Red Dwarf is an enormous spaceship, mining around the moons of Saturn with a crew of 169 members. Before the end of the first episode, 168 of them are dead, wiped out by massive radiation leak. Revived after three millions years, once the radiation has reached a safe level, Dave Lister finds his only companions are a life-form evolved from his cat and Arnold J Rimmer, a hologram simulation of his dead bunk-mate.