"Things are about to get a whole lot more Rimmery!"
Whilst cruising through space in Starbug, the Dwarfers stumble across a drifting scout vessel, the SS Nautilus, which is falling towards a class C asteroid storm and carrying a highly explosive cargo of veranium. Through an act of cowardly malice that goes impossibly right, Rimmer accidentally saves the ship, whose bio-printed captain promptly promotes him to First Flight Lieutenant before dissolving. Overwhelmed with euphoria, Rimmer immediately starts trying to throw his new weight around, with the aid of the Nautilus' bio-printer.This episode includes examples of:
- Aesop Amnesia: Rimmer gets the idea to create dozens of clones of himself, apparently forgetting what happened when he was bunking up with just one copy of himself, to say nothing of the several hundred years he spent trapped on Rimmerworld. The (normal) clones in this episode appear to get on fine, which Rimmer justifies as them adhering to the chain of command where he is the clones' superior officer rather than their 'equal', though we only get to see them for a short while.
- Body Horror:
- Captain Herring, who, thanks to his bio-printer jamming, has had his face gruesomely elongated, leaving him with his eyes and nose on the top of his head and his mouth on the front. And his moustache stretched across this divide.
- The Rimmer Monster, a blob of writhing meat and limbs with multiple grimacing Rimmer faces sticking out of it.
- Bond One-Liner: The episode ends with Lister and Cat informing the Rimmer Monster it has one thing it needs to add to its "to do" list...Dying! (they start blasting away with bazookoids)
- Call-Back:
- Rimmer going mad with power and using it to make Lister's and Cat's lives a misery is a clear reference back to Quarantine, where he used Bothering by the Book as an excuse to do the same thing.
- Kryten tries to warn Rimmer against bio-printing clones of himself by pointing out that having multiple Rimmers around has always been a disaster in the past, referencing both Rimmerworld and Me2.
- Doppelmerger: Rimmer accidentally creates a Rimmer Monster, an amalgamation of Rimmer clones caused by a bio-printer paper-jam. On top of this, the Rimmer monster's goal is to merge with every other Rimmer on board Red Dwarf, up to and including the original Rimmer.
- Evil Sounds Deep: The Rimmer Monster.
- Field Promotion: Captain Herring promotes Rimmer to officer for accidentally saving his ship.
- Forgot About His Powers: Rimmer runs terrified from the monster, forgetting that his Hard Light drive makes him Nigh-Invulnerable.
- I Meant to Do That: Rimmer initially intended to Mercy Kill Herring with a mining torpedo fired at his ship, but the so-called "nuke" wound up instead spinning the Nautilus out of harm's way, leading Herring to believe that was on purpose and Rimmer takes the credit with glee.
- Laser-Guided Karma: Zigzagged. Initially subverted, when Rimmer's cowardly attempt to blow up the Nautilus with a mining missile lest Starbug get caught in the explosion instead miraculously saves the ship and earns him a promotion. Then played straight when he's ultimately forced on pain of death to give up his promotion to save his life.
- Me's a Crowd: Downplayed; the small army of Rimmer clones initially get along okay, but when the original accidentally creates a monster made up of several merged Rimmers, things get exponentially worse.
- Never My Fault: Rimmer suggests printing more crew members in order to help Herring, but Herring had already stated the printer and demands to know who suggested that. Rimmer frames Lister for it.
- Obsessed Are The List Makers: The Dwarfers are able to use the Rimmer Monster's inherited obsession with lists to distract it long enough to rescue Rimmer and then gun it down in a hail of bazookoid fire.
- Our Clones Are Different: Rimmer, once again, decides to populate the ship with his clones in order to create a crew for himself. These clones come out of a bioprinter and require actual DNA, which Rimmer was able to locate by finding old genetic material of his. They also come out fully formed and can apparently be modified, as shown when Rimmer tried to make super macho Rimmers to act as bouncers. They also seem to have Rimmer's personality, shown when they inherit his slavishness to higher command. Additionally, the clones created by the bio-printer are infertile, and they disintegrate when the purpose that they're created for is accomplished. The bio-printer can also jam and end up creating horrifically deformed clones, leading to such horrors such as the Rimmer Monster (a terrifying amalgamation of Rimmers) and a clone of former captain Edwin Herring who has a stretched face that extends to the top of his head.
- Percussive Maintenance: Kryten was able to repair the Bioprinter so unexpectedly quickly by giving it a good kicking.
- Shout-Out: The depiction of the Rimmer Monster chasing down the clones uses a screen reminiscent of either Pac-Man or Castle Wolfenstein.
- Status Quo Is God: Rimmer is promoted to First Flight Lieutenant, but is forced to give up his promotion by the end of the episode to get Lister and Cat to agree to help save his life.
- Take That!: Apparently Lister had sold his genetic code at a young age for 100 dollarpounds and half a packet of cigarettes, and finds out that prior to his 3 million year stasis many companies had used it to clone him repeatedly to make for cheap workforce. This explains why all English call centers sound like they're in Liverpool. And being cloned from Lister explains why they all sound like they hate their jobs.
- Too Dumb to Live: Rimmer, upon being told he will need to wait patiently for the very delicate and fickle bio-printer to produce his "super-macho bouncer Rimmers", and that it'll take quite some time, starts impatiently kicking the machine, slapping the buttons, and jiggling it around. The result is that it jams and spits out the Rimmer Monster.
- Voice of the Legion: When the Rimmer Monster is confronted by Lister, Cat and Kryten, it speaks in a combination of this and Evil Sounds Deep.
