It's Lister's birthday today and Kryten has decided to celebrate. Unfortunately, it's also the day that Lister apparently has a heart attack. Thankfully, it's only a case of severe indigestion, but Kryten suggests putting in a monitoring chip into Lister's bloodstream anyway. It doesn't take long before "Chippy" explodes. Investigating, Kryten finds that Chippy was running off old software and that the ship has been accumulating updates for the past few years.
Installing the updates, the crew find that the JMC had been bought out by M-Corp. It's not too long though before Lister becomes unable to see things that the others can, including lager. Kryten deduces that the upgrade installed a form of perception filter software, meaning that Lister is unable to see anything on board the ship which isn't owned by the company. Even worse, as the Cat is not an official ship worker and Rimmer and Kryten are made up of parts manufactured by different companies, they become invisible to Lister as well.
While Lister struggles with the majority of his stuff being invisible, the rest of the crew finds out that Earth itself was bought out by M-Corp in the late 26th century. being able to knock down opposition by introducing a law to prohibit thinking. Kryten figures out that they can start to fix the issue by restoring Red Dwarf to its original settings (alongside booting up a back-up of Rimmer from one month prior.
Meanwhile, Lister is lured by M-Corp into their pay-per-life 'virtual integrated environment'. Lister is offered the "Basic Lite" package, which puts a cap on his words and gives him a friend to be purchased in Steve (although Lister doesn't want to buy him). M-Corp start to resort to more vicious methods to get Lister to give up his dollarpounds, subjecting Lister to pain so that he pays for painkillers and a glass of water and exposes him to fire so that he buys a fire extinguisher. Eventually, Lister runs out of credits, so M-Corp decides to start removing his lifespan so that he can pay.
The crew (who have rebooted the ship) use Chippy to track down Lister and make it into M-Corp, finding that Lister has become an old man and an assistant who is quite willing to sell them anything. However, Kryten is able to save the day by buying a malicious virus of her which will shut her down, putting Lister back to normal. However, Lister still can't see them. The crew figures out that the virus has gotten into Lister's mind and that the only solution is to reboot his mind. Problem is that Lister's last full backup was made when he was 23 years old. Luckily, Kryten states that he should be able to build up his profile again from CCTV recordings and that he should be back to normal within a month.
Tropes:
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Dave is lured into a virtual reality environment by the M-Corp A.I., which then proceeds to torment Dave, such as giving him chest pain and setting the room he's in on fire, to extort money out of him to pay for things like pain killers and a fire extinguisher. When he runs out of credits, it starts deducting payment from his lifespan, because "time is money".
- Accidental Unfortunate Gesture: Lister's brain is hacked so he can only see items manufactured by M-Corp. Kryten tests the limits of this blindness by holding up various objects and asking Lister if he can see it. Whenever an object is invisible to Lister, it is also invisible to the audience. The last (invisible) object he holds up causes his hand to vibrate in an alarmingly suggestive fashion. He then passes to Cat and Rimmer, whose hands also vibrate in a suggestive fashion, causing Lister to remark "I really hope that's an electric toothbrush!".
- Brain Uploading: A variant; Kryten ultimately determines that the only way to get rid of M-Corp's visual & audial filters on Lister is to "reboot him", wiping his mind and reinstalling his memories from the backup copy he created for Red Dwarf to use to create his hologram upon his death. Unfortunately for Lister, he hasn't updated that backup in decades, although Kryten assures him that he can use Red Dwarf's other files to eventually update his mind back to normal.
- Birthday Episode: Lister’s birthday is celebrated in the first act of the episode.
- Call-Back:
- To an epic degree; the episode ends in a deliberate whole-scale reference to the very start of "The End".
- The answer to the security question "Who did you share your first kiss?" is Uncle Frank, which Rimmer is horrified to find that Kryten and the Cat knows. Rimmer had previously divulged this information during Kryten's assumed last night in "The Last Day".
- In a more subtle one, Lister's aged appearance is clearly based on the 171-year-old Lister seen in "Future Echoes".
- Cast from Lifespan: See also Liquid Assets.
- Embarrassing Password: The answer to the reboot system's security question set up by Rimmer ("Who Did You Share Your First Kiss") is "Uncle Frank".
- Everything Is an iPod in the Future: Parodied. Red Dwarf has a very definite Used Future aesthetic to it given its status as a mining ship, but when Kryten reboots the ship systems to their factory settings, it uses the Mac startup sound.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Kryten ultimately defeats the M-Corp AI that has Lister in its thrall by asking them to provide him with a deadly computer virus that will destroy them — and, because he has the currency to pay for it, M-Corp promptly does exactly that. A rather literal application of "selling the rope that hangs you".
- Liquid Assets: M-Corp graduated to using Time as currency, and when Lister swiftly exhausts his credits, they start draining his time, causing him to drastically age. They also made thinking a taxable event, which they used to dissuade people from rebelling against their control.
- MegaCorp: M-Corp, naturally. Taken to extreme; they bought Earth and copy-righted every single thing, then turned their environment into a "virtual integrated environment" in order to control everything.
- Perception Filter: Used ad verbatim. Anything that isn't owned by M-Corp becomes invisible to its employees.
- Privately Owned Society: M-Corp bought the rest of the Earth after acquiring a monopoly on all energy sources. They nullified any rebellion against them by monetizing thought itself.
- Stop Trick: The M-Corp products start appearing on the ship in this fashion, clearly being added into the shot by stopping the camera briefly.
