Lister is desperate to make the journey back to Earth, and is making plans to have himself and Cat placed in stasis for the trip. The ship, which been steadily accelerating for 3 million years, is about to break light speed, which causes Holly to panic as he tries to navigate and which causes the rest of the crew to experience future echoes, brief visions of themselves from moments anywhere in their future, from a few minutes to many years. It culminates with Rimmer seeing what he believes is Lister being killed in an explosion, but a vision of Lister from the far future claims it was his son, Bexley (named after his favorite footballer, Jim Bexley Speed - he said he wanted to name his first son Jim, after Jim Bexley Speed). The end of the episode has the trio rushing down to the med bay to see Lister presenting his past selves with his newly born twin boys, which may be explained some time in a later episode. Okay, it is, and it's hilarious.
Rimmer finds out that Lister is planning on going into stasis, and is furious, because he doesn't want to be left alone for 3 million years. He also tries to explain to Lister that the human race may not exist after such a time period (something that is dealt with in the novels).But Lister is adamant that he has to return to Earth at any cost. We also get introduced to Talky Toaster, a toaster with AI who Lister despises. The show really gets underway fairly early, and would remain really great up until series 7 (a lot of fans seem to disagree with me on that point, but for me, series 7 and 8 were low points in the show). This episode also injects real world science with the idea of future echoes, a phenomenon that was theorized by Einstein. Over all, a pretty solid episode.
I'm going to rate this one 8 bacon sandwiches out of 10.
(Are we rating this show? If not, can I go ahead and do it anyway? And if not, smeg off, smeghead. I'll do what I smegging like.)
(Also, what is it with all these British shows?)
(That might have been sarcasm.)
