Backwards (Red Dwarf episode)
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| Red Dwarf episode | |
| "Backwards" | |
| Image:Backwards (Red Dwarf).jpg | |
| Episode № | 1 |
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| Airdate | November 14, 1989 |
| Writer(s) | Rob Grant & Doug Naylor |
| Director | Ed Bye |
| Guest star(s) | none |
| Series III November 14 – December 19, 1989 |
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| List of all Red Dwarf episodes... | |
Backwards was the first episode to air in the third series of Red Dwarf.
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[edit] Synopsis
Backwards is the name of an episode (first episode of the third series) of British television comedy Red Dwarf. It is one of the most popular episodes from the show. The story was then reformulated as a novel by the same name.
The crew spend only three weeks in Nodnol in the year 3991 (London, 1993). Rimmer and Kryten get jobs as "The Sensational Reverse Brothers" as the backwards people would consider their forwards actions as 'backwards', but Lister and the Cat believe that they are in Bulgaria.
On this planet, people don't die and diseases make you better. The downside is that toilet arrangement can be extremely disturbing for someone who was born in a forwards Universe (the Cat was too shocked to speak) and sex isn't as fun as it is in a normal Universe. Lister commented that people would consider St Francis of Assisi a petty minded sadist who went around maiming small animals and Santa Claus would be an evil old bastard who went down people's chimneys and stole all the children's favorite toys.
[edit] Opening crawl
This was one of two episodes to parody the Star Wars opening crawl, the other episode being Dimension Jump. The titling explains the changes that were made going from series two to three, however, the scrolling was sped up faster than someone could actually read.
The following text of the opening crawl is taken from a Red Dwarf FAQ created by the newsgroup alt.tv.red-dwarf: [1]
Three million years in the future, Dave Lister, the last human being alive, discovers he is pregnant after a liaison with his female self in a parallel universe. His pregnancy concludes with the successful delivery of twin boys, Jim and Bexley. However, because the boys were conceived in another universe, with different physical laws, they suffer from highly accelerated growth rates and are both eighteen years old within three days of being born. In order to save their lives, Lister returns them to the universe of their origin, where they are reunited with their father (a woman), and are able to lead comparatively normal lives. Well, as normal as you can be if you've been born in a parallel universe and your father's a woman and your mother's a man and you're eighteen years old three days after your birth. Shortly afterward, Kryten, the service mechanoid, who had left the ship after being rescued from his own crashed vessel, the Nova 5, is found in pieces after his space bike crashed into an asteroid. Lister rebuilds the 'noid, but is unable to recapture his former personality. Meanwhile, Holly, the increasingly erratic computer, performs a head sex change operation on himself. He bases his new face on Hilly, a female computer with whom he'd once fallen madly in love.
[edit] Trivia
- Rob Grant appears in this episode as the man smoking the cigarette.
- A hidden message was placed in this episode it can be found on YouTube here
[edit] See also
- Backwards (the novel)
