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Recap / Red Dwarf Season IV "Camille"

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Whilst taking Rimmer on an asteroid-spotting trip in Starbug, Kryten discovers a crashed spaceship and rescues Camille, a mechanoid from the female counterpart line to his own. Romance blooms, but Camille isn't exactly what she seems...

This episode contains examples of off duty Czechoslovakian traffic wardens:

  • Appearance Is in the Eye of the Beholder: Camille looks different to different people, like his sister in law to Rimmer, Kochanski to Lister and a female mechanoid to Kryten.
  • Blessed with Suck: Being a Pleasure Gelf lets you become anybody's greatest sexual and romantic fantasy... which, of course, means nobody respects you for being you. It also causes confusion when dealing with groups of people, as it appears and converses different to everyone. Plus, with the power turned off, you look like a hideous Blob Monster.
  • Body Horror: The Pleasure Gelf in its native form is a squamous mass of greenish-purple flesh with a single eyestalk poking out of it, which a disgusted Cat keeps pointing out.
  • Brick Joke: Lister begins trying to teach Kryten to lie with fruit. Later on, Rimmer complains about Kryten being unbearably weird.
    Rimmer: He was waving a banana in front of me, calling it a female aardvark!
  • Cannot Tell a Lie: At the start, Kryten is fully unable to lie, unable to call a banana something else, like an aardvark. At the end of the episode, Kryten has derailed from this to Will Not Tell a Lie. At times.
  • Character Tic: Even after learning to lie, Kryten remains unable to call Rimmer a smeghead, only managing to get out "smee-heeeee".
  • Doppelgänger Replacement Love Interest: Word of God says Camille was originally supposed to appear as Kochanski in Lister's eyes but they figured he'd probably realise something was up.
  • Dumbass Has a Point: Lister actually makes a pretty sophisticated argument for why Kryten should learn to lie; in addition to helping him become more independant, lying is part of a person's "psychological defense system", and has it's practical applications.
  • It's All About Me: Take a guess who the Cat's ultimate love is.
  • Nice Guy: Kryten really emphasizes this by not being bothered by Camille's true form at all, to the Gelf's own disbelief; he simply confesses she won't win any Miss Universe contests before pointing out that he wouldn't win them either.
  • No Antagonist: A rare example of an episode where there's no antagonist or Negative Space Wedgie to deal with - most of the drama comes from the true nature of Camille and even when her true nature is revealed, she's actually a pleasant creature, up to the point of even dating Kryten for a while.
  • Non-Human Non-Binary: According to Camille, Pleasure GELFs are androgynous in nature, although she identifies as female in nature and Hector (her husband) identifies as male.
  • Overly Narrow Superlative: Kryten, when he tries to convince Camille to come with him, states she'll like the others. Well, one or two of them. Maybe.
  • Prefers the True Form: The crew encounter a genetically engineered life form who each of them perceive as their perfect mate. At Kryten's insistence, Camille turns off this ability, revealing her true form as a big, green, one-eyed blob. While the others are repulsed, Kryten actually finds Camille's true form "kinda cute".
  • Shapeshifting Seducer: Pleasure GELFs are sex workers who can project an illusion to make themselves look like your perfect woman.
  • Star-Crossed Lovers: Kryten and Camille fall in love, but he ultimately sends her back to her ex-husband Hector so she can benefit from his experiments in finding a way to tweak their genes and become something other than Pleasure Gelfs.
  • Whole-Plot Reference: The second half quickly mutates into a prolonged Casablanca reference.

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