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

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Jenuall]

Yeah I always just assumed it was a riff on the whole “guys never call you back” thing, it doesn’t really scan in any particularly logical way but then it’s a throwaway gag so it’s not really meant to be analysed in detail!

[Rudolph]

Red Dwarf exists in a world where toasters, toilets and even shoes are endowed with a personality and identity. Contraceptives seem par for the course.

[Moonlight]

I missed this line for like half my life until running into it on Frinkiac. It’s over the first blood splatter that apparently wasn’t the first blood splatter.

[clem]

Conversely that gag was spoiled somewhat for those of us who read the script in Primordial Soup before seeing the episode.

[Dave]

Yeah that joke is almost entirely lost in the final episode due to the loud audience reaction over the top of it. A shame as it’s a good gag.

[Jenuall]

It’s one that I recall missing on the first few watches back in the 90s but seems clear as day now, I’m assuming the audio is just much better on modern formats and it allows the dialogue to be heard more clearly.

Never been entirely sure why the guy needs to be eating a burger in the middle of a Psiren invasion but there you go!

[International Debris]

I always found the expositiony nature of it a bit tedious. Would have preferred something more like “oh no, my burger!” or something rather than him literally narrating what the Psiren is doing, to the Psiren.

[Flap Jack]

I’ve just listened to the Queeg DwarfCast, and they suggest in it that Holly saying “We are talking April, May, June, July and August Fool” could be literal and mean that his Queeg prank lasted 4-5 months.
So I’m going to break with tradition for this thread and not catalogue my own joke misunderstanding, but catalogue another’s as a noteworthy joke misunderstanding in Red Dwarf fan history.

[Ian Symes]

That wasn’t a misunderstanding as such, it was a deliberately alternative interpretation. I think.

[Flap Jack]

That’s fair. It did seem like you guys were fully convinced that was the secret authorial intent of the line by the end of it though.

I’m just saying, with enough enthusiasm from both sides we could make April-August Fool the next Cinzano Bianco.

[pi r squared]

In Skipper, Rimmer makes a reference to Lister putting a bit of Doner kebab on his profile pic to make him “look like Freddie Mercury”. Is the joke supposed to be that Lister is actually trying to make him look like Hitler, and Rimmer’s too oblivious to realise he’s being compared to a Fascist… or is it literally Lister trying to make him look like Freddie?

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

If memory serves Jon suggests the April May etc joke thing as being the actual length of time right?

Whilst there’s nothing to back it up, there’s nothing to discredit it either and I think if you want to take it as head canon you can.

There’s a few instances in s02 where they seem to be trying to push the in show time forward more than you would expect, like Queeg saying they’ve been flying around in circles for 14months, but there’s also a comment in Stasis Leak from Rimmer that its been three years.  So the idea Queeg has been at it for 6month could easily play into Doug and Rob pushing inshore time forward several months between episodes / years between series.  Which is curious as later they really down play it.  Series 5 is only 4 years, series 8 is 5/6 years etc

[Warbodog]

Also 3,000,002 years in Kryten, which works out despite that being recorded later than Stasis Leak, so it doesn’t seem they were paying too much attention to their own continuity (staggeringly).

An odd one is the throwaway comment that Lister spent 10 years as a trolley attendant before joining Red Dwarf. So he would have started the job at 12 or 13? Though he was an early starter in other fields too.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I can see Lister being a trolly attendant through his teens. 

He’s 25 in Future Echos. And had been with the company 18months in The End. So if he joined at 23, being 13 parking trollies isn’t entirely implausible. 

[Flap Jack]

There’s certainly no absolute proof that Queeg’s regime wasn’t that long, but given how immediately unbearable it was for everyone, I really struggle to imagine it lasting for more than a week or two (also it would be quite depressing if it lasted for months, and I’m not sure they’d ever forgive Holly.)

Strangely I never got the vibe that they were trying to advance time more than normal in Series 2, I always remember them saying “it’s been X years” at various points in the show, and X being the current series number minus 1. But regardless, the 2 year gap between mid series 1 and mid series 3 has room for a 5 month Queeg era if you want it to be there.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Well, the next thing Holly immediately does is invent the Holly Hop drive.  Maybe he is trying to get back into their good graces.

I absolutely believe it is written as a joke, i.e. Holly is just saying it was so big a prank that its more than April fools.  But I’m also absolutely willing to believe it did last 5 or 6 months because, as depressing as that would be, it makes it far more interesting in my mind.

Holly is there to keep them occupied, and he did that for half a year by giving them an authority figure and making them work.

[loadoftottnumb]

The ‘3 years thanks Pal I’m off’ could include the 18 months they spent together pre-accident. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

The line before that is “I gave you the best years of my death”

So it could include those 18months, but it doesn’t read like that.

[Flap Jack]

I guess the Holly Hop Drive might have been to get them to forgive him, but you think they would still be majorly pissed off with him before he unveils it.

[Warbodog]

Series III has a gap of at least 9 months. Though Lister still claims to be 25 and continuity starts to fall apart.

“Five years’ time” in Stasis Leak feels like they were setting it comfortably distant so they’d never have to deal with it.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> Series III has a gap of at least 9 months
And vii has a gap of at least 9 months, if not longer as baby Lister clearly isn’t new born.

Also, re the stasis leak “in five years time” … wouldn’t Kochanski, who has known grown to love Lister, want to ease Lister’s suffering and rescue the younger version from 5 years of stuck alone in deep space?  Shouldn’t she insist on young Lister staying at the very least, knowing it would kill future Lister, but knowing it was potentially the best scenario for him.</font>

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

No way, on your space bike!

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Though Lister still claims to be 25 and continuity starts to fall apart.

Maybe he started taking stints in stasis like Rimmer used to do, in a well-meaning but ultimately futile effort to extend his lifespan long enough to reach Earth while still actually participating in activities around the ship.

[Warbodog]

Not a joke. but a premise I didn’t really ever get was what was going on with Stasis Leak Kochanski. Whether she was:

a) a post-The End Kochanski who future Lister rescued shortly before the accident and (for some reason) took back to the time of the stasis leak to marry, while her past/current self was still on Red Dwarf at the same time, or

b) the current Kochanski from the time of the stasis leak who after her marriage just carried on serving on Red Dwarf and letting the current Lister flirt with her (for some reason) until he went into stasis, then scarpered with her husband.

Neither really made sense, and that’s because I was treating it as one of their unchangeable-timeline stories. But it’s clearly not, because Kochanski will now no longer have been ashes in the Drive Room.

So it’s probably the (b) current Kochanski who then goes back to get her things, plants/forgets the wedding photo in her quarters and mysteriously disappeared out of past Lister’s life that day.

Though he doesn’t mention this aspect and still thinks he has to save her in the stasis booth, so she presumably didn’t formally resign. Oh I don’t know.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Its B … partly because her roommate knows she’s at that hotel.

Any other Kochanski and she wouldn’t have any reason too.

[Warbodog]

It can still be a closed loop if the married couple kept up the ruse until the last minute, then Lister got Kochanski to spill some soap powder on her chair when leaving to fuck with his past self / “preserve causality.” Unless I missed something else.

[International Debris]

If you want to head canon it, Kochanski could have left Red Dwarf at any point after Lister went into stasis, and Future Lister and Kochanski could have explained to Holly, who then simply told Lister that it was Kochanski rather than her replacement so he wouldn’t get suspicious. 

That, or Future Lister went back to Red Dwarf willingly to die. 

Or he and Kochanski got married and then he let her go back to the ship to die.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I don’t think Kochanski’s ashes were ever directly said to be in the control room. In fact, as I recall the only time her remains are referred to is in the deleted funeral scene. So my reading of it was, she wasn’t on the ship at the time of the incident but stayed on until Lister was put into stasis, and Holly only said she’s dead because, well, humans generally aren’t known to live for 3 million years.

[Dave]

I don’t think Kochanski’s ashes were ever directly said to be in the control room. In fact, as I recall the only time her remains are referred to is in the deleted funeral scene. So my reading of it was, she wasn’t on the ship at the time of the incident but stayed on until Lister was put into stasis, and Holly only said she’s dead because, well, humans generally aren’t known to live for 3 million years.

Yeah that’s true, the conversation with Holly about her being dead in The End doesn’t ever refer to a specific pile of powder as being her, he just says that she’s dead.

[Ben Saunders]

“April, May, June, July and August fools” is, to me, clearly just Holly bigging up his jape for comedic effect. Like saying someone’s forehead is so big they have a fivehead, etc. I never got the impression that Queeg took place over more than a few days at most. Remember how insane everybody went in Quarantine and that was only five days. Five months would be genuine torture and I don’t think the boys would ever forgive Holly for that. “Teehee what a jape, you made my life a living hell for half a year, what a character you are. Come back, we love you man.”

[Flap Jack]

Re “how can Kochanski marry future Lister without it affecting the timeline”, I want to attempt a theory/fan fic premise on it (might be better suited to Fan Theory Corner than here, but eh, go where the action is):

Shortly after the events of Stasis Leak, Future Lister and Kochanski finish their honeymoon, and are ready to embark on the second honeymoon that will be the rest of their lives together. But then, something goes wrong. After they’ve made the first time jump in Starbug, Lister looks beside him to see that Kris has gone – she’s completely vanished from the ship.

Panic-stricken, he immediately turns around to search for her, and eventually discovers that she’s back on Red Dwarf in the 21st/22nd/23rd century, doing her old job – and when Lister finds her and speaks to her, she has no memory of their marriage or of time travel. Looking into the matter further, Lister can’t find any evidence that their wedding or the honeymoon ever happened.

Turns out that the timeline does not abide Lister rescuing Kochanski from her fate. It’s the most simple form of grandfather paradox. If Kochanski is saved, Lister never knows he needs to save her.

(“Whatever happened to Kochanski, Hol? Thank god she left Red Dwarf before the accident. I always wanted to ask her out on a date but never found the courage…”

“According to the records available to me, she eloped with a man named Derek Liston. I don’t have any further information about him, but by all accounts they were very happy together. That was still 3 million years ago though, Dave. By now you’d struggle even to carbon date her.”)

This doesn’t stop Lister from trying to make their paradoxical relationship work. He tries over and over again, comes up with many clever methods to rescue Kristine while preserving the timeline. Each time, either Holly gets wise to the subterfuge and the same paradox occurs again, or there is some other unforseen consequence that causes an entirely different paradox to occur.

On one occasion, Lister pleads with Holly to help him fake Kochanski’s death, but cannot convince him to even consider such an action without explaining the circumstances of the radiation leak – which then prevents the radiation leak from happening and causes yet another paradox.

Eventually, after so much time trying and failing to make it work, after the trauma of falling in love with Kochanski only to then lose her over and over again, Lister finally gives up and rejoins Rimmer, Cat and Kryten.

This experience makes him bitter, self-absorbed and reckless, ultimately leading to his characterisation in Out of Time.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Well that’s depressing as all hell.

[Flap Jack]

You’re welcome.

[Jenuall]

I think it’s pretty clear that Kochanski is dead from The End, Holly confirms it and then whole joke about gritting the path wouldn’t really work unless she genuinely had been reduced to a pile of dust

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

ah yeah, the path grit is the indirect confirmation she is dead and a pile of dust.

[International Debris]

Could be Holly pretending, though. To keep Lister from finding out something he should find out until three years later, or however long it is.

[Flap Jack]

You can definitely find ways of making “Kochanski secretly survived the accident this entire time” work, presumably involving a lot of deception by Holly both before and after the radiation leak and potentially even fake ashes.

But the key thing to me is that we know that the Stasis Leak future canonically Does Not Happen anyway.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

What if it does in Out of Time, but that timeline is then erased.  It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, it just mean it hasn’t happened. Hactually.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

This is more misheard than didn’t get.

The line in Stasis Leak about Lister’s best mate Duncan, and his dad pulling a bank job in Purley.  I always heard it as “it was a bank job, they called him Pearly”, as in a Pearly King.  I just had this image of this guy robbing a bank and then being so rich he wore obscene suits covers in diamonds and pearls and stuff.

[Flap Jack]

What if it does in Out of Time, but that timeline is then erased. It doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, it just mean it hasn’t happened. Hactually.

Well, it all comes to the same thing in my mind. However and whenever the “Lister marries Kochanski” timeline is prevented, we know it never happens from the perspective of our Lister. So whatever changes Beard Lister makes to the events of The End and beforehand, ultimately those changes are undone and things go back to the way they were.

Granted, it still needs to be a potential future, or Stasis Leak doesn’t make sense. But as I elaborated on for too long in my theory, only the parts we actually see definitely need to happen in that future.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Oh totally, I’m just being a bit daft.  As much as I don’t like it, you could take the stance that s03 onwards is a different universe/timeline anyway, so perhaps things do workout for s01-02 Lister, but out Lister doesn’t have such luck – but did date Kochanski prior to the accident unlike early series Lister.

[Warbodog]

the key thing to me is that we know that the Stasis Leak future canonically Does Not Happen anyway.

I’d always considered series I & II to be satisfyingly cohesive (like with Future Echoes paying off in Parallel Universe) before all the changes and headcanoning, so was just disappointed to realise that Stasis Leak broke that mould early. Otherwise I could imagine the Stasis Leak future still happening in that… I don’t want to say ‘universe.’

[Flap Jack]

Aha, well the “every time there’s a huge change in aesthetic or continuity with a new series, it’s a new universe” theory is a whole other can of worms. Personally I’m not a fan. It’s much more satisfying to know that all of the episodes definitely happened to the current cast (certain disfavoured series notwithstanding), and the contradictions are just fodder for engaging fan discussions.

[International Debris]

The show actively embraces the ‘every change makes a parallel timeline’ theory, which basically allows for most inconsistencies to be handwaved away. There is a reality where Future Lister and Clare Grogan Kochanski marry and live happily ever after, but that’s just not the narrative we see. I’m happy with that.

[RunawayTrain]

Aha, well the “every time there’s a huge change in aesthetic or continuity with a new series, it’s a new universe” theory is a whole other can of worms. Personally I’m not a fan. It’s much more satisfying to know that all of the episodes definitely happened to the current cast (certain disfavoured series notwithstanding), and the contradictions are just fodder for engaging fan discussions.

Ugh, same here, otherwise it rather feels like cheating.  I’m not a fan of when sci-fi shows do that sort of bait and switch, usually a dramatic episode with their core characters then reveal actually they were an alternate version – it cheapens any preceding drama, always makes it feel hollow to me.  Alternate versions of characters are interesting to explore but not in the complete absence of the original ones.

[PhilPagett]

I don’t get “Durex Volleyball”. Like, at all.

[Warbodog]

I don’t get “Durex Volleyball”. Like, at all.

Blowing up Durex condoms (UK brand) for want of more suitable balls/balloons and using tights (pantyhose/stockings?) for the net. I can see that one being confusing internationally, especially as the description makes it sound like Durex manufactures tights.

I tried tiddlywinks showjumping recently, that’s how interesting my life is.

[Ian Symes]

Phil is a Brummie, so he doesn’t have that excuse.

[PhilPagett]

If they are inflated condoms, I can just about visualise it. Which is what I’ll be doing for the next few minutes.

[Author]

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