User Reviews

When the crew of the Red Dwarf discover and exploration vessel drifting towards an asteroid belt they decide to see if there is anything they can salvage. As they approach the ship its 'Bio-copier' prints off a ship's captain to greet them. A feed-jam during the printing process gives him a rather peculiar appearance. When he contacts the Red Dwarf crew he warns that his ship is carrying an unstable cargo that could destroy both ships if he is hit by an asteroid. Rimmer decides to save himself by launching a missile at the other ship while it is still far away… as luck would have it this doesn't destroy the target; it knocks it into a safer position. The captain thinks this was deliberate and gives Rimmer an on the spot promotion; making him Officer Rimmer. Once his mission is complete the captain deletes himself leaving Lister, Cat and Kryten with a problem… Officer Rimmer his let the promotion go to his head and has divided the ship into officer and other-ranks sections; inevitably the officers' quarters are luxurious and the other areas are worse than ever. He then uses the bio-copier to make many copies of himself… until another problem creates a monstrosity that starts hunting down all the other Rimmers; will the other crew members help him after the way he's been treating them?

This was a fun Rimmer-centred area; the way it showed his cowardice, smugness, conceit and unwarranted superiority complex was very funny. I liked the idea of the bio-copier (even though a similar idea appeared in 'Futurama' years ago), especially when it went wrong while printing the captain. The effects used to show his 'misprint' was delightfully cheesy without being too bad. The way Rimmer behaved when promoted was as expected which made the finale all the more satisfying. The Rimmer-monster was as funny as it was disturbing. The cast do a solid job; most notably Chris Barrie in the role of Rimmer but the others got their moments too; Craig Charles was hilarious as Lister in the scene where we learn that his character gave his genetic rights to the copier company leading to thousands of Lister-call centre workers! Overall another really funny episode.

Rimmer achieves his life's goal and yet has it cruelly taken from him, nevermind however for this episode was brilliant, very funny indeed, the Captain reminded me of those old grouchy men from the muppets.

Doug Naylor gets to poke fun of those newfangled 3D printers. The Red Dwarf crew encounter an explorer ship whose captain has been produced by a bio-copier machine. Unfortunately it got jammed so his face was printed on his head.

I can see this being a common occurrence when 3D Printers take off. The thing being jammed or the ink running out at an inopportune time.

The explorer ship is in the other side of the asteroid belt and its dangerous cargo is at risk of blowing up Red Dwarf, Rimmer fires a missile which gets deflected and ends up saving the life of the ship's captain.

To show his gratitude he promotes Rimmer and makes him officer class. Rimmer always wanted to be an officer shows the worse of his arrogant and smug side of his character. He creates an officer only lifts, corridors and an officer only lounge. He uses the bio-copier to create duplicates of himself. This greatly annoys Cat and Lister.

Again this felt like a vintage episode where we used to see the worse aspects of Rimmer, his cowardice and arrogance. There is a great scene when Kryten tells Lister how to get rid of the database in the bio-machine.

However I get the feeling the budget run out in this episode as it just ends abruptly as the crew tackle the Rimmer monster.

There were lots of funny lines, and Rimmer behaved exactly like you would have expected him to behave. Becoming an officer by "accident" is about the only way he could, and then he shows that it's not just Better Than Life that rebels against him and treats him like garbage, but real life too. Then he suddenly has to have his crewmates (whom he looked down upon for most of the episode) save him from another disaster worse than opening a small package of nuts. The duplicate Rimmers are ready to absorb the original one, and the crew confront the creature, and then... the show ends. No "to be continued", no explanation in the next episode. It's like it was 5pm and the camera crew went home, and started filming Krysis the next day. So just like the title of this review, the episode ends without actually being finished. Quite a disappointing ending.