Fan Theory Corner

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

So where did the pencil Dwarf come from?

    

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Author]

Posts