Fan Theory Corner

[Flap Jack]

I was surprised that I couldn’t find a dedicated thread for this topic, figured there shouldn’t be any harm in starting one (in theory).

What are your favourite/most noteworthy Red Dwarf fan theories? (Either ones you’ve come up with yourself, or ones you’ve heard from others.)

To start us off – Smeg Ups, Smeg Outs , Can’t Smeg, Won’t Smeg etc. are all canon. They take place off screen just before the end of ‘Back to Earth’. Lister is taking advantage of his new lucid squid dreaming to act out fantasies of being a real life TV character in the world where his life story is a popular comedy.

Topic

[Flap Jack]

I respect any effort to create a fan theory for Series VIII, because it has so many problems it’s almost a lost cause. Like a Bermuda Triangle of continuity. Although this does use my least favourite variant of the bootstrap paradox, where not only do ideas have no point of origin, but the very existence of objects and characters don’t have a point of origin either. Like I know that on paper it isn’t any less logical than a Tikka Xtended or Give & Take bootstrap paradox, but it just feels wrong to me.

I wonder what the motivation is for the Dwarfers to go back in time and nick the original Red Dwarf, when they don’t seem to object to its new design at all throughout Series VIII. Maybe it got irreparably damaged, so they go back in time to try and find the nanobots and get them to help, but then they can’t find the nanos and find the original ship instead?

Also I don’t think the theory explains the “how did the nanos recreate the crew when their remains should have been flushed into space, or they would be too decomposed” aspect, because the rest of the crew had abandoned ship by the end of Series VIII, so they couldn’t have been left in the past for the nanos to turn into a planetoid and then back again… and now that I’m typing it out I remember it was Holly’s nanobots that resurrected the crew anyway.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Maaaaaybe we make assumptions about what happened based on what we expect to happen 

The nanobots didn’t rebuild the ship and resurrect the crew. At least, not how we perceived it. 

They create a version of the ship from some of the material of the original Red Dwarf, but it’s tiny tiny. And they shrink Starbug and the crew down to fit inside. 

The end of series VIII isn’t a micro-organism eating the ship am from the inside out, it’s the nanobots construct falling apart. 

Those nanos create diversions to keep the crew from discovering their fate … fake planet with a crashed ship with a fake future predicting future. Pete is their creation. Timewand didn’t do shit. Nanos just whipped up a dinosaur. 

Helps resolve the material issue for the ship and the crew (only need bits of their DNA to rebuild miniture subatomic versions of them) and also helps shove VIII into more of a “whacky let’s ignore it box”. It in a way resolves the end of series VIII too. The ship and ultimately their reality around them are falling apart. And we know nanos work by building big and shrinking down to size. What if the reverse is true. They made tiny and in some why everything grows to size. But they fucked it up and it’s that growing that’s making this dinky reality they’ve created fall apart. 

They’re actually fairly safe as they return to proper size. They just don’t know it.  

[Flap Jack]

Ah, so when Red Dwarf seems too big at the end of Nanarchy, it’s actually normal size, and it’s Starbug and its crew that have been made small. It makes so much sense! … kind of.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Unrumble]

So where did the pencil Dwarf come from?

From itself. It was broken down by the nanobots to be used by the nanobots to recreate it based on the ship that was broken down by the nanobots to be used by the nanobots to recreate it based on the ship that was broken down by the nanobots to be used by the nanobots to recreate it based on the ship that was broken down by the nanobots to be used by the nanobots to recreate it based on the ship that was broken down by the nanobots to be used by the nanobots to recreate it based on the ship that was broken down by the nanobots to be used by the nanobots to recreate it based on the ship that was broken down by the nanobots to be 

[Flap Jack]

Pictured: Lister with a nanobot in Red Dwarf Series VIII (colourised)

[Dave]

Now I want a fan theory where pencil Dwarf travels back in time to replace the original short-Dwarf, with a ripple effect that results in all sorts of other small changes to the timeline, thus explaining Remastered as being canon without invalidating the original.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Now I want a fan theory where pencil Dwarf travels back in time to replace the original short-Dwarf, with a ripple effect that results in all sorts of other small changes to the timeline, thus explaining Remastered as being canon without invalidating the original.

[Frank Smeghammer]

I respect any effort to create a fan theory for Series VIII, because it has so many problems it’s almost a lost cause.

Any time someone starts to rehabilitate VIIIs image, just remember that they took a really interesting Sci-Fi comedy set in space and put it in a prison setting where people’s penises go on the loose and unconvincing dinosaurs run amok.

Obligatory of course

I wonder what the motivation is for the Dwarfers to go back in time and nick the original Red Dwarf, when they don’t seem to object to its new design at all throughout Series VIII. 

The answer to this is linked to the above – they’ve been in prison the whole time. If you really want to headcanon it, just remember that they really don’t know a hell of a lot about the Nano Dwarf they were put into. If you believe at the end of VIII they regained control of the ship then sky’s the limit as far as defects, design flaws and inconveniences go. It is after all a different design to the Dwarf we know and love

[Flap Jack]

The answer to this is linked to the above – they’ve been in prison the
whole time. If you really want to headcanon it, just remember that they
really don’t know a hell of a lot about the Nano Dwarf they were put
into. If you believe at the end of VIII they regained control of the
ship then sky’s the limit as far as defects, design flaws and
inconveniences go. It is after all a different design to the Dwarf we
know and love

Well, given the other times they’ve employed the “go back in time and steal from ourselves” method, Lister would either die if they didn’t (Give & Take), or he would die emotionally (Tikka to Ride Xtended), going back in time and stealing the old ship because they can’t be bothered to get used to the new ship layout seems like a bit of an overreaction.

Though if it isn’t that and it also isn’t that the ship was damaged and they were searching for nanobots to repair it, then what that leaves is the old “we have to do it because we’ve already done it” pre-destiny reasoning. But it doesn’t seem like there’s an obvious way for them to find out that they were the ones who stole Red Dwarf, as they already drew a line under that mystery.

[Moonlight]

I’m still waiting for an explanation of how the Blue Midget dance makes any goddamn sense in a simulation that’s supposed to be giving them a plausible escape through the luck virus. You’re forced to conclude the simulation is either invalidating itself by clouding our heroes’ judgement (nobody so much as questions how this is possible), which seems to happen several times, or that the Blue Midget dance is in fact literally possible in Red Dwarf (which is fucking stupid). Why couldn’t the keys have just been left in the ignition, so to speak?

I refuse to accept “it’s a dream, anything can happen” as an explanation that I’ve so often seen people throw out when it is NOT a dream where anything should happen. That is a very bad argument that completely ignores the actual plot of the story. They explicitly establish this is a realistic simulation meant to analyze behavior in a plausible escape scenario. Changing the way people behave automatically voids it. And speaking of which, Cat getting a convoluted puzzle nobody else could being the indication this is not reality means the simulation is definitely actively fucking with their behavior for some reason which 1000% makes it worthless as evidence, and I don’t think the writing is clever enough to realize this problem.

To be absolutely fair to the “it’s a dream, anything can happen” people though, they probably haven’t watched it in 20 years and I did a fan edit a few years ago that meant extensively watching over the thing many times.

[Warbodog]

or that the Blue Midget dance is in fact literally possible in Red Dwarf (which is fucking stupid).

I’d only seen the Remastered Blue Midget at the time, which does that chicken scratching thing, so I figured it might be weirdly alive in a way Starbug wasn’t.

The false teeth and the “logic” about Cat being smart stood out as the biggest nonsense. But I suppose the dentures could be pointlessly/cruelly AI like the toilets. There’s a fan theory.

[Frank Smeghammer]

I have often wondered why the simulation  is so bad at hiding itself but a few loose thoughts come to mind

1) Better Than Life in the TV Series also didn’t hide itself well. It fed on the desires of the main crew and twisted Rimmers thoughts beyond all recognition as a desire. It accidentally tapped into his tendancy for self-sabotage and misread it as desire. In the AR suite of Series VIII, Cats imagination is so poor and self absorbed that the only plausible escape route that came out of his brain was so absurd as to “give the game away”. It is his idea to dress as Duane Dibley. His idea to make Blue Midget dance. His “genius” with the “Exit” and “Power Sauce” solutions. Cat’s ego becoming fleshed out makes the unreality obvious.

2) The “psychotropic AR” deliberately throws absurdity into the mix to distract and disorient its subjects to try to throw them off the scent so to speak. When absurd things happen in your life, the last thing you think is “this isn’t actually happening”, you’re more likely to be overawed by the absurdity. Consider how little sense Back to Reality actually makes once you realise it is not reality. Have you ever had dreams that seemed so real but in the morning when you wake, you realise “hang on, that didn’t make a lick of sense!!”

In fact, it’s not the absurdity of their existence that gives it away but the mundanity of their escape. It’s precisely that the escape is so easy that the game is given away. The Blue Midget dance is in the realms of “you couldn’t make this up” and is a unique response to a sticky situation. It’s when they escape sticky situations with ease, rather than elaborate chicanery, that they suspect they aren’t really there.

[Flap Jack]

What if the AR simulation suite is like the 23rd century version of ChatGPT, where the tech executives of the day are just so desperate to prove that “smart AR” can replace the human-curated equivalent, that they deliberately overlook or tolerate when it gets random things wildly wrong all the time.

[Flap Jack]

The Promised Land confirmed definitively that cat-folk do have proper and individual names, which means that The Cat must have also had a proper name originally. It also revealed that he was uncool in his youth. So, the theory is that The Cat’s original name was in fact Duane. He repressed the memory of it after adopting his new cool persona, but the despair squid’s toxins uncovered it.

[Warbodog]

Cat didn’t react to the name in the hallucination at first though, until he twigged its wild, ironic humour at the same time as the audience. (Oh, you did say the memory was repressed, never mind).

The Cat Priest tells it like Cat was born after the sick and lame were left behind, and his father was an idiot, so maybe they just didn’t bother naming “the boy” specifically, and Rodon (who’d already left) learned of his existence later.

[Flap Jack]

Cat didn’t react to the name in the hallucination at first though, until
he twigged its wild, ironic humour at the same time as the audience.
(Oh, you did say the memory was repressed, never mind).

Also, a contributor to the theory is the possibility that the felis sapiens lore from IWCD – that cats don’t use names due to vanity – is still, like, half true. So they do have names, but they don’t use them nearly as often as humans do in speech or writing. Which means it wouldn’t be too weird for Cat to forget his original name once he’d spent so long as the only cat around.

The Cat Priest tells it like Cat was born after the sick and lame were
left behind, and his father was an idiot, so maybe they just didn’t
bother naming “the boy” specifically, and Rodon (who’d already left)
learned of his existence later.

Well, the dialogue in TPL does make it explicit that Rodon and Cat were around at the same time. He says he deliberately left him behind due to how uncool he was. Obviously this directly contradicts the priest’s version of events (as has been very much noted), but hey, maybe his memory was failing him in his old age.

Although, looking over the dialogue in Waiting for God, it seems like the priest never unambiguously confirms that The Cat was “the boy” born to “the cripple and the idiot”, he just confirms that “the idiot” was Cat’s father. So, here’s an extra, depressing theory for you: Rodon and Cat actually had another younger brother who was born after Rodon’s ship had left, and this third son was closer with the priest, but he ultimately died young.

… I think I probably prefer the “priest just misremembers things” theory, but, well, it’s an option.

[Warbodog]

[Unrumble]

[Moonlight]

I was rewatching Better Than Life and thinking that Rimmer’s turn towards the darkness feels a bit sudden, and like you’re missing one additional scene that hints at the idea of Rimmer’s imagination starting to betray him before it gets out of control.

And so it occurred to me, if the “This isn’t my fantasy!” “No, it’s mine!” moment is actually entirely Rimmer’s fantasy and this Cat is just another figment of his imagination, then we have a perfect example of Rimmer’s mind betraying him before everything goes out of control. I choose to accept this as canon.

[Warbodog]

Arlene Rimmer (5’4″) reflects Arnold Rimmer’s (5’11”) natural height if he hadn’t been regularly stretched on a rack as a child (is this a comedy?)

But I can’t really be bothered to work through the extrapolations and connect it to Arlene’s aggressive lechery.

[Ian Symes]

Assuming that the physiological differences between cis males and cis females are the same in the parallel world, Arlene is about average height and Arnold is only a couple of inches above. But who’s to say that Arlene’s biological-or-otherwise sadistic lecturer mum didn’t use the rack in the same way Arnold’s biological-or-otherwise sadistic lecture dad did?

[Rudolph]

We’d need to compare Arlene against her sisters, Joan, Francine and Hannah.

[International Debris]

Why do women in that universe have wider hips and larger breasts if they don’t carry children?

[Flap Jack]

Why do women in that universe have wider hips and larger breasts if they don’t carry children?

I mean we’re talking about an episode where going to a parallel universe causes Lister to grow a uterus, he gets pregnant presumably by sucking up gametes through his penis, and he’s able to carry that pregnancy to term and give birth even after returning to his own universe. By contrast, wider hips and larger breasts are pretty plausible quirks of evolution.

[International Debris]

Well, yeah.

[Formica]

Don’t forget that Back to Earth potentially implies there was a Polymorph episode in Series IX. (from here)

The Series IX polymorph was a mutated cousin of the classic polymorph, which could eat not just emotions but any trait. Kryten actually saw the polymorph leaving the ship disguised as Kochanski after it ate Krissy’s perceptibility. She’s still on RD but nobody can notice until they blast the damn thing.

[Dave]

She’s still on RD but nobody can notice until they blast the damn thing.

K-CORP

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

Old Timey Dwarf fen: “Will Doug write Red Dwarf? Or will he write it and kill it?”

RD: TOS: “He’ll um (mumbles)”

OTD fen: “Uh, you didn’t answer me, you just trailed off!”

[Ben Saunders]

Kryten actually saw the polymorph leaving the ship disguised as Kochanski after it ate Krissy’s perceptibility

very good.

[tombow]

It occurred to me in the past few years that Lister had a pretty sad life when he joined the Dwarf. He didn’t have any family left or long term friends. His lazy, slobby life meant he only ever had drinking buddies and didn’t have many ties back on earth. Which is why he obsessed over Kochanski so much as she was his only anchor to the idea of having family or people to care about.

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

Would *any* of *us* want to be friends with Lister? really?!

Given stuff like his story about spending six hours on the loo and the crappy way he treated Lisa Yates, we’d be soon wishing for Carrie White to come along and deal with the man who gives simpletons a bad name:

[Stabbim]

well that’s kinda the point with Lister, I think.

In some respects Lister would be a very terrible/frustrating friend to have (doubly so a roomate, Rimmer’s frustrations with being bunked with him are quite understandable and sympathetic).  He’s a drunk and a slob and a slacker and can be extremely gross in a lot of ways.

On the other hand, if you’re really up against it and he considers you a friend he’ll do his absolute best to come through for you. 

Partying with him would get tedious but it’d be worth it to have him have your back in a scrap.

It occurred to me in the past few years that Lister had a pretty sad life when he joined the Dwarf. He didn’t have any family left or long term friends. His lazy, slobby life meant he only ever had drinking buddies and didn’t have many ties back on earth. Which is why he obsessed over Kochanski so much as she was his only anchor to the idea of having family or people to care about.

I suppose this helps me answer my occasional question about why Lister doesn’t always seem to miss/mourn Petersen Selby & Chen as much as I often feel he should (beyond the meta-knowledge that it doesn’t make particularly good TV to repeatedly make the same references to them without ever showing them).  Great drinking buddies, but they were replaceable and replacements themselves.  With Kochanski being his brief taste of what that “normal” life he never really had could be like.

Mining is a tough, dangerous, lonely job.  Space mining would be exponentially more so.  The Lister character pretty much needs to be the sort of lonely, directionless sad sack who “has no life”.  Enough of a “loser” that he’d actually be willing to sign up for several years of a dead-end shit job that has to pay well because it’s so miserable nobody would ever do it otherwise.  Outside of his actual literal life, he’s got nothing to lose; the one sort of person for whom signing on to do grunt work for the JMC/on The Red Dwarf might actually be worth it.

[Warbodog]

In some respects Lister would be a very terrible/frustrating friend to have (doubly so a roomate, Rimmer’s frustrations with being bunked with him are quite understandable and sympathetic).  He’s a drunk and a slob and a slacker and can be extremely gross in a lot of ways.

He almost gains some self-awareness about this when left to take care of himself in Me2, but then the story gets in the way.

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

Yeah, as much of an arse Rimmer can be, I’d be happy to befriend him and not Lister.

Rimmer would like this which he can never get:

But, given Lister is at least well into his twenties when we learn why he plays AR “Wimbledon” in Gunman, there is a disturbing reason he might watch this:

t 

[Flap Jack]

See what you’ve done, Grant and Naylor?! If we’d had new Red Dwarf since 2020 then the community wouldn’t have had enough downtime for “Rimmer may be a sexist creep but at least he isn’t a paedo like Lister” to germinate. Announce Series XIII now, or the dearth of new takes will only make things worse.

[tombow]

Uh Lister clearly tells us the ball girls are not jail bait. Why he’s no guiltier than Russell Brand!

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Page 61 of Lolita begs to differ.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

Paul McCartney age 22 sung “I Saw Her Standing There”. Lister seems to have had the same view as his fellow Scouser – the ball girl is young, beautiful – and freshly at the age of consent. Remember 17-year-olds are usually in Year 11 and Lister like Macca was in his 20s.

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

Forget “Revenge of the Surfboarding Killer Bikini Vampire Girls”, Gunmen of the Apocalypse indicates why Lister’s *real* favorite horror character must be the villain of “Orphan” (2009):

[Dave]

This thread has taken a weird turn.

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

[RunawayTrain]

Remember 17-year-olds are usually in Year 11 and Lister like Macca was in his 20s.

Year 12 is when you turn 17.  Year 11 is 15/16.

Doesn’t make it much better of course!  If anything Sixth Form might be a bit more vulnerable: feeling all grown up, no longer wearing a school uniform, overall probably perceived more as a young woman than a schoolgirl.  And of course back then 17yos may well have left education completely and be in the world of work.  Which all could lead those around them to not protect them as they should, and not acknowledge the inappropriateness of older men being Interested.

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

Obviously, there’s off-screen footage from Meltdown where Lister takes time off from legging it with Cat and Honest Abe to discuss with Rasputin what it was like with Tsar Nicholas II’s daughters. When Rasp starts discussing Tsarevitch Alexei, Lister completely loses interest and does a Speedy Gonzales for the Good Wax Droid hideout.

[Jonathan Capps]

Sonic Screwdriver, whatever your game is could you tone it down a little bit?

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

Sorry, sometimes a joke is funnier in my head.

[Frank Smeghammer]

Sonic Screwdriver, whatever your game is could you tone it down a little bit?

I like them, whoever they are. Injecting their signature weirdness into every thread

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

[Author]

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