DwarfCast 105 – Live The Promised Land Instant Reaction

71 comments on “DwarfCast 105 – Live The Promised Land Instant Reaction”

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• I’d just like to point out in the context of the scene, using the term “sex change” was neither outdated or offensive. Given that Cat would be having the operation purely for the sake of having Lister’s baby, he wouldn’t actually be identifying as a woman (i.e. gender), it’d just be an operation to change his biology (i.e. sex) It would literally be a sex change operation, since there’s nothing involved in it that would change how he identifies. That you’re offended by it despite the fact that it’s the correct terminology to use given the scenario makes me think maybe you don’t entirely understand what you’re talking about? The entire scene has nothing to do with trans people; the expense of the joke is Lister and Cat’s silly argument about “who would make the more attractive woman” I’m trans and I thought it was funny and entirely inoffensive- it’s like the Wilma Flinstone scene, it’s just the kind of ridiculous conversation the characters would have after being in space too long. It’s such a harmless scene

• No comments yet?

  Okay.

  Nice reaction commentary, and I have a couple of small points (snigger) too.

  Thoughts on the Cats having only three claws: I’ve often thought the Cat should have four large canines too, rather than just the two since that’s a feline trait. It doesn’t bother me much now, as I see it as a holdover from evolution to humanoid form I.e. they kept some traits and not others. That and it would be more difficult for Danny to talk easily with a mouthful of plastic (or whatever they make those things out of). Just 3 claws kind of fits with the two fangs, if that makes sense.

  I initially thought the claws were add on weapons too, largely as Rodon had permanently extended metal claws. He has metal fangs too, so I guess in his case they’re implants replacing his originals.

  Another very small point that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere,* but I thought it a nice touch: the Cats’ shuttle craft engines and weapons make weeaaaaoooowww Cat sounds.

  The sex change stuff didn’t really bother me (although the ‘folding’) stuff made my eyes want to water. I saw it more as a joke about two mates who are not attracted to each other in that way suddenly being confronted with the idea of being surgically altered and having to copulate to continue the human(ish) race. Then again I’m a middle aged bloke but I can see how it might be offensive stretched too far.

  *probably because it’s so in-your-face obvious, but I though it a nice silly gag.

• “ No comments yet?”

  I spoke too soon. ????????????

• I know people who’ve had the op, and am intimately familiar with what it entails – the folding bit is very funny

  I was surprised to see Danny suddenly have claws, I was a little taken aback since I did assume they were fake as well. As to the number, it never occurred to me, lol.

  I did really appreciate how the cat ship’s missiles sounded like a cat going meow and a TIE fighter at the same time, wonderful bit of sound design.

• Thanks for doing Dwarfcast. Much appreciated especially in these strange times when some light from the world is more welcome then ever.

• Bloodteller – I obviously don’t know what I’m talking about on this subject as much as you do, and I take your point on board about how “sex change” may well be an accurate term in this particular context. I’m glad that you didn’t take offence to it, but I don’t think it’s as simple as being able to say it objectively is or isn’t offensive, especially as other trans people, both here and elsewhere online, have said that they had a negative reaction.

  For the record, I’m not massively offended by it, I think it’s best described as misguided and unnecessary but falls short of crossing the line. I don’t think anyone on the podcast would say that it hugely impacted their enjoyment of the special overall – we talked about it right at the start because we kind of just wanted to get it out of the way before moving on to the good stuff.

• Just listened to it. You bastard, Ian! You nearly had me crying at the end! How dare you make me feel feelings!

  Also, I didn’t notice the G&T reference in both viewings I’ve had so far. Looks I’m gonna have to watch again. *sigh* If I must ;)

  Regarding the talk about the moonlight scene. First of all, Phil you’re not alone in liking Series VII. Honestly, it’s one of my favourite series and I think you summed up why it is and also what exactly I love about the moonlight scene, but up until now couldn’t explain it.

  It’s the pathos. Something which, for good or bad (depending on what you prefer, really), VII and BTE had and I haven’t really seen in the Dave era since.

  I sometimes get the feeling that that’s the kind of Red Dwarf Doug really wants to do. Though I love Series X, XI & XII, my main criticism of those series is the lack of pathos and how heightened the characters could be written and performed. I sometimes felt like Doug was maybe afraid to put some genuine pathos in it, afraid to let it breathe and not worry about putting in the next gag.

  I remember during my first watch of the moonlight scene, I would feel a little frustrated that Lister wouldn’t say he likes Rimmer. Obviously I’m not a writer, and it may have ended up being a lesser scene if Lister had just outright said that. You know at this point that Lister does actually like Rimmer and knows he and the team do actually need him. I think Lister knows he knows that, but he can’t say it. The way Doug ended up writing this scene was far better and more original than I could’ve pictured. Maybe my feelings will soften as the years pass, but right now, I’d say that scene is easily one of the best they’ve done. And for me, certainly up there with the likes of the observation dome scenes.

  That scene and Cat saying “I am home” also felt like something I could’ve read in the novels and it’s one of the reasons I love those moments so much.

• It definitely would have been a lesser scene if Lister had just outright said he likes Rimmer.

  Plus it’s not necessarily accurate.

• The ‘sex change’ stuff is a bit tricky because it wasn’t necessarily just Lister and Cat’s ignorance. The entire scene was clearly written from a position of complete obliviousness to the modern understanding of gender identity vis a vis trans and cis people at all. Lister and the Cat are men, and therefore giving one of them a uterus would change them into a woman, is what all 3 characters and by implication Doug seem to believe. In many contexts if not all, that would be considered harmful biological essentialism.

  Of course, you can still chalk it up to the characters being stupid from an in-universe perspective. Kryten has a lot of knowledge but it’s not like he’s never made dumb mistakes. Because if Cat actually got bottom surgery, obviously he would still be a man, and obviously he and Lister would procreate through IVF if they wanted that (which has already worked for Lister and Kochanski!), not by shagging.

  Sidenote: both Cat and Lister have prior experience of getting pregnant and giving birth, don’t they? Puts the conversation into a weird light.

  Ultimately I feel conflicted about the scene, but it definitely wasn’t nearly as bad as the Kryten gender stuff in Series VIII, and it was funny. Just Robert’s delivery on his “let me finish” interjections made sure of that on their own.

• In your first paragraph, Flap Jack, you’re conflating gender with sex. A sex change operation would change Cat’s sex. The English language is utterly woeful and uses the terms “man” and “woman” for both sex and gender, so I can see why somebody would conflate the two, but there’s absolutely no reason to read as much into the sex change gag as you’re trying to. A sex change operation would change Cat’s sex to “a woman”, but it wouldn’t make him “female”… depending on what definitions you use, because English is wank, and transgender issues are “new” enough (they aren’t) to the majority of people that we don’t really have extremely well established terminology for this shit. I think the human race needs to essentially abandon the concept of gender altogether, but that’s a different debate.

  Woman: a female person associated with a particular place, activity, or occupation.
  Female: of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs, distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes.

  By definition, Cat would be “distinguished biologically by the production of gametes (ova) which can be fertilized by male gametes”.

  I’m definitely not wasting my time by pouring fuel onto this fire.

• One of the main reasons I didn’t like that scene is that I’m sick of having to have these sorts of conversations after an episode of Red Dwarf. (That’s not a dig at anyone, just a big sigh about the whole situation.)

• I really enjoyed that scene. But I also really enjoyed the other 88mins. Let’s talk about those.

  Actually I should say I really enjoyed the DwarfCast. I’d have loved to have listened and chatted along last night but I had other online social plans that couldn’t be recorded and listened back to hungover the next morning.

  The episode being split into two on UKTV is a bit weird. I’ve watched it on there twice and it’s caught me off guard both times. I can only assume it’s so if they want to repeat it over two nights they can? It also makes sense as to why they have a montage title sequence. As part 2 opens with it as any episode would.

  Fascinating detail about G&T being on that panel. I ended up going through all of that Twitter thread whilst listening so that was lovely.

  I’m equally confused about the claws as you guys were. Apparently Richard has now confirmed they’re meant to be holding them? Which makes sense but then doesn’t explain the Cat deleted scene (sorry spoilers) so fuck knows. Given the “species change” tweet of Richard’s it feels like he’s just making it all up as he goes along.

• I’m a CIS woman, I’m not going to say that anyone should be offended by what is an outdated term if they aren’t, that’s not why I mentioned it. I don’t think that the intent was bad or to offend, but some people *were* offended or at least uncomfortable with it and had every right to feel that way. Intent is not magic and in 2020 with all the Glinner bullshit going on, I just feel that maybe someone (anyone) should have given that phrase a second thought.

  As Richard Naylor said on Twitter earlier that the intent was actually for them to discuss a “species change”, I feel that this was not at all clear and is definitely not what Kryten and Lister said.

  Again, as I said last night, I did enjoy the episode, but there was no need for this to be in there, IMO.

• I’m equally confused about the claws as you guys were. Apparently Richard has now confirmed they’re meant to be holding them? Which makes sense but then doesn’t explain the Cat deleted scene (sorry spoilers) so fuck knows.

  I think he meant that the original intent was that they were actual cat claws, but they cut the teeny Cat claws because they changed their mind and decided they should be weapons instead.
  This makes less sense to me, since cats do have claws and so that would have been fine, but *shrug*

• Series VII is Dwarf as a comedy drama, and for my money does the drama a lot better than the comedy for the most part. I like this approach (I love the characters and they’ve always been three dimensional enough to withstand real arcs, particularly Lister and Rimmer) but YMMV. If you want a sitcom, you want a sitcom.

  As I said on the ‘cast, I was delighted that TPL offered whole scenes of real pathos. It felt *confident*. And with 90 minutes to luxuriate with stuff like this, it wasn’t at the expense of funny stuff elsewhere.

• >The episode being split into two on UKTV is a bit weird.
  Someone on Twitter said they did that for spoiler purposes, if I remember right. So you couldn’t just skip to the end? I dunno. I imagine it will be one part on the DVD.

  The claws thing is probably a retcon, but you can’t retcon deleted scenes because they were never canon in the first place. It’s an abandoned idea. As it stands we have no reason to assume they’re fake or real, since nothing that was actually broadcast makes a case either way. You can think what you want

• >The episode being split into two on UKTV is a bit weird.

  Someone on Twitter said they did that for spoiler purposes, if I remember right. So you couldn’t just skip to the end? I dunno. I imagine it will be one part on the DVD.

  I thought it was simply to ease the traffic on the app?

  But the very fact that they’ve edited together two distinct episodes suggests to me that a two-part repeat has been considered. Then again, I know nothing about nothing.

• One of the most bizarre complaints I’ve seen is “[insert scene here] didn’t have anything to do with the plot, it was just a comedy bit.” Because… this is Red Dwarf. The only question I have to ask people who say this is, do you think Wilma’s sexy?

• As Richard Naylor said on Twitter earlier that the intent was actually for them to discuss a “species change”, I feel that this was not at all clear and is definitely not what Kryten and Lister said.

  That does seem retroactive to me. I did take it as Kryten ignorance at biology so the tech still wouldn’t result in a baby, the absurdity of the propsal at all and the characters involved but I realise typing this that Lister mating under threat of extinction isn’t particularly pleasant territory either.

• As Richard Naylor said on Twitter earlier that the intent was actually for them to discuss a “species change”, I feel that this was not at all clear and is definitely not what Kryten and Lister said.

  That does seem retroactive to me. I did take it as Kryten ignorance at biology so the tech still wouldn’t result in a baby, the absurdity of the propsal at all and the characters involved but I realise typing this that Lister mating under threat of extinction isn’t particularly pleasant territory either.

  I thought that they had a more relaxed attitude to the whole “last human” thing anyway now because Lister knows he’s going around and round in time (Ouroboros, Fathers and Suns) so he can just do it in another lifetime, and he’s also likely not the last human either, they keep bumping into humans, and the Red Dwarf crew who presumably didn’t all die while the Posse watched from pretty close by, if that’s the case then Lister and Rimmer are at least partly responsible for thousands of deaths.

  Also seems a strange thing to be concerned about given how fucked everyone is haha, the Cat/Danny looks good but he’s still in the Autumn of his years, as is Lister.

• It would have saved a lot of wincing, sighing, getting angry and arguing (alright, let’s call it debating) if Kryten could have just suggested that the Cat “have Lister’s child” as some kind of ridiculous suggestion, in the same vein as Holly’s “Become a dog” in series VIII. Not mention any kind of actual change, physical or otherwise.
  It’d get rid of all that ‘folding’ conversation, for a start.

• Ian is right though, it’s properly shite that seemingly ever 60-90 minutes or so of Red Dwarf has some faux pas which varies from a bit tone-deaf to impressively offensive.

  It’d be better if it was just “this jokes crap/this jokes good” and “that was good sci-fi/ that was a bit shallow” rather than serious topics.

  It’s an unpleasant experience feeling offended by Red Dwarf when you’ve grown up with it. It’s like your Grandma saying something horrendously racist in public.

• Well Lister could have repopulated with one of the female cats. Instead of them just leaving. Ok yeah that could be seen as weird. But isn’t that technically what Kryten was talking about with the sex change thing? Or at least that’s how the episode translated it on screen.

• Kryten’s just so into cleansing he practises eugenics.

• Richard said on Twitter that as far as he knows the two parts are just for VOD, and he expects repeats will be the whole thing. But then he says it’s up to UKTV ultimately so who knows. It’s on again tonight 8 til 10.

  Other interesting things he revealed: a daughter of one of the main four characters was in early drafts, Hattie appearing was discussed, and there are some Easter eggs on the DVD.

• One of the most bizarre complaints I’ve seen is “[insert scene here] didn’t have anything to do with the plot, it was just a comedy bit.” Because… this is Red Dwarf. The only question I have to ask people who say this is, do you think Wilma’s sexy?

  I think this has come up in relation to the sex-change scene because it introduces such an unusual and major piece of technology that it seems like it must be being set up to return to later. It’s Chekhov’s sex-change.

• a daughter of one of the main four characters was in early drafts

  The obvious way that works is that Lister knocked Kochanski up before she left, and they find her, now a teenager. Possibly as a way of reintroducing Kochanski, or perhaps she’s on her own for some reason.

  If it wasn’t Lister’s child, then there’s three other options.

  Rimmer had a child with Yvonne Megruder (I’ve never consider how you spell that before so fuck knows if it’s correct) that he didn’t know about, who somehow survived the accident and the 3million years. Seems implausible.

  Kryten creates a daughter. But then you’re basically doing The TNG episode Offspring where Data creates his own child.

  Or, you bring back Jim and or Bexley and one or both of them identify as female. Which would actually give the earlier scene meaning, if it was meant to show the ignorance of the crew who are then confronted with the reality of it. But I wouldn’t trust Doug to tackle that particularly well.

  There’s a final option … but its so ridiculous as to discredit it. And that is that the didn’t kill all of the baby Polymorph’s from Can of Worms and one has spent the last few years living on its own on the ship.

• I’m equally confused about the claws as you guys were. Apparently Richard has now confirmed they’re meant to be holding them? Which makes sense but then doesn’t explain the Cat deleted scene (sorry spoilers) so fuck knows.

  I think he meant that the original intent was that they were actual cat claws, but they cut the teeny Cat claws because they changed their mind and decided they should be weapons instead.
  This makes less sense to me, since cats do have claws and so that would have been fine, but *shrug*

  Given that Rodon has metal teeth, it sort of makes sense that at least he has replaced his claws with metal ones too. But you could extend this to think that all cats have evolved to not have claws, especially as in 30+ years we’ve *never* seen Cat’s, so that have fashioned replacements to make up for it.

  On the subject of Rodon’s metal teeth, I thought it was going to turn out that Rodon wasn’t a cat at all, and was someone who had adopted the image of a cat to create some sort of rebellion against the cat race and undermine the religion by forcing an atheistic policy onto them or something.

• If they wanted to explore a “child of one of the original crew” story, they could maybe have Kryten die heroically and then years later old-man Lister from Future Echoes discovers that Kryten appears to have mysterious twin daughters, one of whom hangs out on an old abandoned simulant cruiser with a bunch of GELFs studying simulant technology. Then Lister would have to put together a new, slightly shit crew of his own to try and track down an in-hiding professor Mamet and unravel the mystery of who the twins are.

  I reckon they could get ten hourlong episodes out of that if they pad it out with a few triumphant guest appearances from Cat, Rimmer and that guy who played the third GELF from the left in Emohawk.

• If they wanted to explore a “child of one of the original crew” story, they could maybe have Kryten die heroically and then years later old-man Lister from Future Echoes discovers that Kryten appears to have mysterious twin daughters, one of whom hangs out on an old abandoned simulant cruiser with a bunch of GELFs studying simulant technology. Then Lister would have to put together a new, slightly shit crew of his own to try and track down an in-hiding professor Mamet and unravel the mystery of who the twins are.

  I reckon they could get ten hourlong episodes out of that if they pad it out with a few triumphant guest appearances from Cat, Rimmer and that guy who played the third GELF from the left in Emohawk.

  There’s a flashback in this somewhere showing Ackerman having his eye gratuitously removed, followed by Hollister triumphantly returning to avenge him.

• A child of one of the crew would be a horrible idea. And then they’d either have to have the character be around indefinitely…or have to write the child out of the show like all the other “permanent” characters they’ve introduced….but without the allowance to be as flippant of all the other exits.

• Incidentally, I suspect that this crossed Doug’s mind when he talked about all the other questions they could answer with specials. Bexley dying in the drive room isn’t going to be a laugh-riot.

• In your first paragraph, Flap Jack, you’re conflating gender with sex. A sex change operation would change Cat’s sex. The English language is utterly woeful and uses the terms “man” and “woman” for both sex and gender, so I can see why somebody would conflate the two, but there’s absolutely no reason to read as much into the sex change gag as you’re trying to. A sex change operation would change Cat’s sex to “a woman”, but it wouldn’t make him “female”… depending on what definitions you use, because English is wank, and transgender issues are “new” enough (they aren’t) to the majority of people that we don’t really have extremely well established terminology for this shit.

  I don’t think I am conflating gender with sex, and if I am, it’s because most of the time when people say “sex”, they’re just using it as a synonym for “gender” anyway – or if they’re transphobic, they use it to mean “gender, but where I can contradict you about it and insist that your birth-assigned-gender is your actual one”.

  In any case, “Man” and “Woman” are 100% labels of gender, hence why men who were AFAB are called “trans men” not “trans women”. Whether or not “male” and “female” means something else in addition is up to geneticists, but in common speech, when referring to people, it’s just the adjective form of “man or boy” and “woman or girl”. (Like, you would never describe a trans woman as “a male person” unless you were deliberately being a bigot.) So Kryten is wrong that this operation would change Cat “into a woman” in any sense, even if said operation changed his chromosomes. That was the part I was disagreeing with, not necessarily the “sex change” part. Obviously the operation would majorly change Cat’s sex characteristics, but he’d still be a cis man.

  I do echo Ian’s sentiments of resenting the need to get into a discussion of this nature at all after watching a Red Dwarf episode, and my initital reaction was “eh, that isn’t really right, but whatever, it’s pretty much harmless”, but seeing as it became A Thing, I figured I’d donate my 2 pennies, and now I’m part of the problem. Whoops.

• A child of one of the crew would be a horrible idea. And then they’d either have to have the character be around indefinitely…or have to write the child out of the show like all the other “permanent” characters they’ve introduced….but without the allowance to be as flippant of all the other exits.

  The Dave Era has brought alot of characters in that it has had to write out. infact it gets abit silly after a while. so when it comes to writing characters in… Doug would find a way to write them out again.

• “A child of one of the crew”. Hasn’t Bobby always expressed a desire to do an episode with a hand#pupped baby Kryten? Perhaps it was this? ????????‍♂️

• Damn why can’t I edit my post? I’m on my second bottle of wine so an episode button is a necessity. ????

• Maybe it was Cat who had a daughter within the cat people. until Doug remembered he was a said to be a virgin.

  Lister having a daughter doesn’t make sense giving the story. might have been overkill to a story thats already got alot of stuff happening. dunno why Doug wants to add so many ideas to his stories.

• Damn why can’t I edit my post? I’m on my second bottle of wine so an episode button is a necessity. ????

  CAPPSY: What do you want in your edits, darlin’?
  PENDO: Oh, I’ll have some wine, please!

• Complexity is good, but when it’s all on the surface it’s just confusing.

  Needs to plant some stuff and not be afraid of it growing, instead of buying a fully grown plant and then going at it with the secateurs in the last 2 minutes of the episode.

  I think at this point, any ending would be better as a heroic rescue of a colony on a dying / terrorised planet or something, letting them move into Red Dwarf and giving the crew a new life as part of a bigger community, would be better than them returning to Earth.

  If that happened, and he let it grow, Red Dwarf could go on in another direction (if fans were receptive) and Bobby could hang up the rubber mask without guilt.

  Obviously it’d live or die on the casting, that being the case it’d probably die.

• Lister having a daughter doesn’t make sense giving the story. might have been overkill to a story thats already got alot of stuff happening

  The suggestion of the child was in relation to other ideas for the special before they settled on the cats. So it wouldn’t have been in this story, but a different story entirely.

• The suggestion of the child was in relation to other ideas for the special before they settled on the cats. So it wouldn’t have been in this story, but a different story entirely.

  Ah i see. I can see how that was reworked into The Promise Land. The Cats looking up to Lister and him wanting to tell them he isn’t who they think he is could easily work if you changed them into a daughter figure. Its abit like Last Human with Rimmers Son.

• The thing that annoys me most about THAT gag is how Doug seems to be somewhat obsessed with the idea of either Cat or Lister getting pregnant… I mean, it was only just in ‘Can of Worms’ ffs…very odd. It’s funny how ideas like this were handled with a lot more taste back in 1988, when you’d think the exact opposite would be the case! XD

  Richard Naylor covering it with ‘species change’…well why wasn’t that the line in the first place? I do get how the Kryten lines that followed (lady garden…folding etc.) and Rimmer’s ‘ladies…!’ were too good to pass up, but still… Like was said in the Dwarfcast, I’m glad this particular idea never went anywhere.

  Great Dwarfcast btw! Things wouldn’t be the same without it. It was refreshing hearing some different voices on there too. I don’t think it can be stressed enough how good it is to be a Red Dwarf fan right now. Calling the special ‘The Promised Land’ was somewhat a bold move, almost a statement like ‘this is what you’ve been waiting for’ and, at its best, it really REALLY was. I’m so glad most people agree and it wasn’t just me getting carried away with myself. Fucking brilliant!

  What I’m hoping is this becomes the first in a trilogy of specials, to round things off. Personally, I just can’t see them doing another series, not now. Yeah, they did XI & XII back-to-back but so much of it seemed rushed and fraught. Why put themselves through that ever again? In TPL you could feel the room they had to breathe and get it right.

  Speaking of ‘ladies…’ from the moment Chris came in and said that line you knew something was different. He absolutely fucking nailed Rimmer, for the first time in…decades?? It’s not like he’s ever been ‘bad’ as such, but even in the likes of ‘Officer Rimmer’ or ‘Skipper’, where much of the action focussed on him, he was something ‘Rimmer-esque’ as opposed to, well…Rimmer. With this special something clicked. I’m not sure I can exactly put my finger on what. It did help that it was the best Rimmer script in some time, but Chris deserves all the plaudits here.

• Speaking of ‘ladies…’ from the moment Chris came in and said that line you knew something was different. He absolutely fucking nailed Rimmer, for the first time in…decades??

  I thought exactly the same. It was as if he’d been back and watched some early episodes, and stepped away from the Rimmer of recent series – just a nasty, bitter man – and given us a more rounded character.
  (For him then to pop up on a series one commentary a few days later is a happy co-incidence.)

• Yeah, his Rimmer here was great. He never went too broad and over-the-top as we’ve seen in X-XII (and it could have easily gone that way a few times).

  His “sod them, Kryten” is one of my biggest laughs of the episode, and that’s maybe as broad as his performance gets.

• Regarding the cat being Mean. Just watching Better Than Life, where he is cruel enough to give Rimmer a father insulter. So he’s been harsher before. Surely it balances his admission end of the promised land that he has some genuine nice feelings of comarade companiship.

• >His “sod them, Kryten” is one of my biggest laughs of the episode,

  I remember a fair few takes of this (mainly due to Bobby fluffing immediate my afterwards) and the delivery was different (and less broad) each time. The one in the episode is certainly not the first take. For shame, to be honest.

• if Anubis has a cat’s head in the red dwarf universe, our own universe is the deb lister universe – the show has been set in a gender reverse parallel universe all along. in the red dwarf universe there was a cable channel called ‘deb’

• I wonder who played there Kochanski(s).

• c.p. grogan

• if Anubis has a cat’s head in the red dwarf universe, our own universe is the deb lister universe – the show has been set in a gender reverse parallel universe all along.

  I like this. It doesn’t work, due to all the references to non-gender-swapped real life people and characters, but I like it.

• The Inquisitor judged that Anubis had not led a worthwhile life and replaced him.

• Anubis having a cat head is just a real life continuity error and Doug retconning history.

• The Anubis Stone! Well, that’s the clue, isn’t it? The cats having a religious artifact named after the Ancient Egyption god Anubis, when Anubis has the head of a dog! It’s a blatant clue, isn’t it? A blatant clue to the truth the behind The Cat. Well, that’s the final irony, isn’t it? Cat, the ultimate feline, turns out in fact to be Dog!

• The Anubis Stone! Well, that’s the clue, isn’t it? The cats having a religious artifact named after the Ancient Egyption god Anubis, when Anubis has the head of a dog! It’s a blatant clue, isn’t it? A blatant clue to the truth the behind The Cat. Well, that’s the final irony, isn’t it? Cat, the ultimate feline, turns out in fact to be Dog!

  *claps*

• I nominate that post for Hall of Fame status.

• Oh bravo.

• Doug confirms which Rimmer it is in the Dave Era.

  https://www.radiotimes.com/news/tv/2020-04-17/red-dwarf-which-rimmer/?fbclid=IwAR2ItiV6LkZB2p76Mv91K-MJ5UZmmvKOym4gnmVqO46fj0kjutIpj-tsZHw

• Well, yeah that’s what most assumed, but the tone is interesting.

  He seems to be semi-bemoaning not having time to sort out continuity issues/the fact that people care about continuity, but he wrote the episodes that ask the questions of the continuity in the first place.

  For what it’s worth, I don’t see why Rimmer being the OG one needs to be that big a deal, they’ve killed Rimmer before, in Timeslides, so saying Only The Good Rimmer snuffed it isn’t virgin territory, and holograms are probably backed up so just get a new version, preferably on some appropriately sized media.

• I like the cool futuristicy name of the website

• Well, yeah that’s what most assumed, but the tone is interesting.

  He seems to be semi-bemoaning not having time to sort out continuity issues/the fact that people care about continuity, but he wrote the episodes that ask the questions of the continuity in the first place.

  I read it differently – it felt like him choosing a kinder way of saying “yeah, but why would I want to waste screentime on a complex explanation of something that only a handful of fans care about?”

• Sadly, Doug later clarified that the Lister, Cat, Kryten and Holly we see in The Promised Land are the same ones who were in Series VIII.

• the rimmer in tpl is the same as the rimmer in series vii according to a hardlight hologram of doug naylor based on the human doug naylor and totally not based on the human doug naylor made by nanobots to be exactly the same as the human doug naylor the hardlight naylor was based on

• And the less said about the parallel universe Rob Grant the better.

• Morgan Jeffery using his position as the Associate Editor at leading UK entertainment website Radio Times to advertise his podcast uncredited, there.

  (Why does it use The Riddlers theme tune?)

• I wonder who played there Kochanski(s).

  Dominik Diamond (pre series 7) then Hugh Grant

• I never really found the missed the moon joke that funny. isn’t the point of the joke that the moon is huge and Holly still missed it? i imagine the joke works best if you believe Red Dwarf was right up close to the moon and holly missed the shot. but if Red Dwarf was a fair distance away, then the moon would look fairly tiny right? making the shot reasonably missable. which imo lessens the joke abit. and at no point did i think Red Dwarf was close by to make that funny for me.

  Unless i am missing something. in which case explain it to me.

• For me the point of the joke was all the build-up with Holly talking about just how precise all the calculations had to be for the plan to work, only for him to then reveal how inept he was by missing the target altogether.

• For me the point of the joke was all the build-up with Holly talking about just how precise all the calculations had to be for the plan to work, only for him to then reveal how inept he was by missing the target altogether.

  Exactly that, yes. The build-up implying that his calculations had to be absolutely perfect and if they were even the tiniest bit out, the consequences would be devastating… followed up by the news that he’s so far out he missed the moon entirely.

  It’s also all in the delivery as well, which I think was near perfect. Barely a beat before “oh no, I’ve missed” (or whatever the line is), delivered in exactly the same tone and nonchalance as his insistence that his calculations were so accurate. It was a laugh out loud moment for me.

• Yes. I wasn’t expecting anything from the special to immediately become an all-time great moment for any of the characters, but that managed it.

• Yeah, Norman totally sold it, the kind of line you could really expect from his original run on the show.

• Waffleman topic. In the instant reaction Ian, you say you thought Kryten was being killed off for good as a way to write Robert out as of the 4 main cast he is the one to have the hardest time making the show these days.

  Regardless of what is going on in terms of actually getting the show made (covid, GNP/Doug issues etc) or whether you think they actually would do it, do you think the show could return to Lister, Rimmer, Cat and Holly, had they decided to do this at the end of TPL.

  I’d like to hear more talk around that subject, if you think it could work, how it would affect the show, reactions to it etc.

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