Do you watch Red Dwarf? If not, you really should. It’s hilarious. If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to be the last person in existence or be trapped alone in space, you will like this show. They don’t really make an attempt to be accurate as far as I can tell, but the characters are more realistic than you usually see those shows. Just about everyone on the average spaceship is smart and completely capable. They’re also pretty much always stoic and brave. That’s not reality. And that’s not Red Dwarf, either. These characters are cowards for the most part, prone to sarcasm, and don’t always get along.

I feel like that is how I’d behave if I were trapped in space with a cat-humanoid, a hologram of a dead person, and a bunch of GELFs, androids, and Simulants for company. Just about anybody would lose their mind a little given the circumstances.

My favorite character is Lister (with Cat a close second, because I like cats and the idea of a cat-human is great). I identify with him, and Craig Charles is a great actor who plays the part really well. For example, when you find out that he used to work at a supermarket but left because it started to feel like a career – I get that. I hate thinking about the future when the present is so hard to deal with. I also pretty much would have acted the same way with Kochanski when she was alive, I do the same things with my crushes. Luckily, I’ve had better chances to get more than 173 words in with them. Plus I wouldn’t mind buying a farm on Fiji and breeding horses while hanging out with my cat. Or selling hot dogs or doughnuts. As long as I was in Fiji, I think I’d be fine.

My favorite episode is “Timeslides.” It is a bit confusing, since it is one of those back-in-time alternate reality episodes, but this one lets him go back to his old self and prevent him from going into space in the first place. He lives a pretty great life, but you realize that if Lister wasn’t around, Kryten does not get rescued and that Cat never exists. Good old stupid Rimmer ruins everything and changes the timelines so that everything goes back to the way it was, and that’s that. It’s the kind of thing that would probably happen to me. I’d have a much better life if I could go back in time and tell myself not to make some of the decisions I’ve made.

Sure with a show that spans as long as Red Drawf has, there were bound to be some plot points ignored or reconfigured. It happens. Don’t overthink it, and more importantly, don’t be a smeghead. Go watch Red Dwarf. Just watch out for those despair squids.