Red Dwarf Crew, Xtended, Remastered; low-res pixel style!

I made a Red Dwarf pixel art a long time ago, but I’ve improved my pixeling skills since then, and the show has had two new series! So here’s the updated version of my fanficcy what-if scenario: what would it look like if every friendly-ish character that could have joined the crew did? I bent my own rules for some of these, for the purposes of fun, but in a show like this nothing is too implausible.

This was a lot of fun to draw, but half the fun is expanding on the characters and coming up with justifications for how they could have banded together. I’ll put that stuff beneath a Read More thing this time, but first a basic list of all the folks here.

OG Dwarfers: Lister, Kochanski, Petersen, Hollister, Kill Crazy, Baxter, Ackerman, Birdman

Contemporary humans: Jim, Bexley, Ace Rimmer, Michael McGruder, Irene Edgington, Rachel Barker, Jim Green, Tutt Johnson

Past humans: John F. Kennedy, Ainsley Harriott, Jesus of Caesarea, Harmony de Gauthier, Bob the Bum

Holograms/artificially generated consciousnesses: Rimmer, Nirvanah Crane, Legion, Howard Rimmer

Droids/mechs: Kryten, Marilyn Monroe kit droid, Able, Hogey the Roguey, Snacky, Butler, “Adolf Hitler”

Waxdroids: Elvis Presley, Father Christmas, Queen Victoria, Pythagoras, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Stan Laurel, Marilyn Monroe

Evolved animals: The Cat, the Cat Priest, the Dog, the Cat (USA), the Pig, Juma, Krazy, Ora

GELFs: Camille, Hector, the GEAP, Mr. Flibble, Khakhakhakkhakhakkkhakkkkkh, Reketrebn, Rudolph

Computers: Holly, Holly, Queeg, Cassandra, Medi-Bot, Pree

Mechanicals and pets: Vending machines (assorted), skutters, Talkie Toaster, Spare Head 3, Kryten’s nanobots, Frankenstein, Lennon and McCartney, a giant cockroach from Garbage World, Pete, Pete’s offspring

And now, how I imagine each character’s circumstances would lead to them joining the motley crew of misfits. (Note that any references to plot contrivances are not criticisms but a suggestion that they could as easily have gone the other way, to make for the gathering seen here.)

Dave Lister is a given, and Kristine Kochanski’s presence is contingent on her not abandoning Red Dwarf between VIII and BTE. Olaf Petersen could have entered stasis in a few suggested hypothetical situations within the show and novels, but he was also revived in VIII along with Frank Hollister, Kill Crazy, Baxter, Warden Ackerman, and Birdman. Of course this scenario involves the breakdown of formal command structures on the ship, so Hollister (AKA Dennis the doughnut boy) would have to be disgraced following a revelation of his illicit means of advancement… and we don’t want it to be too overcrowded do we, so I depicted only the more notable guest characters in VIII.

Jim and Bexley were born after Parallel Universe and shipped off due to a plot contrivance off-screen, what if that didn’t happen? Ace Rimmer could stay around temporarily at least after Dimension Jump, in an effort to train Rimmer or perhaps even Howard to be more Ace-like (alternative: one of the possible planned endings for Only the Good… where Ace saves everyone). Michael McGruder is Rimmer’s son from the novel Last Human who very plausibly seeks him out and joins the crew. Professor E didn’t have to die in such a stupid way in Entangled. The adulterers Barker and Green also were alive and well briefly in Samsara until a plot contrivance did them in. Tutt Johnson, the tutting man from Timewave, was all ready to throw in his lot with the crew to escape the SS Enconium’s silly rules until he disappeared from the plot.

The Dwarfers have come into contact with several people from Earth’s past. What if JFK hadn’t disappeared in a puff of logic at the end of Tikka to Ride? Or Ainsley Harriott hadn’t gone home after Can’t Smeg Won’t Smeg? Jesus of Caesarea could have stayed on the ship in Lemons. Harmony de Gauthier, AKA Professor Baldwin, could have gone to the exciting future along with Bob the Bum if there hadn’t been such an urgent ticking clock in Twentica.

Rimmer’s here as always. Nirvanah Crane could have left the Enlightenment to be with him in Holoship; the first novel justifies having multiple holograms if other ships such as the Nova 5, stored in the hangar or cargo decks, are projecting them. If they’d figured out how to bring Legion’s projection mechanism with them, he probably wouldn’t have been as nuts if there were more people around. And early revisions of Trojan had the SS Trojan stored within Red Dwarf so if Howard Rimmer hadn’t been killed off he could conceivably stick around; of course the holographic projection mechanism is never regarded as a problem after Series V anyway.

Kryten’s a mainstay now. Petersen’s Marilyn Monroe kit droid from The Last Day is last seen crashing through a wall, so she’s likely still roaming the ship anyway. What if Able wasn’t killed off in Beyond a Joke? Yep, he’d stick around. Hogey the Roguey’s self-declared dramatic vendetta against the crew was treated more as a friendly rivalry in The Beginning, so why not have him around? Just like the Marilyn Monroebot, Snacky is also a confirmed part of the ship as of Give & Take, so I don’t even need to ask a what if question, he’s already there. The crew debated bringing Butler with them in Krysis; why not stash the Nova 3 in the hold as well? In Cured, the supposed no-longer-evil Adolf Hitler turned out to be a reprogrammed droid replica of an unrelated scientist, but there’s no reason he along with the alleged Messalina, Joseph Stalin, and Vlad the Impaler couldn’t join the crew.

The Waxdroids in Meltdown of course all died horribly, but I like the what if of them surviving because they’re all wacky caricatures of famous people; they’re also a playable class in the Red Dwarf tabletop RPG probably for this reason. Father Christmas also turned up in the mobisode Red Christmas and my retcon is it’s the Waxdroid that we saw earlier. I’ve drawn the Elvis Presley, Father Christmas, Queen Victoria, Pythagoras, Abraham Lincoln, Mohandas Gandhi, Stan Laurel, and Marilyn Monroe Waxdroids, but also here would be Albert Einstein, Pope Gregory XIII, Mother Teresa, Francis of Assisi, the Dalai Lama, Noel Coward, and Jean-Paul Sartre if I had room for them.

There’s a few evolved animals in canon but I’ve stretched to fill them out a bit more from other sources. Of course there’s Cat, but maybe the old cat priest from Waiting for God could have recovered and lived a bit longer as part of the crew? Dog is the one character in Parallel Universe who’s a unique entity and not a genderflipped version, so what if he went back to the other universe? Speaking of, the Cat as portrayed in the Red Dwarf USA second pilot is a potentially interesting alternate take so even though it’s way outside canon, what if they’d met her and brought her into real canon or something I dunno. The Pig from the Smegazine comic Evolved is fun, what if she hadn’t put herself into stasis to escape from the story? Also from the Smegazine, Juma and Krazy from Lister the God are elite cat warriors from the past, maybe they decided to escape the war after meeting Lister and returned to the present with him? Ora from the cancelled Series VII episode Identity Within left after her relationship with the Cat came to a natural end after 20 minutes, but uh what if she didn’t do that?

Camille and Hector, pleasure GELFs from Camille, could have not left the ship. The GEAP (Genetically Engineered Adaptable Pet) wreaked havoc when it eponymously appeared in a Smegazine comic due to a protective psychic effect but I figure that it can combine with the Psi-moon effects of Mr. Flibble’s origin (he also has an independent existence in several comics) to, I dunno, cancel each other out or something. It fills out the GELF row with some different types of characters anyway. Khakhakhakkhakhakkkhakkkkkh is of course Lister’s GELF bride from Emohawk: Polymorph II, who could have become just friends and travelling buddies with him. Reketrebn from the novel Last Human is a shapeshifter who becomes a staunch ally of Lister in that continuity, and I’d love to see her in the show. Rudolph and some other reindeer accompany Santa in Red Christmas, and are shown performing quite humanoid actions, so I figure they’re GELFs of some sort, and quite friendly enough to party with the crew long-term.

In Queeg Holly is shown to be capable of maintaining different personas for the sake of a joke, so why not have the original form alongside both the fantastic female form and Queeg himself? And what if Cassandra from off of Cassandra wasn’t destroyed in an elaborate accident but recovered and installed in the ship? There’s no reason Series X’s Medi-Bot isn’t still around. And Pree, well, she’d get along with Cassandra and hopefully not try to kill everyone again, might not be as big a problem if she’s not the sole computer authority. There’s another artificial intelligence in the comic Wetware but it’s never shown with a clear representation and its means of existence is a complicated liquid system, so I haven’t drawn it here.

The non-humanoid mechanical beings on the ship are nevertheless sentient and often an active part of ship life. The vending machines and skutters especially pop up all the time, and Talkie Toaster has had a few significant roles in Series 1, 4, and XII. Spare Head 3 has had a few roles, particularly in DNA, Smeg Outs, and the comic Heady Metal; so what if he didn’t get left in a liquid metal time loop and he and the other spare heads (and hand) weren’t destroyed in Beyond a Joke? Kryten’s nanobots apparently scarpered after recreating Red Dwarf; what if they’d chosen to stay?

Frankenstein was recreated along with Red Dwarf; an early concept for Back in the Red would have had the miniature Starbug encounter her. Lister’s robotic goldfish Lennon and McCartney might still exist. Lister befriended a group of giant cockroaches on Garbage World in the novel Better Than Life, so that could happen, and maybe one comes back to red Dwarf with him. Finally, Birdman’s pet bird Pete goes with him, and there’s also her child who is seen at the end of Pete part 2, a baby Tyrannosaurus.

Well, that was fun. As I said last time, there’s no way this is practical for an audience sitcom, but it’s a fun thought experiment to imagine what the dynamic would be if there was such crazy continuity as the franchise progressed. And it’s still a bunch of outcasts and misfits thrown together by circumstance, making their way through space, which is what Red Dwarf is. The slime’s coming home!