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

[Nick R]

Mundane observation about that chess match (and also Gordon’s postal chess move in Better Than Life): the moves are announced using descriptive notation. But by the time the episode was made, almost everyone had long since switched over to algebraic notation. (The Wikipedia article says FIDE officially switched over at the start of the 1980s.)

Maybe it can be explained like the use of video tapes in the future: at some point between now and Red Dwarf setting off, society switches back to using the old notation system, for some reason?

(Also, the use of that notation system means it matches the HAL chess game in 2001, which – if you squint a bit – those two Red Dwarf scenes could be said to be parodying.)

[Jedi Comedian]

The back and forth stuff suggests that Holly’s playing proper, legal moves, up until at least “queens don’t move like that” and “check and mate, sucker”, with the ‘horsie’ stuff being silly, but inconsequential to the actual gameplay. To counter that, seems odd that Holly would be competent at it, given he tries his best to get out of chess being the game, and “I was thinking of poker” etc… 

Given that Queeg was Holly all along, the whole match (and the discussion about what game they’re going to play) is just an act on his part. He presumably pretends to be worse at/have less understanding of chess than he actually does for the sake of the prank.

[Unrumble]

The back and forth stuff suggests that Holly’s playing proper, legal moves, up until at least “queens don’t move like that” and “check and mate, sucker”, with the ‘horsie’ stuff being silly, but inconsequential to the actual gameplay. To counter that, seems odd that Holly would be competent at it, given he tries his best to get out of chess being the game, and “I was thinking of poker” etc… 

Given that Queeg was Holly all along, the whole match (and the discussion about what game they’re going to play) is just an act on his part. He presumably pretends to be worse at/have less understanding of chess than he actually does for the sake of the prank.

[Moonlight]

This really isn’t about Red Dwarf the series itself, but I’ve been rereading the comment threads on articles leading up to Back to Earth and I feel the distinct absence of everything devolving into a series of SmegaDrive memes every five posts.

Some highlights predicting the future, but not Back to Earth:

[Unrumble]

[cwickham]

“Waiting for God” is the episode where it’s most obvious Holly was originally written as a voiceover (in particular his “yes, you have” at the top of the first scene). And Rimmer going screaming mad over the Quagaars feels like a callback to “Bodysnatcher” which now makes no sense. A real throwback.

I also wonder if the studio audience were given a slightly more detailed primer on “The End”, since the plot leans quite heavily on that.

[Rudolph]

I’d say Balance of Power is the most obvious, especially with Lister talking towards the ceiling with Holly in the first sleeping quarters scene; and a lot of his conversation with Rimmer when he gives him Petersen’s arm sounds like it’s coming in over a tannoy.

[Moonlight]

Holly was still fucked up from light speed so his audio fidelity was poor.

[Frank Smeghammer]

This admission comes before the bombshell in The Last Day where he admits he was abandoned.

Rimmer fails to pick up on it, but in true Rimmer fashion he picks up on “no education”. But not “no parents”

[Stephen Abootman]

Don’t know where to put this so this’ll do:

Hope he didn’t have gangrene.

[Flap Jack]

Actually quite complimentary of them to make the “Then” example a picture of Danny from 2012.

But I looked up the video and was shocked – shocked, I tell you! – to discover that it at no point talks about Danny having to get his leg amputated and also acquiring somebody else’s face and body.

Other brilliant details:

– It’s obviously written by AI, or at least I hope no human could write or research this poorly.

– It never suggests that any of the actors have aged horribly, or comments on their aging whatsoever, or even describes anything about their lives beyond the fact that they’re not over yet.

– The choice of actors/characters is amazing. Except for Clare Grogan and Sophie Winkleman, every actor listed is one who appeared in Series VIII (and Winkleman is counted as being in Series VIII somehow), yet they managed to exclude Holly. So Jake Wood and Kika Mirylees are considered major Red Dwarf cast members but Norman Lovett and Hattie Hayridge aren’t. Also they count Chen but not Selby.

– The “modern” footage of Chloe Annett is from the Series 7-8 era, it’s not even from the 21st century.

– The descriptions are phrased to make it sound like the actors and their characters are the same people. E.g. “He portrayed the character Cat in the TV series when he was 28 years old in 1988. He is a humanoid creature with cat-like teeth that evolved from the offspring of Frankenstein’s bad cat.”

– Every actor is described as “living happily at [current age]”. Bitch, you don’t know that Chris Barrie or Robert Llewellyn are happy. That’s pure conjecture.

[Stephen Abootman]

But I looked up the video and was shocked – shocked, I tell you! – to discover that it at no point talks about Danny having to get his leg amputated and also acquiring somebody else’s face and body. 

A cast member losing a limb is really the sort of story G&T should be leaping on now that @reddwarfHQ isn’t able to cover it. If they don’t want to go down the gangrene headline route, “I’ve lost your shoe too” would suffice.

[Warbodog]

I’m worried that Chris Barrie will see it and take it as factual.

[Dave]

A cast member losing a limb is really the sort of story G&T should be leaping on now that @reddwarfHQ isn’t able to cover it. If they don’t want to go down the gangrene headline route, “I’ve lost your shoe too” would suffice.

[Ian Symes]

You Can Now Take Three Suits

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

[Dave]

You Can Now Take Three Suits

They Do It Below The Knee

[Rudolph]

[Moonlight]

[Dave]

[Moonlight]

[Dave]

[clem]

[Moonlight]

[clem]

They Do It Below The Knee

One Minute, You Got Two Legs, And The Next – Zing…Doof!

[Moonlight]

[Unrumble]

[Moonlight]

[Frank Smeghammer]

[Dave]

[Flap Jack]

[Unrumble]

[Moonlight]

[Formica]

[Moonlight]

[Frank Smeghammer]

Ugh the MultiRimmer beast really annoys me.

Are we supposed to just pretend we can’t see that guy? Just some dude who looks nothing like Chris Barrie hanging out pulling the stupidest fucking gurning face in all the shots?

[clem]

[Moonlight]

Are we supposed to just pretend we can’t see that guy? Just some dude who looks nothing like Chris Barrie hanging out pulling the stupidest fucking gurning face in all the shots?

The weird thing is those fake heads are actually cast from Chris’s face, yet look nothing like him.

[Ian Symes]

[Formica]

I realized in making this that there’s probably a dozen or so different jokes you could do of this from Pete. Also: shitty cropping is my own doing but it’s bizarre that these two scenes use slightly different color grading.

[Dave]

[Dave]

[Unrumble]

[clem]

[Moonlight]

[cwickham]

[Dave]

[Ridley]

[Unrumble]

[Ridley]

For Phil.

[Author]

Replies