Lines That Don't Really Make Sense

[bloodteller]

What are some lines in Red Dwarf that you don’t think make sense?

Two I can think of are in Meltdown when Kryten states the matter paddle “converts an individual into digital information and then transmits him as light beams to another point in space” which would logically mean they travel at the speed of light. Yet they then go to a planet that’s 200,000 light years away and arrive in a matter of seconds.

The other one is in Demons and Angels when Kryten says “I think we can produce four, perhaps even five strawberries a week!”. How would you end up with five strawberries at any point if you’re using a triplicating device?

Topic

[Ben Saunders]

Normal Strawberry 1 (one strawberry)
High Strawberry 1 – Normal Strawberry 1 – Low Strawberry 1 (two new strawberries)
High Strawberry 2 – Normal Strawberry 1 – Low Strawberry 2 (two new strawberries)

That makes five, doesn’t it? Question is how do you end up with four. And what happens if you triplicate the High Strawberry, do you get two good ones and a normal one?

This rate of strawberry production is unrealistically slow given what we explicitly see in the episode, so it’s possible that Kryten was Doing A Joke.

[Taiwan Tony]

Re the strawberry. Don’t they rely on already having one to make three?
One makes three
Of those three, one makes another three
Total number of strawberries = 5 strawberries produced + the original strawberry.

[Taiwan Tony]

Must have started that before 6:28 pm

[Ben Saunders]

One makes two more (3 total)
You put one of the 3 you now have into the triplicator which makes another 2
1 + 2 + 2 = 5
Unless I’m missing something

[bloodteller]

since Kryten says “I think we can produce…” i wasn’t counting the original strawberry they started with, since they didn’t make it themselves.

[Taiwan Tony]

… Yes…?

[bloodteller]

yeah, so you can’t produce five strawberries

[Dave]

They wouldn’t even be in that position if Kryten hadn’t recklessly chucked all those fresh strawberries in the bin in The Last Day.

[flanl3]

If they just keep triplicating high strawberries, they only get one high strawberry and no low, so five is reachable.

Another possible conclusion is that the machine can run about 5 times every 14 days, averaging to 5 new strawberries/week.

[flanl3]

Why don’t they just triplicate a whole fucking pile of strawberries though?

[Hamish]

> They wouldn’t even be in that position if Kryten hadn’t recklessly chucked all those fresh strawberries in the bin in The Last Day.

Yeah, that scene always makes me cringe.

[International Debris]

Given that it produces pairs then yes, it can only ‘produce’ two, four, six, etc. strawberries. The line should really be ‘four, perhaps even six’.

[bloodteller]

>> They wouldn’t even be in that position if Kryten hadn’t recklessly chucked all those fresh strawberries in the bin in The Last Day.
>Yeah, that scene always makes me cringe.

i never quite got what Kryten was trying to accomplish here, tbh. is he deliberately trying to taunt Lister by throwing it away while loudly declaring all the delicious food that’s going to go to waste? that doesn’t seem like something Kryten would do, especially not in Series 3. but even so, once he’s thrown it away what does he expect will happen? did he want Lister to go and pick it out of the bin? Kryten is a dick

[Ben Paddon]

I think he’s just having fun.

[Warbodog]

I love that glimpse of frustration in the “bon appetit, bin” scene, like all his sarcastic digs at Cat’s stupid remarks in V and his letting rip to Rimmer at the end of White Hole. Much prefer it to the satisfied servant of Krysis et al.

[Ben Saunders]

I was counting the original strawberry, making the total number of strawberries 1, 3, 5, 7, etc. Of course I realise now that Kryten said “produce” and not “have”, which means, yes, it will be even numbers of produced strawberries.

[flanl3]

Did nobody read my comment? Five strawberries/wk could obviously be reached with 10 strawberries every two weeks – it’s an average, not completely literal “exactly five strawberries every single week”

[RickLee84]

If the items triplicated had a limited lifespan, what was the point of it at all? If they triplicated a load of food in one go, and only ate the high portion, would it disappear after being eaten leaving the person who ate them hungry as their stomach would be empty?

[Plastic Percy]

Perhaps the next step in Kryten and Lister’s experiment was a method to stabilise the process.

[Warbodog]

That’s always bothered me too, it feels like the strawberries intro was written before they came up with the near-real-time lifespan to enhance + resolve the peril.

[International Debris]

Yeah, I always just assumed it was something they were hoping to iron out at some point, as it was all still at the experimental stage.

[bloodteller]

>That’s always bothered me too, it feels like the strawberries intro was written before they came up with the near-real-time lifespan to enhance + resolve the peril.

the whole intro scene in Demons and Angels is a bit weird anyway. Rimmer being all snidey and making remarks about how stupid Lister and Kryten are-why? they’ve built a fully-functional triplicator which is a pretty impressive scientific feat as well as just generally being really useful.

I guess it’s not out of character for Rimmer to be a bit dismissive and ignorant, but there’s no real reason for it here. Lister and Kryten have created something cool and his immediate response is to shit all over their lives without hesitation

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Rimmer is taking out his insecurities of being crap at everything on the people that he knows deep down are better than him, by shitting all over their genius invention.

He does this sort of thing all the time. He is constantly putting Kryten down, dismissing him is a toilet cleaning android, when its plane as day that without Kryten the crew would be a bit fucked.

Same goes for Lister. Rimmer outranks him by 1 tiny little rung on the ladder, yet Lister proves time and again to be much more competent at just about everything. It goes back as far as the opening scene of the show

“is this a 14b Lister, does it look remotely like a 14b” … when in actual fact it IS a 14b Lister handed him.

He bullies people to make up for the fact he’ll never be as good as them.

[Plastic Percy]

True. Despite what Rimmer might think, if there is a captain of Red Dwarf post-accident, it’s Lister.

In regards to the 14b/14f line, I always took that as Rimmer being a complete anal retentive about the correct type of pipe cleaner to use for cleaning a soup nozzle, when even he knows that they are indistinguishable and make no difference whatsoever.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

In regards to the 14b/14f line, I always took that as Rimmer being a complete anal retentive about the correct type of pipe cleaner to use for cleaning a soup nozzle, when even he knows that they are indistinguishable and make no difference whatsoever.

I mean, possibly. I’ve always seen it though, considering he puts back the one he picks up, that Lister was right in the first place and had given him the correct one. Otherwise I’d have thought Rimmer would use the 14f he picked up just to make a point, even though it is no different to a 14b

[International Debris]

To be honest, I’d put the opening of Demons & Angels down as absolute classic Rimmer: finding a tiny flaw in something otherwise amazing and using it to try make himself look big and clever, whilst actually revealing himself as an ignorant idiot.

[bloodteller]

the Triplicator is a pretty amazing invention, but how does it work? Lister and Kryten didn’t deliberately create it to extract the best and worst elements out of an object, so how does the machine know what’s good and bad?

it’s moral compass is odd as well- why is karaoke music on the low ship? karaoke is fun

[Taiwan Tony]

Satire!
(Pot Noodles are quite nice.)

[Dave]

I’m starting to think Rob Grant and Doug Naylor didn’t even know themselves exactly how the triplicator worked.

[Pete Part Three]

Rob did, but he’s not telling Doug.

[bloodteller]

what happens if you try to triplicate Timewave? presumably you wouldn’t get a High copy, but what is Low Timewave like? these are the real questions

[Dave]

It’s like being on holiday with a group of Germans.

[Ben Saunders]

It’s like being at an Amish bachelor party

[Taiwan Tony]

It’s like a Scotsman eating a banana.

[International Debris]

I refuse to believe that Dave “last night’s flat lager” Lister finds Pot Noodles below him.

[Ben Paddon]

That’s the joke though, surely; that Pot Noodles are so bad that even Lister, a man who eats garbage, will not touch Pot Noodles.

[International Debris]

I suppose I find it hard to really believe because Pot Noodles aren’t that bad.

[Ben Saunders]

They’re pretty low on the tier of foods, but I’ll eat one every now and then and think it’s ok
I used to like them

[Hamish]

The biggest mistake people make is just eating instant noodles on their own. Like with any soup what you add to it is key.

[International Debris]

Pot Noodles aren’t really like that anyway, are they? They have a lot of flavour, packet of sauce, bits of veg etc. in them. Your bog standard packet noodles are different though, eating them on their own is a pretty grim meal.

[bloodteller]

i was talking with an american friend of mine about Red Dwarf a while ago and the Pot Noodle joke got brought up. it turns out that when he watched it, he thought “pot noodle” was some futuristic kind of noodles that contained marijuana, as they apparently don’t have Pot Noodle in america? so i guess that line is taken completely differently over there

presumably why it’s “Cup-A-Noodle” in the US Pilot.

[Hamish]

Every country has its own instant noodle brands, basically. Mr. Noodle being the most common one here in Canada.

[Ben Paddon]

When I bring up Pot Noodle to Americans, they invariably understand what I’m talking about. You have to make weird logical leaps to go into the weed place.

[Bargain Bin Holly]

As an American when I heard the Pot Noodle line, I thought of the Maruchan Instant Lunch things we have here.

[Ben Paddon]

That’s the ones, yes.

[tombow]

Judas the traitor and Thomas the twin are different apostles.

[bloodteller]

eh?

[tombow]

In the Jesus stories of our universe, Judas Iscariot the traitor and Thomas the rumoured twin are 2 different disciples.

[Plastic Percy]

They can play around with the facts of Biblical characters as the Bible isn’t exactly a peer-reviewed objective piece of writing with substantiated sources.

[Dave]

Also, that missing first page that was found, in the Better Than Life news report, rather makes the whole thing meaningless.

[Author]

Replies