John Pascual

JMC's Red Dwarf Crew Profiles:

Hollister, Frank

(Series 1, Ep 1 & Series 8)

Was the Current captain in the Space Corps, Serving the JMC's Red Dwarf (Before the accidend). Frank Hollister is a testament to strong training, good diet and leadership ability –
Rimmer's Comments:
Okay, enough of 'Mr Fat Bastard, 2044.' Having cheated and blackmailed his way up the ranks from his position of Dennis the Donut Boy, (Holly, how come Lister never noticed that one - he must have known that donut stand like the back of his guitar?) it wouldn't surprise me if he really did have a Pick 'n' Mix stall in his quarters. And I stand by my comment that his family crest regally displays two cream buns crossed over a profiterole.
An acknowledged (though not by him) sufferer from piles, Hollister was chastising one Arnold Rimmer BSC, SSC - quite unfairly - for failing to repair a drive plate when he died in a TOTALLY UNRELATED drive plate radiation leak. He was restored to life by the nanobots, thereby destroying the ziggurat of command carefully instituted in his absence (where one Arnold Rimmer ably and heroically took the helm).
His wife Martha apparently made excellent blueberry muffins. Just as well, as her photograph looked more like a publicity shot from Titan Zoo. Hollister once attended the ship's fancy dress ball as a giant chicken. The chicken part was a costume, the giant part was not.

The Cat
Captain's Comments:
When David Lister broke quarantine and smuggled a black cat named Frankenstein aboard Red Dwarf his plan to skip six months' work by being imprisoned in stasis was almost flawless. Apart from that whole 'cadmium II leak/crew wiped-out' thing.
The heavily-pregnant cat, safely sealed in the ship's cargo hold, gave birth to litter after litter which, after three-million years, evolved into a humanoid life-form: Felis sapiens.
(Note:The key moment in cat civilisation was apparently not the discovery of fire or the wheel, but rather the automatic trouser-press.)
The cats' religion was based around a god named 'Cloister' who saved Frankenstein - the holy mother - by being frozen in time, allowing the cat's virgin birth to continue unhindered. (Note: 'Virgin birth' my butt! It was a big black Tom on Titan.) Their image of heaven - Fuchal - features Lister's Fijian dream to set up a hot-dog and donut diner.
A holy war followed between that cats who believed the donut diner hats should be red and those who thought they were supposed to be blue. (Note: They were actually supposed to be green.) As the war subsided, the two factions fled Red Dwarf in two arks in search of Fuchal. Sadly their guiding star-chart was in actuality Lister's old dirty laundry list, and the first ark flew straight into an asteroid.
Left behind were the sick and the lame, the dying. The Cat was cared for by a blind cat priest after his parents - a cripple and an idiot - passed away. The Cat was later adopted by David Lister as a replacement for Frankenstein. (Note: The cat seems unfazed by meeting his people's deity, perhaps because his supposed 'god' is often to be found trimming his toe-nails with his teeth.)
The Cat was predominantly self-educated, (Note: Particularly hard were Thursdays, when he had double nothing) and has managed to avoid 'the W word' (work) almost entirely. Until his imprisonment, that is, when he was put to rock duty. (Note: This actually only entails changing rock records on the ships' PA system every 45 minutes.)
The Cat owns an extensive wardrobe and harbours a severe desire to get close to real, actual women. (Note: His recorded dreams include one which featured himself, three girls and a family-sized tub of banana yoghurt. I have yet to recover this from Dr McClaren.) On several occasions the Cat has been transformed into his alter-ego, Duane Dibbley, a pointless loser whose overbite could open beer bottles. (Note: He does, however, continue to carry a triple-thick condom, just in case - apparently his enthusiasm has not been dampened by the ineffectiveness of his extra-strong spot-cream.)
'The Cat' remains otherwise un-named. (Note: Claims that his middle name is 'Superficial' have proved to be false.) Amongst his most distinguishing features are pointed teeth, colour-co-ordinated internal-organs and six nipples. (Note: Apparently the female of the species is extremely easy to please in bed.)

Kochanski, Christine Z (1)
(Series 1, Ep 1)
Captain's Comments:
A superb navigation officer whose unfortunate infatuation with Third Technician David Lister was ended when she went back to Tim, one of Red Dwarf's chefs. (Note: This could explain why, when he was attempting to be promoted above Rimmer, Lister elected to sit the chef's exam.) Kochanski's hologramatic body was utilised by Rimmer to distract Lister during said exam, leaving the hologram with a - temporary - breast and wriggling hips.
Lister discovered a stasis leak which allowed him to return to Red Dwarf pre-accident, and he arrived with every intention of wedding Kochanski. Having tracked her down at the Ganymede Holiday Inn, Lister discovered that she had married a version of him from five years in the future. (Note: One assumes she was lured back by the promise of better foot hygiene.)
Lister's obsession with Kochanski reached its nadir when a Psiren hallucination of his lost love almost succeeded in luring him to his death. She claimed to have used Lister's sperm - from Red Dwarf's storage bank - to create twin boys, Jim and Bexley. (Note: To the rest of the crew, the truth was as plain as a Bulgarian pin-up.)

Kochanski, Christine Z (2)
(Series 7&8)
Captain's Comments:
In a parallel dimension, Lister was caught smuggling his cat aboard Red Dwarf by Navigation Officer Kristine Kochanski. Being the sentimental type, she couldn't bring herself to vaporise the moggy as per regulations - and found herself facing six months in stasis.
Three-million years later, Kochanski's only companions are a life-form who evolved from her cat, and David Lister, a hologram simulation of one of the dead crew. Under Kochanski's tutelage, the Cat became an intelligent and capable life-form, while her Lister's time as a hologram made him sensitive and considerate. (Note: He is also capable of staying awake for several seconds after sex.)
Unfortunately for her, Kochanski met this dimension's Starbug crew via a linkway through a dimensional tear. (Note: Classified under 'wibbly thing'.) Lister's GELF bride infiltrated non-space and attacked the linkway, leaving Kochanski stranded. Further attempts to return her have failed. (Note: In extremely painful ways - see medical records for Kochanski's thighs.)
During this period, Lister and Kochanski also began the process of having a child. Begun in an in-vitro tube (Note: Not Lister's first choice as a method of conception) and grown in a uterine simulator, the child - actually the infant Lister - was taken back in time and abandoned in order to fulfil causality. (Note: Would this reason for abandonment stand up in court?)
Kochanski grew up in the Gorbals, the trendiest part of Glasgow, alongside her brother Moose and her pony, Trumper. She was educated in Cyberschool, but afterwards - having discovered that the world didn't actually revolve around her - she went off the rails and became a retropunk.
This rebellion was curtailed when Kochanski went to Cadet School. (Note: It is entirely possible that this was caused by the cyberpunk movement not allowing a full provision of hair-spray.) She enlisted in the Space Corps and signed on to Red Dwarf.
Aside from her love of cottage cheese (with pineapple chunks) and her hatred of showers, it is Kochanski's love of her teddy bear, Boo-Boo, and the fact that when making love she makes a noise like a rusty gate that really leaves her open to taunting by Kryten. (Note: The level of jealousy Kryten exhibits is unheard of outside of Oscar-night parties.)

Lister, David
Captain's Comments:
Has requested sick leave due to diarrhoea on no less than 900 occasions. Left his previous job as a supermarket trolley attendant after ten years to avoid being tied down to a career. Promotion prospects - zero.
As one might have expected from the infant Lister, he was not so much 'born' as 'found'.
He was discovered in a cardboard box beneath a pool table in the Aigburth Arms public house, Liverpool at approximately six weeks of age.
He was adopted by a Mr and Mrs Wilmot, but his stepfather died when Lister was six. (Note: To get away from the young Lister? I don't think we can rule this out.) By the age of 11, Lister was living with his grandmother - a rotund lady with a penchant for head-butting French teachers.
Lister's early friendships - most notably with "Duncan," whose family fled to Spain after their father pulled a bank job - seem to have encouraged the criminal side of his personality. Most people steal towels from hotels, Lister stole a bed; he was also repeatedly caught scrumping for cars. (Note: Why does he never steal soap, or clean socks?)
Education was limited to 97 minutes in art college. (Note: Actually adequate time to cover what is otherwise a 3 year syllabus.) Previous work experience includes playing gigs as worse-than-Steps rock band 'Smeg and the Heads,' and parking trolleys at a Megamart.
During a drunken pub-crawl based on the Monopoly board, Lister somehow ended up on Mimas in a gingham dress and fishing waders sporting a worrying rash and a passport bearing the name Emily Berkenstein. He spent the next months living in a luggage locker. (Note: If he can fold himself that small, I should have had him cleaning the ship's ducts.)
Joining the Space Corps in the hopes of finding free passage home, Lister discovered that Red Dwarf would not reach Earth for four and a half years. He smuggled a Cat into the ship's air ducts in order to take advantage of the statutory punishment - 18 months in stasis. (Note: They used to call it suspended animation, until somebody pointed out that some technicians were never really that animated in the first place.)
A cadmium II leak killed the crew shortly thereafter. (Note: See my report on the incompetence of 2nd Technician Arnold Rimmer, files 5 through 948) Lister was revived after the radiation half-life had faded - approximately three million years later. (Note: He prefers to count it in ice-ages, that way it's only four.)
During the subsequent five years, Lister was joined by Rimmer, a hologramatic version of his former bunkmate, Holly, the ship's senile computer, a life-form evolved from his cat, Kryten, a rescued series 4000 mechanoid, and a version of navigation officer Kristine Kochanski from a parallel dimension. (Note: Order industrial strength paracetamol.)
Skipping through some fairly grotesque occurrences (including the worst, and messiest, case of space mumps ever recorded), and the rather bizarre fact that Lister is his own father (with his ex-girlfriend Kochanski emerging as his Mom), Lister was partially responsible for a nanobotic rebuilding of the Red Dwarf ship - which he had carelessly mislaid - and its crew. (Note: This means me.)
Lister is currently serving two years in the ship's brig for misuse of confidential files.(Series 8) He is sharing a bunk with the resurrected Arnold Rimmer. (Note: Talk about hard time!)

Rimmer, Arnold Judas
Captain's Comments:
There's a saying amongst the officers: "If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. If it's not worth doing, give it to Rimmer." He aches for responsibility but constantly fails the engineering exam. Astoundingly zealous, possibly mad, probably has more teeth than brain cells. Promotion prospects - zero.
Rimmer is the youngest of four brothers - the others being John, Howard and Frank, all of whom are high-flyers in the Space Corps - and seems to have been the victim of some extraordinarily psychotic parenting. His father was a half-crazed military failure, who made up for his own inadequacy (being one inch below Corps regulation height) by stretching his sons on a rack. (Note: By the time Frank was 11 he was 6'5".)
His mother seems to have spent a great deal of time with more successful officers in positions that would baffle most balloon-modellers, (Note: Contact Rimmer's mother, mention you're a captain) and Rimmer divorced his parents at the age of 14, only retaining access to the family dog every fourth weekend.
Graduating from Io House (the boarding school which enforced his wearing of boxing gloves while in bed), Rimmer enlisted in the Samaritans. In one morning, six people committed suicide, including a wrong number who only called for the cricket scores. (Note: The papers dubbed the day 'Lemming Sunday.')
With a maintenance course from Saturn Tech under his belt, Rimmer elected to enrol in the Space Corps and work his way up the ranks.
Rimmer entered the Corps at the level of third technician, and managed to climb the ladder all the way to... well, second technician. (Note: I owe Todhunter $£10 on that bet.) He has taken and failed the astro-navigation and engineering exams 13 times - the most fascinating of which resulted in him writing 'I am a fish' 400 times on his paper. (Note: Send the paper to Dr. McClaren for psych evaluation.)
Despite this failing, Rimmer continued to lie to his mother. While his father suffered a series of strokes (Note: Accusations that this was caused by Rimmer's perpetual failure are unfounded), he told her that he had reached the position of 'Rear Admiral Lieutenant General.' In reality he was still making sure the vending machines didn't run out of fun-size crunchy bars.
At best an incompetent fool, it was Rimmer's failure to repair a drive plate correctly which caused the cadmium II leak that killed the ship's crew.(Note: Drag Rimmer over the coals for killing me.) He died also, but was revived as a hologram to keep surviving crew member Dave Lister sane. (Note: Check Holly's sanity chip.)
Rimmer's personality was replicated exactly. His fascination with 20th century telegraph poles, his love of Hammond organ music and morris dancing and his enthusiasm for war-based board game Risk continued. (Note: As did his curious pride for his swimming certificates.)
Ironically, Rimmer's life has improved immeasurably since he died. He had sex for a second time (Note: Apparently the woman, Nirvanah Crane, was in no way hampered by mental illness. Can this be right?) and was posthumously promoted to officerhood. (Note: Although I'm not entirely sure that Second Tech David Lister - current occupation 'bum' - is permitted to promote within the field.)
Rimmer was last seen heading off into the big black, replacing his heroic counterpart 'Ace' when the latter was mortally wounded. His inability to tell the ignition from the ejector seat may hamper his chances as a hero for infinite dimensions. (Note: Make a new bet with Todhunter.)

Following the nanobotic revival of the Red Dwarf crew (Series 8), a new, living Rimmer has emerged. Lacking the five years of growth the previous version had experienced, he promptly attempted to cheat his way up the ziggurat of command and condemned himself and his companions to two years in the ship's brig. (Note: Possibly the best place for them.)

Rimmer, Ace
(Series 4, Ep4 and Series 7, Ep2)

Captain's Comments:
In another dimension, the young Arnold Rimmer was kept back in school. By remaining in Junior D for a second year, Rimmer's drive to succeed powered him to become a Space Corps Marine, eventually ending up as a test-pilot for the Corps. While testing a ship which crosses dimensions, Rimmer encountered himself. (Note: To quote Ace, 'The man's a maggot.
Solely responsibly for a soar in rubber shares, Rimmer eventually caught the business end of a neutron tank in Dimension 165. (Note: There are an infinite number of dimensions - who's been going around numbering them?) Each Ace enlisted a successor, and sooner or later they were bound to call up Red Dwarf's own second technician. (Note: He had actually been transformed into Ace by an Emohawk once before, so he may yet prove capable.)

Mechanoid, Series 4000
Created by Professor Mamet for Diva-Droid International - and modelled on her one-time love John Warburton(see: Kryten 2X4B 523P) - the 4000 series' angular head meant it could never be mistaken for a human in the way the 3000 series droids were.
The 4000 is supplied with spare limbs and heads - the brains of which are part-organic - and is also available in a GTi model which comes with a slide-back sun-roof head and realistic hands and toes. All models are programmed to believe in a Silicon Heaven, an electronic afterlife for those who serve their masters well - this prevents them from getting stroppy when the time comes for them to be upgraded.
Operational notes: For reasons best known to Diva-Droid International, the 4000s Was also known as 'Series III.'

Kryten 2X4B 523P
Originally a service mechanoid aboard the Nova V, Kryten inadvertently killed the entire crew and crashed the ship when he decided to give the main and back-up computers a good soapy clean(he didn’t know what he did was wrong) . The three other survivors of the crash - mapping officers Jane Air, Tracey Johns and Anne Gill - perished soon afterwards, but Kryten did not appear to notice and kept feeding and dressing them regardless.
His first arrival aboard Red Dwarf was short-lived - his willingness to serve(He was created to serve, and Nothing else.) was so abused by Rimmer that Kryten rebelled, took Lister's space bike and fled into the night. Soon afterwards he was found to have crashed into an asteroid. Lister toiled to fix the droid, but was unable to fully restore his original personality. (Or his accent, which altered from upper-class English to Canadian.
Despite being voted 'the big-eared, ugly one' by his other spare heads (all of which would later be destroyed by a nega-drive blow-back), Kryten attracted the attentions of Camille, a pleasure GELF whose love Kryten would sadly lose to her husband, Hector.
Maintaining a staunch belief in Silicon Heaven, Kryten continues to take lessons from Dave Lister in lying and rudimentary insults. He has also mastered pomposity if he does say so himself - although when ambivalent he does have the look of a dog chewing a caramel toffee. He has also - and quite by accident - begun to exhibit a possessive jealousy towards Kristine Kochanski over Lister.
All these character flaws - of which Kryten had become rightly proud - were nearly lost when his corrupted files were repaired by Red Dwarf scientists and the Data Doctor program. However his ability to display ambivalence came through, re-corrupting his circuitry and returning him to the messed-up mech he was.
Harbouring a desire to be human, Kryten was lucky enough to get his wish when his part-organic brain allowed his DNA to be transformed. Discoveries of non-functional nipples, mediocre visual functions and disturbing underpant activity, however, forced the mechanoid to rethink his position and change back.
Kryten's more unfortunate features - his obsessive mothering and a head shaped like a novelty condom - came from his designer, Professor Mamet, in a mockery of John Warburton, the fiancée who jilted her(See: Series 4000 Mechanoid) . He also had a furious temper, prompting Mamet to give Kryten and his kind nega-drives in which to store their negative emotions.
Kryten is currently serving time in the brig on floor 13(Series 8). He is in the women's wing, sharing a cell with Kochanski - the decision having been taken that his lack of male genitalia automatically categorise him as female.
Operational notes: Kryten has attempted to create himself a penis, nick-named Archie. It was last seen scurrying towards Hollister's office. I think Kryten's sentence is about to get longer...

Holly
Red Dwarf's on-board computer, and the inventor of the new decimal sound 'Hol Rock'. Despite an original Operational 8th AI Generation with IQ of 6000, Holly had always been quirky - during the astro-navigation exam Holly instigated urine testing in case any urine attempted to cheat - but he is now a fully-fledged sufferer from computer senility.
During the three-million years he spent alone in space, Holly read every book ever written by anyone ever (the worst of which was Kevin Keegan's Football - It's a Funny Old Game). He also managed to create a comprehensive - nay, definitive - map of the universe, complete with post offices and little steeples.
Holly's first love was a Sinclair ZX81, but she was cheap, stupid and she wouldn't load - not for him, anyway. He later fell for Hilly, his female self from a parallel universe whom he encountered when he invented the Holly Hop Drive. Indeed, he fell so badly that he chose to take on her face in a head sex-change operation. (This would remain until the nanobots restored his core program.)
The female Holly did have her intelligence restored via intelligence compression, but this reduced her operation life-span to less than four minutes. (Thankfully this entire event was erased from history when Lister blocked up a time-spewing white hole.) Holly is also able to appear on a wrist-watch, although he has become wary of people who scratch their armpits or who have holes in their pockets.
Currently Holly is hidden inside Red Dwarf's computer banks in an attempt to avoid detection by his nanobotically-revived, hyper-intelligent counterpart. Nevertheless, he continues to help Lister, Rimmer and the rest as best he can while they are in prison - he believes Lister could shorten his term by becoming a dog, thus making each year of his sentence seven times shorter.
Operational notes: Go easy on the Android home brew, it leaves you with a rotten hangover come morning.

Queeg 500
Queeg is The Space Corps(Not JMC) Main AI Computer, put in as A Main or Backup System.
All SC’s Queeg Systems contain all of Space Corps Directives and Justice World Law. Dispite it’s mean-military academy and a harsh task-master, Queeg is the SC answer for Law to get thing right in Deep Space.
Notes: Queeg was names after Lieutenant General Queeg from the Late20th and Early 21rd century(Early Space Corps program), and later Create Justice World, and The SC Class A -Enforcement Orb (External Enforcement Vessel).
Operational notes 1: Rimmer: ‘What are you doing? (holgram body moving-not by rimmer)You don’t just take over my body willingly.’ Queeg: ‘The Company (Space Corp) is paying for your survival. And out here in Deep space, I AM the Company!!’
But in this case, Holly used the back-up computer Queeg for a Joke. Or so Holly would have you believe, seeing as its actually him behind there.
Operational notes 2: ‘We are talking jape of the decade. April, May, June, July and August fool’.-Holly

Skutters
The maintenance robots of Red Dwarf have piled their cupboard high with Film Fun magazines. They love John Wayne movies and playing Cowboys and Indians. Oh, and insulting Rimmer with two-finger salutes - especially when he's using them to help with his cooking.
Operational notes 1: Aside from Bob and Madge, I don't think many of the skutters have names. Rimmer nick-named a couple Pinky and Perky, but I think he was just being mean.
Operational notes 2: In the Book there are 100 skutters on the ship, 2 skutters per room and/or floor. But in the Show there are ONLY 2 skutters-Bob and Madge(there may be more in other floors/areas. but Bob and Madge are the main ones).