Future Echoes

Future Echoes
Red Dwarf - Series 1 - Episode 2

While Lister is having trouble with the food dispensing machines, Holly, the spacehip's computer, is busy preparing the ship to go faster than light speed. When the ship does go above the speed of light some time later, Lister is busy shaving in front of a mirror. He asks Holly what the big flash was and Holly tells him that they've "broken the light barrier". Lister carries on, but is surprised to see his reflection cut itself, shout out and talk to Rimmer. When he looks around, Rimmer isn't there. Then he cuts his own chin, and shouts out for Rimmer, who refuses to believe him when he tells him what just happened.

Lister then starts preparing to go into stasis while they fly back to Earth. He walks into the drive room, and talks to Rimmer for a bit, who seems to be ignoring him:

LISTER: Yo, Rimmer, look, I've been thinking...
RIMMER: What?
LISTER: You know, about going into stasis and everything.
RIMMER: How did I do what?
LISTER: What do you mean, "How did I do what?"
RIMMER: Lister, don't be a gimboid.
LISTER: I'm not being a gimboid!
RIMMER: I've just been in the library, thinking. And I've decided...(pause)...shut up! As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I've decided when you go into stasis, I want to stay behind. I want to be left on.
LISTER: What, on your own for the rest of your life?
RIMMER: What things?
LISTER: Eh?
RIMMER: I said what?
LISTER: What's going on?
RIMMER: You're space crazy!
LISTER: I'm space crazy?! You're the one who's space crazy!
RIMMER: Well, it probably is deja vu. It sounds like it.

Rimmer walks out, and immediately walks back in again from the opposite end of the room. Lister jumps out of his skin, and asks Rimmer what the hell was going on.

LISTER: Aaahhh! Rimmer! I've just seen you walk out of that door.
RIMMER: (talking directly to LISTER) What?
LISTER: How did you do that?
RIMMER: How did I do what?
LISTER: You just this second walked out of that door.
RIMMER: Lister, don't be a gimboid.
LISTER: I swear, on me grandmother's life, as you walked out of that door, you came in this one!
RIMMER: I've just been in the library, thinking. And I've decided...
LISTER: Rimmer, I'm telling ya...
RIMMER: Shut up! As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, I've decided when you go into stasis, I want to stay behind. I want to be left on.
LISTER: Rimmer, you've just come in and said exactly these things.
RIMMER: What things?
LISTER: You said that!
RIMMER: I said what?
LISTER: And that! You said that!
RIMMER: You are space crazy!
LISTER: And then you said, "Well it probably is deja vu."
RIMMER: Well, it probably is deja vu. It sounds like it.

And he does. Lister runs after him into the corridor, and they see Cat running down the corridor away from the sleeping quarters, holding his mouth and shouting "My tooth! My tooth! I think I lost my tooth!" Lister and Rimmer walk into their quarters, and to their shock see Cat hanging around Lister's aquarium.

RIMMER: He just walked past us.
LISTER: It must be something to do with lightspeed.

When they ask Holly what's going on, he ignores them at first and then says that they're seeing future echoes. He explains further - because they're travelling faster than light speed, they're catching up with things they're about to do before they've done them. In effect, they're "seeing bits of the future".

Rimmer notices a Polaroid which has mysteriously appeared, attached to Lister's bunk. The picture is of Lister carrying two crying babies. Holly and Talkie Toaster both agree that the photograph is a future echo, and all present wonder how Lister is going to wind up with two babies, since there are no women aboard the ship.

Some time later, Lister is walking around the corridors, when suddenly he hears (and feels) a loud explosion. He runs up to the drive room, where Rimmer tells him that he just saw Lister being blown to bits. When he tries to tell Lister how he dies, Lister tells him not to. Rimmer then says that he was wearing his silly hat when he got blown up, so Lister takes it off and starts gloating. Rimmer warns him that he can't change the future and that he's going to get blown up anyway. Lister reasons that since the Cat breaking his tooth was a future echo, then if he can stop the Cat breaking his tooth, he might be able to stop himself getting blasted to shreds. He hurries back to the sleeping quarters to try and stop Cat eating his robot goldfish, but breaks Cat's tooth in doing so.

Rimmer starts ribbing Lister about his soon-to-be state of deadness. Holly suddenly comes in on the intercom, warbling that an emergency is in progress and that Lister needs to sort it out. Lister walks up to the drive room, and Holly asks him to hook the navicom up to the main computer. Rimmer cautiously watches from a distance as Lister connects them together and flips the six switches on the navicom, one by one. He flicks the last switch on, and nothing happens.

Ecstatic, he runs back to his sleeping quarters with Rimmer, and is suddenly confronted by a very old man who is lying in his bunk. He claims to be Lister, aged 171, and with an artificial arm. He tells them that it wasn't Lister who Rimmer saw in the drive room dying, but that it was actually Lister's second son, Bexley. He laughs in Rimmer's face and vanishes.

On Holly's suggestion, Lister and Rimmer run to the medical room with a Polaroid camera. Lister then sees his smiling future self walking out of the medical room with a small newborn boy in each arm. Lister takes a picture, and we see it developing in the background as the credits roll.

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