When Rimmer gets his hands on a Quantum Skipper, which allows the user to travel between parallel realities, he sets out looking for one where he's not such a loser.
Things... don't work out well. Aside from a myriad of worlds we don't get to see, Rimmer visits:
- A universe just before the radiation leak wipes out the Red Dwarf crew, where Captain Hollister tried to escape in an escape pod before the ship was rad-wiped, but failed.
- A universe where Lister is more cultured, but the ship has been taken over by the humanoid descendants of Lister's pet rat.
- A universe where there are multiple Listers inhabiting Red Dwarf.
- A universe where he's the Ship's Computer.
- A universe where he almost ends up being sacrificed by the other Dwarfers.
Finally, he ends up in a universe where he seems to have everything he's ever wanted; still alive, married, four sons, and a successful astronavigation officer. Only one problem: Lister's the Captain of Red Dwarf, having discovered and repaired the leaky drive plate, averting the catastrophe, trading his good deed into shares and becoming incredibly wealthy when Red Dwarf discovered a planet full of Helium-7, which he used to buy Red Dwarf as his own vessel.
Disgusted by the idea of having his perfect universe at the cost of obeying Lister, Rimmer returns to his original Red Dwarf.
This episode contains examples of:
- Agitated Item Stomping: How Rimmer destroys the Skipper at the end of the episode.
- Alternate Universe: A major part of the episode is Rimmer skipping between alternate universes in the hope of finding the perfect one for him.
- Blatant Lies: The alternate Captain Hollister claims not only to have "tripped" and fallen into the escape pod, but that he "accidentally" hit the launch button instead of the button that opens the pod.
- The Bus Came Back:
- Norman Lovett and Mac McDonald have cameos as Holly and Captain Hollister respectively after having not been seen since the end of Series VIII.
- The original design for Red Dwarf returns in the Captain Lister universe.
- Call-Back: Helium-7 is the same incredibly valuable substance the Dwarfers discovered in "Timewave".
- Canon Immigrant: Evolved rats previously appeared in the tabletop RPG, though with some differences to The Rat in this episode.
- Characterization Marches On: Captain Hollister's crew evaluations are brought up again, having previously been mentioned all the way back in "Waiting For God". Back in that episode Hollister deemed Lister to be an utterly useless incompetent (albeit marginally less so than Rimmer); here, his description of Lister is much more in keeping with the Brilliant, but Lazy characterization that Lister's had in the intervening years.
- Continuity Nod: Rimmer gives up on the last universe he visits, the one where he has everything he could ever want, because that just can't make up for the fact that Lister is even more of a success than he is in that universe. This references Back to Reality, where it was established that part of the reason Rimmer was driven to despair was because he was confronted by the "truth" that he was inherently less successful than Lister.
- Digging Yourself Deeper: Rimmer brings up The Multiverse theory to Captain Lister, who confuses it for a strip club on Venus he visited once. Okay, maybe more than once. Alright, alright, he's a lifetime member. And met his wife there.
- Dirty Coward: The alternate Captain Hollister not only tries to abandon his crew and flee the ship before the disaster, but refuses to let Rimmer in, despite there being plenty of room.
- Drinking on Duty: Captain Lister drinks, smokes, and eats snacks in his quarters while on duty (as he puts it, the Captain of the ship is always on duty) and offers Rimmer to partake.
- Everybody's Dead, Dave: Inverted in a humourous call-back to the first episode when Rimmer ends up in an Alternate Universe where the deadly radiation leak has not happened (yet):Rimmer: The crew are alive?
Holly: Yes, Arnold.
Rimmer: The original crew?
Holly: Yes, Arnold.
Rimmer: Captain Hollister?
Holly: Nobody’s dead, Arnold.
Rimmer: Todhunter?
Holly: Nobody’s dead, Arnold.
Rimmer: Not even Petersen?
Holly: Nobody.
Rimmer: Nobody’s dead? Not even Lister?
Holly: Gordon Bennett. Lister, Petersen, nobody. Nobody's dead. Nobody is dead, Arnold.
Rimmer: So hang on. You’re telling me nobody's dead.
Holly: I wish I'd never brought this up now. - Fake Better Alternate Timeline:
- Rimmer comes across a universe where Lister is more cultured and Rimmer-esque. Rimmer is about to accept this universe until he finds that this Lister was put into stasis for bringing a pet rat on board, leading to the ship being swarmed by Rat Men.
- The final one he comes across seems to be perfect for Rimmer — he's married with children, back on Earth, alive rather than a Virtual Ghost, and he's an astronavigation officer. Then, he finds out that Lister outranks him in this universe and is captain of Red Dwarf, which is enough of a dealbreaker for Rimmer to return to his original universe.
- Foil: The Rats to the Cat. Whilst Cat has evolved to the point he looks and speaks like a dapper Afro-British man, and is the Last of His Kind (at least on the ship), the Rats look like giant humanoid rodents, talk like stereotypical Afro-British street thugs, and have a thriving civilization that infests Red Dwarf, to the point that Lister and Kryten are more or less living there on the Rats' sufferance.
- Gilligan Cut: The space-time anomaly Kryten accidentally creates whilst trying to make the skipper is effectively this trope as a space-time phenomenon. Anything they decide to do causes the opposite to immediately occur.
- Hiroshima as a Unit of Measure: While Kryten and Rimmer are trying to figure out what's going on as they inadvertently start skipping through alternate universes depending on what choices they don't make, they compare the weirdness of the situation to the relative weirdness over time of Michael Jackson. Kryten thinks it's only moderately weird (1989 Michael Jackson) while Rimmer thinks it's a lot weirder (1993 Michael Jackson).
- Human Sacrifice: One of the few worlds seen in passing has Rimmer nearly being sacrificed by Lister, Kryten and Cat, all wearing black hooded robes and chanting "Om!" around a candle-lit altar.
- Hypocrite: Early on, Rimmer claims that a person should surround themselves with people who are brighter and more successful than they are. But when he finds out the seemingly perfect universe he's traveled to includes a Lister who is more successful than he is, he decides that he can't live in such a universe.
- Incoming Ham: "YO, KRYTIE! WHERE MAH DINNER AT?!"
- Interdimensional Travel Device: Kryten invents the Quantum Skipper, a dimension travel device based on information salvaged from a science lab they previously visited, which Rimmer then uses to find a universe where he thinks he'll be happier.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Captain Hollister tried to use a four-seater escape pod for himself during the Cadmium II radiation leak incident that wiped out the crew and refused to let anyone else on board. Only to find that the escape pod has jammed. Just as the radiation caught up with him.Hollister: Oh, nuts.
- Me's a Crowd: One timeline that Rimmer goes to is one that has many Listers dwelling in the sleeping quarters. He legs it very quickly.
- Mythology Gag:
- The "reverse decision skips" that stem from the faulty Quantum Skipper call to mind the events of White Hole.
- The existence of the Rats is a nod to "Parallel Universe", where a dismayed Cat discovers his alternate universe counterpart is not the sexy female Cat he was hoping for, but a lowbrow, slobby and male Dog. It also might be a nod to the Red Dwarf roleplaying game, which posited in other universes there were humanoid cats, dogs, rats, mice, rabbits, iguanas and even real vindaloovians.
- Palette Swap: One of the alternative dimensions features a Blue Dwarf instead of Red Dwarf.
- Plot-Sensitive Button: Kryten informs Rimmer that the quantum skipper needs recharge time after each skip. However, this only applies for the first skip, and after that Rimmer sometimes spends as little as a few seconds in a reality before being able to use the button again.
- Rat Men: In the universe where Lister is more Rimmer-like, the ship has been populated by giant humanoid rats, who evolved from Lister's pet rat whilst he was in stasis.
- Ripped from the Headlines: The alternate version of Captain Hollister claims that he accidentally tripped, fell into an escape pod and hit the ejection switch — a jab at Francesco Schettino, captain of the Costa Concordia, who abandoned the ship after it ran aground with the loss of nearly three dozen lives, and tried claiming afterwards that he had accidentally fallen off the ship and landed in one of the lifeboats while trying to co-ordinate the evacuation.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Rimmer skips into another universe after having escaped the one where he met Holly and Hollister, and finds the sleeping quarters chock-full with Listers.Rimmer: Uh, no. (skips to another universe)
- Series Fauxnale: An episode designed to serve as a potential finale in case they can't get the cast and crew back together for Series XIII, whilst also allowing things to pick up where they left off should more series be made.
- Show Stopper: The audience's reaction to the reveal of Holly had to be considerably edited down for the broadcast version.
- Take Our Word for It: We don't see what several of the universes Rimmer skips to contain, just his reaction.
- The Unreveal: Rimmer is married in his (almost) ideal life but the identity of his wife, and whether she is a pre-existing character like Yvonne McGruder, Sabrina Mulholland-Jjones or even Kochanski, is never revealed.
- Wham Shot: Rimmer arrives in the first parallel universe and notes it's just Red Dwarf, looking the same as the one he just left. He walks down the corridor and the camera follows him... to reveal Holly on one of the monitors.
- With a Foot on the Bus: Rimmer was prepared to leave the crew in search of a universe where he was more successful, but he returns when he fails to find it.
