Dave Lister
Encyclopedia
David "Dave" Lister, commonly referred to simply as Lister, is a fictional character
from the British
science fiction
situation comedy
Red Dwarf
, portrayed by Craig Charles
. (In the never-aired pilot
for the American version of the show, Lister was played by Craig Bierko
.)
Lister is normally dressed in a leather jacket
and hat, his boiler suits and his lengthy dreadlocks
that he grows only from the back of his head. Until series VII, he was presumed to be the last human being alive, due to a radiation leak on the mining ship Red Dwarf which killed the crew while he was in stasis
. Holly
, the ship's computer, piloted the ship away from Earth and kept Lister in stasis for 3 million years, at which point the radiation levels had again returned to normal and Lister was released. As a crew member of Red Dwarf, Lister and the other characters encountered many strange beings and life-forms, usually of human origin.
, he was discovered at six weeks old on 26 November 2155, under a pool table in a Liverpool
pub (the Aigburth
Arms), nestled in a cardboard box
with the mysterious word "ouroboros
" scribbled on its side. Lister celebrates his birthday
on 14 October, "most of the time". Lister is in fact his own father, shown in the episode "Ouroboros" when he fills up a test tube for Kochanski, and then realises after seeing a battery box with an "Ouroboros" logo, that he in fact is the baby in the test tube.
He was adopted by the Wilmot family, but after his adoptive father died when he was six he went to live with Grandma Lister. She was a tough, pipe-smoking woman who once famously headbutted the headmaster of Lister's school when Lister came bottom in French, leading to Lister's expulsion, and whose cooking led to his being nicknamed "Fat Boy" from ages eleven to thirteen. Lister decided to lose weight after his grandmother died when she was hit by a truck, and he was ashamed to find that the coroner had to go back for a second piece of chalk to complete the chalk outline. After his grandmother's death, Lister apparently lived and attended school in an orphanage, sleeping in a pitch-dark dormitory alongside many other boys including "Squeaky" Gibson, whose life he saved on one occasion when he discovered Gibson having an epileptic fit. Around the same time he got his first job as a supermarket trolley attendant, which he would eventually quit after ten years "because he didn't want to get tied down to a career".
Lister lost his virginity
at the age of twelve in one of the bunkers on the ninth hole of Bootle
Municipal golf course
. He also spent a good part of his puberty lusting after the older sister of one Pete Tranter. Lister suffers from claustrophobia
, which stems from an incident at age 17 when a vengeful husband caught him making love to his wife, in the supermarket where he was employed. The man kidnapped the naked Lister, locked him in a box and threatened to throw him into a canal. Lister begged for mercy and was finally released onto the stage of a local theatre in the nude, in the middle of the Bootle Amateur Players' production of The Importance of Being Earnest
. Around the same time, he formed a band called Smeg and the Heads in which he was the singer and guitarist, along with his friends Dobbin (drums) and Gazza (bassist). Seemingly their only song was called "Om", the only lyrics to which appeared to be repetitions of the vocalisation "om". Lister was accepted at art college, but dropped out on his first day when he learned his schedule would include lectures "first thing in the afternoon". Lister went out with a girl named Lise Yates, but the relationship ended because he did not want a commitment, a fact that Lister has since secretly regretted.
Within the continuity of the books by Grant Naylor
, Lister went on a drunken Monopoly
board pub crawl with his friends to celebrate his 24th birthday, where he got very, very drunk;— when he awoke, he was on Mimas
, one of Saturn
's moons, wearing a lady's pink crimplene hat and a pair of yellow fishing waders, with no money and a passport in the name of "Emily Berkenstein". Lister, determined to make enough money to get back home, spent six months stealing "hoppers" (the equivalent of taxis on Mimas) and collecting the fares, but he loses all his money several times from blowing it all on alcohol (with the belief that if he gets drunk enough again, he will awaken back in London) and on one occasion being mugged by a drug addict who was high on the narcotic "Bliss". Eventually, Lister signs up for a job on the mining ship Red Dwarf, which unknown to him was due to make a four-and-a-half-year mining run to Triton
before heading back to Earth.
), or getting drunk with his friends Olaf Petersen, Selby and Chen. Lister was imprisoned in a stasis booth
because he smuggled an unquarantined cat
, which he named Frankenstein
, aboard the ship. In the book, he deliberately let the cat be discovered so that he would be placed in stasis, thus getting back to Earth
in (subjectively) no time at all.
While Lister was in stasis, a release of lethal radiation occurred onboard as a result of a faulty repair carried out by Rimmer, killing the entire crew. Holly
, the ship's computer, kept Lister in stasis for three million years until the radiation levels returned to normal. Lister was left as presumably the last human being in the universe, accompanied on Red Dwarf by a hologram simulation of Rimmer and a humanoid creature
that evolved from his cat. Lister is actually believed to be the god of this race of cat-people, who know him as "Cloister the Stupid".
After a sexual liaison with Deb Lister, his female alter-ego from a female-oriented parallel universe, he, via caesarean section
, gave birth to twin sons named Jim and Bexley, named after his favourite zero-gravity football player, Jim Bexley Speed. Due to them being born in a different reality to their conception, both of them grew to be eighteen years old within three days. Realising that if they stayed with him they would be dead within a fortnight, Lister sent them back to their mother's dimension.
Lister has a tattoo on his right buttock, dedicated to the love of his life: it is a heart with an arrow through it and underneath it has in dripping curry sauce, "I love Vindaloo". It was obtained while on planet leave on Ganymede
with Petersen, who spiked his cocktail with four-star petrol. When he woke up the next day, he had enrolled as a novice monk in a Ganymedian monastery. He also has another tattoo claiming that he loves Petersen placed on his inner thigh, which stems from an unidentified incident where the two got so heavily drunk together that Lister had no idea what was happening to him. In the Red Dwarf roleplaying game, Petersen's character profile (featured in "The Extra Bits" booklet) states that he has a reciprocal tattoo from the same incident.
Lister is dedicated to resurrecting and winning over the one true love of his life - Kristine Kochanski
, the long dead navigation officer of Red Dwarf. It is his ambition to marry Kristine Kochanski and start a frugal life on a farm on the Earth islands of Fiji
.
stains on the front, and prior to going into stasis he saved money by never buying soap, deodorant or socks. He enjoys "bumming around", drinking large amounts of lager
, and eating Indian food
. Lister has dreadlocks on the back of his head, which he seems to have for most of his life (in "Future Echoes
", Lister meets himself at age 171, and his dreadlocks are the length of his body; they are also present, if shorter, on his 17-year-old self in "Timeslides
"). Lister's religious beliefs are unclear. In the episode, "The Last Day", Kryten states that Lister is a pantheist
, believing God to be in all things; however, in the later episode "Back to Reality" he is described as the "ultimate atheist". In "Waiting For God", Lister displays disgust over the Cat people's war over a religious disagreement stating that they were "using religion as an excuse to be really crappy to each other."
He prides himself on being a good man possessing moral courage, something which is used against him by a 'despair squid' in "Back to Reality"; when hallucinating under the influence of the squid's ink, he was driven to suicidal despair by his belief that, in the alternate world in which he found himself, he was a genocidal minister in a totalitarian state, responsible for the murder of countless innocent people. When confronted with an evil version of himself on a corrupted version of Red Dwarf, Lister says of his evil counterpart, "But he kills; I'm not capable of that." Likewise when he kills "The Creator" of Red Dwarf during his Back to Earth hallucination, his initial reaction is to state that he doesn't kill people and doesn't understand why he did it. His value for life was also shown when he and Kryten were being hunted by the Inquisitor, Lister being deeply affected by the knowledge that Kryten's seemingly imminent death would only mean something because he had helped Kryten to break his programming, thus giving him a life to lose. He has also shown some philosophical traits over the course of the series, such as when he reflected on the relative futility of the Justice Field witnessed in "Justice" saying it denied people free will and didn't truly rehabilitate the inmates. He also lamented on the escalation of uncontrolled evolution that resulted in the creation of the Despair Squid in "Back to Reality".
In many ways, Lister is the complete opposite of Rimmer, and the two are constantly at odds with each other. Rimmer is constantly accusing Lister of stupidity but Lister has actually been shown to be quite intelligent on several occasions and his lack of motivation is really what holds him back. For example, he managed to learn the international language Esperanto
from Rimmer's tapes, while Rimmer himself was unable to. He is capable of piloting a spaceship and has a knack for mechanical repairs, particularly amateur cybernetics
. When the Inquisitor appeared on Red Dwarf to judge the crew, he declared that Lister's failure to put his brain to good use was evidence that he had not lived a worthwhile life. Lister is a very socially capable person; well liked by his friends and has had a number relationships with women, albeit not all successful (his lack of ambition being the main cause for not settling down). He has a high emotional intelligence being capable of reading people and empathizing with them. The novel Last Human
explains that Lister often knows the solution to a problem but that he usually consults Kryten
as he lacks confidence in his own opinion. He also considers himself good at pool, saying that he was nicknamed "Dave Cinzano Bianco Lister" because once he was on a table you couldn't get rid of him.
Dave Lister is also an avid junk collector who has purchased (among other things) a talking toilet, a talking toaster with artificial intelligence, and two robot goldfish, which he named Lennon
and McCartney
(the latter of which swims backwards and is prone to breaking down).
", his companions are able to distinguish a psiren disguised as Lister from the real Lister because the psiren is able to play guitar (having taken its pattern from Lister's own mind, the psiren performed as the guitar virtuoso Lister perceives himself to be, rather than the dismal ability he usually displays). Lister eventually acknowledges his inability to play the guitar to at least some degree; in "Nanarchy
" he comments, after playing his guitar with assistance from Kryten due to the loss of an arm, "at least now I'm only half-crap." In Series 1, Lister's guitar is firstly an Ovation acoustic and silver in colour. Then in Series 3, episode 2 ("Marooned"), his guitar is shown to be a black, electric guitar — according to Lister it is a "genuine Les Paul
copy.")
In the alternate reality where we first meet Ace Rimmer there is a version of Lister who goes by the name Spanners. While it's not established what his real name is, he is a highly skilled technician and we find out later in the episode he married Kochanski and had twin boys, Jim and Bexley. Unlike Rimmer Lister is pleased a version of him is doing so well.
During an encounter with The Inquisitor, Dave is replaced with an alternative version of himself. This Dave Lister, one of the sperm who didn't have the chance to fertilise his mother's egg, was given the chance to live a better life than the one lived by the real Lister. However, the fact that he is dressed identically, and also stranded on Red Dwarf, suggests that this Dave fared no better. This Dave was ultimately killed by The Inquisitor whilst the real Dave tried to escape deletion from existence.
Under the influence of a despair squid's hallucinogenic ink, Lister is fooled into thinking that his time aboard Red Dwarf was just a realistic encounter in a Total Immersion Videogame. After leaving the game, Lister briefly gets to watch the action as another group plays the game as it was intended to be played - the scenario observed involves the team having exciting adventures in outer space and interacting in a far less dysfunctional manner, and where the role of Lister is filled by a good-looking and suave new player.
Discovering a temporal rift in normal space, Lister, along with the rest of the crew, travel through it and encounter an alternative Red Dwarf crew, with some small differences: in this reality, it is Lister who is the hologram, having failed to survive the accident which wiped out the crew. His hologramatic status led to this Lister becoming a better person, more caring and attentive, and cured of his slobby habits.
During the novel Last Human, the crew fought an alternate version of Lister who was adopted by different parents, this Lister choosing the wealthy but psychotic Thorntons over the poorer but more emotionally stable parents which the normal Lister had. As a result, this Lister grew up to be a sociopath, often manipulating others with his efforts, claiming not to believe in even the concept of love, and perfectly willing to murder his shipmates in order to achieve his goals. This Lister is eventually killed when he is destroyed by the gestalt telepathic entity known as the Rage.
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
from the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
situation comedy
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...
, portrayed by Craig Charles
Craig Charles
Craig Joseph Charles is an English actor, stand-up comedian, author, poet, radio and television presenter, best known for playing Dave Lister in the British cult-favourite science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf...
. (In the never-aired pilot
Television pilot
A "television pilot" is a standalone episode of a television series that is used to sell the show to a television network. At the time of its inception, the pilot is meant to be the "testing ground" to see if a series will be possibly desired and successful and therefore a test episode of an...
for the American version of the show, Lister was played by Craig Bierko
Craig Bierko
Craig Philip Bierko is an American actor and singer.-Early life:Bierko was born in Rye Brook, New York, the son of Pat and Rex Bierko, who ran a local community theatre. Bierko's mother was a Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism...
.)
Lister is normally dressed in a leather jacket
Leather jacket
A leather jacket is a type of clothing—a jacket-length coat—usually worn on top of other apparel, and made from the tanned hide of various animals. The leather material is typically dyed black, or various shades of brown, but a wide range of colors is possible...
and hat, his boiler suits and his lengthy dreadlocks
Dreadlocks
Dreadlocks, also called locks, a ras, dreads, "rasta" or Jata , are matted coils of hair. Dreadlocks are usually intentionally formed; because of the variety of different hair textures, various methods are used to encourage the formation of locks such as backcombing...
that he grows only from the back of his head. Until series VII, he was presumed to be the last human being alive, due to a radiation leak on the mining ship Red Dwarf which killed the crew while he was in stasis
Stasis (fiction)
Stasis , or hypersleep, is a science fiction concept akin to suspended animation. Whereas suspended animation usually refers to a greatly reduced state of life processes, stasis implies a complete cessation of these processes, which can be easily restarted or restart spontaneously when stasis is...
. Holly
Holly (Red Dwarf)
Holly is the ship's computer on the science fiction situation comedy Red Dwarf.The character is played by Norman Lovett in Series I and II and, following a "head sex change" to look like his parallel universe alter ego "Hilly", played by Hattie Hayridge in the series 3 episode Backwards, is female...
, the ship's computer, piloted the ship away from Earth and kept Lister in stasis for 3 million years, at which point the radiation levels had again returned to normal and Lister was released. As a crew member of Red Dwarf, Lister and the other characters encountered many strange beings and life-forms, usually of human origin.
Early life
An orphanOrphan
An orphan is a child permanently bereaved of or abandoned by his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan...
, he was discovered at six weeks old on 26 November 2155, under a pool table in a Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
pub (the Aigburth
Aigburth
Aigburth is a suburb of Liverpool, Merseyside, England. Located to the south of the city, it is bordered by Dingle, Mossley Hill, and Garston.-History:...
Arms), nestled in a cardboard box
Cardboard box
Cardboard boxes are industrially prefabricated boxes, primarily used for packaging goods and materials. Specialists in industry seldom use the term cardboard because it does not denote a specific material....
with the mysterious word "ouroboros
Ouroboros
The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The name originates from within Greek language; οὐρά meaning "tail" and βόρος meaning "eating", thus "he who eats the tail"....
" scribbled on its side. Lister celebrates his birthday
Birthday
A birthday is a day or anniversary where a person celebrates his or her date of birth. Birthdays are celebrated in numerous cultures, often with a gift, party or rite of passage. Although the major religions celebrate the birth of their founders , Christmas – which is celebrated widely by...
on 14 October, "most of the time". Lister is in fact his own father, shown in the episode "Ouroboros" when he fills up a test tube for Kochanski, and then realises after seeing a battery box with an "Ouroboros" logo, that he in fact is the baby in the test tube.
He was adopted by the Wilmot family, but after his adoptive father died when he was six he went to live with Grandma Lister. She was a tough, pipe-smoking woman who once famously headbutted the headmaster of Lister's school when Lister came bottom in French, leading to Lister's expulsion, and whose cooking led to his being nicknamed "Fat Boy" from ages eleven to thirteen. Lister decided to lose weight after his grandmother died when she was hit by a truck, and he was ashamed to find that the coroner had to go back for a second piece of chalk to complete the chalk outline. After his grandmother's death, Lister apparently lived and attended school in an orphanage, sleeping in a pitch-dark dormitory alongside many other boys including "Squeaky" Gibson, whose life he saved on one occasion when he discovered Gibson having an epileptic fit. Around the same time he got his first job as a supermarket trolley attendant, which he would eventually quit after ten years "because he didn't want to get tied down to a career".
Lister lost his virginity
Virginity
Virginity refers to the state of a person who has never engaged in sexual intercourse. There are cultural and religious traditions which place special value and significance on this state, especially in the case of unmarried females, associated with notions of personal purity, honor and worth...
at the age of twelve in one of the bunkers on the ninth hole of Bootle
Bootle
Bootle is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, England, and a 'Post town' in the L postcode area. Formally known as Bootle-cum-Linacre, the town is 4 miles to the north of Liverpool city centre, and has a total resident population of 77,640.Historically part of...
Municipal golf course
Golf course
A golf course comprises a series of holes, each consisting of a teeing ground, fairway, rough and other hazards, and a green with a flagstick and cup, all designed for the game of golf. A standard round of golf consists of playing 18 holes, thus most golf courses have this number of holes...
. He also spent a good part of his puberty lusting after the older sister of one Pete Tranter. Lister suffers from claustrophobia
Claustrophobia
Claustrophobia is the fear of having no escape and being closed in small spaces or rooms...
, which stems from an incident at age 17 when a vengeful husband caught him making love to his wife, in the supermarket where he was employed. The man kidnapped the naked Lister, locked him in a box and threatened to throw him into a canal. Lister begged for mercy and was finally released onto the stage of a local theatre in the nude, in the middle of the Bootle Amateur Players' production of The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at St. James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae in order to escape burdensome social obligations...
. Around the same time, he formed a band called Smeg and the Heads in which he was the singer and guitarist, along with his friends Dobbin (drums) and Gazza (bassist). Seemingly their only song was called "Om", the only lyrics to which appeared to be repetitions of the vocalisation "om". Lister was accepted at art college, but dropped out on his first day when he learned his schedule would include lectures "first thing in the afternoon". Lister went out with a girl named Lise Yates, but the relationship ended because he did not want a commitment, a fact that Lister has since secretly regretted.
Within the continuity of the books by Grant Naylor
Grant Naylor
Grant Naylor was the collective name used by writers Rob Grant and Doug Naylor for their collaborative work, particularly the television series Red Dwarf. Grant and Naylor themselves called this pseudonym a "gestalt entity" Grant Naylor was the collective name used by writers Rob Grant and Doug...
, Lister went on a drunken Monopoly
Monopoly (game)
Marvin Gardens, the leading yellow property on the board shown, is actually a misspelling of the original location name, Marven Gardens. The misspelling was said to be introduced by Charles Todd and passed on when his home-made Monopoly board was copied by Charles Darrow and thence to Parker...
board pub crawl with his friends to celebrate his 24th birthday, where he got very, very drunk;— when he awoke, he was on Mimas
Mimas (moon)
Mimas is a moon of Saturn which was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel. It is named after Mimas, a son of Gaia in Greek mythology, and is also designated Saturn I....
, one of Saturn
Saturn
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus , the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.Saturn,...
's moons, wearing a lady's pink crimplene hat and a pair of yellow fishing waders, with no money and a passport in the name of "Emily Berkenstein". Lister, determined to make enough money to get back home, spent six months stealing "hoppers" (the equivalent of taxis on Mimas) and collecting the fares, but he loses all his money several times from blowing it all on alcohol (with the belief that if he gets drunk enough again, he will awaken back in London) and on one occasion being mugged by a drug addict who was high on the narcotic "Bliss". Eventually, Lister signs up for a job on the mining ship Red Dwarf, which unknown to him was due to make a four-and-a-half-year mining run to Triton
Triton (moon)
Triton is the largest moon of the planet Neptune, discovered on October 10, 1846, by English astronomer William Lassell. It is the only large moon in the Solar System with a retrograde orbit, which is an orbit in the opposite direction to its planet's rotation. At 2,700 km in diameter, it is...
before heading back to Earth.
Life onboard Red Dwarf
As a third-class technician, Lister was the lowest ranking crewman on Red Dwarf, a ship with a crew of 169, and spent his time performing tasks too menial for the skutters (under the hated supervision of Arnold RimmerArnold Rimmer
Arnold Judas Rimmer is a fictional character in the science fiction situation comedy Red Dwarf, played by Chris Barrie. He is unpopular with his crew mates, and is often the target of insults or pranks...
), or getting drunk with his friends Olaf Petersen, Selby and Chen. Lister was imprisoned in a stasis booth
Stasis (fiction)
Stasis , or hypersleep, is a science fiction concept akin to suspended animation. Whereas suspended animation usually refers to a greatly reduced state of life processes, stasis implies a complete cessation of these processes, which can be easily restarted or restart spontaneously when stasis is...
because he smuggled an unquarantined cat
Cat
The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...
, which he named Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
, aboard the ship. In the book, he deliberately let the cat be discovered so that he would be placed in stasis, thus getting back to Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
in (subjectively) no time at all.
While Lister was in stasis, a release of lethal radiation occurred onboard as a result of a faulty repair carried out by Rimmer, killing the entire crew. Holly
Holly (Red Dwarf)
Holly is the ship's computer on the science fiction situation comedy Red Dwarf.The character is played by Norman Lovett in Series I and II and, following a "head sex change" to look like his parallel universe alter ego "Hilly", played by Hattie Hayridge in the series 3 episode Backwards, is female...
, the ship's computer, kept Lister in stasis for three million years until the radiation levels returned to normal. Lister was left as presumably the last human being in the universe, accompanied on Red Dwarf by a hologram simulation of Rimmer and a humanoid creature
Cat (Red Dwarf)
The Cat is a character in the British science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf. He is played by Danny John-Jules.-Character development:According to Danny John-Jules, the character of Cat is based on a combination of Little Richard's look, James Brown's moves and Richard Pryor's facial...
that evolved from his cat. Lister is actually believed to be the god of this race of cat-people, who know him as "Cloister the Stupid".
After a sexual liaison with Deb Lister, his female alter-ego from a female-oriented parallel universe, he, via caesarean section
Caesarean section
A Caesarean section, is a surgical procedure in which one or more incisions are made through a mother's abdomen and uterus to deliver one or more babies, or, rarely, to remove a dead fetus...
, gave birth to twin sons named Jim and Bexley, named after his favourite zero-gravity football player, Jim Bexley Speed. Due to them being born in a different reality to their conception, both of them grew to be eighteen years old within three days. Realising that if they stayed with him they would be dead within a fortnight, Lister sent them back to their mother's dimension.
Lister has a tattoo on his right buttock, dedicated to the love of his life: it is a heart with an arrow through it and underneath it has in dripping curry sauce, "I love Vindaloo". It was obtained while on planet leave on Ganymede
Ganymede (moon)
Ganymede is a satellite of Jupiter and the largest moon in the Solar System. It is the seventh moon and third Galilean satellite outward from Jupiter. Completing an orbit in roughly seven days, Ganymede participates in a 1:2:4 orbital resonance with the moons Europa and Io, respectively...
with Petersen, who spiked his cocktail with four-star petrol. When he woke up the next day, he had enrolled as a novice monk in a Ganymedian monastery. He also has another tattoo claiming that he loves Petersen placed on his inner thigh, which stems from an unidentified incident where the two got so heavily drunk together that Lister had no idea what was happening to him. In the Red Dwarf roleplaying game, Petersen's character profile (featured in "The Extra Bits" booklet) states that he has a reciprocal tattoo from the same incident.
Lister is dedicated to resurrecting and winning over the one true love of his life - Kristine Kochanski
Kristine Kochanski
Kristine Z. Kochanski is a fictional character from the British science fiction situation comedy Red Dwarf. Kochanski was the first console officer in the navigation chamber on board the spaceship Red Dwarf...
, the long dead navigation officer of Red Dwarf. It is his ambition to marry Kristine Kochanski and start a frugal life on a farm on the Earth islands of Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
.
Fate
Throughout the previous series at least several glimpses of Lister's future have been seen:- In the episode "Future EchoesFuture Echoes"Future Echoes" is the second episode of the science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf series one, and was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 22 February 1988...
" in the first series of the show, a vision of Lister is seen with him as a very old man of 171 years old with a mechanicalMachineA machine manages power to accomplish a task, examples include, a mechanical system, a computing system, an electronic system, and a molecular machine. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work...
prosthetic hand. This future version of Lister still has his dreadlocksDreadlocksDreadlocks, also called locks, a ras, dreads, "rasta" or Jata , are matted coils of hair. Dreadlocks are usually intentionally formed; because of the variety of different hair textures, various methods are used to encourage the formation of locks such as backcombing...
, although they are over two metres long and almost white with age. - In the episode "Cassandra" in the eighth series of the show, the Dwarfers make contact with a prophetic and clairvoyant computer that has the ability to predict the future without a margin of error. Lister is told by Cassandra that he will live to 181 years old and will die whilst trying to take a bra off with his teeth. Though Lister believed this was an incredibly sexy way to go, the others quickly pointed out that at 181 years old it may be his own bra, and that the teeth may not be in his mouth at the time (It should be noted that Cassandra was aware that Lister would kill her, and hence may not have been entirely honest about his fate).
- In the book Better Than Life, which explores different adventures than the TV series, Lister eventually discovers Earth, but finds that it is ruled by eight-foot-long cockroachCockroachCockroaches are insects of the order Blattaria or Blattodea, of which about 30 species out of 4,500 total are associated with human habitations...
es. He becomes their king and plans to rebuild the planet. The others find him thirty-six years later (after believing Lister was missing for a fortnight due to a time dilation). Later, after Lister dies of a heart attack in a confrontation with a polymorph, his body is taken to the alternative universe where time runs backwards and is told that he will be rescued in thirty-six years time. Two accounts of what followed are BackwardsBackwardsBackwards is the fourth Red Dwarf novel. It is set on the fictional backwards universe version of Earth.The novel was written by Rob Grant on his own. It follows on directly from the second Grant Naylor novel, Better Than Life, ignoring Last Human...
and Last HumanLast HumanLast Human is the title of a 1995 science fiction comedy novel written by Doug Naylor. It is part of the Red Dwarf series of novels, based on the popular television show created by Naylor and his partner Rob Grant...
. - In TimeslidesTimeslides"Timeslides" is the fifth episode of science fiction sit-com Red Dwarf Series III, and the seventeenth in the series run. It premiered on the British television channel BBC2 on 12 December 1989. Written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, and directed by Ed Bye, the plot deals with Lister's desire to...
, when transported to an alternate reality in which he is rich and famous, Holly finds a news report stating he died in a plane crash aged 98; he was making love to his 14th wife at the time.
Back to Earth
In the 2009 special "Red Dwarf: Back to Earth", after an encounter with a female despair squid, Lister, along with the rest of the crew, hallucinate an alternate reality in which they are fictional characters and that their lives are just a TV series that they have somehow escaped from.Personality
Lister is very lazy, and more importantly, unmotivated. He is a slob, his best shirt is a one with only two curryCurry
Curry is a generic description used throughout Western culture to describe a variety of dishes from Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, Thai or other Southeast Asian cuisines...
stains on the front, and prior to going into stasis he saved money by never buying soap, deodorant or socks. He enjoys "bumming around", drinking large amounts of lager
Lager
Lager is a type of beer made from malted barley that is brewed and stored at low temperatures. There are many types of lager; pale lager is the most widely-consumed and commercially available style of beer in the world; Pilsner, Bock, Dortmunder Export and Märzen are all styles of lager...
, and eating Indian food
Indian cuisine
Indian cuisine consists of thousands of regional cuisines which date back thousands of years. The dishes of India are characterised by the extensive use of various Indian spices, herbs, vegetables and fruit. Indian cuisine is also known for the widespread practice of vegetarianism in Indian society...
. Lister has dreadlocks on the back of his head, which he seems to have for most of his life (in "Future Echoes
Future Echoes
"Future Echoes" is the second episode of the science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf series one, and was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 22 February 1988...
", Lister meets himself at age 171, and his dreadlocks are the length of his body; they are also present, if shorter, on his 17-year-old self in "Timeslides
Timeslides
"Timeslides" is the fifth episode of science fiction sit-com Red Dwarf Series III, and the seventeenth in the series run. It premiered on the British television channel BBC2 on 12 December 1989. Written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, and directed by Ed Bye, the plot deals with Lister's desire to...
"). Lister's religious beliefs are unclear. In the episode, "The Last Day", Kryten states that Lister is a pantheist
Pantheism
Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...
, believing God to be in all things; however, in the later episode "Back to Reality" he is described as the "ultimate atheist". In "Waiting For God", Lister displays disgust over the Cat people's war over a religious disagreement stating that they were "using religion as an excuse to be really crappy to each other."
He prides himself on being a good man possessing moral courage, something which is used against him by a 'despair squid' in "Back to Reality"; when hallucinating under the influence of the squid's ink, he was driven to suicidal despair by his belief that, in the alternate world in which he found himself, he was a genocidal minister in a totalitarian state, responsible for the murder of countless innocent people. When confronted with an evil version of himself on a corrupted version of Red Dwarf, Lister says of his evil counterpart, "But he kills; I'm not capable of that." Likewise when he kills "The Creator" of Red Dwarf during his Back to Earth hallucination, his initial reaction is to state that he doesn't kill people and doesn't understand why he did it. His value for life was also shown when he and Kryten were being hunted by the Inquisitor, Lister being deeply affected by the knowledge that Kryten's seemingly imminent death would only mean something because he had helped Kryten to break his programming, thus giving him a life to lose. He has also shown some philosophical traits over the course of the series, such as when he reflected on the relative futility of the Justice Field witnessed in "Justice" saying it denied people free will and didn't truly rehabilitate the inmates. He also lamented on the escalation of uncontrolled evolution that resulted in the creation of the Despair Squid in "Back to Reality".
In many ways, Lister is the complete opposite of Rimmer, and the two are constantly at odds with each other. Rimmer is constantly accusing Lister of stupidity but Lister has actually been shown to be quite intelligent on several occasions and his lack of motivation is really what holds him back. For example, he managed to learn the international language Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
from Rimmer's tapes, while Rimmer himself was unable to. He is capable of piloting a spaceship and has a knack for mechanical repairs, particularly amateur cybernetics
Cybernetics
Cybernetics is the interdisciplinary study of the structure of regulatory systems. Cybernetics is closely related to information theory, control theory and systems theory, at least in its first-order form...
. When the Inquisitor appeared on Red Dwarf to judge the crew, he declared that Lister's failure to put his brain to good use was evidence that he had not lived a worthwhile life. Lister is a very socially capable person; well liked by his friends and has had a number relationships with women, albeit not all successful (his lack of ambition being the main cause for not settling down). He has a high emotional intelligence being capable of reading people and empathizing with them. The novel Last Human
Last Human
Last Human is the title of a 1995 science fiction comedy novel written by Doug Naylor. It is part of the Red Dwarf series of novels, based on the popular television show created by Naylor and his partner Rob Grant...
explains that Lister often knows the solution to a problem but that he usually consults Kryten
Kryten
Kryten is a fictional character in the British science fiction situation comedy Red Dwarf. Kryten's registration code on Red Dwarf is "Kryten additional 001". The name Kryten is a reference to the head butler in the J.M...
as he lacks confidence in his own opinion. He also considers himself good at pool, saying that he was nicknamed "Dave Cinzano Bianco Lister" because once he was on a table you couldn't get rid of him.
Dave Lister is also an avid junk collector who has purchased (among other things) a talking toilet, a talking toaster with artificial intelligence, and two robot goldfish, which he named Lennon
John Lennon
John Winston Lennon, MBE was an English musician and singer-songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as one of the founding members of The Beatles, one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music...
and McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
(the latter of which swims backwards and is prone to breaking down).
Entertainment
To prevent boredom, Lister enters in many recreational activities.- Television — Lister and Cat have in depth discussions about The FlintstonesThe FlintstonesThe Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...
(debating if Wilma Flintstone is sexier than Betty Rubble) as well as Tales of the RiverbankTales of the RiverbankTales of the Riverbank, sometimes called Hammy Hamster, is a Canadian children's television show starring Hammy Hamster and other animals....
: The Next Generation ("Camille"). - Films — Lister enjoys watching films, from classics like Citizen KaneCitizen KaneCitizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
and CasablancaCasablancaCasablanca is a city in western Morocco, located on the Atlantic Ocean. It is the capital of the Grand Casablanca region.Casablanca is Morocco's largest city as well as its chief port. It is also the biggest city in the Maghreb. The 2004 census recorded a population of 2,949,805 in the prefecture...
(the remake with Myra Binglebat and Peter BeardsleyPeter BeardsleyPeter Andrew Beardsley MBE is an English former footballer who played between 1979 and 1999. He once set a record transfer fee in the game and represented his country 59 times between 1986 and 1996, once as captain...
, which Lister described "definitive") to films like Revenge of the Surfboarding Killer Bikini Vampire GirlsB movieA B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
. Lister also likes soppy romance films (see "Confidence And ParanoiaConfidence and Paranoia"Confidence and Paranoia" is the fifth episode from series one of the science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf. It was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 14 March 1988...
" and "HoloshipHoloship"Holoship" is the first episode of series 5 of the science fiction sit-com Red Dwarf Series V and the twenty fifth in the series run. It was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 20 February 1992. Written by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, and directed by Juliet May...
"). In the novels, his all-time favourite film is It's A Wonderful LifeIt's a Wonderful LifeIt's a Wonderful Life is a 1946 American Christmas drama film produced and directed by Frank Capra and based on the short story "The Greatest Gift" written by Philip Van Doren Stern....
. - Games — To pass time onboard Red Dwarf, Lister has created many different games including "Match the Bodypart to the Crewmember" and "Armpit Name That Tune" ("Blue"). Kochanski even suggests that Lister's favourite games include "Name That Smell" and "How Many Marbles Can You Fit Up Your Nostril" ("Beyond A JokeBeyond a Joke"Beyond a Joke" is the sixth episode of science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf Series VII and the 42nd in the series run. It was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 21 February 1997...
"). - Virtual/Artificial Reality — Lister enjoys using the virtual reality suite onboard Starbug playing such games as WimbledonThe Championships, WimbledonThe Championships, Wimbledon, or simply Wimbledon , is the oldest tennis tournament in the world, considered by many to be the most prestigious. It has been held at the All England Club in Wimbledon, London since 1877. It is one of the four Grand Slam tennis tournaments, the other three Majors...
and Gumshoe ("Gunmen Of The ApocalypseGunmen of the Apocalypse"Gunmen of the Apocalypse" is the third episode of series VI of the science fiction sit-com Red Dwarf. It was first broadcast on 21 October 1993, on BBC2, and went on to win an International Emmy Award. The episode was written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor, and directed by Andy de Emmony...
"). Rimmer claims that Lister only uses the AR machine to have sexSexIn biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
— a claim supported in "Stoke Me a ClipperStoke Me a Clipper"Stoke Me a Clipper" is the second episode of science fiction sit-com Red Dwarf Series VII and the 38th in the series run. It was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 24 January 1997. Written by Paul Alexander & Doug Naylor and directed by Ed Bye...
". Although Lister agreed with Kochanski to partake in Jane AustenJane AustenJane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
World, Lister found the experience boring ("Beyond A JokeBeyond a Joke"Beyond a Joke" is the sixth episode of science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf Series VII and the 42nd in the series run. It was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 21 February 1997...
").
Guitar
Lister is very attached to his guitar, believes himself to be an excellent guitarist, although his belief is misplaced. In the episode "PsirensPsirens
"Psirens" is the first episode of science fiction sit-com Red Dwarf Series VI and the 31st in the series run. It was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 7 October 1993. Written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor and directed by Andy de Emmony...
", his companions are able to distinguish a psiren disguised as Lister from the real Lister because the psiren is able to play guitar (having taken its pattern from Lister's own mind, the psiren performed as the guitar virtuoso Lister perceives himself to be, rather than the dismal ability he usually displays). Lister eventually acknowledges his inability to play the guitar to at least some degree; in "Nanarchy
Nanarchy
"Nanarchy" is the eighth, and final, episode of science fiction sitcom Red Dwarf Series VII and the 44th in the series run. It was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 7 March 1997. Written by Paul Alexander, James Hendrie & Doug Naylor and directed by Ed Bye...
" he comments, after playing his guitar with assistance from Kryten due to the loss of an arm, "at least now I'm only half-crap." In Series 1, Lister's guitar is firstly an Ovation acoustic and silver in colour. Then in Series 3, episode 2 ("Marooned"), his guitar is shown to be a black, electric guitar — according to Lister it is a "genuine Les Paul
Les Paul
Lester William Polsfuss —known as Les Paul—was an American jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor. He was a pioneer in the development of the solid-body electric guitar which made the sound of rock and roll possible. He is credited with many recording innovations...
copy.")
Alternative Listers
As well as Deb Lister, there have been various other alternative versions of Lister.In the alternate reality where we first meet Ace Rimmer there is a version of Lister who goes by the name Spanners. While it's not established what his real name is, he is a highly skilled technician and we find out later in the episode he married Kochanski and had twin boys, Jim and Bexley. Unlike Rimmer Lister is pleased a version of him is doing so well.
During an encounter with The Inquisitor, Dave is replaced with an alternative version of himself. This Dave Lister, one of the sperm who didn't have the chance to fertilise his mother's egg, was given the chance to live a better life than the one lived by the real Lister. However, the fact that he is dressed identically, and also stranded on Red Dwarf, suggests that this Dave fared no better. This Dave was ultimately killed by The Inquisitor whilst the real Dave tried to escape deletion from existence.
Under the influence of a despair squid's hallucinogenic ink, Lister is fooled into thinking that his time aboard Red Dwarf was just a realistic encounter in a Total Immersion Videogame. After leaving the game, Lister briefly gets to watch the action as another group plays the game as it was intended to be played - the scenario observed involves the team having exciting adventures in outer space and interacting in a far less dysfunctional manner, and where the role of Lister is filled by a good-looking and suave new player.
Discovering a temporal rift in normal space, Lister, along with the rest of the crew, travel through it and encounter an alternative Red Dwarf crew, with some small differences: in this reality, it is Lister who is the hologram, having failed to survive the accident which wiped out the crew. His hologramatic status led to this Lister becoming a better person, more caring and attentive, and cured of his slobby habits.
During the novel Last Human, the crew fought an alternate version of Lister who was adopted by different parents, this Lister choosing the wealthy but psychotic Thorntons over the poorer but more emotionally stable parents which the normal Lister had. As a result, this Lister grew up to be a sociopath, often manipulating others with his efforts, claiming not to believe in even the concept of love, and perfectly willing to murder his shipmates in order to achieve his goals. This Lister is eventually killed when he is destroyed by the gestalt telepathic entity known as the Rage.