Director Ed Bye
Starring Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules & Robert Llewellyn
Rated PG
Score 6/6

First Broadcast 17th January 1997

In the aftermath of the battle with their future selves, the crew, resurrected from the dead, due to time paradoxes and Lister is depressed when he learns the curry supplies were destroyed in the battle. But all hell breaks loose yet again when Lister uses Kryten’s spare-head “Spare Head 2” to take them back into time to get some curries from Earth. Only to change the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and create an alternate dimension.

I know the normal thing to do would be to start from Series 1 and work my way through them but up until this point I have not reviewed any Red Dwarf episodes for the site and besides Tika to Ride is one of my favourite episodes. I’m not sure how many more Red Dwarf episodes I am going to take a look at but I figure at the very least I am going to have to have a look at my other favourite episode which is in series 4.

I accept that there might be a few of you out-there who might have problems with how Red Dwarf’s time drive works, I would like to think that considering this is also in a universe where a psychopathic curry man (The Mutton Vindaloo Beast) we can probably overlook a few things regarding the Time Drive.
There is a lot to love about this episode I loved how Tika to Ride recapped the events of the previous episode without doing the stereotypical ‘previously on …’ cliché you see with most episodic television, both Robert Llewellyn and Craig Charles gave great performances. I loved the attention to detail regarding the assassination of President Kennedy and the exposition regarding the timeline after the events of the attempted assassination is a brilliant piece of speculative fiction. I also must admit that the cannibal jokes still give me a chuckle.
To me what makes this episode so memorable is Michael J. Shannon’s performance as President Kennedy and Lister’s line about driving the conspiracy nuts crazy.