cargo Cult
- Catapult Nightmare
- Catch Phrase: "Smeg! Smegging Smeghead!"
- Cattle Punk: Second half of Gunmen of the Apocalypse.
- The Chris Carter Effect (the first two series had a Myth Arc which foreshadowed future plot points and Character Development... which was subsequently dropped for a Monster Of The Week-type routine at the start of series III)
- Claustrophobia (Lister. Lampshaded that it only comes up when it makes the plot more dramatic)
- Cluster Smeg Bomb: Lister and Rimmer, one each.
- Cold Opening: Stoke Me a Clipper had an opening scene four or five minutes long before finally kicking into the opening sequence. But that's excusable.
- Commuting On A Bus: Rimmer (sort of) for part of Series VII and Holly for Series VI and VII (excluding the finale).
- Contemplate Our Navels (Either played straight or as a parody of science fiction in general being wont to do this, much of the show was taken up by philosophical ideas via sci-fi trappings, i.e. the manifestation of Lister's Confidence and Paranoia', or the Inquisitor'')
- Contested Sequel (After the Grant/Naylor writing partnership broke up in 1993, both writers penned a new Red Dwarf novel: Doug Naylor wrote Last Human in 1995, and Rob Grant wrote Backwards in 1996. Each one ignores the other and is written as following the second book Better Than Life, making them both contested sequels.)
- Control Freak (Rimmer)
- Couch Gag
- Couldnt Find A Pen (episode Psirens)
- Credits Gag
- Crowning Music Of Awesome: Apart from the theme tune, Tongue Tied could count. And of course, the Rimmer Song.
- Crowning Moment Of Funny: If you absolutely had to pick one, then the Not What It Looks Like scene in Polymorph would be a strong contender.
*extremely long pause*
Rimmer: Well I can't say I'm totally shocked...
- Cuckoo Nest
- Curse Cut Short: Possible example in Rimmerworld. As Rimmer falls toward the wormhole, he launches into a tirade which cuts off after several adjectives.
- Darker And Edgier: While still extremely comedic, the novels are a lot darker.
- Deadpan Snarker (all of the main characters to varying degrees)
- Deflector Shields
- Dirty Coward (Rimmer)
- Dont Explain The Joke (The cast have crawled off-stage and hidden under tables at conventions when asked what 'Smeg' means.)
- Downer Ending (Only the Good.... Averted with the recent special, Back to Earth)
- Drill Sergeant Nasty (Queeg)
- Dropped A Bridge On Him: The offscreen death of Kochanski is a subversion, as she is given a Tear Jerker memorial scene in Part One, and in Part Two it is revealed she is still alive and Kryten lied about it to Lister.
- Duke Nukem Forever (The Movie's coming out! Soon! Really!)
- Ear Worm "It's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere...."
- Embarrassing Middle Name (Arnold Judas Rimmer; he tells people who first meet him that it's "Jonathan")
- Empathic Environment: The psi-moon in ''Terrorform".
- Enemies With Death
- Enhance Button: Parodied mercilessly in Back To Earth. Uncrop!
- Enemy Without
- Esperanto The Universal Language
- Even The Guys Want Him: Space Corp Special Service Test Pilot Arnold "Ace" Rimmer.
Bongo: If you're interested, I'll be in my quarters at lunchtime, covered in tarama salada.
Ace: I didn't know your bread was buttered that side, Bongo.
Bongo: It isn't. I've been happily married for 35 years. It's just, a chap like you can turn a guy's head.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave (The core premise, the show is the Trope Namer.)
- Everythings Better With Bob ... as in Bob the Skutter.
- Everythings Better With Penguins: Mr. Flibble.
- Everything Trying To Kill You: In the book version of Better Than Life, when Lister crashes on a planet which turns out to be Earth the planet itself seems to be out to get him.
- Evil Twin
- Evolutionary Levels
- Extreme Omnivore: Lister's fondness for curries and spices of all sorts means his ordinary meals tend to be gross, and the stuff he's eaten that he thinks is unusual... Some of the more notable items have included swarfega (industrial-grade soap used to remove oil) mixed with glass cleaner, a baked space weevil (which he didn't look at and which he thought, from the taste, was crunchy King Prawn), dog food, dog's milk tea, beer milkshakes and a live tarantula. Admittedly that last one wasn't voluntary. The fact he's a major boozehound presumably doesn't help matters.
- And a triple fried egg chili chutney sandwich
Rimmer: I feel like I'm having a baby!
Lister: The trick is, you've got to eat it before the bread dissolves...
- Lister is stated to have only a few functioning taste buds remaining (or just the one).
- Explosive Instrumentation
- Explosive Overclocking
- Failure Is The Only Option: Getting back to Earth.
- Faster Than Light Travel (Future Echoes)
- Fetish Fuel: Out of the four main cast, one's in leather, one's in rubber, one's in lycra and the other's in PVC.
- Kochanski's first Series VII outfit seems to be made primarily of skin-tight, red rubber.
- Fictional Document (the Space Corp Directives)
- Finger Licking Poison: In Back in the Red, with a (non-lethal) drug in the seal of an envelope.
- Fix It In Post
- For Want Of A Nail: One little split in the destiny line created Ace Rimmer.
- Freaky Friday (Bodyswap)
- Furry Fandom: Although it was made before the Internet made the fandom famous, DNA has Rimmer ask incredulously if Lister is claiming to enjoy strapping on a bushy tail and naming himself 'Nutkin' when Lister, attempting to explain why he feels Kryten should change back into a Mechanoid, mentions his envy of a squirrel he saw in the botanical gardens after getting dumped by Kochanski.
- Future Imperfect
- Future Me Scares Me (played for laughs in Stasis Leak)
- But played straight in Out of Time.
- Gag Penis: Kryten's "groin attachment". Archie could perhaps qualify as well.
- In Only the Good..., Rimmer gets one (not seen) in the universe where everything's opposite.
- Gainax Ending (Back To Earth has retroactively turned Only the Good... into this)
- Gargle Blaster
- Gender Bender: Holly.
- Genre Savvy: The little girl on the bus in Back to Earth is well aware of the Never Found The Body trope and points out to Lister this means that Kochanski must be alive. She's got that trope down.
- Getting Crap Past The Radar:
- Ghost City (episode Tikka To Ride)
- Gone Horribly Right: The Despair Squid was the result of compressing 5 billion years of evolution into 3 years. It killed just about everything in the ocean.
- Good Angel Bad Angel (episode Confidence and Paranoia)
- Green Eggs - in episode Legion
- Groin Attack: Rimmer does this to the Grim Reaper in Only the Good.... Has it done to him (in a way) by Lister in Back to Earth.
- Hand Or Object Underwear: (Done with pieces of paper that say "Top Secret")
- Hand Puppet: Mr. Flibble, a cute but evil toy penguin through which Rimmer channels his hex energy while infected with the holovirus in Quarantine.
- Hard Light (Rimmer)
- The Heartless
- Helping Hands
- Heroic Sacrifice JFK assassinating himself
- Historical In Joke
Lister: (talking to a crowd listening to Hitler) "Don't listen to him, he's a complete nutter! And he's only got one testicle!"
- And the Who Shot JFK spoof (Tikka to Ride''), in which Kennedy ended up shooting his own past self because it turned out the timeline in which he survived became a Crapsack World.
- Holodeck Malfunction: "Gunmen of the Apocalypse".
- Hollywood Pudgy: Lister isn't that big. In fact, in the later seasons, he's downright scrawny.
- Homoerotic Dream (One of Lister's dreams after Arnold Rimmer left Red Dwarf to become the next Ace involves a kiss between Lister and Rimmer which Lister wakes up from quite shocked.)
- Human Popsicle (Dave Lister)
- Humongous Mecha: Blue Midget's redraw could count as one.
- I Am Legion in, er, Legion.
- I Call Him Mister Happy: Archie.
- Identical Grandson: Lister. He's the child of the second Kochanski and himself.
- Intangible Man (As a soft-light hologram, Rimmer is often complaining that he cannot touch or taste or feel anything, and in one scene in Balance of Power when Rimmer tries to block Lister's path, Lister simply walks out through Rimmer.)
- I Cannot Self Terminate: Averted. Kryten is often quite willing to shoot himself when feeling especially guilty.
- Involuntary Shapeshifting (in DNA and Emohawk: Polymorph II).
- It Came From The Fridge (the curry monster)
- Jeannie Cut (for the purpose of grabbing hologramatic items from the air)
- Jonas Quinn (Inverted. The original Rimmer from episode 1 comes back for series VIII, replacing the hologramatic Rimmer who had been there for every other episode.)
- Journey To The Center Of The Mind (episode Terrorform)
- Sort of. More 'Journey to a Planet that Has Shaped itself to Represent Someone's Mind.'
- Jumping On A Grenade
- Killed Mid Sentence: Kryten.
- Last Of His Kind - Cat and Lister at least until the arrival of first Kochanski and later the whole crew of Red Dwarf). Of course, the cat race still exists somewhere Out There, and one of the "lost episodes" that exists only as storyboard (see the DVD extras) would have featured a visit to a planet of Cat's people, as a spoof of the Star Trek TOS episode Amok Time.
- Leaning On The Fourth Wall: The pub owner's reverse rant in Backwards, ostensibly informing Kryten and Rimmer they're fired, actually criticises the 'one sad git' who's reversed the recording. Of course, when the episode was filmed, reversing it was complicated.
- Legacy Immortality (Ace Rimmer)
- Living Ship
- Locked In A Freezer
- Logic Bomb: Kryten deactivates Hudzen-10 with one. Hudzen mentions a Silicon Heaven, which Kryten exclaims doesn't exist. Kryten and Holly persaude Hudzen they're telling the truth, and Hudzen, having been programmed to believe in Silicon Heaven, shuts down. Kryten did believe in Silicon Heaven, but was able to lie due to Lister's programming breaking.
- After all, where would all the calculators go?
- Love Makes You Crazy: Lister's GELF wife in Emohawk: Polymorph II.
- Lyrical Dissonance
- The Mad Hatter
- Man I Feel Like A Woman: Rimmer becomes Kochanski in Balance of Power. He doesn't concern himself with feeling his feminine physique until the process is only partly reversed by Holly.
- Mayor Of A Ghost Town
- Medium Blending: The claymation episode.
- Memetic Mutation: "Mr. Flibble's very cross."
- "ALPHABETTI SPAGHETTI??!"
- "Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast". Actually mutated within the show itself: "Stoke me a clipper, I'll be back for Christmas. [pause] Whatever."
- "But, where would all the calculators go?"
- "Gazpacho soup!!"
- "Everybodys Dead Dave"
- Merlin Sickness (Backwards)
- Missing Episode (Played with in Back to Earth in that there were two more seasons of Red Dwarf somehow made in the 'real world' that the crew land in, which we of course don't have.)
- And worst of all, Series IX was apparently "the best by miles".
- And in real life, too, Doug Naylor has said something along the lines of "I have no interest in writing Series IX... though I am interested in writing Series X".
- Not to mention there really are two missing episodes that were planned but never filmed. (One featuring the story of Lister's twin sons and Kryten's return should have opened season 3/Series III. The other was the Cat episode.)
- Mister Seahorse (Dave Lister's offscreen male pregnancy between the end of Parallel Universe and the start of the third season.)
- Mix And Match
- Motive Decay: Beginning with Series 3, the crew seem to forget that their main aim is to return to Earth and instead concentrate on having adventures. This objective gets picked up again much later in the series.
- Mr Exposition (Holly, and later Kryten)
- Mr Vice Guy
- MST 3 K Mantra: How'd we find a traffic cone in deep space? How can the ship suddenly maintain two holograms at the same time? Eh...let's just never mention it.
- My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels (Rimmer's attempts at Esperanto)
- Nakama
- Nanomachines
- Necro Non Sequitur: Cassandra's demise.
- Nerds Are Sexy: Averted, subverted and kicked to the floor by Duane Dibbley.
- Never Say That Again
- Nietzsche Wannabe (The Inquisitor; subverted by his attempts to populate the universe with meaningful humans)
- No Periods Period: Lampshaded and averted. It's briefly mentioned in Balance of Power when Kochanski (really Rimmer) claims to be, "Having a woman's period." In Only the Good..., Lister explains to Kryten why the second Kochanski has said it's the wrong time of the month. Kryten is shocked that television and film have so successfully avoided this. Kryten, armed with this new knowledge of the female body, hilariously averts the trope
 .
- No Water Proofing In The Future (Kryten, and all the other Series 400 mechanoids of his type)
- Non Sequitur Thud (Happens to Kryten after he's used as a battering ram, and briefly starts calling Lister "Susan")
- And also in Quarantine when the insane Rimmer telekinetically attacks him with a fire axe.
- Now Do It Again Backwards
- One Man Army: Ace Rimmer. In Stoke Me a Clipper, he downs a Luftwaffe plane, takes out a whole squad of Nazi soldiers apart from one and simultaneously rescues a princess. What a guy.
- Opposite Sex Clone - Well, opposite sex dimension. (episode "Parallel Universe")
- Rimmer eventually, after several failures breeds an actual opposite sex clone of himself in the episode Rimmerworld.
- Painful Rhyme: Blue's Rimmer song.
- Paint It Black: Evil Holly and Evil Lister in Demons and Angels.
- Pardon My Klingon
- Parental Incest: Averted in the show, played straight in one of the books. Lister attempts to get off with Kochanski's second incarnation knowing full well she's his mother (via IVF; he's his father). In one of the books, it's suggested he actually does.
- Given the circumstances, it's kind of too late for him to worry about this.
- Pass The Popcorn (Thanks for the Memory)
- Phrase Catcher (Ace Rimmer, "What a guy!")
- Pointy Haired Boss (Captain Frank Hollister is revealed to have only reached his rank through blackmail (from the lowly position of Doughnut Boy no less), implying that he is only marginally more qualified than Rimmer or Lister (though clearly more clever and/or more ambitious).)
- The Poochie: An aversion - Kryten fit into the main cast perfectly and it felt like he'd been in it all along. The ill-fated Americanization put him in the first episode. (The only episode)
- Precision F Strike (Rimmer in 'Waiting for God')
Rimmer: We'll soon see how totty it is, laddie, the quarantine period's nearly up! Bastard!
- Precursors (subverted: all life in the universe originated on Earth, which makes us the Precursors.)
- Projected Man
- Prophetic Fallacy
- Put On A Bus: Holly, once in Series VI and VII, and again in the Dave specials Back to Earth (he's fine, just temporarily out of commission for the duration of the episodes).
- Reality Subtext (derailed by large hiatus at peak of UK popularity)
- Also completely changed the course of Series VIII. Originally, it was going to end with a two-parter, culminating in the crew finally returning to Earth but obliterating civilisation as they arrive. However, circumstances meant the hour-long series opener had to become a three-parter, another episode had to become a two-parter and the series had to finish on a cliffhanger.
- Refugee From TV Land ( the crew - or so they initially think in Back To Earth)
- Reincarnation: Referenced, Rimmer claims to have been chief eunuch to Alexander the Great.
- Replacement Goldfish: Averted when Kryten defeats Hudzen. Referenced when Rimmer becomes the next Ace.
- Replacement Scrappy: Kochanski replacing Rimmer as a regular in series VII.
- Not really—Kochanski was set to become a major character that series even before they found out Chris Barrie was quitting.
- Reset Button: White Hole (although a later episode implies it wasn't quite a total reset) and the beginning of Tikka to Ride after everyone aboard Starbug had been killed and the craft exploded at the end of Out of Time.
- Retool
- Revival - Two of them: Series VII was broadcast after a four-year hiatus, and the three-part Back to Earth was broadcast after a ten-year hiatus.
- Re Write (Too many to count. The creators always maintained that if altering the Back Story could improve the show, then they should alter it.)
- Although some of it makes sense. Whose idea was it to give Rimmer a job that could endanger the entire crew?
- Then they used Rule Of Funny and rewrote the Re Write, implying that the job was so easy that anyone that could mess it up must have the brains the size of a newt's testicle.
- Robo Cam
- Rule Number One: The Space Corps Directives
- Sacrificial Lamb (The Red Dwarf crew in the first episode. Several of them reappeared in flashbacks, and the entire crew were ressurected for series VIII).
- Satire Parody Pastiche (Many over the years, including Casablanca in Camille and Blade Runner in Back to Earth)
- Scapegoat Creator - Since the Grant/Naylor partnership broke up, many fans have used the drop-off in quality in the last two seasons (along with the slightly better reception of Backwards compared to Last Human) as evidence to support their claims that Rob Grant alone was responsible for the show's early greatness, and that Doug Naylor is just a hack with ideas above his station. To a lesser extent this also applies to Paul Alexander, who took over as Naylor's main writing partner after Grant quit.
- Science Marches On - Invoked in Back to Earth. It handwaves the mentions of cassettes in Series VIII with a claim that people eventually reverted to the format from discs.
- Screw Yourself - Dave Lister has drunken sex with his gender opposite, Deb Lister, in the Opposite Sex dimension, which leads to him actually getting pregnant despite his protestations of "But I can't be pregnant! I'm a guy! I don't have the... equipment!" (see also entry on the trope page) Cat plans to have sex with himself (the only person he could ever love), but his opposite is actually a male dog.
- Seasonal Rot (The last two seasons tended to be highly variable in their quality)
- Shirtless Scene: Three of the four main cast (even Kryten), except, oddly, for the Cat, who is supposed to be the most sexy. May have to do with the fact that the Cat mentions he perms his leg hair...
- Well, he thinks so. The fact that Danny John-Jules is made of rubber is neither here nor there.
- In the episode Kryten, the cat informs the audience that he's "so excited all six of [his] nipples are tingling." Not showing him shirtless was probably a combination of the "cat" physiology being difficult to show, and the weightier problem of the "cat" physiology being difficult to show without squicking the audience out completely. Had they shown him shirtless, his attraction value/percieved sexiness might have been Ruined FOREVER.
- It's very simple. Another way to describe "shirtless" is "badly dressed."
- Shoot The Shaggy Dog - The entire Felix Sapien (Felis sapiens) Civil Wars. They fought over the colour the hats should be (Red Vs Blue). Not only would Lister not have approved, but they both were wrong (he wanted green). Leads into Silly Reason For War.
- Silly Reason For War
- Self Fulfilling Prophecy: Cassandra claims that a character will die of a heart attack after being told he's going to die of a heart attack. Similarly, she prophesies that she will be killed by one Dave Lister; Lister's conscious attempt not to harm her leads to her accidental demise.
- In future echoes, Rimmer sees an echo of Dave dying at a computer console. To prove the future isn't set in stone, he tries to prevent another echo, Cat breaking a tooth. Bet you can't guess what happens next.
- Share The Male Pain (Referenced and explained in the episode Legion, where the titular Legion explains that any pain he feels is conveyed to the rest of the crew. He stabs his hand to show them and then tells them not to anger him, or "it'll be ''there''").
- Shoot The Bullet (The Riviera Kid demonstrates this ability in the VR episode Gunmen of the Apocalypse.)
- Shout Out: The first two series' title music is very reminiscent of Also Sprach Zarathustra from 2001. The name Holly might bea Shout Out to HAL, too.
- Speaking of music, Ace "What a guy!" Rimmer's theme in Dimension Jump could very well be a shout out to "Take My Breath Away" from Top Gun. A different theme was used in Stoke Me A Clipper.
- There's a Shout Out to Die Hard 2: Die Harder in DNA. When Lister claims "How can the same smeg happen to the same guy twice?" after he is attacked yet again by his favorite foods.
- Smart People Play Chess: Used by Queeg after being challenged to a duel by Holly.
- Spaceship Girl (Holly starts off as a male AI interface, but undergoes a sex change after the second season)
- Note: Holly in either incarnation was attracted to other AI (and sometimes even humans) of the opposite gender. The series never calls attention to the inherent questions this raises, and it's probably best not to think about it too much.
- Spot The Imposter: (Psirens) The real Lister couldn't play guitar to save his life, but since he thinks he can play guitar like a pro, the Psiren that had taken Lister's form read his mind and played guitar accordingly. And was promptly shot.)
- The 'imposter' Lister's hands are played by Phil Manzanera. Apparently the writers wanted Brian May for that part, but he wasn't available - but his wife, actress Anita Dobson, got the part of Captain Tau.
- Sorry I Fell On Your Fist: The "Good" or "High" version of the crew members from Demons and Angels.
- Strange Salute
- Studio Audience
- Subverted Trope
- Survived The Beginning
- Temporal Paradox: Lister is the son of his future self and the alternate Kochanski. The whole thing is neatly sewn up by the word "Ouroboros", implying it's a cycle, a temporal loop.
- Also, the battle between Starbug and future Starbug in Out of Time. The evil crew win with their advanced weapons systems, but because they destroyed their previous selves, they didn't exist to fight Starbug. Lister, in the next episode, tried to explain why they weren't dead, but the camera he was talking to exploded.
- That Makes Me Feel Angry: Invoked after Kryten is ordered into a waste compactor by a Psiren and crushed into a cube.
Kryten: I'm almost annoyed.
- That Was Objectionable (Rimmer repeatedly objected to his own defense councel in Justice —and was overruled by the judge AI of the prison spacestation every time—, because Kryten's defense strategy hinged on proving that Rimmer was too all-around incompetent to have been liable for the disaster aboard Red Dwarf that he felt guilty for.)
- "A man of such awesome supidity, he even objects to his own defense counsel!"
- The Other Darrin
- Holly, the ship's computer and most notable example, was played by Norman Lovett for Series I-II and was replaced by Hattie Hayridge for Series III-V before being Brother Chucked in Series VI. When the character returned for Series VIII (and the Series VII finale), Holly was once again played by Norman Lovett.
- Kryten, the mechanoid, was a one-off character in Series II played by David Ross. When he became a regular in Series III, Ross was unavailable and Robert Llewellyn replaced him for the rest of the show's run.
- Talkie Toaster (Exactly What It Says On The Tin) was voiced by John Lenahan in Series I and II (although his scenes were cut for the latter.) When the character resurfaced briefly in a Series IV episode (White Hole), not only was he voiced by David Ross (the original Kryten) but the original prop had been replaced as well.
- Kristine Kochanski was a guest character in Series I, II and VI, and played by Clare Grogan. When the character became a main character in Series VII, Grogan was unavailable and Chloë Annett replaced her.
- Terraform (Back to Reality, Rimmerworld)
- Tech Marches On (Lampshaded in Back to Earth when Kryten and Lister discuss how 21st century DVDs were later replaced by "superior" technology — video tapes — because those were too large to lose whereas it was scientifically proven that humans are incapable of putting DVDs back into their box... neatly explaining why the early series has the characters using VHS tapes despite the series being set in the future.)
- The Last Man Heard A Knock
- This Is Not A Drill "This is a drill." [sound of a jackhammer]
- And in a later episode when Holly's grammar chip is damaged... "Abandon shop! This is not a daffodil. Repeat, this is not a daffodil!"
- Time Travel
- Timey Wimey Ball: Several, but a memorable and rather ingenious example comes from Future Echoes. Lister witnesses an echo of Rimmer, spouting apparently non-sequitur phrases before storming off indignantly. An instant later, Rimmer reappears on the other side of the room and Lister confronts him about what he's just seen ... which causes Rimmer to say the phrases that previously seemed non-sequitur and then storm off indignantly. Don't worry, it confuses the characters as well.
- Tomato In The Mirror: Rimmer in Rimmerworld. Also parodied in Out of Time with "robo"-Lister.
- Too Soon: The running order of Series IV was changed because of the Gulf War.
- Trademark Favourite Food: Lister and Curry. Especially Vindaloo.
- Trash Of The Titans
- Trojan Prisoner
- Uncanny Valley: Kryten claims this is why he looks less human than previous droids. Although this doesn't explain why his successor, Hudzen-10, looks more human.
- Also, Holly's forgotten command scene from Demons and Angels.
- Unusual Euphemism: Smeg. At least, it was supposed to be a thoroughly fictional profanity.
Rimmer: Why don't you smegging well smeg off, you annoying little smeggy smegging smegger?
- Use Your Head (Kryten, in White Hole)
- Used Future (From Series III onwards, when Mel Bibby became the set designer. The first two series were meant to have a grey submarine feel, but really just looked like plywood walls painted grey.)
- Villain Song: Blue's Rimmer could perhaps be a subversion. It's not actually Rimmer (it's a simulation created from Rimmer's logbook). Although he's not technically a villain, it proves to Lister that Rimmer was an antagonist.
- Virtual Ghost (Rimmer)
- Waif Prophet (Subversion)
- We Need A Distraction
- Who Shot JFK (himself)
- Woolseyism: Backwards begins with some Star Wars expository text that speeds up too fast for the viewer to read. In some foreign dubs it is accompanied by a voice over, which also speeds up until unintelligible. And even if the US pilot is So Bad Its Horrible, there were a few gems in adapting jokes for an American audience ("Death? It's like being at an Amish bachelor party.")
- Xanadu
- You Fail The IQ Test: An IQ of 6000? Makes as much sense as anything in a 'verse as screwy as this one.
- You Need To Get Laid
Kochanski: "Rimmer, have sex with someone. And that's an order."
- You Will Be Beethoven: See Who Shot JFK.
- Zany Scheme, then A Simple Plan an instant afterwards (The Jailbreak from Rimmerworld)
- Zero G Spot (referenced, if not seen)
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