Red Dwarf: Ships: Starbug
Starbug, or at least the Starbug seen in the series is an interstellar transport ship seen periodically as the saga developed. It was used in seasons 6 and 7 when Red Dwarf was lost by Lister and subsequently turned into a planetoid by Nanobots.
It has facilities to house it’s own computer (though in this case it was Holly) and has a small number of cryo-chambers. Starbug’s are not armed, but after an altercation with a Simulant ship, Starbug was armed with a laser in Season 6.
The ships cockpit has seating for four crewmembers and the usual array of navigation and communication devices (it has a translation device that can transmit messages in all known languages – including Welsh). It does however lack the basic ship command signs….. Going from ‘Blue Alert’ to ‘Red
Alert’ requires the bulb to be changed!
Starbug was almost indestructible. Lister once explained that it was made out of the same material that is used to make the dolls that service airplane crashes – and Cat believed him! Nevertheless, the ship has proved that it can withstand smashing through Red Dwarf’s hull, swimming in molten lava and crashing at speed into numerous planets and asteroids.
James Axford sent me an email to say, “…Starbug is actually made out of the same stuff as a black box (the thing that records everything that happens on a plane)“
It was destroyed however, when it landed on the shrinking Red Dwarf at the start of Season 8.
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