Lister foolishly takes Holly's advice to join the "Canaries" believing that it is the prison choir, but he soon regrets it when he finds out that it's actually a convict army who are sent into the wreckages of ships to explore; basically they go on suicide missions!

When onboard a crashed spaceship, they discover Cassandra. She's a highly intelligent computer who can accurately predict the future. When she tells Rimmer that he's going to die while Cat, Kochanski, Lister and Kryten are going to survive, he quickly goes about trying to change this.