Lister finds himself distracted from a fit of maudlin moping over his status as the last of humanity when he inadvertently gets involved in a Love Triangle with two of the vending machines and also discovers a letter from an ex-girlfriend implying he may have fathered a child with her before they broke up.
This episode contains examples of:
- Alliterative Title: The name of the episode is Dear Dave.
- Bottle Episode: Set entirely on Red Dwarf and featuring no guest cast apart from a voiceover.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Kryten is taken aback when Vending Machine #23 points out that Lister put his hand on her "logo".
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Drives the primary plot of the episode, with Lister trying to find a letter that will reveal who fathered his ex-girlfriend Hayley Summers' baby. Whilst he doesn't explicitly say it, his angrily denouncing Haley as a "slag" and then sucking on one finger is an obvious inferral that it turned out to be Roy's baby.
- Mood Whiplash: In the final minutes of the episode, Lister makes a tender, heart-moving speech about how he's sure his ex-girlfriend Hayley Summers would have been a wonderful mother... then reads the letter and angrily denounces her as a "slag".
- Not What It Looks Like: In the second last scene of the episode, Lister accidentally lets Vending Machine #34 drop and falls on top of her, and his efforts to put the machine upright are mistaken by both Rimmer and Kryten (and by Vending Machine #34 herself) as some kind of weird robosexual intercourse.
- Parlor Games: The Cat decides to inform the crew of "bad news" by playing a game of charades with them. After many misguesses (including giant death worms), it is eventually revealed that the bad news is that the mail pod has crashed into his clothes.Rimmer: "Mail pod arrived and crashed into your clothes"? How is that two words??
Cat: Cuz when it was over, all I could say was "Ohh, maaaan!" - Robosexual: Vending Machine #34 is plainly attracted to Lister, whilst Lister actually finds himself making some tentative attempts at flirting both with her and with Vending Machine #23, a result of Kryten pointing out that maybe Lister should just look for a compatible partner of any species, rather than holding out hope of finding a living human woman.
- Shipper on Deck: Kryten seems quite delighted with the idea that Lister has moved on to Vending Machine #34, having encouraged him to start considering non-human consorts in the first place.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Rimmer's plot of trying not to be demoted to Third Technician ends with the Cat taking his special report to use as toilet paper, leaving it unclear whether he ended up being demoted or not.
