Xpress Lifts

This article is about the the specialised elevator system for long journeys aboard Red Dwarf. Not to be confused with the more common elevators.

The boys take a ride ("Stasis Leak", Series II)

The Xpress Lifts were a type of elevator transport system employed for long journeys within the interior of the massive Jupiter Mining Corporation spaceship Red Dwarf.

Appearance

Like most of the corridors on the ship, the Xpress Lifts were labelled in both English and Esperanto.

Since there were thousands of decks, such journeys could take a very long time, and so there was in-flight (or in-lift) entertainment similar to an airplane flight, awful elevator music, terrible food (according to the Cat), Dave Lister felt claustrophobic, and an automated hostess who advised the occupants to commit suicide should anything go wrong (even demonstrating how to do so). The Xpress lifts came with a Black Box for recording a last will and testament, and cyanide pills drop down instead of oxygen masks.

The Dwarfers once used the Xpress Lifts to go 2,567 floors from the Z Shift sleeping quarters down to Floor 16 in their search for a stasis leak. Lister found the experience so distressing that he vowed to never use the Xpress Lifts again. ("Stasis Leak", Series II)

Gallery

The logo of Xpress Lifts

The Boys from the Dwarf take a ride

The Xpress Lifts exit

The Lift Hostess ("Stasis Leak", Series II)

Quotes

• Lister: "I hate this stuff. It really freaks me out!"

• Lift Hostess: "Thank you for travelling Xpress Lifts. Sorry for the delay."
  Cat: "Apologize for the chicken! First meal I've ever had where the container tasted better than the food!"

Trivia

The Xpress Lift shaft as it appears in the remastered episode

• For the remastered version of Stasis Leak, extra effects were added to the Xpress Lifts to make them appears louder, and more "shaky". There are also added digital shots of the elevator shafts, which were not shown originally (the elevator shafts are almost identical to The Tank elevator shafts from Series VIII).
• Lister's claustrophobia is hinted at in the Xpress lift. This was also hinted at earlier, when he was in a space suit outside the ship with a crazed Confidence in the Series I episode "Confidence and Paranoia". Lister's claustrophobia would become a major plot point in the much later Series VII episode "Duct Soup".

See also

• Elevators