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The White Giants have never been visually depicted

White Giant is one of the types of shuttlecraft of Red Dwarf. It is the largest of the Red Dwarf shuttlecraft, which also include, smallest-to-largest, White Midget, Blue Midget and Starbug.

White Giant only features in the second Red Dwarf novel, Better Than Life, and is never mentioned in the television series. It's never explained what the craft looks like. It is probably named after White Midget.

Novels[]

White Giant is mentioned briefly in the first novel, Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, as a transport ship for miners heading for Red Dwarf.[1]

White Giant appears more prominently in the second novel, Better Than Life, although it is little described beyond it's colour and large size. Arnold Rimmer and Cat use White Giant to find Lister on Garbage World. Given that Starbug was destroyed by acid rain, and the destruction of Blue Midget, White Giant was left as the only remaining shuttlecraft for Red Dwarf. However, in the two sequel novels Starbug has been rebuilt and White Giant never appears.

TV Series[]

Cat-arks-smegazine

The Cat Arks as depicted in the Red Dwarf Smegazine; likely the 'original' White Giants

CanaryShuttle1

The unnamed transport shuttle used by the Canaries in Series VIII; likely the nanobot-rebuilt and upgraded White Giant

White Giant appears in early scripts, but do not actually appear in the television series. One explanation of the absence of the original White Giant is that the Cat species likely modified them into the Cat Arks, and left Red Dwarf with them, a decade or so before Lister came out of stasis. ("Waiting for God", Series I)

The largest shuttle actually used by the Boys from the Dwarf in the television series is Starbug.

White Giant was intended to be included in a flashback scene in the Series VII episode "Ouroboros", but it would eventually be replaced by White Midget.

It is likely that White Giant makes an appearance in Series VIII as the unnamed transport shuttle used by 'The Canaries', the so-called prisoner suicide squad who attempt dangerous missions from The Tank on Red Dwarf. Given that it can transport numerous squads at once, this craft was almost certainly larger than Starbug, and of course was white. This may have been intended to be a nanobot-rebuilt and upgraded White Giant, as with Series VIII's Red Dwarf itself, and also with Series VIII's Blue Midget.

The Canary shuttle was not seen to be used by the crew to evacuate and abandon Red Dwarf at the end of "Only the Good...". However, since the shuttle has not been seen again, it likely that it too evacuated. The Canaries are referenced in the Series X episode "Fathers & Suns", when Lister is in an airlock and a Canary uniform can be seen among the spacesuits.

References[]

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