Red Dwarf: Ranking The Time Travel Episodes From Worst To Best

2. Stasis Leak

The first example of the crew being able to travel back in time and interact with their past selves occurred thanks to series two's Stasis Leak. After trying to adequately explain deck 16's anomaly in the space time continuum to Cat (and the audience), Rimmer and Lister settle on simply "a hole back into the past", and each tries to influence and improve their lives. Arriving three weeks before the nuclear meltdown which killed the crew, Rimmer attempts to convince his past self to enter stasis and thereby survive alongside Lister. His efforts are applaudable but his rather long winded description of cause and effect merely convince him that he is just having another hallucinatory trip from Lister's Titan Mushrooms. Lister meanwhile, having previously found a wedding photo of him and Kochanski, sets about marrying the love of his life only to discover she in fact marries yet another Lister from the future. Causality is also interwoven with classic Dwarf humour, the other side of the magic doorway being located in the men's shower room for example, and Rimmer's barrage of Captain Hollister dressed as a chicken has to be the funniest scene ever between the two. Often overlooked by the Lister/Rimmer double act, the Cat here also has some great moments to shine; his understandable confusion at time travel is hilarious, and his first encounters with particular aspects of human civilisation (women included) are spot on.