Misheard lines

[Ben Saunders]

Fat Bastarrhoea, what happens when you eat too much Indian food

[Dave]

In Meltdown, when Abraham Lincoln says “That’s Rasputin!”, even I know what he’s saying I can’t not here “That’s rice pudding!”

[Me Own Stunts]

Ouroboros:

“With us going round and round in time, the human race can never become extinct. We’re like a kind of holding pan.”

[Ian Symes]

Off-topic, but that line is complete bollocks, isn’t it? When Lister dies, it doesn’t matter that there’s another version of him still alive *in the past*.

[International Debris]

It doesn’t even work as “the human race will survive for a lot longer”, given that we now know there are other humans out there in the 3 million years later universe.

[Pete Part Three]

>When Lister dies, it doesn’t matter that there’s another version of him still alive *in the past*.

Indeed. We can all make that claim.

[Flap Jack]

Exactly.

Lister’s life may not have one point of origin, but it definitely will have one point of conclusion.

(Ouroboros is kind of bad, folks. I don’t know if you’d heard.)

[bloodteller]

>Off-topic, but that line is complete bollocks, isn’t it? When Lister dies, it doesn’t matter that there’s another version of him still alive *in the past*.

i think the point of the scene is he’s putting himself under the pool table so that he can become the last human being alive in the future- he’s basically made it his own “destiny” to wind up 3 million years in the future on a shit spaceship, because otherwise the human race would be wholly extinct.

it’s still bollocks though because they meet humans in X and XI and XII, and the proposed “Earth” for VIII was apparently meant to have the human race still living on Earth 3 million years in the future. so really he’s just made it so he has to be on a spaceship in the future on his own for absolutely no reason at all

[Ben Saunders]

To be fair Lister doesn’t know what’s going to happen in later series

[Flap Jack]

i think the point of the scene is he’s putting himself under the pool table so that he can become the last human being alive in the future- he’s basically made it his own “destiny” to wind up 3 million years in the future on a shit spaceship, because otherwise the human race would be wholly extinct.

No, because the quote is “With us going round and round in time, the human race can never become extinct.”

That’s never become extinct, not “the human race can only become extinct thousands/millions of years after it would do otherwise” – and “round and round in time” part refers to the human race “continuing” through Lister in the past, because if it’s just about Lister surviving an extra 3 million years, then the fact that it’s a time loop wouldn’t make a difference.

[Dave]

I thought the point was that humanity would never become extinct because each baby Lister sent back in time would then go forward and have a baby of its own, which would itself go forward and have a baby, and so on. So Lister immediately becomes not only his own son, but also his own grandson, his own great grandson, his own great-great grandson and so on and so on to infinity.

All these babies just happen to be the same person because of the time loop.

[Pete Part Three]

>So Lister immediately becomes not only his own son, but also his own grandson, his own great grandson, his own great-great grandson and so on and so on to infinity.

I guess that’s what Doug/Lister was getting at, but it just doesn’t stand up to a huge amount of logic. There’s two chronologies here: there’s Lister’s timeline (his birth > his death) and the Universe’s timeline (the big bang > the big crunch).

While, the future of the human race is based on its continued existence in the Universe’s timeline (which in turn is dependent on Lister being alive…because he’s the last human), the fact that Lister is his own family tree is irrelevant. One day he will die, and the Universe will continue…without the human race. It doesn’t matter that 60 years ago, Lister travelled back in time with a 9 month old version of himself. That was 60 years ago.

He could tell Jim and Bexley when they were born “the human race can never become extinct.” because the human race can continue in them (provided they, um, find some company). But Lister (30ish) and Lister (9 months) doesn’t give a new generation in the Univese’s timeline, so has no effect on the human race. So, er maybe Lister is telling himself that the human race can never become extinct because he is destined to be the last human, have sex with himself in a parallel universe and give birth to twins. Fair play; he’s doing his bit.

[Ben Saunders]

Just thought it’s a shame Kochanski didn’t get to say goodbye to her son before he was put under the pool table, but that would have spoiled the ending, eh. Maybe she’s waiting outside the pub.

Just checked the plot synopsis to get my facts straight and noticed there were eighteen months between the tubing and the abandonment so at least they got some time together (at least nine months?)

I just realised the ending of Ouroboros features Lister using the Time Drive to go back to a very specific place in time and space – the Aigburth Arms in 2155. Did they use the time drive to go anywhere deliberately before of was where they ended up random? I know in Tikka Xtended Lister sends some curry back a few weeks but don’t know if that is “canon.”

It begs the question of why they don’t use the Time Drive to find Red Dwarf. Or go back to Earth three million years ago, or now. Or maybe it doesn’t and I’m talking shite.

[Ben Saunders]

They do it in Tikka. They go back to kill Kennedy. God damn.

[Dave]

I guess that’s what Doug/Lister was getting at, but it just doesn’t stand up to a huge amount of logic. There’s two chronologies here: there’s Lister’s timeline (his birth > his death) and the Universe’s timeline (the big bang > the big crunch).

Both those are linear timelines, so one is entirely within the other anyway. You could argue that another is the human race’s timeline (birth of the first human > Lister’s death). Which again falls within the universe’s timeline.

But the (admittedly slightly poetic) point being made by the story is that the time loop creates a new chronology that goes round and round forever, with Lister’s bloodline never ending as his family continues to give birth to descendents for an infinite amount of time.

And in doing so, Lister prevents himself from being the last human (because there will always be another to come after him – even if it’s just him again), and the human race will go on for an infinite amount of time thanks to the timeloop (even if that timeloop’s infinite amount of time is itself contained within a finite amount of linear time).

I can see why some people don’t like it, but I think it’s quite a clever way of giving humanity some kind of happy ending while maintaining the premise of Lister being the last human and humanity destined to become extinct as soon as he dies.

[Jimboid]

What I don’t understand is why Lister’s kid with Kochanski would be Lister, rather than a different person – which, as I understand it, is the standard.

Maybe the episode explains it. It’s a long time since I’ve seen VII and this isn’t a good enough reason to change that.

[Jimboid]

Also, sightly back on topic – what does he shout at Kochanski when he’s chasing her down the dimensional tunnel?

Is it “Blum” or something? I get that he’s unsure what to call her and it’s an unintentional portmanteau of “Mum” and something else. But what?

[Ben Saunders]

“Mum”, surely?

>that timeloop’s infinite amount of time is itself contained within a finite amount of linear time
Insert image of Rimmer trying to remember what a quasar is here

[Pete Part Three]

>Both those are linear timelines, so one is entirely within the other anyway.

But that’s the point. It’s part of the Universe’s timeline. And it’s nowhere near the end of it, unless Lister dies on the day the Universe collapses in on itself.

>and the human race will go on for an infinite amount of time thanks to the timeloop (even if that timeloop’s infinite amount of time is itself contained within a finite amount of linear time).

For time to work in this way, it’s necessary for it to be repeating endlessly. The fact that the past is a “destination” means that it still exists once it’s no longer the present. If that’s the case then the fact that Lister is traversing time in the wrong direction is kind of incidental.

>What I don’t understand is why Lister’s kid with Kochanski would be Lister

Because it always was. It’s a single timeline. He spot a crate of Ouroboros batteries and Kryten explains what that means. This rings a bell for Lister that because he was found abandoned in a box that was marked “Ouroboros” when he was born. He then makes a pretty crazy deduction that the sperm donation he made must be him. And so it is him. It’s a predestination paradox, kinda like The Terminator.

The question remains of who was the father of Kochanski’s Lister.

[Jimboid]

The predestination paradox doesn’t really explain the genetics of it, though.

[Flap Jack]

I can see why some people don’t like it, but I think it’s quite a clever way of giving humanity some kind of happy ending while maintaining the premise of Lister being the last human and humanity destined to become extinct as soon as he dies.

It’s all in how you interpret it. You/Doug say “He fathers himself, which means infinite Listers, forever!” while I say “No, there’s just one Lister total, who’s stuck in a stable time loop, and said time loop makes no difference to how many humans there are, or how long Lister lives, or anything at all. All Lister does is ensure that his life occurs in the way it always did. Lister still dies, humanity still dies, nothing matters any more than it did before, goodnight.”

It begs the question of why they don’t use the Time Drive to find Red Dwarf. Or go back to Earth three million years ago, or now. Or maybe it doesn’t and I’m talking shite

You definitely aren’t talking shite. The time drive in Tikka To Ride/Ouroboros is one of the most glaring plot holes (for want of a better term) in all of Red Dwarf. No fan theory or headcanon can possibly explain why they don’t even try to use it to get back to Earth. Out of Time dodged this problem expertly, but Tikka… didn’t.

I’m reminded of Ed Bye making light of people complaining about the time drive on the DVD documentary, essentially amounting to “Geez, calm down guys, the time drive was just a thing we made up!”, which is a perfectly valid defense if you don’t think making your TV show’s overall story cohesive is important.

So many episodes managed to use time travel to tell a particular story while making it believable that it was very limited in use – Future Echoes, Stasis Leak, Timeslides, The Inquisitor, Out of Time, Lemons, Twentica, Give & Take, and even … *sigh* … Timewave – but oh no, there’s just no way they could have done their “oops we accidentally saved JFK” plot without giving the crew unlimited space-time traveling capabilities.

[Ben Saunders]

In series six they have both a time drive and a teleporter, which begs the question why they can’t just use one after the other to end up in a specific time and place, again. I remember thinking this during the “we’re in deep space in the 12th century thing” – you have a teleporter!

What the fuck happened to the matter paddle in Meltdown? Did they destroy it? Oh wait they mention it’s back on Red Dwarf in Back to Earth. So now they have two teleporters and a time drive which is also capable of teleporting, depending on which series it’s used in.

[Flap Jack]

In series six they have both a time drive and a teleporter, which begs the question why they can’t just use one after the other to end up in a specific time and place, again. I remember thinking this during the “we’re in deep space in the 12th century thing” – you have a teleporter!

I mean, my inference was that any teleport they had could only transport them a limited range/back to Starbug – Blake’s 7 style – not to any location in the entire universe.

[bloodteller]

they explain in Tikka Xtended that they can’t use the time drive to go back to Earth 3 million years ago as they might end up causing another paradox or messing up history, with Lister promising to Rimmer that his timejump to 3 weeks ago to get the ship’s curry back will be the last time they use it.

they use it again in Ouroboros but i guess that’s a fixed point in time so there was no worry that they’d fuck things up

[bloodteller]

they also use it again in the Children In Need skit but i don’t think that’s really considered to be part of the same continuity

[International Debris]

Just checked the plot synopsis to get my facts straight and noticed there were eighteen months between the tubing and the abandonment so at least they got some time together (at least nine months?)

When does this happen in Lister’s chronology? Sometime during VII, but… when? Is there an 18 month gap between Blue and Beyond a Joke or something?

What I don’t understand is why Lister’s kid with Kochanski would be Lister, rather than a different person – which, as I understand it, is the standard.

Oh yes, it’s utter bollocks. If Kochanski was Lister’s mum, he’d be 50% Kochanski already, so when he had a kid, the baby would then be that + another 50% Kochanski (so 75% Kochanski) and so on and so on. Genetically it’s utterly impossible.

You definitely aren’t talking shite. The time drive in Tikka To Ride/Ouroboros is one of the most glaring plot holes (for want of a better term) in all of Red Dwarf. No fan theory or headcanon can possibly explain why they don’t even try to use it to get back to Earth. Out of Time dodged this problem expertly, but Tikka… didn’t.

There’s the whole ‘interfering with the past’ thing, which ties up the idea of not going back to Earth again, but why not go back to the last place and time they had Red Dwarf? Hell, they could end up stealing it from themselves, which is FAR more amusing a plot that nanobots. It would also avoid the entire VIII scenario.
Or, as it’s capable of space AND time movement, why not just Earth, one second into the future? It really is a horrible plot hole.

What the fuck happened to the matter paddle in Meltdown? Did they destroy it? 

Wasn’t it converted into the triplicator?

[International Debris]

Ugh now I REALLY wish they’d gone back and stolen Red Dwarf from themselves at the start of series 7.

[Flap Jack]

they explain in Tikka Xtended that they can’t use the time drive to go back to Earth 3 million years ago as they might end up causing another paradox or messing up history, with Lister promising to Rimmer that his timejump to 3 weeks ago to get the ship’s curry back will be the last time they use it.

Ah ha ha, that’s such a bad excuse! Given they show they can operate the time drive perfectly, the only paradoxes they could feasibly create by going back to THEIR OWN TIME would be:

1. Bringing back Kryten to before the technology which made him existed, therefore potentially changing the circumstances of Kryten’s creation and eventual meeting with the RD crew – Solution: either part ways with Kryten, or return to live in Kryten’s time period instead.
2. Deliberately trying to stop the Red Dwarf radiation leak from happening, or trying to rescue Lister from the ship millions of years early – Solution: don’t do that.
3. Um… something to do with The Cat, maybe? – Solution: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Nothing else they could do in the post-accident 3-million-years-ago past would impact their own history on Red Dwarf, because Red Dwarf basically just drifted into space for all that time, doing its own thing.

But sure, I guess that’s a good enough reason to casually dismiss the idea of seeing loved ones, your home planet, or any other people again.

[Dave]

But that’s the point. It’s part of the Universe’s timeline. And it’s nowhere near the end of it, unless Lister dies on the day the Universe collapses in on itself.

I don’t remember anyone claiming (here or in the show) that the story of Ouroboros made Lister immortal. The whole idea of Lister and the human race never being extinct by going round and round in time is meant to be more of a philosophical idea than a literal one, I think.

[Ben Saunders]

I’ve thought about this a lot. The “can’t change the past” argument falls apart in a universe where free travel through time is possible, and here’s why.

You can change events right now, yes? Fair enough.
You cannot go back to 1985 to change events.
You can, apparently, go forwards to 2085 to change events.
If you then go forward to 2185, 2085 is now the past and you cannot change events there anymore.
In a universe where you can freely travel between the distant and not-so-distant future the logic of being (not) able to change events falls apart.
Your future is somebody else’s past.
Thank you for listening.

Doctor Who has been to the end of the universe so surely he cannot go back and change any events at all because he would be interfering with “the past” from the perspective of the end of the universe.

[Ben Saunders]

That is of course unless you subscribe to the “each journey through time creates/enters a parallel dimension” theory, which Red Dwarf definitely does not

[bloodteller]

>Ah ha ha, that’s such a bad excuse! Given they show they can operate the time drive perfectly, the only paradoxes they could feasibly create by going back to THEIR OWN TIME would be:

i think it was more along the lines of “we fucked up the entire future of the Earth from 1963 onwards four seconds after we arrived, if we went back to Earth our time we’d probably fuck everything up so badly that civilization would collapse” so i guess the main characters just all see themselves as being really destructive and clumsy morons now.

it’s not about time paradoxes, it’s about travelling back and accidentally bumming another gunman out of a window

[Warbodog]

So now they have two teleporters and a time drive which is also capable of teleporting, depending on which series it’s used in.

One of those teleporters is also a time machine, shown by the end of Rimmerworld.

What the fuck happened to the matter paddle in Meltdown?

Wasn’t it converted into the triplicator?

The Time Drive in Tikka looks a lot like the Matter Paddle too, with its round handles. Maybe they shoved them together to create the time-space machine.

The Matter Paddle was probably a time machine in the first place, since Kryten says it transmits you at the speed of light, but then they arrive at a planet 200,000 light years away instantaneously. (Shut up).

Is there an 18 month gap between Blue and Beyond a Joke or something?

The chronology (gleaned from dialogue) mostly works. Back to Reality is four years after The End, and it’s been “five, six years” by Back in the Red, so VI & VII span up to two years.

[Ben Saunders]

>One of those teleporters is also a time machine, shown by the end of Rimmerworld.
Christ, haha. Get it together Grant Naylor.

[Flap Jack]

i think it was more along the lines of “we fucked up the entire future of the Earth from 1963 onwards four seconds after we arrived, if we went back to Earth our time we’d probably fuck everything up so badly that civilization would collapse” so i guess the main characters just all see themselves as being really destructive and clumsy morons now.

it’s not about time paradoxes, it’s about travelling back and accidentally bumming another gunman out of a window

But then that’s not an argument against going back in time, that’s an argument against existing in society at all. Any of us could inadvertently do something like that which ends up shaping history in a bad way, but it’s not particularly likely, and I’m not going to go live in deep space just in case.

Sure, Lister and co. could – and by definition, would, at least a little bit – “change history” by going back to their time of origin and living their lives, but there are very few changes they could make deliberately (and therefore trigger a paradox), because they only know very few details about how human history develops, and for accidental changes they’d have no idea how it was any different.

Essentially, if it’s not a paradox, it’s not a time travel problem, it’s just a regular, everyday problem.

… can we at least agree that they should have used the time drive to check if Earth was still there in the present day?

[bloodteller]

maybe they should just do an episode where they go back to Earth for real so that the plotholes of “why don’t they just use X to go back to Earth” no longer pop up.

they’re still common in the newer episodes e.g. the Chronos Casket, the Stasis booths that they legit use in Krysis etc. that could all be easily used for them to go back home. or that Quantum Rod, which it was never really made clear exactly what it did

[Hamish]

> So many episodes managed to use time travel to tell a particular story while making it believable that it was very limited in use – Lemons

To be fair, is there any particular reason why Kryten could not have just tinkered with the rejuvenation shower to alter what time period it sent you to?

Come to think of it, why did it send them to 23 A.D. Britain in the first place anyhow? I get that it effectively de-ages the universe because the alignment brackets were misaligned, meaning that it casts its beams outward rather than inward, but why would that physically take the Dwarfers anywhere? Also, I would have thought de-aging the universe would have been a far more destructive process than was depicted.

[Pete Part Three]

Quantum Rod = infinite improbability drive

They could have at least have addressed the batshit odds of Rimmer managing to run into his brother.

[Dave]

I thought that was already pretty well explained by the episode, wasn’t it?

[Jimboid]

Yeah, doesn’t it draw previously connected things together, in a magical quantum way?

[bloodteller]

could they not just have used it to go back to Earth then

[Jimboid]

You’d think they’d at least consider it.

The whole “they’re not really trying to get back to Earth any more and that’s why they don’t try” notion doesn’t ring true.

Trying to get back to Earth was the founding concept of the show. We still get regular reminders of how miserable Lister is stuck in deep space

[Jimboid]

I suppose it’s understandable…the show ends when they get back to Earth, so there’s no narrative hurry to do so.

But it defies the logic of the show to not at least give an in-universe reason for not jumping at the chance to take a short-cut home.

(Sorry for the split post, the site is glitchy as fuck on my phone – and that’s swearing).

[Pete Part Three]

>Yeah, doesn’t it draw previously connected things together, in a magical quantum way?

If memory serves, Kryten poses the question “Did the rod do this?”…and it’s never actually answered. Obviously, the intention is that the rod *did* do it, but it’s never explored.

[Me Own Stunts]

> But the (admittedly slightly poetic) point being made by the story is that the time loop creates a new chronology that goes round and round forever, with Lister’s bloodline never ending as his family continues to give birth to descendents for an infinite amount of time.

Am I the only one who hates the idea that Lister is somehow <i>infinitely inbred</i>? This is why I can never like the ‘father’s day’ plot strand in Fathers and Suns. It’s an idea that should have been instantly dropped after series 7, and a new continuity quickly established in its place (they’ve retconned enough other things to get away with this) rather than brought back for series 10.

Inevitably when a show reaches something like its seventh or eighth series it starts eating at its own past. Series 7 was at that point in Red Dwarf history when it had already done the slightly repetitive, formulaic series (series 6) so aimed at more ambitious ideas to keep itself fresh. It would have been so lovely for Lister to have just had an ordinary mother and father, and just been an ordinary bloke who was pulled into a science fiction world. But no, his own birth had to be science-fictionised and now he’s infinitely inbred. Urgh!

[pi r squared]

Any plotline that gave us the exceptional Luster double-header scene as both father and son is a winner in my eyes.

[pi r squared]

Just one sentence and I still fucked it up.

[Me Own Stunts]

> they explain in Tikka Xtended that they can’t use the time drive to go back to Earth 3 million years ago as they might end up causing another paradox or messing up history, with Lister promising to Rimmer that his timejump to 3 weeks ago to get the ship’s curry back will be the last time they use it.

This doesn’t solve it though. Their single problem with the events of ‘Tikka to Ride’ was the damage they inflicted on the history that should result in Red Dwarf being in space.

They’d cause no problems whatsoever going back to a century that was after the accident happened on the Red Dwarf ship, but before the human race became extinct.

The question is how they justify pissing around in deep space 3 million years into the future, when they actually don’t need to and are constantly complaining about how sick they are of each other’s company. All that time in the empty vacuum of space looking for planets and moons for supplies, hoping they might run into other individuals who aren’t hostile… well just use the time drive, mate.

[Me Own Stunts]

>I get that it effectively de-ages the universe because the alignment brackets were misaligned, meaning that it casts its beams outward rather than inward

I’d quite like to know how the misaligned beams somehow had enough range to cover every atom in the entire universe.

[Jimboid]

Imagine if in Porridge they gave Fletcher a key to the prison and he used it once to pop out and buy some biscuits, then stuck it in a drawer and forgot about it.

[Author]

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