The episode opens with Lister on the bridge of the Red Dwarf enjoying a beer milkshake and a sappy film, when he's interrupted by Holly, who is bored - having already read everything ever written - and needs Lister to erase some of his memory so that he can enjoy Agatha Christie novels again. Lister moves to his quarters to finish the film, but is interrupted again by Rimmer, being obnoxious as usual. Rimmer is aghast that Lister has gone down to explore the officers' block, as it hasn't been sterilised yet: just because it was on Rimmer's "To-Do" list doesn't mean it was actually done. Lister was looking for his old crush Kristine Kochanski's dream recorder and talks about his best mate Petersen's theory of a person's Confidence and Paranoia, and how his own Paranoia always came out on top when he wanted to chat her up. He tries to talk Rimmer into saying where he hid the other holo-disks, to give him just a few hours with a holo-Kochanski to finally tell her how he felt; but Rimmer won't tell, not wanting to get switched off and replaced.
That night, Lister feels sick, tries to get to the medical quarters, and faints. Rimmer runs to the Cat for help. Cat immediately jumps to his feet — and then sits back down to keep eating once Rimmer has run out again. Twice. This forces Rimmer to employ the medically underqualified skutters to aid Lister, who is running a high fever from a virus that has spent three million years mutating in the unsterilised officers' quarters...
Later on, Lister's fever dreams become real, firstly as a rain of fish and the spontaneously-combusting 15th-century Mayor of Warsaw, and then as the titular Confidence and Paranoia. Paranoia is a sickly little man in a black suit who is mortified beyond compare at everything Lister does or has done. Confidence (played by Craig Ferguson) is a big, brash, American-accented man, slick of hair and loud of shirt and voice, who loves absolutely everything Lister does. Lister naturally likes Confidence and pals up with him, ignoring Rimmer's protests that these figures are manifest symptoms of his illness. Rimmer at first gets to enjoy comparing notes on Lister's inadequacies with Paranoia, but the relentless downer eventually becomes too much for even him and he attempts (badly) to have Paranoia lethally injected by a skutter — while Confidence helps Lister figure out where Kochanski's holo-disk is hidden: right outside the window of their sleeping quarters.
Despite Rimmer's failure, Paranoia goes missing.
As Lister and Confidence go on a spacewalk to find the disk, Confidence casually reveals that he killed Paranoia (cha-cha-cha) for always tearing Lister down, and that Lister can do a lot better than a loser like him. In fact, Lister is so great he should just take his helmet off and relax — only losers need oxygen! An argument and a scuffle ensues as Lister naturally refuses. Confidence decides to show Lister how great it would be, removes his own helmet, and immediately blows up.
Shaken, but triumphantly in possession of Kochanski's disk, Lister plugs it in. It turns out... to be another Rimmer. Because like hell Rimmer would be stupid enough to leave Kochanski's disk in the envelope labeled Kochanski!
"You had Tropes, right?"
"Yeah?"
"And they were listed":
- An Aesop: You shouldn't always listen to your paranoia, but untempered confidence can be just as bad.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Both Confidence and Paranoia are the embodiments of Lister's... well Confidence and Paranoia. The reason why they don't physically resemble Lister is that they only appear as what Lister thinks are confidence and paranoia.
- Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: As Rimmer pointed out, Confidence and Paranoia both had to die for Lister to get better. Any possible moral issues this might raise are settled, however, when Confidence kills Paranoia, before killing himself due to his own stupidity.
- Batman Can Breathe in Space: Invoked by Confidence in the climax, when he claims that people only tell Lister he needs oxygen "to make you feel small". He's dead wrong, of course.
- Black Comedy Rape: Rimmer's liaison with Yvonne McGruder is brought up for the first time and it's... disturbing. It was given a slightly less squicky Retcon in the books.Rimmer: What about Yvonne MacGruder? That was a date.
Lister: She'd been hit on the head by a winch, she had a concussion.
Rimmer: That's got nothing to do with it. She was crazy about me.
Lister: Oh, yeah? She kept calling you "Norman."
Rimmer: She still went to bed with me.
Lister: Yeah, because she had wonky vision and she thought you were somebody else.
Rimmer: Serves her right for being concussed, doesn't it? - Cassandra Truth (or likely Briar Patching): Rimmer solemnly warns Lister that he'll regret activating Kochanski's disk. He's right!
- Cats Are Mean: Cat can't comprehend why Lister needing help would justify interrupting lunch.
- Comically Missing the Point: Rimmer asks "What's going on?" and Holly replies that Poirot just stepped off the train, and in Holly's opinion they all did it (which of course is completely true).
- Crazy-Prepared: Rimmer not only hid the holo-disks so close by that Lister would never think to look there, he swapped Kochanski's disk with a duplicate of his own just in case Lister ever did figure it out.
- Exact Words: Rimmer never said he decontaminated the officers' block, just that he was planning to a few days ago.
- Explosive Decompression: Confidence explodes like a bomb the instant he removes his helmet.
- Eye Poke: One of the skutters does this to Lister with a thermometer while attempting to take his temperature.
- Flat "What": Lister's dance-punctuated spacewalk with Confidence is soured by the latter's revelation that he killed Paranoia.Confidence: I killed him! (resumes dancing) Cha-cha-chaaa...
Lister: What do you mean, "you killed him, cha-cha-cha"? - Glurge Addict: Lister indulges in a real sob-story of a movie and gets increasingly irritated that the best bit to cry over keeps getting interrupted.
- Good Angel, Bad Angel: Confidence and Paranoia. Although it's up for debate which is which.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Rimmer correctly states that Confidence and Paranoia are symptoms of Lister's disease and therefore need to be gotten rid of. Both he and Paranoia also raise a valid point about how unlikely it is that Kochanski would take Lister up on his offer of a relationship, as she has always had better prospects and a smart head on her shoulders. It says a lot that Lister even parrots their remarks and requires another bout of ego-stroking from Confidence to carry on with his scheme.
- Kissing Warm-Up: Referenced when Paranoia starts dredging up Lister's embarrassing adolescent memories.Paranoia: Do you know he used to practice kissing on his own?
Rimmer: How?
Paranoia: (demonstrating) He made lips out of one hand and waggled his thumb through the gap, like a tongue.
Rimmer: That is priceless! It really is.
Paranoia: Seventeen years old and he used to snog his own hand. - Literal Split Personality: The titular personality traits manifest real people from Lister's mind. They then spend the rest of the episode trying to influence Lister until Confidence murders Paranoia and accidentally commits suicide.
- Obliviously Evil: Confidence is utterly convinced that everything he does is for Lister's own good. This includes destroying the medical unit, preventing him from getting further treatment, and even murdering his counterpart to make sure he is the only remaining influence on Lister, and can continue pushing him toward increasingly insane risks... such as taking his helmet off in space.
- Pet the Dog: Rimmer seems genuinely concerned about Lister's health, getting extremely frustrated when the Cat, the only other one around with a physical body, won't put his meal on hold to save a life.
- Rain of Something Unusual: Lister hallucinates a real indoor rain of fish— all of which are quickly eaten by the Cat.
- Reality Warper: A virus that's mutated over three millions years turns its host into one, with things that Lister dreams about showing up in person.
- Shaped Like Itself: Rimmer tries to explain that Lister has been having "solid" hallucinations. Lister asks him to put it a different way, and Rimmer obliges...."You had hallucinations, all right? And they were solid."
- Suicidal Overconfidence: Confidence, in his efforts to build Lister up, says that he doesn't even need oxygen. Confidence takes off his own helmet to prove it. Suffice it to say, he doesn't live to regret it.
- Take That!: According to Holly, the worst book ever written is Football: It's A Funny Old Game by Kevin Keegan.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Lister and Cat's reaction to having two Rimmers onboard.Rimmer: Think you had it bad before? Now you've got it in stereo, baby.
- Too Dumb to Live: Confidence removes his helmet in the vacuum of space. Big mistake.
