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]

Why would they not have telephones?

Yeah. Didn’t technology advancement  stop around the 1920s? Phones existed long before then. 

In Twentica it’s not that the technology doesn’t exist, it’s that it’s retrospectively prohibited. The year they land in is around the 1950s.

They guess that the prohibition threshold is around the 1920s but the level of tech that is allowed suggests that it might be before that.

[Moonlight]

They also had electric street lights in the 20s, which are gas lamps in this society. The only electrical anything implied outside of the science club is that Lister has to hotwire a car, but it’s stated to be a steam car so that doesn’t really make sense. All he needs to do is light a fire under the boiler and wait for half an hour.

All the jokes that come from the hotwiring justify its inclusion. I say it doesn’t make sense in the same way Backwards doesn’t make sense, in that it doesn’t matter because it’s funny.

[Technopeasant]

When did pizza delivery take off?

[Moonlight]

My brief research says American soldiers got a taste for it overseas in WWII and the more modern idea of pizza delivery really exploded in the 60s after existing in a more limited capacity between then and WWII ending.

I’m starting to think this episode isn’t historically accurate.

[Flap Jack]

I didn’t realise until I read up on history just how differently the real time-travelling cyborgs who occupied Earth for a third of the 20th century looked and acted. Shame on you, Doug.

[Author]

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