Dark observation dome

[loadoftottnumb]

With apologies to Mr/Mz Warbodog for pinching  their thread title idea, I was thinking recently about how sad/grim it is that Rimmer’s fake dad and half brothers were so horrible to him, possibly because he wasn’t really a Rimmer. We don’t know if his brothers knew of course. 
There are other things in the Dwarf universe that are really grim, dead people having the choice between being trapped in a company controlled body so they can still work or staying dead, the gradually decaying corpses of the Nova 5 being served soup, Lister desperately trying to shag his mum, anyone have some more? 

Topic

[Renegade Rob]

I imagine indefinitely booting down a hologram is the moral equivalent of imprisoning Tzim-Sha in a stasis pod and then permanently sealing the building containing the stasis pod so that nobody can ever enter it to release him, for whatever that’s worth.  

[International Debris]

Or that the decision about who should repair the drive plate was delegated, and whoever it was delegated to didn’t know enough about Rimmer to avoid giving him the job.

Well, yes, it was probably the head technician, whoever that was. The captain probably doesn’t deal with every issue on the ship, otherwise there’d be no need for officers.

[cwickham]

Presumably it’s a result of being written much later, but Me2 does seem to forget that they had to shut down all non-essential power systems to sustain a second hologram, doesn’t it? Do the video player and cinema qualify as “essential”?

[RunawayTrain]

Can they turn off systems on specific decks to use that power for other things?  (Or in other words, ‘reroute’ that power, but this isn’t Star Trek.)

[Renegade Rob]

Presumably it’s a result of being written much later, but Me2 does seem to forget that they had to shut down all non-essential power systems to sustain a second hologram, doesn’t it? Do the video player and cinema qualify as “essential”?

I kind of assumed that since they only hang around between 2-3 sets at any given time, non-essential is the 95% of the colossal ship which still leaves plenty of wiggle room in the remaining 5% for a theater or karaoke bar on C deck or whatever.

Here’s a dark mundane observation: initially it seemed like Lister was bluffing when mentioning to Binks that they had a rather sturdy holo-whip in the munitions cabinet, but then four episodes later, Low Rimmer is wielding one. While it makes sense that the Low Dwarfers would have such implements of evil like a holo-whip and spinal implant chip, to what extent does the triplicator “create” new things? Are we to believe there was an already-existing holo-whip on the normal Red Dwarf, and if so… why the fuck would they have that? The least dark answer is if it’s a sex thing, like if George MacIntyre picked one up in his effort to still be a threat to people’s marriages while an intangible hologram.

It is possible that the triplicator creates things, like the maggots in the low strawberry (unless the maggots were also in the original strawberry, with the high strawberry actually having extra-tasty enlightened zen maggots). Maybe the holo-whip and spinal implant chip were solely creations of the Low Dwarfers, but if that’s the case, then they were damn productive in the one hour of their existence. Perhaps the triplicator has a temporal component to, because unless the high and low Dwarfers redecorated their whole ships really quickly right after being spawned into existence, it seems like the triplication isn’t one-to-one but is a little more qualitative and holistic, which is why the high sleeping quarters are decorated with enlightened new age stuff and not the BEST no-smoking signs and BEST cans of leopard lager (unless I missed that). Like it all seems lived-in, as if the high and low ships have been that way for some time and not just ten minutes, like they have their own “history.” But I digress, as I am wont to do.

[Dave]

Either way it feels like a holo-whip must be a thing that exists, for Lister to be able to mention it to Binks.

The least dark answer is if it’s a sex thing

I like that this is where we are now with this thread. 

[Renegade Rob]

Well yeah, it’s a dark observation dome, not a family-friendly hugs and lollipops observation dome.

[Flap Jack]

I think we have to assume that the triplicator can and does create things that aren’t just altered copies. The maggots are the prime example (because obviously the maggots are the key aspect of the low strawberry’s low-ness and not an inherent part of the original strawberry), but it also applies to lots of random stuff on the high and low ships, like the clothes and the horror video tapes and such.

So, maybe Red Dwarf Prime has a holo-whip, and maybe it doesn’t.

Worth noting that the holo-whip Low Rimmer has is functionally opposite to the one Lister references to Binks, if it exists. A whip that can be wielded by a hologram to attack a living person, compared to one that can be wielded by a living person to attack a hologram.

[Dave]

[tombow]

I’m sure this must have been discussed, but I always wondered how Rimmer could have been “explaining to the Captain why he hadn’t sealed the drive plate properly”. Surely if it had gone far enough for Rimmer to be in trouble people would have repaired it by then? Or did Rimmer see it was dangerous, intend to go to the Captain and tell him, and was in the process when the leak happened?

 

[International Debris]

People could have been working on repairing it while Hollister was giving Rimmer a bollocking. It wouldn’t have been him doing the repairs, after all. 

Head technician: Sir, the drive plate appears to have been misrepaired.
Hollister: Well, get somebody to fix it! You know how dangerous that could be.
Head technician: Already have done, sir. Petrovitch is on his way as we speak.
Hollister: Who’s responsible for this mess?
Head technician: Second technician Rimmer, sir.
Hollister: Sigh. Send him up to see me. Now.
Head technician: Yes, sir.
Hollister: And when I’m done with him, I want to see you too. You’d better have a good explanation for why you gave Rimmer such an important job. 

[Stabbim]

Presumably it’s a result of being written much later, but Me2 does seem to forget that they had to shut down all non-essential power systems to sustain a second hologram, doesn’t it? Do the video player and cinema qualify as “essential”?

well, given that Holly/Red Dwarf’s new prime directive post-accident is “Keep Lister Sane” perhaps they do.

[Moonlight]

which is retconed later on to be the entire Milky Way

I would vociferously argue that line about doing “jags up and down the Milky Way” is not meant to be taken as literally meaning the ship flies across the galaxy because that feels really, really out of line out of a retcon for Series 12 to be making. Why can’t it just be a colorful way of saying the ship gets around?

the general miasma of S8

What a good series of words.

[Warbodog]

Like it all seems lived-in, as if the high and low ships have been that way for some time and not just ten minutes, like they have their own “history.”

It seems more like it’s tapping alternate universes than creating things, since the alt crews are settled in and not acting like they were the regular characters a few minutes before. There’s the line about them not knowing what their Triplicator is for too.

…So where did that come from then? No, it doesn’t make any sense.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

which is retconed later on to be the entire Milky Way
I would vociferously argue that line about doing “jags up and down the Milky Way” is not meant to be taken as literally meaning the ship flies across the galaxy because that feels really, really out of line out of a retcon for Series 12 to be making. Why can’t it just be a colorful way of saying the ship gets around? 

Because for one it’s said in the same scene about finding helium 7 so needs to leave the solar system at the very least. 

As far back as series VIII Doug clearly had it in his head Red Dwarf was travelling between star systems, with the prisoners being exported to a penis colony on Adelphi 12

[Dave]

As far back as series VIII Doug clearly had it in his head Red Dwarf was travelling between star systems, with the prisoners being exported to a penis colony on Adelphi 12

With this image I’m finally realising that in fact Series VIII could actually have been worse.

[Dave]

[Renegade Rob]

As far back as series VIII Doug clearly had it in his head Red Dwarf was travelling between star systems, with the prisoners being exported to a penis colony on Adelphi 12

Not all the prisoners. Just Archie.

[Dave]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

[Ridley]

MAROONED VOICE: You were exported to a penis colony on Adelphi 12?

[International Debris]

Do I recall a novel retcon somewhere too? I certainly got the feeling that Red Dwarf was going further than the solar system long before Skipper.

and I agree that it’s a bad retcon and shouldn’t have happened. It’s the writers forgetting the show’s scrappy, low-stakes roots.

[Moonlight]

[Moonlight]

Do I recall a novel retcon somewhere too? I certainly got the feeling that Red Dwarf was going further than the solar system long before Skipper.

If I recall, Infinity explicitly states that interstellar travel was dead due to its impracticality by the time the book takes place.

[Stabbim]

Do I recall a novel retcon somewhere too? I certainly got the feeling that Red Dwarf was going further than the solar system long before Skipper.

 If I recall, Infinity explicitly states that interstellar travel was dead due to its impracticality by the time the book takes place.

It does, while explaining the stasis pods are vestigal from that era and now only used as brigs

It’s one of my favorite conceits about the Red Dwarf universe, relative to almost all other space based sci-fi.

It deftly solves the logistical problems of long-distance space travel by simply making it not worthwhile.  No aliens and nothing worth colonizing.  A fun anticlimax worthy of a sitcom approach to sci-fi.

Slots in nicely with AI inevitably becoming neurotic rather than evil.

[Renegade Rob]

But as a species, humans must have realized at some future point that they urgently needed to perfect long-distance space travel in order to find a habitable S3 planet suitable for building a wax droid theme park.  

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Or alternatively, it was created not as a theme park, but as an interactive epitaph to Earth and humanity by mechs, GELFs or one of the many synthetic or genetically engineered entities left in our wake, that thought they had a pretty good idea of how to accurately portray life as it was but in fact didn’t have a smegging clue and were making wild guesses and baseless assumptions. Hence all the mistakes and inaccuracies.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

They definitely rediscover a desire for interstellar, FTL travel post Red Dwarf leaving the solar system. And humanity certainly expands our beyond the limits of the solar system. 

[Moonlight]

So, did M-Corp own the Earth forever, or did they get overthrown eventually?

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Well seeing as M-Corp’s infrastructure outlasted human civilization to the extent that they were able to track down the very last human…

[Moonlight]

To be fair they didn’t track him down, they received a signal from Earth however many years late.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I thought it was from some sort of M-Corp update station somewhere much closer to Red Dwarf.  That’s then where all the supplies comes from, and where Lister gets beamed off too.

[Author]

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