Red Dwarf XI – Give & Take

“Give & Take” is episode three of Red Dwarf XI.

Rimmer is on the way to the crew quarters on the Red Dwarf, although he gets into an argument with a lift and fires it. Apparently, a space station has been detected and it will be destroyed by an asteroid storm in five hours, giving them only a limited time to explore it. Lister has been in bed for two days with a hangover.

On the space station, which is called Asclepius, the Dwarfers split into two groups. Rimmer and Kryten discover a mechanoid which bears more than a little similarity to Robby the Robot, which Kryten says is the medical droid Asclepius, a highly advanced droid which was programmed to be able to perform any procedure on any known creature. Lister and the Cat, meanwhile, discover a skeleton which has apparently stabbed himself in the back and a another droid – which is actually Asclepius. And is more than a little mad.

By the time Kryten and Rimmer find Cat and Lister, the latter have both been knocked out – and Lister has had both of his kidneys removed. Which get accidentally caught in the crossfire and destroyed. The timescale of the destruction of the station is also a little inaccurate. So they flee the station just before it is destroyed in a rather unrealistic series of explosions.

Kryten and Rimmer still don’t know that the rogue droid was actually Asclepius. Then again, nor do the Cat or Lister. So Lister has no kidneys, is hooked to a dialysis machine, and has a limited amount of time to live, and the state of the art medibot that is going to help him is nothing of the sort. Lister’s other requirement needs the cat to be generous. Generosity is not in the nature of the Cat species.

Rimmer decides to make use of the “medibot”‘s psychological skills. Which results in a series of disconnected clips that make very little sense, but provide a glimpse into Rimmer’s troubled life. And Lister’s life depends on a couple of things that don’t seem to be possible.

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