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

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

There’s a line in The End where Rimmer says he wasn’t academy educated, and that he had the wrong parents.  But we know Rimmer’s parents (dad at least) were obsessed with Rimmer joining the Space Corp and becoming an officer.  So why didn’t they send him to the academy?  Unless he didn’t get in, but I feel Mrs Rimmer would have fucked the right people to get him in

[Dave]

I always read that as him not having the right parents to give him what he needed to succeed. Their approach to parenting didn’t get the best out of him.

[International Debris]

Rimmer’s backstory in the first series is very different to what it becomes later on. It feels a bit awkward trying to make any sense of it.

[Ian Symes]

So why didn’t they send him to the academy?

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I’m calling bullshit on that though. I think Rimmer 2’s response shows Rimmer knows that’s a feeble excuse. 

[Flap Jack]

The key point is just that Rimmer was the punching bag in his family, and his parents were bastards.

[Rudolph]

Given Rimmer’s poor academic performance, coupled with his parents dislike for him, I figured that Rimmer Sr. considered it a waste of money to send Rimmer off to the Academy and made up an excuse to justify it.

Rimmer does appear to have some sort of tertiary education, though. He did take a maintenance course at Saturn Tech, and did go to cadet school where he beat his drill instructor at Risk. Although these might’ve been part of the Space Corps basic training he mentions in Me², or extracuricular studies in order to qualify for promotion to Second Technician.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Lister tells Cat to meet in 5 minutes to go into stasis, and then immediately walks into the drive room and starts talking to Rimmer in a way that implies he might be changing his mind. But is then distracted by Rimmer talking nonsense as he is a future echo. 

[International Debris]

I love the idea that all their clothes, belongings, food, etc. have survived three million years completely intact, but they have to take anything they want into stasis to get it back to Earth. As if the shelf-life for these things is explicitly somewhere between three and six million years.

[Formica]

I love the idea that all their clothes, belongings, food, etc. have survived three million years completely intact, but they have to take anything they want into stasis to get it back to Earth. As if the shelf-life for these things is explicitly somewhere between three and six million years.

It seemed to me the concept was that you’re packing the few things you’d want if the ship wrecked and you survived due to the stasis field mechanism not busting until after most of the damage was done, especially considering how ultra-reinforced thac stasis booth appears. I take it there’s also survival kits à la Rimmerworld pod. Or, at least, this is a cultural concept that survived from when they’d actually be putting the whole crew in there for long-distance travel.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Lister has been Rimmer’s bunkmate for 8 months, yet he had once mentioned his all important plan to Rimmer in that time.  Lister doesn’t seem the type not to have brought it up, he is very quick to do so here, and it is everything he is working towards.

[International Debris]

I always get the impression that, pre-accident, they kept non-essential chat to a minimum. Lister mentioned the plan in defence of an insult from Rimmer, in a conversation brought about by Rimmer’s ludicrous cheating. I never picture them actually having casual conversations; Lister’s remark about half of their words being him telling Rimmer to smeg off is probably truer than we like to imagine, having seen their friendlier-by-necessity relationship post-accident.

I knew people at university who barely said a word to their flatmates in halls, and although that’s easier with separate rooms and a larger number of people, it’s how I imagine Rimmer and Lister most of the time.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Im just watching The End now and Lister actually say “this is why I never said anything because I knew you’d say something like this” when Rimmer starts taking the piss.

Also it’s interesting how Rimmer is quite happy to let Lister know he’s cheating.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Well, Rimmer’s already decided in his head that it’s simply a memory aid, and thus not technically cheating, so he probably wouldn’t be all that fussed about ‘sharing’ the secret with an inferior technician, particularly when he knows said technician well enough to be sure he’s not arsed enough to rat him out.

[cwickham]

In A Bit of Fry & Laurie S04E03, one of the ingredients for the cocktail is “a lump of Cinzano Bianco”.

[Jonathan Capps]

In A Bit of Fry & Laurie S04E03, one of the ingredients for the cocktail is “a lump of Cinzano Bianco”.

A measure of gin.

[Jenuall]

Do they discuss how hard it is to remove it when spilled on a table or whether it’s so shit nobody wants to drink it?

[International Debris]

You definitely wouldn’t want to get a lump of cinzano bianco on your table, if you think how much just a splash stains it.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Imagine spilling so much cinzano bianco on your table that it congeals into a solid lump.

[Jenuall]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Series 1 has this lose arc of Lister wanting to bring back Kochanski as a hologram and how he still pines after her etc.  That resolves in an episode that is entirely about Rimmer.

Series 10 has a lose arc of Lister trying to find Kochanski, who apparently ran away prior to BtE.  That resolves in an episode that is entirely about Rimmer.

[cwickham]

…Both of which were also quite late replacements for the originally intended conclusion

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Yes. Im sure that entered my mind when it all suddenly occurred to me but I forgot to include it

[International Debris]

Both of which end up ignoring the Kochanski plot entirely, never to return to it.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Exactly!

They’re basically the same episode

[Flap Jack]

Lister… isn’t maintaining the vending machines meant to literally be your job?

(Btw: hey, a mithing thpace before that final thentence.)

[Dave]

Lister… isn’t maintaining the vending machines meant to literally be your job?

No it’s Rimmer’s job, Lister just helps.

[Flap Jack]

Feels like splitting hairs to me. Rimmer and Lister were a vending machine maintenance team, which Rimmer was in charge of, yes, but presumably Lister retained some relevant skills/knowledge or sometimes did jobs on his own. And he did later rebuild Kryten.

Of course, it’s not out of character or anything for him not to bother, and to no longer care about his “technician” role under the circumstances, but it just seems like if a faulty vending machine was personally inconveniencing him, he might take a bit of initiative about that.

[Dave]

Yeah I was just being silly really.

I guess that now the skutters don’t have an entire ship of (1,)169 people to look after, Lister maybe thinks it’s not unreasonable that they look after this stuff now.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

No crew, no union, Rimmer and Lister are able to give the repair work to the Skutters.

Although I’ve always thought “service droids” were more akin to the robot bell boy you see in Stasis Leak but given they’re never mentioned or seen again, unless they took a ship and fucked off to form their own civilisation at some point in the 3million years, so just have to assume he meant Skutters.

[Dave]

After so much talk over the years of Blade Runner’s influence on the show, it never occurred to me until now that this is basically the same story:

[International Debris]

[Warbodog]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Rudolph]

I always get the impression that, pre-accident, they kept non-essential chat to a minimum.

I’ve always found Lister’s story in Marooned slightly incongruous. The one about the bar room brawl. It seems to imply that Lister and Rimmer willingly spent time together on shore leave, going to that night club. I can’t imagine Lister inviting Rimmer on a night out, or Rimmer wanting to tag along with Lister and his deadbeat mates.

[clem]

I thought the same thing about that bit in Kryten, “It’s always the same when we meet girls.” 

[Stabbim]

Well, early on, they probably at least tried to get along before realizing/admitting just how much they don’t.  Going to be bunking together, going to be working together, going to be seeing a lot of each other, might as well try to get on, right?

I can see Lister immediately recognizing Rimmer’s an awkward loner without knowing him well enough to realize why and trying to involve him socially before repeated instances of Rimmer being a smeghead got him fed up enough to give up.  After all, Lister’s new and doesn’t really know anybody, Rimmer’s gonna be his bunkmate anyway, might as well try.  And Rimmer, for his part, does try to be liked, he doesn’t really want to be such an unpopular prat, he just can’t help but fail.

And they get fed up, and stop trying, and by the time the show starts they’ve realized how much they can’t stand each other.

[Unrumble]

Well, early on, they probably at least tried to get along before realizing/admitting just how much they don’t. I can see Lister immediately recognizing Rimmer’s an awkward loner without knowing him well enough to realize why and trying to involve him socially before repeated instances of Rimmer being a smeghead got him fed up enough to give up.  After all, Lister’s new and doesn’t really know anybody. And they get fed up, and stop trying, and by the time the show starts they’ve realized how much they can’t stand each other.

This nicely articulates my feelings. The way the novel fleshes out Listers story JMC and early days on-board, and what an optimistic guy he can be, I can see him trying to be social with the bloke who he’s going to be bunking & working with. 

Anecdotes like the ones from Kryten & Marooned, I can imagine them both gravitating towards whatever the nearest convenient bar is, ditto if they’re on planet leave on some little backwater-type place, lots of the crew might mosey on down to the same establishment/area. 

[International Debris]

Yeah, the bar incident could have been very early on. Meeting girls, on the other hand, would no doubt happen during their day-to-day work.

The real answer is that the softening of Rimmer’s character and the pair’s relationship was a creative decision rather than a natural evolution, and these are parts of that retcon, but let’s not spoil the speculation too much.

[clem]

What’s up with everyone wearing braces in Series 2? 

[Ian Symes]

[Dave]

What’s up with everyone wearing braces in Series 2? 

[International Debris]

I’ve never noticed those braces on Lister before. They really don’t suit him.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

They look like the sort of carpet my nan had.

[Dollar Pound]

the reason for the braces is to jazz things up a bit

[GlenTokyo]

I think Lister’s are the best of the bunch tbh.

Also, who wears braces with cycling shorts?

[International Debris]

Rimmer.

[Dave]

[Warbodog]

Because of this corridor’s frequent use in series 1, I came to think Rimmer said “White Corridor 159” in the opening scene of The End, when he really just says “right.”

This one’s probably Red Corridor 454 (or brown), do we see any other colours? Can we infer what the colour coding means?

Another White Corridor.

No colour coding I can see in Floor 16, but it does confirm that ‘floor’ and ‘level/nivelo’ are synonymous, along with ‘corridor.’ When the numbering already make no sense, and possibly the colour scheme, it doesn’t really matter what you call them.

[International Debris]

Today I learned that it isn’t “white corridor 159”.

[Author]

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