Is Justice a deliberate retcon…or is Kryten lying?

The whole drive plate thing never made much sense to me anyway. Why would a mere 2nd technician, more used to ensuring that the chicken soup nozzle on vending machines wasn’t clogged, be entrusted with repairing such a vital piece of equipment such as the drive plate? Rimmer may have guilt over the incident but he still blames Lister for it, saying that if he had some help while fixing it, it wouldn’t have happened. So if Lister was unavailable as he was in stasis, why wasn’t someone else assigned to help Rimmer?

>The whole drive plate thing never made much sense to me anyway. Why would a mere 2nd technician, more used to ensuring that the chicken soup nozzle on vending machines wasn’t clogged, be entrusted with repairing such a vital piece of equipment such as the drive plate?

it’s implied in Back In The Red that repairing the drive plates is an incredibly easy task- presumably Rimmer was given the job of fixing them because Hollister assumed that not even Rimmer was stupid enough to botch such an easy task.

I’m leaning towards retcon now, and that’s weird.

I’ve always taken that scene as Kryten not denying the events, but putting the blame on the yo-gurt who assigned the task to someone inept who was bound to fail, and the Justice computer conveniently finding that an acceptable excuse.

But reading the dialogue, Kryten rejects the possibility it even happened, and the verdict is “It is not possible for you to have committed the crimes.” Even though it is possible because it did happen (at least in the original continuity).

Also Skipper confirms Rimmer’s claim that if Lister was here the crisis would have been averted by showing us the universe in which Lister becomes captain. In that episode he also mentions a cash payoff to keep shtum and I think implies that he discovered the fault, so perhaps we can take that to mean that a radiation leak was not a known possibility at the time of Rimmer fixing the drive plate, so the idea that the job wasn’t seen as thay critical works. Now that’s a retcon.

>I think it’s pretty well-established in-universe that Rimmer was responsible for the leak though.

No Kochanski relationship + 169 crew members were also concrete facts from dialogue in multiple episodes, that’s why it seems like it might be another of those post-novel retcons that’s less obvious. I can’t remember if/when Rimmer’s drive plate culpability is mentioned again, but the continuity’s a mish-mash in VIII and beyond.

No Kochanski relationship + 169 crew members were also concrete facts from dialogue in multiple episodes, that’s why it seems like it might be another of those post-novel retcons that’s less obvious.

Yeah, I suppose that’s fair. But then why would Rimmer feel guilty about it?

The interesting thing about Justice is that the judgement process is not like The Inquisitor, so it’s not as though Rimmer is judging *himself* as being guilty over the incident. In fact, one of the best gags of the episode is that he stands in his prison shoes fully expecting to be cleared and allowed in, and then is unpleasantly surprised when he’s reminded of what he did.

To me, that suggests that the guilt is sincere but buried deep down, subconsciously, to the point where Rimmer doesn’t even consciously think of himself as guilty of the deaths he caused. I think that runs counter to the self-delusion scenario that Kryten outlines.

The trouble is, I think Kryten’s argument is *so* convincing that even the viewers start to think to themselves “yeah, hang on, how could Rimmer get anywhere near something that important?”. And I think that disconnect is exacerbated by the rewrites to The End that makes Second and Third Technicians more lowly than originally intended.

I think the truth lies somewhere between the idea of Rimmer being as deluded and buffoonish as Kryten argues, and the idea that he’s solely responsible. The truth is that he’s someone incompetent who was tasked with something that was too complicated and important for him to handle, and he cocked it up as a result.

I always just thought he was tricking the mind probe by leaving out certain bits of truth, but I don’t think anything Kryten says implies Rimmer wasn’t responsible in canon.

By going on about how inexplicable it’d be that they’d get a vending machine repair man to fix a drive plate he convinces the probe that it’s merely misplaced guilt rather than actual culpability despite the fact Rimmer was sent to repair the driveplate, because he knows that the only evidence the probe has to work with is Rimmer’s mind, not records and CCTV, as such the probe knows what kind of person Rimmer is, the “his ship, his fault” stuff and lets him off.

Simply

Is Rimmer guilty/ does he feel guilt?

Yes

Does Rimmer think the smooth running of Red Dwarf is his responsibility?

Yes

Considering his rank, is it likely he would have been asked to repair the driveplate?

No

As such not guilty.

because he knows that the only evidence the probe has to work with is Rimmer’s mind, not records and CCTV

It does rather show up the nonsensical nature of the process. Why consider evidence and facts when you can just test whether someone feels subjectively guilty about it?

Presumably genuine psychopaths who know they are culpable but feel no remorse or guilt for their crimes would get off scott free every time.

I assumed Holly fixed it afterwards. Which makes you wonder why he didn’t just do it in the first place.

>So did the enormous explosion fix the drive plate all on its own? Or is Red Dwarf now operating without a drive plate?

if i recall correctly it’s mentioned in various bits of dialogue that there’s more than one drive plate, so presumably if just one blows up it doesn’t stop the ship from working. e.g. “There’s a potentially lethal scenario involving drive plates, sir. If one of these plates is misrepaired…”. So for all we know there’s thousands of drive plates onboard the ship, whatever they actually are.

It’s also odd that IV doesn’t retcon things the same way they did in the novels, where the crew was 11,000+ and it starts in the late 22nd century (eventually used in Ouroboros, which also mentions Kryten Rimmering the Nova 5 crew).

Did 11,169 sound like too many to be funny in Justice? Did “enlightened 22nd century guy” not have the right cadence?

Also, how come the justicefield didn’t discover Kryten’s guilt over the deaths of the Nova 5 crew? Ok, it was an accident, but he’s at least technically guilty of that as Rimmer is of killing the Red Dwarf crew.

It isn’t retconned as Kryten’s fault until series VII, is it?

Wasn’t it his fault in the book?

is it ever established in the book that him ‘cleaning’ the computer and causing the ship to crash was what actually killed the crew, though? they aren’t dead by the end of the chapter, so i always just assumed they lived out the rest of their lives stuck on the ship with Kryten, rather than them all dying in the crash.

> But you’d have thought he at least subliminally knew as he had the idea to put them in wigs.

Maybe Kryten thought when they had become skeletons that they had just ‘gone grey’.

Back to Reality, not DNA. I was getting my mysterious ancient corpses mixed up.

I haven’t seen the sixth sense because the twist ending has been ruined by the simpsons, scrubs, the lonely island etc. It’s now common knowledge like what’s the capital of France and what colour is the sky.

Is there anyone left who doesn’t already know the twist ending of Planet of the Apes (1968)?
If references in things like The Simpsons hadn’t already spoiled it for you, then simply look at the cover of the home video release. Or watch the recent reboot/prequel trilogy.

>Is there anyone left who doesn’t already know the twist ending of Planet of the Apes (1968)?

My wife didn’t know it, but assumed what was going on straight away, since it’s blatant if you watch enough sci-fi and Twilight Zone specifically. She was also unspoiled when we watched Empire Strikes Back, Sixth Sense, all Nu Who regenerations except the last one (only because I told her), Simpsons-spoiled Twilight Zones, and basically all films and TV. She won’t watch Red Dwarf though.

>Literally how?

Different cultural background, or just bad taste pre- my great taste. Things sometimes remind her of childhood anime I have no knowledge of. Even if you once saw an “I am your father” parody with some robot-looking guy 10 years ago, there are lots of things with robot-looking guys.

>I’d also forgotten that Kryten refers to Rimmer as a “retard” at one point. Urgh.

i wonder what the initial reaction to that line was at the time? surely it can’t have been considered such a horrible word at the time if it was being casually used on BBC 2.

My wife didn’t know it, but assumed what was going on straight away

Ha, my girlfriend was the same – I hid the DVD sleeve from her before watching, but after five minutes after they landed she said “I bet they’re back on Earth”