Kryten

A character from Red Dwarf. Also an Episode

Kryten began life as a service mechanoid aboard the nova 5. After a computer error (It disliked being cleaned with a mop and bucket), the nova 5 crased into an asteroid, leaving kryten alone with the ship's three crewmembers.

Thousands of years later, the crew of Red Dwarf stumble across the wreck. Kryten does his best to play the good host, but the rest of the crew are somewhat Unconversational. Dead quiet, in fact. Kryten follows the crew to red dwarf, rather than face not having anyone to serve.

Rimmer is quite happy to order kryten around, and make up pointless tasks for him to do. Lister can't stand to see kryten be treated like this; he wants Kryten to be following his dreams, like he is trying to do.

Kryten, however is happy just to serve people. It's all he's ever done. When Lister pushes the issue, he admits to having dreams 'I'm in a garden. I've never even seen a garden, except in books. And I've planted everything, and made it grow. It's my garden, and there's no-one there but me, just me and all the things I made live'.*1

Lister's instruction, accompanied by Easy Rider, The Wild Ones and Rebel Without A Cause convinces Kryten to defy his original programming, and rebel agains Rimmer. He leaves on Lister's bike, not to be seen again until the next series.

The series 4000 mechanoid was designed by Professor Mammet, and its personality was modeled after her ex-husband. It is uncertain whether the Groinal attachment *2 has the same origin. In Kryten, Kryten is played by David Ross. In series 3 onwards he is played by Robert Llewelyn.

1 - This is probably the most moving line in Red Dwarf, and I've taken the liberty of quoting it in its entirety. Robert Llewelyn's kryten has grown up, doesn't have the sadness of David Ross's

2- A huge umbilical hose to which a hoover, floor polisher, or even an egg whisk can be attached
'So you can just plug in the groinal attachment and whip up a spanish omelette? I can, sir, but you'd be surprised how few people would be prepared to eat one'

The robot (or 'android' as he is referred to) in Red Dwarf. Kryten is a cleaning robot, programmed to enjoy cleaning things. The red dwarf team (That's Lister, the Cat, and Rimmer) find him serving a crew of women who have been dead for years - only their skeletons are left (But they do have an excellent beauty regime).

Kryten's main role is to need teaching how to be normal, allowing him to be the focus of much mis-teaching humour, and thus the occasion of Rimmer/Lister clashes. Kryten also has a habit of repeating the text of regulations whose titles Rimmer quotes, thus revealing the regulation to be completely irrelevant. Kryten also fulfils a much needed practical role: he is a holy fool and an idiot-savant. While often buffoonish, due to his being programmed to be generally useful, he can in almost any situation be relied on to a) Be more intelligent than the rest of the crew b) Know more about the world. This allows the Red Dwarf to realign itself from being about being stuck in a big scary building with some random people you (Lister) hate, to being a comedy-adventure.

In physical terms, kryten has an head which is composed of almost-flat surfaces: the top of his head is trapezoid, and his features angular. It is very obviously made of pink rubber. As Robert Llewellyn said of the makeup procedure, which takes literally hours to apply, and makes him sweaty and uncomfortable, "I sometimes think it is a subtle form of torture". While the David Ross portrayal (Of series 3) was camp, with a falsetto voice, Llewellyn's longer running portrayal is definitive. His kryten has a rich, mid-atlantic-accented voice, and crisp, very clear diction, with lots of pauses, as if the script is peppered with commas (It is), which cannot be lost (He certainly doesn't lose them). While the early kryten dithered, the subsequent kryten rarely does, being characterised by a confidence to do things like serve grilled space weevil, presenting this culinary creation for human approval as if it were a perfectly normal, acceptable thing to do. (Of coursem the only thing that bothers lister about being served a rat-sized grilled insect is that Kryten has included vegetables, in the form of salad).