"We prefer the ship of green, and the sexy light man with the lady legs so long and luscious"
-BEGG Chief
Biologically Engineered Garbage Gobblers, often referred to as BEGGs, are a type of humanoid GELF in Red Dwarf.
History[]
When Earth was facing a refuse crisis, the BEGGs were first designed to eat the landfills.
Three million years later, three BEGGs and a BEGG Chief were living at a campsite of watungas on a snowy moon. Red Dwarf flew close by, and Dave Lister sent out scouters to confirm the life-signs. Believing that it may have been the missing Kristine Kochanski, Lister took a Starbug to check it out.
When Lister first met the BEGGs on their moon, Kryten stated that he was happy that Lister had started making friends with kindred beings. However, the BEGG Chief only appeared to tolerate Lister due to the fact, compared to them, Lister was a very poor poker player, and kept losing things like Starbug, and Arnold Rimmer, to the BEGGs. The BEGG Chief was very happy about this.
Biology[]
In appearance the BEGGs are vaguely similar to the Kinitawowi, only smaller (around the average height of a human) and less intimidating than the Kinitawowi. Their faces are less simian and more goblin-esque, with pointier ears and less hair, although they do have huge gorilla-like chests.
Like the Kinitawowi though, they are also one of the friendlier "kintetiakh", or tribes of humanoid GELF, although they have been known to eat the occasional human, such as one unfortunate member of an English boarding school (from who the BEGG Chief learned the English language from, before gobbling him up whole).
The BEGG's digestive systems were capable of processing "sediment, sludge and slop", as Lister puts it (in the episode in which they feature, the BEGGS are seen eating electrical junk and chewing on power chords in the their watunga). This leaves them permanently inebriated, with breath that "can sandblast buildings".
Appearances[]
BEGGs appeared in the Series X episode "Entangled", in which they beat Dave Lister in a poker game. Lister bets Arnold Rimmer after first losing Starbug to them, and loses again. In order to ensure the deal, they fit Lister with a groinal exploder recovered from the Erroneous Reasoning Research Academy. They are seen living in cloth-roofed wood huts, though this may just be them adapting to the conditions of that one given moon. Lister attempts to get them to accept the "fabled spoon of destiny" instead, but they see through the ruse, proving that they are more intelligent then they first appear. They instead offer Lister the chance of a rematch, putting Kryten and the Cat on the line this time. In the end the entire batch suddenly die by choking to death on electrical chords, leaving Lister trapped with the exploder. ("Entangled")