Mundane observation dome

[Warbodog]

Do you have any miscellaneous insights on the series that may be worth contemplating for a few seconds before moving on with our lives? Here are some of mine.

1. The four regulars have names that can work any way around, though this would have been more obvious if David Ross had stayed and wouldn’t work if Chris Barrie used his real name.

2. The series’ lax attitude to continuity extends to the setting. Outside of Holly’s distress calls, I don’t think three million years is mentioned all that much after series I and before VI (not sure about later years). Instead, we get the extremely fudged “dead for centuries” and “travelling for thousands of years” – not actual retcons, but suggesting a more conventional setting for casual viewers tuning in and the sort of stories they’re telling. It’s only millions when they need it to be.

3. 200 years of stasis between series V and VI means that the earlier series took place in their equivalent of the early 19th century by comparison (e.g. Blackadder the Third). Since they didn’t run into a long-lived Camille or one of her great-great-etc grandchildren, it didn’t come up.

4. Although Lister is routinely slagged off in the series, he’s spared the level of seemingly authoritative character assassination that Rimmer gets, because the audience is aligned with Lister’s viewpoint most of the time. For example, we see Kochanski Camille belittling Rimmer’s interests, but we don’t get the equivalent of Hologram Camille reacting to Lister’s pickup lines, we’re left to form our own opinions on those. This flimsy point has not been considered much beyond this single example.

5. Cat’s costumes are overwhelmingly referenced more than anyone else’s in the series, but the least discussed by fans.

6. Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibbley were so seemingly ubiquitous in canon and tie-in merchandise through the 90s (Smegazine strips, T-shirts) that they still feel overused today, even though it’s been over 20 years since they appeared. Maybe they’re allowed back after all.

7. Only series III & V and maybe XI & XII (not as familiar with those) don’t have any sense of an arc whatsoever (though IV’s minor Kryten disobedience arc was already fucked up by episode shuffling). Series III is just about the only series where no episode directly references any previous episode, but it still has the Backwards scrolling text and general references to Rimmer having died and stuff.

8. One of the series’ most famous and quoted scenes – everybody’s dead, Dave – is a straight-up 2001: A Space Odyssey homage and would have been received that way at the time, but doesn’t work like that for most people coming to the episode later on or new viewers who are young or don’t watch old films.

9. Sometimes dismissed as lightweight and gimmicky today, Backwards was designed as an innovative interactive experience to reward extracurricular effort. As well as inviting fans to work out the backwards events and filming logistics, Arthur Smith’s eugolonom is teasingly long and “you scoundrels” is clearly a cleaned-up translation gag even before you’ve heard it. Unfortunately, by the time technology caught up with the intent and the ability to reverse media files properly on home computers became commonplace, Backwards Forwards came out and everyone just cheated with the walkthrough.

Imagine the quality of the musings I left out!

Topic

[Warbodog]

[Unrumble]

[Rushy]

Can we talk about how perfect Simon Treves was in this role? 

Admittedly, John Abineri didn’t have much to work with. But it’s still impressive to outclass a legendary actor, in a revival show no less. 

[gerrydelasel]

* Rimmerworld moved so I am indeed dumb. The fact Rimmerworld is a
direct sequel to Gunmen underscores how this was never the intended
broadcast order though. *

I only noticed today that in Gunmen, Rimmer is wearing his soft-light red tunic even though it was broadcast after Legion, so he should be in his blue hard-light tunic. Colossal continuity blunder; series ruined!

[Rushy]

Isn’t there a line about him having to turn on hard light to use the VR machine? I think back then, they thought he’d switch in and out, but later realised it made more sense just to keep him permanently hard light

[gerrydelasel]

I stand corrected! My confidence in RD continuity is restored.

[International Debris]

Yeah, it’s interesting to ponder how far that idea got before being abandoned. It’s possible the idea was kept in in Gunmen as a way of reminding audiences, what with it coming directly after Legion and still being such a new idea.

[Warbodog]

It was claimed in some old reference work (the Programme Guide or the DVD booklet or something) that they put Chris in a red costume by accident, so had to quickly add that line on the day. That sounds a bit dubious though.

[Renegade Rob]

I watched Ambassadors of Death for the first time recently and it was bugging me that the crazy general guy looked familiar, and sure enough, it was Rimmer’s dad himself, John Abineri, who was just as obsessed with aliens as Rimmer but in the Doctor Who universe wasn’t an inch too short to become an officer. (A pretty interesting serial actually with some neat villains, I’m surprised I don’t hear it talked about more. Abineri did a nice job with the role.)

[Rushy]

(A pretty interesting serial actually with some neat villains, I’m surprised I don’t hear it talked about more. Abineri did a nice job with the role.)

Ambassadors of Death is my favourite Pertwee serial. I think the way Terrance Dicks managed to construct long stories was never bettered. He just had a special knack for it. The truth unpeels episode by episode. There’s really no filler. 

[sleepey]

Someone explain the Rimmerworld wormhole to me. They say time moves more quickly inside it, but also that time moves more quickly on the other side of it? Isn’t the other side of it just somewhere else in normal space? Why would that run at a different speed? Or is the effect just applied to Rimmer’s pod? If they flew there without using the wormhole would they find everyone moving really fast? When they follow him through, aren’t they now on the other side of the wormhole from Red Dwarf, losing hundreds of years of ground (if the time difference comes from the travel time inside the wormhole)? Or is it frozen in place (if the time difference comes from being on the other side of the wormhole)? I can’t make sense of it & it’s been bugging me for literal decades.

[Ben Saunders]

I watched Ambassadors of Death for the first time recently

I love Ambassadords of Death, the two opinions on it I hear the most are “it’s slow-burn kino” and “it’s really boring”. Well the truth is it’s both! I love all the slow, methodical space stuff and the eerie, atmospheric direction, the sinister, unspeaking aliens, the duplicitousness of almost everybody involved. It was a David Whittaker script that he couldn’t quite get right and had to abandon, only for Dicks & Hulke to finish it, stripping it of all its humour. Series 7 is such a strange outlier for Who in how relatively serious and adult it is, I like it as a one-off thing. it’s funny how shit adding the extra zap to “…of DEATH!!” in every episode is. 

[Ben Saunders]

Someone explain the Rimmerworld wormhole to me

Isn’t “time moves faster inside it” just shorthand for “due to the fucked up machinations of spacetime, time moves faster on the other side of the wormhole relative to us, as we move slow relative to them, but really time is moving normally on both sides, just relativity and all that”?

Red Dwarf (if it wasn’t just in Lister’s sock drawer) would begin to move incredibly slowly relative to them at whatever point the time dilation kicks in, it would never be moving fast relative to them, only slower.

Time dilation/length contraction is a fucking insane concept, though

[Podey]

People travelling at high speeds through space would experience less time than people on the surface of a planet anyway, due to Einstein’s theory of relativity, so I guess the wormhole exacerbates that? 

[Spaceworm Jim]

I’m still not entirely convinced that the hatred of Timewave isn’t made up as some sort of practical joke.

It’s one of the few things I’ve ever seen that has left me genuinely annoyed to have watched it, like it was an actively bad time and I could have done anything else with my precious minutes. The other things were The Timeless Children, The Reality War, The Last Jedi and Danganronpa V3. Anything else I’ve been like well that sucked but at least it was an experience. Timewave just made me feel violated.

I was replying to this.

[Rushy]

 it’s funny how shit adding the extra zap to “…of DEATH!!” in every episode is. 

You take that back

[Ben Saunders]

You take that back

What are you gonna do, kill me? … to DEATH?!

[clem]

[Rushy]

What are you gonna do, kill me? … to DEATH?!

[gerrydelasel]

Someone explain the Rimmerworld wormhole to me.

I didn’t really get this either. A fast moving body experiences slower time than a slow moving body. But in any case, since both parties have to travel through exactly the same wormhole, both should end up experiencing the same amount of time passage, so Starbug should have arrived not much longer after Rimmer got there.
But I guess wibbly wobbly timey wimey.

[International Debris]

The wormhole time dilation is only relevant when one ship is on one side and one is on the other. When both ships are on the same side there’s no difference, but for the moments when they’re separate, it’s significant. If it’s a second on one side for a year on the other then even a few minutes is dramatic.

[Asclepius]

And so, last night, we reached Psirens as the kids watch RD for the first time, and me for the umpteenth.

It’s at this point that the lovely model shots turn into CGI for quite a few of the action scenes, isn’t it? I wasn’t expecting it, and it came as a bit of a surprise. It’s some of the most dated stuff we’ve seen so far! What was the thinking at the time? It’s cheaper? It’ll look better…?

[Ian Symes]

Series VI has a fair few model shots augmented with computer graphics, but it’s still almost entirely physical models. It’s not until Series VII that CGI is used in place of model shots for the first time.

[Warbodog]

You can see the genesis of Series VII.

[Dave]

I think some of the CGI used in VI is far better and more effective than the stuff in VII – there are lots of little moments where I think it’s deployed well and more subtly, and meshes better with the model/live action footage.

[Unrumble]

I think some of the CGI used in VI is far better and more effective than the stuff in VII – there are lots of little moments where I think it’s deployed well and more subtly, and meshes better with the model/live action footage.

That’s really the happy medium, as Ian says, it’s about augmentation. Wholly relying on CGI when you don’t have the budget/capability to make it not look fake, is where it looks a bit rubbish. Using it here and there, where it doesn’t take you out of the reality of the situation, works.

[Asclepius]

Series VI has a fair few model shots augmented with computer graphics, but it’s still almost entirely physical models. It’s not until Series VII that CGI is used in place of model shots for the first time.

I think it was most noticeable as Starbug was making its way through the asteroid field. The asteroids were looking very flat…as was Starbug.

It’s odd revisiting all of these. I’ve probably watched them all twice…three times maybe? And not for many years. But I’ve heard them dozens upon dozens of times. To get a belly laugh out of me, a gag needs to be entirely visual, or needs to have a visual component to it that I’ve totally forgotten about.

That said, I’m still laughing at it more than my kids do. They still keep asking to watch it, but never get an actual full laugh out of it. Weirdoes.

[Warbodog]

Just noticed that “Robert” Llewellyn is a bit like “Robot” Llewellyn. I’m confident that no one else has made this observation in the last 36 years.

[Ian Symes]

One Dimension Jump whilst very tired, I thought it would be hilarious to keep calling him “Robot” to his face to see if he noticed. He either didn’t, or was too polite to mention it.

[Dave]

[Ian Symes]

Oh, that gobshite.

[Warbodog]

This is also blowing my mind. It was destiny.

[Frank Smeghammer]

“Remember Red Dwarf? Remember “H”, the guy who had a ‘H’ on his forehead?”

[Dave]

Oh, that gobshite.

Weirdly he does look like the result of David Ross Kryten and Robert Llewellyn Kryten getting into a teleporter together. 

[Rushy]

It occurs to me that Hollister would’ve been a much better choice to bring back as a hologram. 

He has authority, but in a relaxed and reasonable sort of way. I feel like he wouldn’t care about making Lister do pointless chores, but would try to give him some discipline and helpful feedback. And Lister respects Hollister enough to actually do most of what he says. I can imagine them becoming close friends in some version of Red Dwarf. 

[Moonlight]

I still maintain that if Red Dwarf ever decided to take another swing-for-the-fences format shift like the old days, I’d love to see Hollister brought back as part of the main cast as long as fat jokes aren’t 70% of his material. Even though the actual writing lets him down, Mac’s performance is easily the best part of Series VIII. He is also just outrageously funny any time he’s interviewed about the show.

[Dave]

Yeah, I do love Mac.

[Turk Thrust]

I recall that around 20 years ago when people were discussing VII on the boards, there was a discussion about whether it would have been better to bring back Hollister than Kochanski.

It still wouldn’t have been the same show without Rimmer, obviously, but at least we wouldn’t have had jealous Kryten.

For it to have worked, you would have needed to have a regular version of Hollister rather than the Dennis the Doughnut Boy version of VIII.

[Moonlight]

For it to have worked, you would have needed to have a regular version of Hollister rather than the Dennis the Doughnut Boy version of VIII.

I think I generally don’t have too much of a problem with making Hollister a sillier character if he’s going to be around full-time, I just don’t think VIII especially knew how to use him. But there’s absolutely comedy in the idea of him being the only competent one if you were to stick to a more 1/2 characterization.

[Technopeasant]

D(C)a(t)nny John-Jules

Craig Charl(ister)es

Norman L(H)o(lly)vett

[Rushy]

I think I generally don’t have too much of a problem with making Hollister a sillier character if he’s going to be around full-time, I just don’t think VIII especially knew how to use him. 

Same. Mac could’ve gone really hammy a la Dwalin from the Hobbit, but his performance style itself hadn’t changed. That’s what made the material work as well as it did. It could’ve been much worse. 

[Warbodog]

[Rushy]

When you’re suddenly bald and scripted to be nearly insane, how would you react? 

[Dave]

This is one of the most convincingly robotic-looking movements Robert has ever done.

[Rushy]

Aside from grumblings about how series 7 is like seeing your ex-wife’s wedding tape, have either Grant or Naylor ever commented on each other’s Red Dwarf?

Naylor’s introduction for Last Human implied that he was going to read Backwards, at least

[Dave]

Doug’s thoughts on Into The Gloop would be interesting. 

[Ben Saunders]

I’m mildly fascinated by the thumbnails on BBC iPlayer. All of the Red Dwarf ones are just screencaps of the episodes, until the Dave era starts using promo photos. But Doctor Who is a total hodgepodge of subtle AI upscaling, horrendously obvious AI upscaling, random screencaps from episodes, behind the scenes photos, promo material, the quality fluctuates drastically and I can’t imagine what the thought process behind any of it was. This photo of Romana is quite nice but clearly run through Gemini or something, then look those Daleks! Horrible. Why do it for some episodes but not others? Season 16 is pretty crap quality on iPlayer as well and idk if the DVDs were that shit or if they’ve put up the VHS versions for some reason. A lot of the black & white stuff is unrestored VHS quality shite but I thought they’d stopped doing that by this point.

[Turk Thrust]

Aside from grumblings about how series 7 is like seeing your ex-wife’s wedding tape, have either Grant or Naylor ever commented on each other’s Red Dwarf?
Naylor’s introduction for Last Human implied that he was going to read Backwards, at least

Rob said that he watched some of VII and disliked it so much (and bringing back Kochanski was so far away from what he would have done) that he couldn’t bring himself to watch VIII.

I haven’t heard him comment about watching any of the Dave era, but I’m sure he was happy enough to get paid for all of them.

[Technopeasant]

Watching the Dave era on Britbox Canada and the captions are full of little errors like “metastation” instead of “medi-station”, but I must admit I prefer:

[Warbodog]

I hadn’t paid much attention to this animation from Psirens before, so hadn’t noticed:

“RD93” in-joke (filmed in ’93)

That the species names cycle out of sync with the images

That the first human form is specifically “women” (sic) and is anatomically different.

[Author]

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