Original Air Date: February 15, 1988
Starring: Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules, Mac McDonald
Directed by: Ed Bye

Cat Out of the Bag Alert! This review contains some spoilers for this episode!

Synopsis: In the first episode of this classic British sci-fi comedy series, David Lister (Craig Charles) is a low-ranking maintenance officer on the mining ship Red Dwarf traveling through the outer reaches of space.  His life is made miserable by his barely superior ranking supervisor, Arnold Rimmer (Chris Barrie).  Lister is caught committing an infraction and sentenced to suspended animation, only to find that things have radically changed when he emerges.

Kitty Cameos: Lister owns a pregnant black cat named Frankenstein which figures very prominently in the series’ initial set up.  We see Frankenstein in an early scene in which Lister pours her some milk and talks about how life will be for them when they get back to Earth and he sets up his farm on Fiji.

Lister is called into Captain Hollister’s office where he is asked to reveal the whereabouts of the cat.  Lister denies having a cat, but stupidly he has taken a picture of himself with Frankenstein and had it processed in the ship’s lab.  It’s the fact that Lister has smuggled the contraband cat aboard and then refuses to disclose her whereabouts that forces Captain Hollister to send him into suspended animation for the rest of the mission.  Unfortunately after Lister is frozen in time there is a disastrous radioactive accident which kills the entire crew and the ship’s computer, Holly (Norman Lovett) keeps Lister in suspended animation for 3 million years.  When he emerges he finds that Holly has brought Rimmer back as a hologram to give him company.  Not only that, but Frankenstein’s kittens and their subsequent generations have evolved into a humanized being they call Cat (Danny John-Jules.)

Final Mewsings: Lister is a hero in our books for giving up everything to save his cat.

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