[1] The episode was written by Paul Alexander, James Hendrie and Doug Naylor, and directed by Ed Bye.
The problem is, Kryten hasn't seen his nanobots since the attack on the crew by the Despair Squid hundreds of years earlier, right before they lost Red Dwarf.
They therefore decide to retrace their steps all the way back to the ocean planet where they met the Despair Squid and have to go into Deep Sleep for the very long journey.
Down on the desert surface they find items from Red Dwarf including the original Holly (Norman Lovett) who explains that the nanobots restored his core program and then mutinied: they deconstructed Red Dwarf, creating their own miniature version of the ship and turned the rest into a planetoid for safekeeping, converting the ship's many computerized systems into sand.
[3] Most reviewers noted the return of Norman Lovett as Holly,[4][5][6] although DVDActive disliked the episode's "mercilessly slow first scene".