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Owned by Dave Lister, Talkie Toaster is a toaster with Artificial Intelligence who is completely obsessed with making toast and annoys everyone on board. He appears in series 1 (and in a deleted scene in series 2) with a stainless-steel cover and a circular light on the side which flashes as he speaks. He appears in series 4, and is described in the book, as a red toaster made of plastic, with his name "Talkie Toaster" emblazoned on the side and rather more flashing lights, although they have nothing to do with when he speaks, which is indicated by the press-down handle that would usually be used to start bread toasting. In series 1 he is voiced by John Lenahan , and in series 4 by David Ross .
In the TV show, the Toaster would keep interjecting in conversations in surprisingly and annoyingly smart ways, and whenever possible would try eventually to steer the conversation towards toast. Eventually this became too much for Lister who smashed the Toaster into 3000 separate pieces with a 14lb lump hammer.
Kryten eventually repaired the Toaster in order to use him as a guinea-pig for "intelligence compression" - restoring his former intelligence (his AI chips were very badly damaged) at the cost of reducing his operational lifespan. After it worked with him Kryten tried it on Holly, but a miscalculation made her twice as smart as she used to be and left her with only three-and-a-half minutes to live. Later on by blocking up a " white hole" (opposite of a black hole, which spews out time) time was reset to before the Toaster was repaired so he didn't end up repaired after all. The Toaster's repaired personality was somewhat different to his original one: it now had a different voice and no longer tried to hide its obsession with toast. Where before, the Toaster would cut into a conversation, insult someone, and then make some reference to toast, the new Toaster was barely able to go more than two sentences without asking if someone would like a cooked bread product.In the book, the Toaster helped Holly double his original IQ but shortened his life to three and a half minutes. He won seven hundred and ninety three chess games against Holly. During this time, the Toaster also saved the crew from death: while Holly was a genius, he explained to the Toaster how to escape from a black hole, information which later came in useful when the crew encountered one. The Toaster did not, however, merely volunteer this information: it forced the crew to eat ridiculous amounts of toast before talking. The When the crew were attacked by a polymorph, and the crew lost a certain emotion, ( Rimmer loses his anger, Lister loses his fear, The Cat loses his vanity and Kryten loses his guilt), the Toaster is destroyed by Kryten. After getting his guilt back, Kryten rebuilt the Toaster. Unfortunately the Toaster thinks he's a moose.
The Toaster was apparently manufactured by a Taiwanese company named "Crapola Inc."
Red Dwarf characters