Jokes you don't/didn't get

[bloodteller]

i know there’s the thing of “the joke isn’t funny if you explain it” but were there ever gags in Red Dwarf you didn’t get? and if so, what?

i never quite got what Cat’s “stan and ollie” line in White Hole was about, for example. nor did i get what “see you in ten minutes?” (repeat x10) from Pete was all about, and also Rimmer’s “steers and queers, which are you boy?” joke from Meltdown

Topic

[Dave]

Yeah, there’s quite some contrast between the pub in Ouroboros and the pub in Timeslides.

Maybe it was just a faux-futuristic interior design trend that everyone had grown out of by the time Lister was in a band.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I’d never really considered it to be futuristic. But now you mention it, and I just rewatched it, I see where you’re coming from.

I always say it as really dive-y and rough, which it is, but it definitely has elements of future in it.

The door is a futuristic coffin shape, I’d never notice the twinkly lights outside but they’re there … and it makes it look more like the interior of a space station than a pub in Liverpool. Especially with everything being metal and riveted.

I don’t think the clothing really matters too much. Lister just has a similar style to the people he grew up around. Except for a brief period in his teens when he ostensibly rebelled and dressed like a disco ball with wings.

Other than Timeslides and Ouroborus, we don’t see any other future Earth so it’s hard to say what it’s like really.

The Aigbuth Arms is future-y, but there’s plenty of old pubs and buildings that stand now from hundreds of years ago. It’s not unusual for the pub in Timeslides to have a 1980s interior feel, when there’s pub that have pre-victorian feels knocking around.

Other than that, we see rich Lister and a butler. And upperclass “fashion” always seems to revolve around suits and shit so that stands that it would survive.

[clem]

The Aigbuth Arms is future-y, but there’s plenty of old pubs and buildings that stand now from hundreds of years ago. It’s not unusual for the pub in Timeslides to have a 1980s interior feel, when there’s pub that have pre-victorian feels knocking around.

Isn’t the pub in Timeslides meant to be The Aigburth Arms as well then? I like Dave’s theory for why it looks the way it does in Ouroboros because I always think that scene’s a bit naff, too sort of route-one dystopian future. Alternatively, by the time Smeg and The Heads are playing there The Aigburth Arms has become a late 1980s theme pub.

[Dave]

In fairness one or two of the clubs I used to go out to in the 90s looked quite like the Ouroboros pub design – all hard angles and industrial materials, like a zone from the Crystal Maze but where you could get shitfaced.

So it’s reasonable to think it could just be a fashion thing and yeah, maybe Smeg and the Heads are playing in a retro place, a deliberately old-fashioned boozer.

[International Debris]

The Ouroboros pub is a really, really ninetiesy vision of the future. It feels kind of quaint now. But it fits the era of the show quite well, because VII in particular feels like everything exists in a sci-fi universe, whereas the III pub fits its own era well because the reality of the show was still pretty down-to-earth and humdrum at that point.

[GlenTokyo]

The Ouroboros pub is a really, really ninetiesy vision of the future. It feels kind of quaint now. But it fits the era of the show quite well, because VII in particular feels like everything exists in a sci-fi universe, whereas the III pub fits its own era well because the reality of the show was still pretty down-to-earth and humdrum at that point.

The universe of Red Dwarf got a bit more dystopian around III really, got our first genetically engineered life form, then simulants, the first book came out too which is also on it’s way to dystopia if not dystopian. I’ve not read it for a while but I feel like it is, grungy brothels, grand theft auto, massive corporations running everything, companies blowing up stars for advertising purposes etc.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Isn’t the pub in Timeslides meant to be The Aigburth Arms as well then?

I never thought it was, just a random pub the band were playing in.

The Ouroboros pub is a really, really ninetiesy vision of the future.

It looks like part of a Laser Quest arena which would track with exactly that.

[Jenuall]

Yeah the Laser Quest comparison is spot on.

I much prefer series III’s “the future hasn’t really changed much” vibe. The inclination when doing anything Sci-Fi is to portray the future as being a complete change from what we have today – flying cars! holograms everywhere!! cyborg people!!! NEON!!!!!

But the reality is that these never pan out – yes technology develops and styles change, but never in the ridiculous way that most sci-fi tends to suggest. Back to the Future’s 2015 looks ridiculous now, Blade Runner’s 2019 likewise. Most projections of the future from sci-fi are inherently stupid and rarely reflect on the realities of how a society actually progresses.

That’s why Timeslides “just a normal pub” always felt great to me, even if the fact it looked that way was almost certainly down to budget/time reasons rather than any particular desire to show the future as “basically the same as now”

[Warbodog]

Back to the Future’s 2015 looks ridiculous now, Blade Runner’s 2019 likewise.

Not really good examples though, Back to the Future was doing jokes about the future extrapolating 1980s trends mixed with hokey sci-fi tropes and Blade Runner’s all unrealistically symbolic and deliberately anachronistic.

[International Debris]

Yeah, the actual ‘futuristic’ stuff we have all feels a bit more mundane. 25 years ago, something like Alexa would have been mind-blowing, as would iPhones and vaccines with microchips sending biodata to Bill Gates (lol), but they’re things that crept up and became day-to-day household items.
There are definitely differences in interior decor – we’re in a very stark era of plain while walls in homes and craft beer pubs with exposed piping – but the Aigburth Arms feels really cartoony because it’s going for ‘sci-fi’ rather than ‘fashion’.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I know with Red Dwarf we’re talking hundreds of years rather than a few decades, but even then you can usually point to things and see the progression.

Like, iPhones might be mind blowing but also you can break them down to all the different things that did exist in the 70s and 80s and just track their development 30-40 years on.

And we’ve had sci-fi prepping us for a lot of these things for decades. Phones, smart watches, computers that talk … hell, Red Dwarf is in a way partly responsible for our easy acceptance of things like Alexa.

Whilst decor and styles change, core functions don’t. Like, why the fuck would you hang a pool table form the ceiling? And why, after millennia of doors being rectangular, would you suddenly make them any other shape? Especially on a planet.

[Warbodog]

‘Grav-Pool’ suggests the table should hover like a Star Trek anti-grav pallet, so I can only make sense of the chains meaning that either

a) the table’s knackered and no longer gravs, adding to the character of the place (my preferred option, but a bit too subtle)

b) it’s turned off, they turn on the anti-grav and remove the chains when someone wants to play, presumably with a blue glow and distracting hum… then have to bother chaining it to the ceiling again after

c) the show couldn’t work out how to make the table float convincingly, so this was a shit compromise on the day

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

‘Grav-Pool’ suggests the table should hover like a Star Trek anti-grav pallet, so I can only make sense of the chains meaning that either

You say that, and I suspect that is what they were going for. But …

Grav-pool is just “gravity-pool” … which is just normal pool. It’s not Anti-Grav or Zero-G.

That said I prefer option A of your solutions to the chains.

[Warbodog]

I used to have the idea it was like air hockey and the balls would hover and glide or something, but that sounds even less appealing to play than normal pool on an unnecessarily hovering table. No idea, but watching that Ouroboros clip again after reading these descriptions was funny.

[Jenuall]

I always assumed it was something along the lines of air hockey as well, even if the thought of hitting some kind of floating balls around a table suspended from chains sounds like a terrible way to spend time!

[Dave]

When I first watched it I think I visualised it as some kind of 3D pool where the balls could go up in the air as well as along the table. A cube-shaped table essentially. How that would actually work though, fuck knows.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

surely the point of pool is that it’s played on a single plane.

Unless you made the “table” the inside of a cub and somehow where able to play in that 3D space from the outside

[Dave]

Yeah, I hadn’t really fully thought it through. But then neither had they.

(Essentially 3D pool is what Lister plays with planets though, isn’t it.)

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Pool with planets is sort of meant to be the exception though isn’t it. Lister sees it as 2D and says he’ll take the shot, but Rimmer reminds him that, amongst other things, it’s a 3D situation.

He also has the benefit of being able to fire a nuclear warhead into a sun to take the shot.

[Warbodog]

Grav-pool is just “gravity-pool” … which is just normal pool. It’s not Anti-Grav or Zero-G.

So maybe there is Zero-Gee Pool that’s more popular in the 22nd century but more expensive to buy and this is a Classic Pool table that pathetically wants to be the next best thing by wobbling when players lean on it.

[ChrisM]

I think that maybe the chains are meant to keep the grav-pool table from moving too far away from a set location rather than to hold the table up, although that might have been their function in our real world that lacks anti-gravity technology.

I.e. imagine the table hovering without anything to tether it. Any little bump would send it flying across the room. The chains would prevent that.

That amount of chains does seem rather overcompensating, though.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

So they are a solution to a problem created by inventing a game that in itself is rather untenable.

Just put bloody legs on your table and let gravity do its job!

[si]

I always figured the chains would get in the way of anyone trying to lean over the table to take a shot.

[Flap Jack]

Grav-Pool is actually played on a completely normal pool table, but with modified game rules written by Pool World Champion of the 22nd century, Arabella Gravenstein.

[Jenuall]

I always figured the chains would get in the way of anyone trying to lean over the table to take a shot.

The 23rd century equivalent of getting stuck trying to play a shot where the table is too close to a wall

[Jonsmad]

The cinzano joke thread that was more than settled by robs tweet and Ian’s detailed logical analysis of comedy. I’ve just heard it in a version front Doug and rob in son of cliche’ weird dimension episode. Chris Barrie reading describes the dawn of time and says if the whole of time was a day with a party dinosaurs turn up late drunk, and mankind doesn’t arrive until 3am and there is only Cinzano left to drink.

[Jenuall]

Just reading back over the history of this topic now to find that one.

Wow. Some people actually thought the joke was that Cinzano Bianco would stain the table?! :D

I got a good laugh off that, so thanks crazy interpretation people!

[International Debris]

Happy to inspire some smugness.

[Jenuall]

I wasn’t intending to engage smug mode there so apologies if it came across like that!

[Jenuall]

Not really a joke I didn’t get, more one that doesn’t really make sense on any deeper inspection: Cat’s “lucky you didn’t order a double cheeseburger!” line in Bodyswap.

It’s a great line and definitely worthy of the laugh it gets, but it doesn’t really work within the logic of the situation. The joke interpretation is along the lines of ‘a double cheeseburger is a bigger order than a milkshake and crunchy bar therefore would result in an even worse outcome for them!’ except the reality is that nothing about the rewiring implies it would have caused a bigger problem. Either ordering anything from the vending machine would have triggered the self destruct or each order would have been wired up to something entirely random so a cheeseburger would have caused something entirely different and most likely not as bad!

[Dave]

I think you’ve just summarised exactly why it’s funny.

[Warbodog]

Yeah, that’s always made it a bit funnier for me. We’re conditioned to laugh at whatever he’s going to say anyway, and it comes out more hahadoesntevenmakesense!

[Warbodog]

If we’re going to ruin jokes through internally consistent logic, gynaecologist Rimmer’s deathday cake would be a speculum – not what you thought!

Actually, shouldn’t Holly’s postman example have really been ‘postbox’ to set up the punchline? The mental image comes through pretty clear anyway.

(Lister baking him that cake is a nice callback to Balance of Power).

[Pete Part Three]

LISTER: Oh, I don’t know, you know. I had this Geography teacher, Miss Foster. She took us on a school summer camp trip to Deganwy. I had the tent next to hers, right. And in the middle of the night I was woken up by this really weird noise. _She_ didn’t think men were better than machines.

I get this joke. I just want to point out that I think it’s rubbish, so I’m posting it here.

[Jenuall]

These episodes are 30 years old at this point, all that’s left to do is over analyse the jokes!

[International Debris]

Ah yes, the “lol sex toys” joke. I didn’t get it on first watch, it clicked not too long after, and I’ve still never laughed at it.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Boring sods, I think it’s amusing.

Maybe she was shagging her service robot.

[Jenuall]

It’s not the best joke in the world but it gets a chuckle from me at least. Craig potentially oversells the line a bit

[Jonathan Capps]

It’s not the best joke in the world but it gets a chuckle from me at least. Craig potentially oversells the line a bit

I think this is it, but then I actually like the “what’s an iguana?” joke, even Craig’s delivery so what do I know.

[Dave]

Maybe she was shagging her service robot.

I think there’s a Kochanski/Kryten fanfic in this.

[Jenuall]

I’d be 99% sure that such fanfic already exists.

Kryten would be a safer fuck than Hudzen-10, that guys groinal attachment can snap bricks in half!

It’s not the best joke in the world but it gets a chuckle from me at least. Craig potentially oversells the line a bit

I think this is it, but then I actually like the “what’s an iguana?” joke, even Craig’s delivery so what do I know.

The iguana line often gets held up as evidence of Craig’s early crap acting (and it kind of is) but I quite like the innocence with which he belts it out!

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

It’s just occurred to me … we all point to Dear Dave as a crap repeat of an earlier better joke, Lister humping a vending machine and Rimmer walking in. But actually, Kryten given Kochanski the heimlich maneuver is closer to the Polymorph original … as it’s clearly meant to look like he is ramming her from behind, but there’s no character to walk in and catch it.

[Warbodog]

I didn’t take it as sexual, but I haven’t watched the episode since I was about 12. Just watched the clip again and I still don’t think that’s the intention, but the visual is there.

[Dave]

I’d be 99% sure that such fanfic already exists.

It was a reference to a once-infamous fanfic that does indeed exist.

Click if you dare.

[Dave]

It’s just occurred to me … we all point to Dear Dave as a crap repeat of an earlier better joke, Lister humping a vending machine and Rimmer walking in. But actually, Kryten given Kochanski the heimlich maneuver is closer to the Polymorph original … as it’s clearly meant to look like he is ramming her from behind, but there’s no character to walk in and catch it.

See also: Officer Rimmer.

[Pete Part Three]

I didn’t take it as sexual, but I haven’t watched the episode since I was about 12. Just watched the clip again and I still don’t think that’s the intention, but the visual is there.

I think the visual was only ever selling that intention when it was used in the opening credits sequence.

[International Debris]

I would imagine everyone involved was aware of how it looked and certainly didn’t play down any humour the audience would have got from that interpretation, but at the same time the joke clearly works just as well (however well that is) without needing that element.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Here’s something I’ve realised I’ve never understood. Who were The Boston Doyles? Presumably a family of notoriety and money? But who? Is it something the show made up?

I did a quick google and the main results point to a reason of Mafia Romance books

[GlenTokyo]

Here’s something I’ve realised I’ve never understood. Who were The Boston Doyles? Presumably a family of notoriety and money? But who? Is it something the show made up?

I did a quick google and the main results point to a reason of Mafia Romance books

Would be right up Rob and Doug’s street for it to be Boston, Lincolnshire as apposed to Boston, Massachusetts. Have everyone thinking of a rich family descended from the pilgrims that arrived on the Mayflower or something, when in fact it was a bloke called Fred Doyle who played up front for Boston United FC in the 1974-75 season.

[Dave]

Is it something the show made up?

I always assumed this.

[Author]

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