Rimsy the Stupid?

he even seems to have a forehead-positioned symbol of some sort.
Sooo…is the gag that the Cats thought Lister was God but got the wrong person?

Rimmer wasn’t a hologram at the time.

…could it be McIntyre?

I think the other illustrations we see suggest that it’s a more generic saviour figure. 

Although I did quite like the version used in Promised Land that is more closely modelled on Lister.

I think the other illustrations we see suggest that it’s a more generic saviour figure.

Honestly those ones do look more like Craig.

Maybe they have the photo of Lister and Frankenstein as a reference point 

Maybe Holly could communicate with the cats in the hold, but I always got the impression he didn’t. After all, why not actively give them information and correct all their misunderstandings about Lister in that case, not just interrupt them making religious artwork to inform them that their creator Cloister the Stupid had dreads?

Of course, the subject of the cats is a minefield of things it’s better not to think about. Like how are there any food supplies left on the ship at all after they were used to feed 3 million years of cats? And how did all the cats leave the ship in big arks if they were confined to the hold?

Yeah, I assumed Holly sealed the cats and left them there until the background radiation was safe to give them access to other parts of the ship, which is the same time as Lister was revived. I never got the impression he’d communicated with them – but at the same time obviously Holly knows about the cats to some extent, as it’s him who explains them to Lister.

I’ve never sensed them working like replicators. In the opening scene Rimmer is literally cleaning a nozzle with a pipe cleaner.

i think they’re just futuristic dumb waiters 

Those early machines are weird anyway. Rimmer cleans the nozzle in the opening, but then when he orders chicken soup it arrives immediately on a mini dumb waiter style device. And they’re stocked with buckets and wellington boots. I still think it’s some kind of replicatory type thing. 

Those early machines are weird anyway. Rimmer cleans the nozzle in the opening, but then when he orders chicken soup it arrives immediately on a mini dumb waiter style device. And they’re stocked with buckets and wellington boots. I still think it’s some kind of replicatory type thing. 

The real question is how the fuck the microwave in Polymorph works. 

I think Holly knew about the cat race the whole time but couldn’t communicate with them, or just chose not to for some reason. That seems to be the case in IWCD at least, where he does worry briefly about all the supplies they’re using up but just leaves them to it and busies himself gurning and reading while the cats evolve. Alternatively there’s that Smegazine strip where he’s some kind of religious icon for the cats iirc

But the soup arrives immediately. It’s not a case of waiting for it to pour. Same as the bucket and wellies. They must have been waiting, prepared. And from what we can see, the soup comes from above where the nozzle was.

I think it’s replicators but they have Rimmer and Lister doing pretend makework because they’re useless but they can’t fire them. But unlike Star Trek replicators, these are made from pre-existing patterns which are limited. Kind of like the old sci-fi cartoon pills you pour water on and turn into a full meal. So they have a thousand servings of soup available in each vending machine and when you order one it’s immediately beamed in. 

I am definitely not just making this up on the spot to find away around a visual discrepancy and throwaway gag in the first two episodes. 

Actually, I honestly think the Future Echoes scene is written intended to be at least vaguely like a replicator, a machine that can just provide anything you want immediately, but it gets it hilariously wrong. And then that idea is never useful for the plot again so is quietly dropped.