1 Toaster View.
The screen hums and crackles with white noise, which clears to a computer display:
BOOT UP SEQUENCE INITIATED
Clears to display:
VISUAL SYSTEM CCD 517.3
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM K177
MACHINE IDENT: TALKIE TOASTER
Clears to display:
AURAL SYSTEM: ON-LINE
This vanishes, to be replaced with a view of KRYTEN; it is heavily biased toward the chin, as though shot from beneath, and through a yellow filter. As we watch, the yellow fades, to be replaced by colours.
KRYTEN: Hello? Can you hear me? Oh, no, of course not: I haven’t engaged your verbal systems.
He presses some buttons on an off-screen keyboard.
LISTER: (From offscreen) Kryten.
2 Int. Science room.
LISTER approaches KRYTEN.
LISTER: Kryten, what you doing, man?
KRYTEN: I’ve just repaired the toaster, Sir. Well, I’ve nearly repaired the toaster.
LISTER: Oh NO, man! Dismantle him! You don’t know what the little bleeder’s like!
KRYTEN: Well, I’ve read all the documentation, Sir. He’s simply a talking alarm clock who provides his owner with early morning toast and light conversation.
LISTER: Not this one. This one’s mental!
KRYTEN: Sir?
LISTER: He’s defective. He wants everyone to eat toast ALL OF THE TIME. He’s obsessed with it. And if you don’t want to eat, like, four hundreds rounds of toast EVERY HOUR, he throws a major wobbly. That’s what caused the accident in the first place.
KRYTEN: What accident?
LISTER: The accident involving me, the toaster, the waste disposal and the fourteen pound lump-hammer.
KRYTEN: That explains why he was down in the garbage hold in three thousand separate pieces.
LISTER: Another thing. He always says “Howdy doodly do.” Drives you spare. I mean, what the smeg does “Howdy doodly do” mean?
KRYTEN: Well, just trust me, Sir. My motives will become clear.
He presses some more buttons on the keyboard. The TOASTER lights up and speaks. Its bread-lowering lever moves up and down as it speaks with its mid-Atlantic accent in an impossibly cheerful tone:
TOASTER: Howdy doodly do! How’s it going? I’m Talkie — Talkie Toaster, your chirpy breakfast companion. Talkie’s the name, toasting’s the game. Anyone like any toast?
LISTER: Look, _I_ don’t want any toast, and _he_ (indicating KRYTEN) doesn’t want any toast. In fact, no one around here wants any toast. Not now, not ever. NO TOAST.
TOASTER: How ‘bout a muffin?
LISTER: OR muffins! OR muffins! We don’t LIKE muffins around here! We want no muffins, no toast, no teacakes, no buns, baps, baguettes or bagels, no croissants, no crumpets, no pancakes, no potato cakes and no hot-cross buns and DEFINITELY no smegging flapjacks!
TOASTER: Aah, so you’re a waffle man!
LISTER: (to KRYTEN) See? You see what he’s like? He winds me up, man. There’s no reasoning with him.
KRYTEN: If you’ll allow me, Sir, as one mechanical to another. He’ll understand me. (Addressing the TOASTER as one would address an errant child) Now. Now, you listen here. You will not offer ANY grilled bread products to ANY member of the crew. If you do, you will be on the receiving end of a very large polo mallet.
TOASTER: Can I ask just one question?
KRYTEN: Of course.
TOASTER: Would anyone like any toast?
KRYTEN: Didn’t you HEAR what I just said?
TOASTER: Yes, but I thought you might have changed your mind in the
meantime.
LISTER: You see? You see what he’s like?
KRYTEN: (Exasperated) We haven’t changed our mind!
LISTER: NO TOAST!
TOASTER: But I am a toaster. It is my /raison d’etre/. I toast, therefore I am. If you don’t want any toast, why did you repair me?
LISTER: Yeah, why did you repair him?
KRYTEN: He’s a guinea pig for a technique called “Intelligence Compression.” His AI chips were very badly damaged in the accident.
TOASTER: But that was no accident! That was first-degree toastercide!
LISTER: Just shut your grill!
LISTER elbows the toaster in the grill, hard. It says “Ow,” but nothing more.
I must have missed something, somewhere. I couldn’t follow it. (Ohmybrems!)
Priceless!
I watched a couple of Red Dwarf clips today and enjoyed them very much. Must pursue further....