david ross played the first kryten in red dwarf.
who played the first kryten in red dwarf?
david ross
kryten (as portrayed by david ross) first appeared in the "red dwarf" episode "kryten" (1988), where he is characterised as a service mechanoid on board the "nova 5", a spacecraft originally from earth. kryten says that his entire purpose is "to serve and have no regard for himself". he sends a distress call which is picked up by the crew of the mining ship "red dwarf", claiming that the male crew died when the "nova 5" crash landed on a planetoid, while the female crew are—according to kryten himself—"stable, but injured". the female crew have actually been dead for "centuries"—kryten apparently not realising this, and continuing to feed and serve them. because there is no-one else on board the "nova 5", kryten starts a new life on "red dwarf" with the hologram arnold rimmer (chris barrie) as his new master. dave lister (craig charles) persuades kryten to rebel against rimmer (which includes showing him the movies "rebel without a cause" and "easy rider") and to become independent. kryten changes the portrait of rimmer he paints to make it appear as though he was sitting on the toilet, and then pours soup onto rimmer's bed sheets. kryten takes lister's space-bike and goes out to find a planet with an atmosphere where he can grow a garden, which had always been a dream of his. this episode also marks a 'first' in science-fiction history in which an android deliberately gives a human being the 'finger'.
kryten
kryten (as portrayed by robert llewellyn) returns in "backwards" (1989), where he permanently becomes part of the "red dwarf" crew. at the start of the episode, kryten is described in some scrolling text as being found in pieces after his space-bike crashed on an asteroid. lister rebuilds kryten, although he is unable to recapture his former personality. in the episode proper, kryten causes the "starbug 1" shuttle to fall into a time hole while taking a driving test facilitated by rimmer. the ship crash lands on earth in a reality where time runs backwards, leaving kryten, rimmer and "red dwarf"s computer holly (hattie hayridge) stranded. rimmer and kryten spend three weeks working as the novelty act "the sensational reverse brothers" and begin to enjoy life in this new reality, but are fired by a pub manager (arthur smith) for a fight that rimmer and kryten become involved in later that night. lister and the cat (danny john-jules) come to rescue rimmer, kryten and holly in another "starbug" to get back to "red dwarf".
kryten