This episode starts off with Lister entering the control room, finding a "Monster Kebab" from Kryten, and in the process of trying to eat it, he causes a fire. Rimmer comes in and berates him for causing the fire, telling him to fill in a ridiculously large accident report form. It's more than 20 pages long and apparently, it's more than that. Lister refuses to sign the thing, more interested in life signs coming from an upcoming moon. He heads off there.
Meanwhile, Kryten has been working on the quantum rod they got from the Trojan, and during a conversation with the Cat, they become "quantum entangled," saying everything together at the same time and usually thinking of the same stuff. Probably just a coincidence.
Later on, Kryten finds Lister outside the ship in a spacesuit, begging to be let in. Lister had been to the moon and met with Bio-Engineered Garbage Gobblers, an off-shoot of Gelfs, specifically meant to eat garbage and refuse and being constantly inebriated, and now spends their time drinking whiskey and playing poker. Lister had asked them for rumors about Kochanski but ended up playing with them, losing both Starbug and Rimmer. Kryten decides to hand Lister the rest of the accident report form, which Lister blows out the airlock.
Rimmer learns about the "accident" as Kryten explained to him, and when Kryten clarifies it wasn't an accident, Rimmer decides to give Lister an entire box of both the Accident Report Form and the Airlock Safety Report Form to show he was cleared to use the airlock to begin with. Rimmer leaves a box with the report forms by the same airlock.
Lister is trying to figure out a way to clear his debt with the Beggs since he has to deliver Rimmer to them. And when Rimmer finds out, he suggests they escape. It turns out the Beggs fitted Lister with a groinal exploder, set on a timer and rigged to blow if tampered with. And if Lister were to die, so does Rimmer. So their only option is to reason with the Beggs.
Trying to pass off Rimmer as raddled and essentially worthless, the Crew decides to bribe them instead with a "Spoon of Destiny", able to control the universe. The Beggs see through it immediately and challenge Lister to another round of poker. Only this time, if they win, they take everybody save Lister. Fortunately, the Beggs end up choking to death, to Lister's dismay.
Rimmer and Lister learn about Cat and Kryten's quantum entanglement and through a sheer amount of coincidences brought on by the entanglement, they learn of a space station where Lister's "Knacker Attacker" was developed. They even find out its coordinates.
When they get there, they find that it's a science outpost that was built around the concept that two wrongs can make a right, the idea being that erroneous and stupid people could accomplish amazing things in sheer ignorance of their own level of stupidity. Well, that was the plan. The whole theory turned out to be wrong in the first place.
Still, they find a nest of stasis pods, with one member inside — Professor Irene Edginton, who developed the groinal exploder. Only ... she's a chimpanzee. She had (also) developed a machine that was supposed to jump-start her own evolution into the next stage of humanity, but as everything went wrong on the station, the opposite happened instead.
Kryten is able to restore her back to human form and they ask her for help with Lister's problem. Working on the principle that she gets everything wrong, they are able to decipher the code used for the bomb. But Irene is able to figure out the last button needed to decode the bomb, and Lister's balls are saved.
Rimmer and Irene develop a bond with each other and walk through the hallway with Lister's preferred airlock. As they decide to go to Rimmer's quarters and have sex, Lister comes in through the airlock and leaves it open. Irene trips over Rimmer's box of report forms and falls into the airlock. Rimmer and Lister beg her not to push any buttons, but she does anyway — and is ejected into space. Lister asks Rimmer for a pen.
Tropes
- Aborted Arc: Lister's visiting the BEGGs to try and find any information about Kochanski's whereabouts is the final remnant of a story arc that would have seen her return as a main character. The arc was put on hold when the original scripts for the following two episodes had to be shelved because of production issues, and then abandoned completely.
- Achievements in Ignorance: The space station where Irene worked was developed with this in mind — people (like Irene) who get everything wrong would be able to develop new technologies despite their ignorance and stupidity. Ultimately subverted, though, as it turns out that it didn't work. Irene herself was turned into a chimp when her evolution machine turned out to have the opposite effect.
- All Men Are Perverts: When Irene is transformed from chimp to human, she's naked. Lister, Rimmer and Cat are content to just stare at her. Kryten, being a mechanoid, doesn't notice at first but when he does, he offers to get her a sheet to cover herself up. Lister, for his part, does offer her his jacket.
- Bat Deduction: The idea that Irene's name is an indication she'll get something right if everyone expects her to get it wrong is the same sort of logic as "Esperanto means hope, hope defeats despair" from "Back to Reality", where the point is that it's convoluted nonsense.
- Between My Legs: Irene's transformation from chimp to human is framed this way, largely because her actress (Sydney Stevenson) hadn't actually been cast when the scene was filmed — due to the fact that the original plan had been to keep Irene as a chimp, which proved to be unworkable when it was realised that there were limits on the amount of time the actor playing the chimp could spend in the costume.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Unlike Rimmer and the Cat, who are happy to tell Kryten to take his time in finding the sheet to cover Irene's nakedness so they can stare at her longer, Lister offers Irene his jacket without a word.
- Devolution Device: Irene had created a device that would evolve humanity into the next stage. However, she got it hopelessly wrong and used the device to accidentally devolve her into a chimp instead.
- Dramatic Irony: Irene, who says they can call her "Professor E" — Irene E. Despite being wrong all her life, she actually manages to guess the last button needed to deactivate the explosive belt. Rimmer and Cat point out the irony of it.
- Fake Shemp: Sydney Stevenson hadn't been cast as Irene when they filmed the scene where she tranforms from the chimp to her human form, so they got a model for that scene, which is why it's shown Between My Legs.
- Freeze-Frame Bonus: Irene even has her glasses on upside-down. She really does get everything wrong.
- Groin Attack: Lister is trying to avoid having his love spuds blown off by the explosive belt. Luckily for him they're able to deactivate the belt in time.
- Horrible Judge of Character: Professor Irene, in fitting with her characterization of getting everything wrong - she ends up believing that Rimmer is of the strong, brave type when he is anything but.
- The Loins Sleep Tonight: Rimmer presumably, as his plans to have sex with Irene are ruined after she accidentally falls into the airlock and ejects herself out into space.
- Lost Him in a Card Game: Lister loses both Starbug and Rimmer whilst playing poker with the BEGGs.
- MockGuffin: The crew attempt to get out of giving Rimmer and Starbug to the BEGGs by attempting to pass off an ordinary spoon as "The Spoon of Destiny", capable of controlling the universe. Unfortunately for them, the BEGGs see right through it.
- Never My Fault: Interestingly, Rimmer no longer holds himself responsible for the radiation leak that wiped out the crew on Red Dwarf, asking who really was responsible, the man or the system. Lister insists it was the man (Rimmer), but previous episodes have established that the system was also to blame. So in a way, they're both right, but Rimmer is using it as justification to rework the Health and Safety department of the ship to take over the accident report forms.
- Please Put Some Clothes On: Kryten offers to get Irene a sheet to cover herself after she assumes (nude) human form. As the scene ends, Lister is removing his jacket and stepping forward to hand it to Irene.
- Speak in Unison: Thanks to being quantum entangled, the Cat and Kryten spend a significant portion of the episode speaking at the same time.
- Thrown Out the Airlock: At the end of the episode Irene trips into the airlock and is thrown out into space just as she and Rimmer are making plans to have sex.
