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

[Dave]

“Football Picture Story Monthly” *feels* like the title of a fictional publication that would be used as a joke in Red Dwarf, somehow (rather than a real thing published by D. C. Thomson). The cadence just seems to match.

[RunawayTrain]

 Edit: actually I might be mixing my memories up between Inspector Morse and one of the 90s BBC shows in which Patricia Routlege played the lead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hetty_Wainthropp_Investigates
Assuming you also mean a detective show. Hyacinth as a detective sounds like an interesting watch.

I’ve been watching both Hetty Wainthropp Investigates and Keeping Up Appearances in the last few months, so could be from either or both  :)  Hetty Wainthropp Investigates is interesting as something of a 90s time capsule as well as the mystery solving aspect.  It has a lot of heart, really highly recommend it.

[Dave]

When the two Red Dwarfs appear in Demons & Angels, the pre-zoom versions are just shrunken versions of the final full image, including cutting off the entire bottom of the closer Red Dwarf with a straight crop. It’s only a split-second and a tiny image in the show but really obvious on the Smegadrive. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

This is one of those mundane observations that I’d always observed and just assumed everyone else had 

I always find the crop really distracting. It’s because it’s in the foreground and it’s cropped by the frame in the full zoom, but it’s probably be less distracting if it were the second ship further back

[Warbodog]

Didn’t notice, I’m probably always watching the gap between them to see if they’ll make them overlap, never remembering that they (checks Smega-Drive) don’t.

[ReddiShadow]

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.

TIL that Chris Barrie isn’t his name – Christopher Brown. How had I never known this?

Brown Christopher sounds like if Alan Partridge did a blackface character. 

[Technopeasant]

In one of the Radio Times articles linked in the other thread Chris mentions basing his performance for Rimmer on his own brother Gordon.

https://i0.wp.com/stasis-leak.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/document_2022-09-26_191913.jpg?ssl=1

A) I had never heard that before.

B) His brother is presumably named Gordon Brown.

[tombow]

I’ve only just realised the similarity between Dr Who comics/Star Beast’s Meep and the Smegazine comic’s Geap. Apologies if everyone else noticed it – I haven’t heard the Dwarfcast on that issue

[Author]

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