History

Butler was the main robotic servant of Nova 3 before the ship crashed looking for the S.I.U. station. In the millennia since he has spent his copious free time becoming an accomplished artist, novelist, doctor, and diplomat with various GELF populations.

When the boys from the Dwarf first set out to meet Butler, they originally anticipated he'd be in a similar state to Kryten when he was abandoned on Nova 5.

However, they are impressed by Butler's artistry, culinary, and knowledge when they arrive; embarrassing Kryten. Rimmer suggests recruiting Butler, saying they'd keep Kryten for the menial tasks aboard Red Dwarf, Lister berates Rimmer for thinking this.

When the crew take Butler for a ride on Starbug, they are confronted by hostile GELF ships; however once they discover Butler is with them, with whom they are already acquainted, they become friendly. Butler takes his leave to help aide the GELF tribe - the Sakenyako - with his expertise in medicine, something Kryten encourages him to do.

Later in the episode, Kryten phones Butler to boast about their meeting with the Universe. However, Butler reveals he is quite familiar with said-galactic entity and he purposely manipulated with Starbug so they could meet it, this most likely further increases Kryten's jealously in the process. ("Krysis", Series XI)

Gallery

The Boys from the Dwarf along with Butler and Kryten in his new red shell

Trivia

• Butler shares similarities with Legion; they both share high-cultured tastes and dabble in art, they both make their home aboard space stations where they once served its crew, they both impress Rimmer enough for him to want to recruit both of them during their respective first encounters, and they both take the appearance of a mechanoid during their episodes (However, in Butler's case, he is a mechanoid). However, Butler differs from Legion in that they are of two separate races (Butler a Series 3000 Mechanoid and Legion a gestalt entity), they have differing intentions (Butler is friendly, attempting to help Kryten get over his mid-life crisis by having him meet the Universe; while Legion is hostile, intending to keep the crew prisoner for his own benefit), and Butler may leave his space station at anytime while Legion is imprisoned aboard his.
• Butler also shares similarities with Ace Rimmer; they are essentially two-sides of the same coin (Kryten and Butler were stuck in the same situation, marooned on spaceships with their crews dead), one is clearly superior to the other, and the rest of the crew fawn-over how great the other clearly superior counterpart is much to the annoyance and jealously of the clearly less superior counterpart.