The Red Dwarf Crew

The Red Dwarf Crew, also known as the Boys from the Dwarf or The Posse, are the main characters of the British science-fiction sitcom Red Dwarf.

They generally consist of Dave Lister, the last human alive; Arnold Rimmer, Lister's dead crewmate hologrammatically resurrected; Cat, a humanoid evolved from cats; and Kryten, a mechanoid cleaning-robot with abandonment issues. Throughouit the show multiple other crewmembers join and leave; such as the senile ship computer Holly and Lister's romantic interest, Kristine Kochanski.

Crewmembers

David 'Dave' Lister

Played by Craig Charles

Dave Lister was found in a cardboard box as a baby under a pool table in a bar. He was adopted and frequently mentions being a juvenile delinquent such as hotwiring cars when he was only 7 or losing his virginity at the age of 12 on a golf course.

He later enlisted with the JMC (Jupiter Mining Corporation) and became Third Technician, the lowest rank on the ship, aboard the mining vessel Red Dwarf. He was part of Z-Shift under the command of Arnold Rimmer, the most unpopular man on the entire ship. They performed menial tasks, frequently repairing chicken soup machines.

Lister dated First Console Officer Kristine Kochanski for a couple weeks before being dumped for a catering officer, however Lister still longed for her and dreamed of getting back together with her and moving to the island of Fiji. There, Lister dreamed, they'd own a sheep and a cow and breed horses; while Lister owned and operated a hot dog stand. Unfortunately, Kochanski never knew of these plans as Lister never gained the courage to tell her.

After Lister smuggled a cat, Frankenstein, aboard Red Dwarf, violating the ship's quarantine policy, Lister was put into stasis as punishment for 18 months. However, following a Cadmium II radiation leak, the entire crew was wiped out and Holly was forced to pilot Red Dwarf out of the solar system to avoid spreading contamination; all the while Lister was still in stasis. He was later released by Holly after the radiation cleared out... three million years later.

Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSc., SSc.

Played by Chris Barrie

Arnold Rimmer was son to a military failure of a father and an abusive, uncaring mother; constantly bullied and ridiculed by his three successful and popular brothers; John, Frank and Howard. His father's obsession with having failed to be enlisted into the Space Corps led to Rimmer and his brothers being instilled with fantasies of military success; that they must become officers or they'd be failures in their father's eyes.

Rimmer later enlisted with the JMC (Jupiter Mining Corporation) and became Second Technician and head of Z-Shift aboard the mining vessel Red Dwarf. He was only in-command of one man, Dave Lister, and their prime directive was to maintain that the ship's chicken soup machines were in proper working order.

He constantly tried, and failed, to pass his astro-navigation exams to try and become an officer with the Space Corps; one time having an emotional breakdown and writing "I am a fish" 400 times on an exam before passing out.

He was later instructed to repair a drive plate that caused the death of Flight Co-Ordinator George McIntyre; however, he failed and when reporting his failure to Captain Frank Hollister a radiation leak occurred and killed the entire crew except Lister, his cat Frankenstein, and Holly.

Three million years later Rimmer was resurrected as the ship's hologram by Holly to keep his former bunkmate, Dave Lister, sane.

Cat

Played by Danny John-Jules

The Cat is a felis sapien, the off-spring of generations of evolution all originating from Lister's cat, Frankenstein.

Born to a cripple and an idiot, Cat was one of the last of his kind; the rest having abandoned Red Dwarf in two separate arks in search of the promised land, leaving only the useless behind.

By the time Lister was released from stasis, only Cat and an elderly, blind cat priest remained; the Cat having taken accustomed to roaming around Red Dwarf and taking ownership of everything he saw. In their first encounter, Lister and Rimmer ran to the canteen asking Holly who it was they saw in the corridors.

Cat later "assimilated" and became a little bit more friendly to Lister and Rimmer; though his obsession with fashion and looks remained.

Kryten 2X4B 532P

Played by David Ross (Series II), Played by Robert Llewellyn (Series III - Present)

Kryten is a service mechanoid originally employed aboard the Nova-5; however after accidentally cleaning sensitive navigation hardware the ship plummeted and killed the entire crew leaving only Kryten as the sole survivor.

Kryten went computer senile and proceeded to act as if the crew were still alive, occasionally taking breaks to watch his favorite television show Androids on Groovy Channel 27.

When the Red Dwarf crew received an S.O.S. distress call from Kryten, they were told the crew of three females were still alive. After Lister, Rimmer, Cat, and even Holly made themselves look presentable and boarded the Nova 5, they discovered the crew was in fact, dead.

The crew proceeded to recruit Kryten; however Rimmer often took advantage of Kryten's nature to which Lister disagreed with strongly. After being encouraged to break his programming, Kryten rebelled, painting Rimmer wearing an admiral uniform while taking a dump and flipping him the bird. Kryten proceeded to go off on a spacebike, to which he promptly crashed into an asteroid.

After being rebuilt, Kryten's personality reset and he has been taking lessons by Lister regularly on how to become more human; though he still enjoys the job he was built to perform, even if he does in-service of people he mostly doesn't respect.

On & Off Crewmembers

Holly

Played by Norman Lovett (Series I, II, VII, VIII, & XII), Played by Hattie Hayridge (Series III-V)

Holly was the onboard supercomputer in control of Red Dwarf with an IQ of 6000.

After a Cadmium II radiation leak resulted in the death of the entire crew apart of Dave Lister, Holly piloted Red Dwarf out of the solar system to prevent the spread of radiation.

Three million years later, Holly's IQ drastically decreased as Holly became computer senile, to an extent. Holly proceeded to release Lister from stasis and resurrect Rimmer as the ship's hologram to keep Lister sane.

Holly routinely pulled practical jokes on the crew, mainly Lister and Rimmer, such as giving Rimmer a beehive haircut and telling Lister he was being hunted down by NORWEB.

After an encounter with a parallel, female counterpart, with whom Holly fell in love with, Holly underwent a computer head sex change into his female dimensional alter-ego, Hilly.

After the crew lost Red Dwarf to Kryten's nanobots, Holly was lost to the crew and absent for two series before being recovered from the terraformed 'Red Dwarf planetoid' the nanobots constructed. Holly was back to his original head and while the crew were in an AR simulation as part of an investigation by the nano-recreated crew of Red Dwarf, Holly revealed to Lister he played a part in the reconstruction of the crew by the nanobots, revealing he regularly creates scenarios so Lister can keep sane.

Holly, alongside the rest of the boys from the Dwarf, were imprisoned in the Tank for the rest of Series VIII as punishment for attempting escape and the misuse of confidential files.

When the show returned after a 9-year hiatus for Back to Earth, Holly was absent. Explained by Rimmer that 9-years of backed-up bath water caused by Lister knocked Holly offline and he was currently being dried-out by the skutters. He was later mentioned in later series, such as by mentioned by Kryten and Rimmer when they were installing Pree as the new supercomputer of Red Dwarf; though she was later uninstalled.

While Rimmer was quantum skipping through several dimensions, he encountered an alternate dimension Holly onboard a pre-accident Red Dwarf. However, Holly quickly revealed the Cadmium II radiation leak had occurred and Rimmer was forced to quantum skip to the safety of another dimension. Rimmer also entered a dimension where he was essentially the ship's Holly, but he quickly abandoned that.

Kristine Z. Kochanski

Played by Claire Grogan (Series I, II, VI), Played by Chloë Annett (Series VII, VIII, Back to Earth)

While Lister could never regain the love of the deceased original Kristine Kochanski; the crew happened to encounter an alternate dimension version of Kochanski.

This alternate dimension Kochanski had been put into stasis instead of Lister, having refused to incinerate Frankenstein and instead hiding her onboard Red Dwarf.

She encountered our Red Dwarf crew, and following a surprise attack from GELF ships, she was marooned with them and away from her original crew, a hologram of Lister, Cat, and a gold-plated Kryten.

After a failed second attempt at returning to her crew, she reluctantly agreed to stay with our crew if they'd save her from falling into nonspace, which they did. She stuck with our crew from being marooned on Starbug in Series VII to being imprisoned onboard Red Dwarf by its nano-recreated crew in Series VIII.

Following the show's nine-year hiatus, she supposedly had died after being sucked out of an air-lock. However, during a hallucination brought about by a female Despair Squid, Kryten revealed he had lied to Lister about Kochanski's fate; he had lied about her death to spare Lister the knowledge that Kochanski had willingly abandoned Lister and the crew and left, unhappy with how Lister was slowly killing himself and with how melancholy their lives had become. After being tempted with the prospect of spending his final days in the hallucination with a fake Kochanski, Lister refused, vowing to find Kochanski and win her back.

Since then Kochanski has been mentioned various times in recent series, such as in the Series X episodes 'Fathers & Suns' and 'Entangled' and the Series XII episode 'Skipper'.

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