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

[Rushy]

So do we think that Norm-Holly just preferred wandering around in a CRT monitor on a trolley, like that one history class where they let you watch Blackadder?

I think he was too embarrassed to admit he forgot how to be holographic. 

[Ian Symes]

I always took it as Holly having the ability to generate holograms, rather than being one himself. “Hologramic computer” = “gaming PC”.

[Nick R]

So do we think that Norm-Holly just preferred wandering around in a CRT monitor on a trolley, like that one history class where they let you watch Blackadder?

Fun fact: in the Year 9 WW1 history class when we were going to watch the last episode of Blackadder Goes Forth, the teacher couldn’t find the right episode on the video. So we watched the episode “Plan C: Major Star” instead.

[Dave]

I always took it as Holly having the ability to generate holograms, rather than being one himself. “Hologramic computer” = “gaming PC”.

In that case presumably Starbug has a separate hologramic computer in VI and VII.

[Doomitron]

That reminds me how I always wish the “turning the AI companion human” thing that Kryten has happen to him in DNA happened to Holly instead. You’d lose the polaroid joke (which I never thought was super funny anyway) but I feel like you’d get a lot more material to mine out of giving Holly a body and seeing what dumb things they’d do and how the dynamic with the crew would change with having a woman onboard before changing her back.

[Doomitron]

Didn’t this happen in a Smegazine now that I think about it?

[Dave]

Didn’t this happen in a Smegazine now that I think about it?

There is the story with the liquid supercomputer thing where Lister and a humanoid Hattie-Holly have a chat, yes.

[Technopeasant]

[Moonlight]

TOWEH

[Technopeasant]

[tombow]

I always wondered if Lister’s suit at the end of DNA could be copyright infringement of Robocop

[Flap Jack]

Parody element makes it fair game.

[Author]

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