Fast forward three million years. The simulant, in his time-space travels, finds Starbug and announces that he is going to try the crew on their worthiness to live. Kryten explains that this must be The Inquisitor, a rogue simulant who, according to space legend, has made it his mission to travel throughout the universe and "delete" people, replacing them with individuals created from a different sperm or egg, if he deems them to have failed living up to their potential and thereby wasted the precious gift of life.
Which is very bad news for the Boyz.
The first called before the Inquisitor is Rimmer, who angrily demands how the Inquisitor can be a fair judge. The Inqusitor responds that all who are tried before him are judged... and here he lifts the mask to reveal Rimmer's face... by themselves. "Oh, smeg!" remarks Rimmer, something his other self agrees with. Rimmer's defence falls flat, prompting the Inquistor to remark on how he's a slimy, despicable, rat-hearted green discharge of a guy. Rimmer concedes he can't have been anything else, with his lunatic dad and his mad mom. Hell, from his starting standpoint, being a nothing is a step up.
The Cat is next, and his only defence is his ass. Hey, he's a shallow guy, but he's got a great ass! Then comes Kryten, who declines to accept commendation for all his selfless deeds, since that's just him following his programming, angering the Inquisitor when he asks why it judges people. And Lister... just tells the Inquisitor to smeg off.
The judging complete, the Inquisitor tells the four that two of them have been found unworthy, and will be erased. At the press of a switch, the Cat and Rimmer disappear. Lister is outraged, until Kryten points out the problem: The Cat and Rimmer aren't the ones on the chopping block.
- Lister: The Cat has led a more worthwhile life than either of us?Inquisitor: He is a shallow and selfish creature - as is the hologram. By their own low standards, they have acquitted themselves. Whereas you and the mechanoid could've been so much more.
Before the Inqusitor can finish erasing Lister and Kryten, they're saved by... Kryten? A future version of Kryten jumps in and slices off the Inquisitor's hand, giving them his gauntlet. But while they're talking, the Inquisitor recovers. Future Kryten's final words before his head is crushed are "enig". Lister and Kryten scarper back to Starbug, where they try to get the Inquisitor's bindings off. Lister blames himself for getting Kryten into the whole mess, but Kryten insists he believes in Silicon Heaven, but he doesn't anymore, thanks to Lister teaching him to lie. They do eventually manage to crack the chains, and head back into Red Dwarf. Only there's a problem: The ship and Holly don't recognise them. Because they don't exist there anymore. note
They're met by Rimmer and the Cat. Rimmer, as the smeghead he is, insists on killing these weirdo intruders immediately. Lister manages to prove he knows who he is by producing a very, very long list of all the reasons Rimmer is a smeghead. Then Lister and Kryten come in. ... err, that is, the Lister and Kryten who've been created thanks to the Inquisitor, their "sperms in-law" as Lister puts it. Despite the physical differences, Lister-B is pretty much the same as Lister-A, and he defends his counterpart from Rimmer's attempts to kill them. Then the Inquisitor shows up again. In the ensuing melee, the other Kryten and Lister are killed. But Lister manages to find a way to access Red Dwarf's systems now.
As the two try to think of a way to deal with the Inquisitor, the Cat and Rimmer catch up, throwing their lot in with them. Not that it does them much good when the Inquisitor returns, leaving just Kryten and Lister. Kryten has managed to figure out the way the gauntlet works, and freezes the Inquisitor in time while he's beating up Lister. As Kryten prepares to go back in time and sacrifice himself, his replacing the gauntlets gives Lister an idea.
The Inquisitor gets free once more, but Lister is able to knock him out, and drags him to one of Red Dwarf's cargo bays, hanging him on a chain. As he tells the Inquisitor, in a lot of ways he's killed Lister's friends today. He then threatens to drop the Inquisitor, only to pull him back up, claiming that it makes them even - if he didn't exist, he wouldn't have saved the guy from falling. Except, as the Inquisitor notes, if he didn't exist, the Inquisitor wouldn't have been in peril in the first place. Oops? But, as the Inquisitor fires his time gauntlet, he realizes the truth: Lister's sabotaged his gauntlet so it fires backwards. Instead of erasing Lister, it'll erase him.
With the Inquisitor gone, his victims are restored. Kryten tells Lister this is probably an appropriate juncture for them to high-five. Lister, who's still got his alternate's arm, thinks he can do Kryten one better...
Tropes include:
- Adaptation Decay: The episode begins with Lister reading Virgil's Aeneid, in comic book form. Judging by Kryten's glimpse at it, it's not entirely accurate.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Simulants are not stable to begin with. This one wound up deciding that there was so much wasted life in the universe, it was his job to clean up all of it.
- Backwards-Firing Gun: "Yeah! It's the old backfiring time gauntlet routine!"
- Batman Gambit: Lister displays a rather genius piece of thinking - he makes the inquisitor think that he's trying to trick out time by saving the inquisitor from falling to his death, knowing that the inquisitor will just say that erasing Lister will stop him threatening his life in the first place and will immediately use his gauntlet to erase Lister without checking for tampering first. But the gauntlet has been tampered with - it backfires and erases the inquisitor.
- Blatant Lies:
- Rimmer's initial defence is just full of it. The Inquisitor immediately interrupts his first attempt, and then calls him out on every one after.
- Kryten doesn't fear death. He believes in silicon heaven. He believes in an afterlife for droids. Except, as Lister notes, his leg shakes when he lies, and at that moment it's shaking so much he has to shout to be heard over the noise it's causing.
- When Lister and Kryten are met by Rimmer and the Cat, Rimmer tries to claim he's a rough-and-tough ex-Green Beret who's not to be messed with.
- Borrowed Biometric Bypass: How Lister gets through the door after Holly rejects his palmprint. Much to Kryten's disgust.
- Call-Back: While trying to prove his identity Lister references a number of facts about Rimmer that he's learned over the course of the series including:
- The letters he puts after his name are actually swimming certificates, established in "Me2".
- The names of Rimmer's brothers, first mentioned in "Polymorph".
- The time he volunteered for the Samaritans and people ended up killing themselves, mentioned in "The Last Day".
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Analysing the Inquisitor's actions reveal this. He doesn't necessarily care whether you're a moral person, he only cares whether you have in anyway "seized the gift of life" and made the most of it. In order to make this a fair trial and avoid judging them by his own standards of what makes a worthwhile life, he takes the form of others so they can be judged by their own standards. This logic is immediately shown to be flawed when it comes to the Red Dwarf crew, where he judges only Lister and Kryten as being unworthy of life. According to him, Rimmer's and the Cat's own low standards (Rimmer's beief that his family gave him little chance of being more than what he is, while the Cat's vanity means he doesn't believe for a second that he hasn't lived a worthwhile life) mean they have achieved much, while in contrast both Lister and Kryten are very much aware they could have been more, meaning that by their own standards they haven't met the Inquisitor's criteria.
- Chekhov's Gun: The episode begins with Lister complaining about the Schmuck Bait of the Trojan Horse gambit, and how anyone that stupid deserves to be kapowed in their sleep. At the very end of the episode, guess what does the Inquisitor in?
- Chainsaw Good: A future version of Kryten manages to save Past!Lister and his former self by pulling out a lazer chainsaw and hacking off the inquisitor's arm.
- Cowardice Callout: Lister calls Rimmer a "tremendous physical coward" while giving the latter an epic "Reason You Suck" Speech.
- Deathly Unmasking: In a deleted scene, the final confrontation between Lister and the eponymous villain plays out a little differently. Here, the Inquisitor removes his mask to discuss Lister's reasons for saving his life - revealing his true face for the very first time. Consequently, when the Inquisitor is erased from history by the booby-trapped time gauntlet after trying to kill Lister with it, he dies unmasked.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?:
- Lister's strategy in dealing with The Inquisitor during his "trial"? Display utter contempt and non-compliance with the time-travelling simulant who can and will erase him from existence! His final statement was simply "Spin on it".
- Kryten gets a more low-key one, when he questions by what right the Inquisitor has to judge humans.
- Grand Theft Me: The Inquisitor announces himself by seizing control of Lister's body and speaking through it.
- Honour Before Reason: Lister doesn't like the inquisitor from the moment they make contact and outright states several times that he doesn't believe he has the right to judge peoples worthiness of existence; when his trial comes along he doesn't entertain the inquisitor's methods for a second and refuses to give any defence for his own existence.
- When both Cat and Rimmer seemingly got erased (they were only teleported away) Lister needed to be held back by Kryten (and chains) to stop him attacking the inquisitor. To put that into perspective the inquisitor is a simulant (a literal killing machine) and Lister still wanted to beat him up.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Rimmer, the Cat, both Krytens and both Listers are all packed into a lift together when the Inquisitor begins spraying shots from his time gauntlet through the metal grating of the roof - hitting absolutely no-one.
- In Spite of a Nail: Despite the fact that the Inquisitor is explicitly giving potential people the chance to make more meaningful lives than the ones who ended up being born, none of the replacements that we see end up anywhere different than the originals, other than the replacement version of Thomas Allman being in much better physical shape than the original. Which could easily be a subtle jab at him being delusional about the importance of his self-appointed task.
- Irony: The Inquisitor's whole plan is predicated on the absence of God: in appointing himself the final arbiter of every sentient being's worth, he has put himself in the place of God. Kryten subtly calls him on this.
- Knight of Cerebus: The Inquisitor, an immortal android that exists until the end of time, where he concludes that the only meaning of existence is to live a good life. He invents a time machine, judges everyone who ever lived, and if he deems them unworthy of existence, he erases them from history. He has no comical traits and is treated very seriously. And from his debut episode onward, the show gets progressively Darker and Edgier.Cat: {staggered with horror} Okay! We don't know who you are, but we've seen enough of the other dude to know we wanna be on your side!Rimmer: {only slightly more composed} He killed our two crew mates in cold blood! He's a monster.
- Look, a Distraction!: Kryten's contribution to the duel with the Inquisitor."Excuse me, could I please distract you for a brief second?"
- The Narcissist: Cat justifies his existence by saying he has given the world pleasure by having a beautiful ass. It works.Inquisitor: Some might call that a pretty shallow argument.
Cat: Some might call me a pretty shallow guy. But a shallow guy with a great ass! - Nausea Fuel: When Kryten realizes that Lister has used his alternate's severed hand to open the door, he says that if he was capable of vomiting he would do so.
- Never My Fault: Rimmer uses this defence - and to be fair, his parents were quite horrible (as he points out) and his brothers had all the looks and talent. Rather surprisingly, this actually gets him off.Rimmer: Yes, I admit I'm nothing. But from what I started with, nothing is up.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Despite his claims to be improving humanity, the Inquisitor clearly cares nothing about the supposedly "worthy", as shown when he murders the "better" Lister and Kryten in cold blood, as well as going on to do the same to Rimmer and Cat, both of whom he had previously judged as deserving of life. His gleeful declaration of "The sport begins!" as he hunts the crew down shows that, like most Simulants, he's ultimately just a sadistic killer.
- Oh, Crap!: When Kryten explains that the Inquisitor only deletes people who have lived worthless lives, pathetic losers, and those who have failed to make anything of themselves, Rimmer's immediate response is "we're in big trouble." Not to mention as Kryten describes the qualifications for not getting erased, each sentence gains a "oh, God" from Rimmer. And when he realizes his worthiness will be judged by himself, he can only say "oh, smeg."
- "The Reason I Suck" Speech: When it comes to judging Rimmer, the Inquisitor rejects every lame attempt that Rimmer comes up with to justify being such a failure and a poor excuse of a human being in general, especially since the Inquisitor takes on the identity of the person being judged and can therefore spot any lie. Eventually, Rimmer gives up and does some genuine self-reflection (albeit still incredibly self-pitying), which the Inquisitor accepts as a valid defense.Arnold Judas Rimmer: What else could I have been? My father was a half-crazed military failure; my mother, a bitch-queen from Hell. My brothers had all the looks and talent. What did I have? Unmanageable hair and ingrowing toenails. Yes, I admit I'm nothing. But from what I started with, nothing is up.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Lister unleashes a short-but-devastating one on Rimmer to prove he knows who he is, listing Rimmer's failings as a person. The Cat (and Rimmer himself) admits that Lister's got his number.Lister: You're really mean with money. You're a tremendous physical coward. You once spent an afternoon on the Samaritans switchboard and four people committed suicide! Your middle name is Judas, but you tell everyone that it's Jonathan. You sign all your official letters "Arnold Rimmer BSc", and the BSc stands for Bronze Swimming Certificate! You're a cheating, weasley, low-life scumbucket, with all the charm and social grace of a pubic louse!
- Skeleton Motif: The Inquisitors' helmet. It's not quite shaped like a human skull, though.
- The Social Darwinist: The Inquisitor, with his philosophy that only the worthy should live.
- Slouch of Villainy: The Inquisitor is laid out on his dark throne as he asks people to justify their own existence.
- The Tell: Lister knows Kryten is lying when he claims he's Not Afraid to Die, because his right foot jiggles involuntarily whenever he lies. Kryten hadn't noticed this before (though it is clearly visible to the audience), but after Lister points it out, his foot jiggles harder and harder until his entire body is shaking violently.
- Throwback Threads: Rimmer spends the first part of the episode in his "Captain Emerald" suit from Series 3 and 4, only changing into his uniform for that Series (a red quilted uniform) once Lister and The Cat are removed from the timeline and replaced.
- Understatement: Prior to his traveling back in time to perform his Heroic Sacrifice, Kryten sums up the disastrous events which have led to himself and Lister being rendered non-persons who never existed, the entire Red Dwarf crew subsequently being horribly killed and Lister himself being left alone potentially to be killed by the Inquisitor with this:Kryten: All in all, today's been a bit of a bummer, hasn't it sir?
- Whole-Plot Reference: Grant and Naylor were heavily inspired by The Terminator and the works of Harlan Ellison.
