Toy Soldiers

Day.

The control consoles all read "autopilot." 

LISTER is at the table, eating a curry, turning one of RIMMER's toy soldiers over in his other hand.

RIMMER: 

Look, please, honestly. 

They're priceless.

LISTER: 

I'm just having a goosie.

RIMMER: 

Look, if you get curry all over them, 

how's that going to look?

 What's Lieutenant-General 

Baron Jaquinaux of the 

First Cavalry Division

 supposed to be doing 

with goat vindaloo 

all over his tunic?

LISTER: 

It'll make him look more authentic. 

People'll think he's got

 Dysentry.

LISTER puts them back in the trunk.

LISTER 

You're obsessed with War, aren't ya? You collect Toy Soldiers,

play war games, 

read all those stupid combat mags. 

And half your books are on 

Patton and Caesar 

and various other gits.

RIMMER: 

It's about Leadership. 

That's What I Admire -- 

The Ability to Command, 

to out-think a worthy opponent 

on the field of battle.

LISTER: 

It's so ironic, when deep down 

you're such a 

basic, natural coward.

RIMMER: 

Coward?

LISTER: 

Planet leave, Miranda? 

That space bar, The Hacienda? 

When that fight started up? 

You were out of that door quicker than a whippet with a bumful of dynamite!

RIMMER: 

That was a bar-room brawl! 

A common pub fight. 

A shambolic set-to.

LISTER: 

Which you started!

RIMMER: 

I just made an innocuous comment, 

I merely voiced The Rumour 

that MacWilliams was 

sexually inclined towards 

sleeping with The Dead. 

I didn't start the rumour, 

I merely voiced it.

LISTER: 

To His Face —

Right to His Face —

When he was there 

with his four biggest mates. 

And then you did your Roadrunner act, 

and left me to face the music.

RIMMER: 

I could have gotten hurt!

LISTER: 

You'd have made a brilliant general, would't you?

RIMMER: 

Generals don't smash chairs over people's heads. They don't

 smash Newcastle Brown bottles into your face and say "Stitch that,

 Jimmy." They're in the nice white tent, on the top of the hill, sipping

 Sancerre and directing the battle. They're Men of Honour.

LISTER: I don't believe it! You make war sound romantic.

RIMMER: 

I'll tell you something. 

Something I've never told anyone. When I was fifteen, I went to Macedonia on a school trip, to 

The Site of Alexander The Great's Palace. 

And for the first time in my whole life, I felt ... 

I felt I was Home. 

This place was where I belonged. 

Years later, I got friendly with a hypnotherapist, Donald -- 

and told him about the Alexander The Great thing, 

and he said that he'd regress me back through my past lives. 

I was dubious —

but I let him put me under.

 It turned out, my instincts were absolutely correct -- I had lived a

 past life in Macedonia. 

That palace was my home. 

Because, believe it or not, Lister, 

he told me, that in a past incarnation, 

I was, Alexander The Great's 

Chief Eunuch.

LISTER: 

Do you know something? 

— I believe ye.

RIMMER: 

He didn't say that I was Alexander himself, 

which is obviously what I wanted to hear. 

But it explained everything: 

I'd lived a previous life alongside one of the greatest generals in history. No wonder the military's in my blood.

LISTER: No wonder you're such a good singer.

RIMMER: Well, maybe it's rot, I don't know. But it's funny -- to this

 day, I can't look at a pair of nutcrackers without wincing. And why is

 it, whenever I'm with a large group of women, I have this overwhelming

 urge to bathe them in warm olive oil?

LISTER: I have that urge, Rimmer. It's got nothing to do with past

 lives.

RIMMER: Well, why is it, then?

LISTER steps up into the cockpit. Stars glint through the front-view

window behind him.

LISTER: It's because you're unhappy with your own weasly, humdrum

 existance. You're looking for something with a bit more ... I don't

 know ... glamour.

Behind him we see a flaming meteor hurtling towards them. RIMMER's eyes

widen slightly as panic robs him of the power of speech.

LISTER: Now is what counts -- you've got to live life today. Who knows

 what's going to happen tomorrow? Who knows what's going to happen in

 the next five minutes? That's what makes life so exciting.

The meteor smashes into them.

7 Model shot.

Meteor collides with Starbug, sending it spinning into the atmosphere of

the moon below.

8 Model shot.

Starbug overheating as it plummets through cloud.

9 Model Shot.

Starbug crash-lands on snowy landscape and screams to a halt.

LISTER: (VO) 

You see what I mean?