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]

Yeah but water is *on earth*. It’s not like they’ve found water buffalo on mars. 

….. yet.

Yeah but the point is they don’t come from the water, but they’re happy spending time there. Like space weevils in space.

[Frank Smeghammer]

I’ve thought about the space weevil thing before and the conclusion I came to is that they are, a bit like cat, evolved from a regular Earth dwelling household pest, into one that ravages cargo bays of their plentiful food supplies. It is established that they eat through Starbug’s food supplies in Series VI.

Keep in mind we have things like flour weevils and grain mites in the real world. I think “Space Weevil” is just their term for whatever evolved “food store pest” they occasionally get an infestation of when they loot so many derelicts

[Ben Saunders]

I’m watching a video on Heinrich Himmler and noticing some similarities between him and Rimmer. Insecure, inept men who fetishise military glory and standards to which they themselves can never meet. Himmler also didn’t have a lot of medals so wore his 15-year long service and 10-year long service SS medals on his uniform. Idk if that’s a coincidence or if they wrote that into Me² knowing that.

[Nick R]

Also their names are both *imm*er.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[tombow]

Herman Goring would have been a better inspiration than Himmler. Ok he was a drug crazed nazi cross-dresser, but at least he and Lister could have gone dancing.

[Moonlight]

DEBATE: Is that a green screen behind them that never got comped out for whatever reason? It’s very strange if it’s meant to just be part of the set.

[Ian Symes]

I wouldn’t have thought so, as the facilities in 1988 BBC Manchester wouldn’t really have been up to keying off green. This was back in the days of analogue colour separation, rather than digital chroma keying.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Maybe they couldn’t think what to put there and thought “hey green light, that’s pretty space-y”

[si]

Given the horror of Starbug’s windscreen a year later, I’d imagine it’d look worse than that if they wanted to put something in there.

[Jenuall]

I think it’s just another part of the reaction to how dull and grey everything looked in S1, any attempt to inject colour into the proceedings was welcomed

[Renegade Rob]

It’s clearly meant to be a porthole showing the green external hull of a Starbug parked directly behind Blue Midget in the cargo bay. 

[Frank Smeghammer]

It’s stuff like this that makes me think I’ve wasted my life on Red Dwarf. You spend too long on this forum and you start to think “hang on….is Red Dwarf crap??”

I mean honestly it’s my favourite and has been my whole life but knowing what we know about the show comes at a price.

If someone said “Red Dwarf? Never got into that, it was a bit shit I thought”. I think I’d just have to say fair enough and move on.

[Dave]

It’s true, I’ve been a Red Dwarf fan for over 30 years now but having just noticed that slightly weird green thing I can’t help but think “fuck it”.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Moonlight]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Dammit KT I wanted to be the one to post that meme 

[clem]

[Dave]

[Flap Jack]

Of all the things that could trigger an existential crisis about being a Red Dwarf fan, I would not have bet money on “someone pointing out that an element of the set in one scene of one episode looks slightly weird” being it.

[Nick R]

[Unrumble]

[loadoftottnumb]

Loaded up the episode to have a look, I do think it’s just supposed to look spacey. 

I did notice however there is a bit of a dodgy edit during the conversation regarding where Kryten is sat, the angle and the lighting change between the close up and the side shot. 

I agree, RD is useless, I’m dedicating myself to being a Vicar of Dudley fan. 

[Frank Smeghammer]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

“One must imagine Red Dwarf a bit crappy.” – Albert Camus

[Dave]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

[Unrumble]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

The famous Bodyswap scene

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I was gonna sort it out in the dub!

[Ridley]

I want me rooned bach now

[International Debris]

Vicar of Dudley

I feel like Ian would have something to say about this.

[Dave]

Vicar of Dudley

I feel like Ian would have something to say about this.

[Unrumble]

[Frank Smeghammer]

What about the complete pointlessness of the Hologram Projection Cage which never requires use again because they invented the light bee a few months later?

All I’m saying is, I love Red Dwarf as much as the rest of you but I’ve noticed too much now. I’ve got a Red Dwarf Related Brain Disorder

[Dave]

[loadoftottnumb]

I was just being quirky, I love Dawn Tinsley 

[GlenTokyo]

I’ve said it before, being a Red Dwarf fan is like being a football supporter. There was a time where Red Dwarf was in Europe and had world class players, but that was the best part of 30 years ago and now we’ve been yo-yoing between League One and League Two for a few seasons and we’ve just been knocked out of the cup by Cleethorpes Town. You still turn up on a Saturday afternoon though. 

[Renegade Rob]

I always have these moments where I’ll put Red Dwarf off to the side for a long while and then come back to it later and it’s like wait… this is quite good. 

[Moonlight]

I wouldn’t have thought so, as the facilities in 1988 BBC Manchester wouldn’t really have been up to keying off green. This was back in the days of analogue colour separation, rather than digital chroma keying.

I would say they weren’t up to compositing in general.

[Ian Symes]

I’ve said it before, being a Red Dwarf fan is like being a football supporter. There was a time where Red Dwarf was in Europe and had world class players, but that was the best part of 30 years ago and now we’ve been yo-yoing between League One and League Two for a few seasons and we’ve just been knocked out of the cup by Cleethorpes Town. You still turn up on a Saturday afternoon though. 

Absolutely this. It’s the exact same emotional rollercoaster as football. When new Red Dwarf comes along, you desperately want it to be brilliant. It’s far far more important to you than it should be. And if it’s shit, it’s not just a disappointment, it’s emotionally painful.

[Renegade Rob]

That’s what Russell T. Davies calls “anticipointment.”

[Nick R]

I wonder what Cat would think of Dudley-from-Street Fighter’s dress sense?

[Moonlight]

Wasn’t this show only 20 years old, like, two weeks ago?

God, I still feel glad that Series 11 and 12 happened when they did. 2016 and 2017 were dark days for me, the same six weeks 12 aired being some particularly dark ones. I NEEDED those new episodes every week.

[Warbodog]

Wasn’t this show only 20 years old, like, two weeks ago?

See this cute little feller?

Hedgehogs apparently live up to 7 years on average. Rarely reach 9.

The episode was filmed in 2015.

Have a nice day.

[Ian Symes]

I have some terrible news about the cat who played Frankenstein. Both of them.

[Flap Jack]

Considering actual people who worked on the show have since passed away, forgive me if I don’t shed any tears over a hedgehog who appeared in a single shot.

… now, if it was a bandicoot, then that would be a different story.

[Dave]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I don’t like that you put Frankenstein as the one Cat tries to chat up. I mean, I suppose it’d be in-character, but still…

[Renegade Rob]

(Give him a break, he’ll die unless he finds a female cat, sometimes you gotta work with what ya got.)

I was particularly grateful for the Promised Land coming out when it did. Had a streaming party with friends, and this was just like a month into the pandemic, and Animal Crossing can only sustain your sanity so much. 

So apparently alligators and crocodiles live for decades, so fingers crossed that Alison the crocodile is still with us.

[Author]

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