Captain's Office

The Captain's Office was a small room used by Captain Frank Hollister of the JMC mining spaceship Red Dwarf as his personal working space. The office was adjacent to the Drive Room used by the crew in Series I, both of which were located on Level 147 of Red Dwarf.

Description[]

Like much of this central region of the ship, it had a submarine-like appearance, with a grey paint job. There were clipboards hung up on the wall filled with information and a large, dated, and weathered ship schematic, above which was the "captain" sign, also in Esperanto as "ŝipestro". Even the tables and chairs were grey. The only colour in the room came from the circular data discs, some green ivy along the far wall, and a miniature model of the ship in a bottle.

History[]

Series I[]

When Dave Lister defied Space Corps Directives and smuggled an quarantined animal aboard the ship, Holly detected it through his Supervision Field, but was unable to locate it. However, Lister took some photographs of the cat and sent them to be processed in the ship lab, and so was caught that way. Lister was called to the captain's office. As he went through the Drive Room, he briefly flirted with Kristine Kochanski, who sarcastically told Lister that he was being called into the captain's office for a promotion. Upon entering the office, the captain told Lister that he knew about the cat, and that if he refused to give up its location, he would have Lister forfeit eighteen months wages by being put in stasis. Lister refused, was put in stasis, and was the only crewmember to survive the later radiation leak. (Pilot episode)

Later, Lister watched a recording of the Cadmium II radiation leak which had killed the crew. Lister saw the force of the blast throwing Rimmer from the Drive Room (where he had been explaining to the captain why he hadn't repaired the drive plate properly) into the adjacent Captain's Office, where Rimmer died. As he died, Rimmer knocked the snow globe off the captain's table, which smashed, and Rimmer's last words were "Gazpacho Soup". Lister then determined to uncover the meaning of Rimmer's last words. ("Me²", Series I)

Series II[]

A black-and-white flashback sequence is seen, during which Arnold Rimmer complained to the captain in his office about Lister drugging him by putting Titan mushrooms in his breakfast. This explains why Rimmer had attacked two senior officers, believing them to be giraffes who were armed and dangerous. When the captain only gave Lister two weeks punishment detail. Rimmer was furious, believing that the penalty should have been fifteen years in the ship's brig, and attacked the captain too, receiving eight weeks of punishment detail himself. ("Stasis Leak", Series II)

Series VIII[]

When Red Dwarf was reconstructed and the original crew resurrected by the nanobots, the captain's office was recreated (as per the original plans before the JMC made budget cut-backs) as a larger room at the end of a long, brightly-lit corridor. It had a brighter, blue paint job, with vertical file stacks and a larger ship-in-a-bottle.

After gaining access to confidential crew files, Rimmer appeased the captain in his office by warning him about the potential of hazardous radiation leaks, giving a blueberry muffin like his wife used to make, and giving him some hemorrhoid cream. The captain told Rimmer he was impressed, and said that Rimmer was proving himself marked out for greater things. ("Back in the Red II", Series VIII)

Lister and Rimmer were called into the Captain's office repeatedly when they got into trouble again and again, eventually leading to the captain having a nervous breakdown. ("Pete I", "Pete II")

Series XII[]

Many years later, Rimmer used a Quantum Skipper to explore the different versions of Red Dwarf within the infinite dimensions of The Multiverse. He came across a dimension where he went into the captain's office, finding it identical to the original in size, colour and layout, only to his disappointment Lister was sat in the captain's chair instead of Captain Hollister. (Skipper, Series XII)