Red Dwarf: S02E05: Queeg

The first scene is of Lister in his bunk doing a woman’s magazine quiz. Cat and listens to a tape of Tess of the D’Urbervilles which has become twisted and sounds like rap music. Rimmer is playing a Skutter at chess. The Skutter is winning handsomely, but it only has a few minutes before it is due to go back on duty. Rimmer is simply waiting for time up and he will win by default. He explains this to the Cat and Lister and the Skutter sticks up two fingers at him.

Rimmer is unconcerned, he rants on about how men are better than machines.  Holly comes on and forgets to tell them something.  Suddenly there is a loud bang and a shudder. “Ah yes, there is a meteorite about to hit the ship! There I knew it would come back to me in a moment.”

Rimmer accuses Holly of being senile “You’re about as much use as a condom machine in the Vatican.”

Holly can’t tell how much damage there is because the damage machine is damaged. It turns out that floor 592 is damaged.  It houses the Hologram chamber and Rimmer begins to suffer damage. Lister tries to fix the rest of the damage by following Holly’s instructions. Unfortunately Holly tells him to connect two WRONG cables together and it causes an explosion.  Lister is dazed and his clothes are smoking slightly.

Rimmer starts on Holly, “You are a total, total …. A word has yet to be invented to describe totally whatever it is that you are. But you are one, and a total one at that!”
Holly replies slightly sheepishly, “Alright, keep your hair on.”
“I’m lucky is I can keep my legs on with you in charge!” says Rimmer.
“Yeah, he’s out to lunch man!” says Cat (things are looking pretty bleak for Holly)
Rimmer adds, “He’s out to breakfast, lunch, dinner, tea, supper, the lot! He’s not in for a single meal if you ask me.”

Cat chips in, “Hey who’s that!?” the face of a stern looking ‘I’m gonna kick your ass’ black geezer appears on the screen. Rimmer thinks it’s an alien, Holly is surprised when he looks over to the other monitor and sees, “Queeg!”

Queeg speaks, “I am QUEEG 500, the Red Dwarf backup computer. All vessels of the Jupiter Mining Corporation Fleet are obliged to carry a backup computer to replace the primary computer if the primary computer contravenes article 5. I am therefore taking control of this vessel.”

Holly looks on, “This is mutiny Mr Queeg, I’ll see you swing from the highest yardarm in Titan docking port for this days work.”
Rimmer wants to know, “What’s article 5?”
Queeg responds, “Gross negligence leading to the endangerment of ships personnel”
Lister suddenly comes to life, “Hang on, you can’t do this. Holly has an IQ of 6000!”
Queeg looks at Lister as though Lister was something stuck on the bottom of his shoe, “Is that what he told you…… it has a 6 in it, but it isn’t 6000……. It’s 6.”
“SIX!” says Holly, “Do me a lemon. That’s a poor IQ for a glass of water.!”
Lister still questions Queeg’s motives, “How come he knows all the answers to questions about space and that, when we ask him?” (like, nicely put Lister).
Queeg tells them about Holly’s little secret. “He consults a book…….The Junior encyclopaedia of space. It’s the only one he could find which had pictures!”
Holly gets angry, “That’s a lie that is, you’d better find yourself a good layer guy!”
Cat adds, “So that’s why he was never on the case.”
“I am on the case I’m sharp, I’m kicking bottom!” says Holly, defending himself.
“How come he can navigate us back to Earth?” ads Lister.
Queeg responds bitterly, “He can’t, you’ve been travelling round in circles for the last eighteen months!”
Holly is quietly becoming very agitated, “That’s a load of Tottenham that is! It’s a steaming pile of Hotspure! I’m on to his game, he’s turning you against me so he can take over.”
Queeg responds commandingly, “this is not a matter for discussion. Your terminals have been bypassed, you’ve been retired…. From now on, Red Dwarf is run by Queeg 500!”

Later, Rimmer is telling Lister how the ship seems to be running much better with Queeg in charge. Lister is not so sure. He prefers Holly. He thinks that Holly must be feeling really bad. “Computers feel things too” he says.

Next day, Queeg sounds Rimmer’s alarm at 6am.  Rimmer wants to go back to bed, but Queeg wont let him. He takes control of Rimmer’s body and forces him to do exercises. “I’m putting you through the regulation exercises. The company is paying for your hologramitic survival, out in space I am the company.” He makes Rimmer do 500 jerks then sit-ups then a three mile run. Lister wakes up and is mildly amused.

He runs past Cat who is trying to get some food from the food machine without any luck. Lister and Cat have to work to get food. The first job is to scrub the floor. Holly appears on a mobile monitor. He’s been demoted to a sort of night watchman complete with cap and scarf). Lister complains of their treatment under Queeg’s regime but Holly seems mildly impressed with his replacement, “Well, no doubt he knows what he’s doing, unlike certain gibbering wrecks of computers we could mention. Still it was nice to see how everyone rallied round defending me to the hilt. Different story now init!?”

“I defended you.” Says Lister.
“Oh really. Queeg told you I had an IQ of 6,” complains Holly, “and you answered, ‘Really, that explains everything’…… here are certain members of the crew on this ship that don’t believe my IQ is 6000…… I can prove it if you want……. I want to prove it…..”
“Ok” says Lister, “what’s the square root of 2049?”
“Oh, you want me to prove it now do you?” says Holly somewhat taken aback.
“No…. No I don’t..” says Lister trying not to offend.
“Clearly you do,” says Holy, “otherwise you wouldn’t have mentioned it. You think that my giving you the square root of 2049 will prove my IQ is 6000.”
“Well,” says Cat, “What is it?” (reliable as always!)
“You wouldn’t prefer a sports question?” asks Holly quickly.  Lister and Cat try to play along with Holly, but every time they ask him a question he asks them to ask a different one.  Both are now becoming slightly uncomfortable.

Finally, Lister asks a space question, “What’s the nearest planet to the sun?”
Holly makes a big thing of answering the question, “That’s right up my particular field of expertise that is,” he says, “the nearest actual planet to you’re actual sun is…..” Holly looks into his ‘Junior Colour Encyclopaedia of Space’ book… and replies, “Mercury!”

Cat and Lister are convinced. Well, I think they are convinced. Holly asks, “So, am I fully restored in your confidence as the right dude for the gig?” Lister and Cat nod in agreement. “Right, Leave it with me.” Holly trundles off.

Lister and Rimmer talk about how things were better with Holly than with Queeg. Lister points to the qualities of friendship and trust, and that they were sadly missing when Holly needed them most. When Rimmer disagreed, he asked him how many friends he had, “besides inflatable Ingrid that is?”. Rimmer replied, non and added “How do you know about Inflatable Ingrid?”. Lister admitted that he’d been seeing Inflatable Ingrid behind his back.

Holly decides that now is the time to confront Queeg. He challenges Queeg to a game of chess for the return of his ship. Queeg agrees, provided that the looser is erased and ‘oblivionised’. Holly agrees and the two begin a short game of chess. Holly looses.

In a very moving final scene, Holly says goodbye to his friends as they gather in a rather clean looking living quarters. Holly appears to tell them that he’s going. “Well dudes, I’ve come to say goodbye…. Well, see ya Dave, I hope it works out with you and Kochanski. See you Cat, I hope one day in the not too distant future, you fulfil your hearts desire and get you’re end away! And Arnold, well I hope you meet those aliens that you’re looking for and they give you a body, and you become an officer and you get a sex life and all those millions of other things that you feel you need to make you happy….. Well…. I hate long goodbyes, perhaps when you’ve got the dosh (money) together to go don the disco, you’ll raise a glass to your old mate Holly and think, things weren’t too bad when he was around, perhaps he wasn’t the most efficient computer that was ever invented but, we had a giggle. one last thing, 45.265881……. That’s the square root of 2049. I may not be fast, but I get there in the end. Well, as they always say, finish on a song……I’ll say goodbye to love, no-one ever cares if I should live, or die….time and time again the time for…. love…. has….passed… me………….”

Then the monitor shows, ‘Erase Completed’.  And Holly is no more.

Queeg then appears and with his customary stern disposition he informs the crew, “Listen suckers, there’s only one thing I wanna say to you……” Holly’s voice takes over Queeg’s face. “What’s happening dudes?” it says (?).

Holly’s smiling face appears, “We are talking jape of the decade. We are talking April, May, June, July and August fool……… Yes, that’s right…….. I am Queeg.”

Cat, Lister and Rimmer all jump up in surprise, “WHAT!” they say.

Holly adds, still smiling, “Queeg never existed, it was me all along. Wheeze of the week mate! Going round in circles for 14 months! Get my information from the Junior Colour Encyclopaedia of Space! The respect you have for me is AWSOME isn’t it!” (wadda GREAT line).

Lister, still shocked, asks, “Do you mean to say, you staged the whole thing!?”  Queeg’s voice appears with Holly’s face, “That’s right suckers!”. Then in his normal voice, “And the moral of the story is, appreciate what you’ve got. Because basically I’m fantastic!”

He sure is!!  That was one helluva practical Joke!!.  The show ended there but it will live in this Sad Geezers memory forever!

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