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

[Ian Symes]

We could show them the first fifty pages or so of Last Human.

[Ridley]

Not sure how seeing the retainers of the Nguyen Dynasty will help them.

[Technopeasant]

Maybe the Gallifrey Gals should get their own thread?

[tombow]

I just thought of a question that often recurred to me as a kid – how does Cat create his idea of “what’s currently in fashion”, which he mentions a lot, but…given that he’s in a time with no other people/media? I thought of it because I was watching an episode of “Hoarders” where a woman with a huge doll collection is deciding to just keep her 20 favourites and give away the rest, and it made me think of Cat’s suits.

[Podey]

[Technopeasant]

Aceified Rimmer in Emohawk deems Lister too valuable as a probable last human, but deems the Cat expendable despite being just as likely the last felis sapiens (they haven’t been seen in over 200 years at that point with only one ark known).

[Moonlight]

R-ace-ist Rimmer.

[Flap Jack]

Given the last cats departed Red Dwarf within Cat’s lifetime (well, plus a few hundred years in deep sleep), and they don’t know what happened to them, Rimmer likely believes there are other cats still. Compared to humans, who were last seen as a large population 3 million years ago.

Plus, Rimmer’s twisted logic at that point is that Cat’s death is already guaranteed due to them being trapped with the Emohawk. So in his mind he’s not choosing Lister’s life over Cat’s, he’s choosing for Lister to survive instead of neither of them.

[Dave]

Of course, in the deleted scenes (recently revisited in the DVD podcast for VI) we see that Ace can’t bring himself to go through with killing Cat and stops short before Lister interrupts him. So maybe he never would have actually done it.

[Unrumble]

R-ace-ist Rimmer.

[Ben Saunders]

Guy on the right (aren’t they all on the far right etc) looks like Ryan Stiles from Who’s Line

[Ben Saunders]

There are people on tiktok making fancams of Red Dwarf and honestly this one is kind of cute: https://vt.tiktok.com/ZGeQxoEdg/

[Technopeasant]

We don’t actually know that the ark left within the Cat’s lifetime, merely that of the Priest and of his parents, as they were the ones left behind. If anything “but then the boy was born” implies otherwise. Which brings us to how Rodon ended up with the cat ark, but that is a whole other story.

[Moonlight]

I mean he’s the older brother (and we don’t know how older), so he could have left at any time before Cat was born. It more raises the question of how he knew he had a brother at all.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I think we have to take an old blind cat priests memory of events with a pinch of salt. 

[Technopeasant]

I suppose we don’t even know if they are full siblings. It is possible Rodon was the child of the cripple and/or the idiot from before the arks left.

[cwickham]

Timeslides has more credited guest stars than every other episode in Series III put together.

This is *almost* true of Meltdown, which has 10 credited guest actors compared to 11 in every other episode of Series IV put together.

(It’s also true of Back to Earth Part Two but it’s not really an equivalent situation)

[Warbodog]

I’m not sure if there’s any consistency across my favourite episodes, but strictly limited guest cast seems to be a factor, Gunmen being the exception. Although thinking about it, even seemingly lonely Me2 has the radiation leak flashback, Titan Taj Mahal cinema ad and maybe more.

[Moonlight]

Guest Starring

Mugs Murphy

[cwickham]

Average Number of Credited Guest Actors by Series

Series 1 = 3.17

Series 2 = 4.17

Series III = 3.17

Series IV = 3.5

Series V = 2.83

Series VI = 3.67

Series VII = 3.5

Series VIII = 5.25

Back to Earth = 4.67

Series X = 4.5

Series XI = 4.67

Series XII = 4.83

The Promised Land = 6

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Kinda want interesting when you start looking at it just how few episodes are core cast only. 

[cwickham]

Marooned, Bodyswap (if you don’t include Carole Brown), Demons & Angels, Out of Time, Duct Soup, Blue and Nanarchy if you consider Norman “main cast” for that ep. The only guest cast in Future Echoes, DNA, White Hole, Dear Dave and Mechocracy are voiceovers, mostly vending machines. Then there are various other grey areas where there are guest cast the characters never interact with or whatever…

[International Debris]

Does the mutton vindaloo beast not count as a guest character? Genuine question. 

Also Bodyswap has the vending machine as a voiceover. 

Blue does technically have some background extras in the flashback. 

[GlenTokyo]

[Warbodog]

Demons & Angels … Duct Soup

Demons & Angels has Jake Abraham (or someone) as a stand-in Lister, plus the inexplicable taranshula and maggots. Duct Soup has GELFs.

[cwickham]

Criteria was that the actor has to actually be credited on the episode itself.

[Flap Jack]

Well, I guess cwickham is strictly talking about credited guest cast here (Edit: yep, of course he replied as I was typing to confirm). Which episodes only feature the regular 4-6 characters, and which episodes only feature the regular 4-6 actors regardless of credit, are both different questions.

For the former, stand-ins like Lister from Demons & Angels and Kryten from Out of Time wouldn’t exclude those episodes, but they would for the latter.

[Warbodog]

Criteria was that the actor has to actually be credited on the episode itself.

I know, just trying to get as pure as possible, which is probably Marooned then. Didn’t know there was a Kryten stand-in in Out of Time.

[RunawayTrain]

Average Number of Credited Guest Actors by Series
Series 1 = 3.17
Series 2 = 4.17
Series III = 3.17
Series IV = 3.5
Series V = 2.83
Series VI = 3.67
Series VII = 3.5
Series VIII = 5.25
Back to Earth = 4.67
Series X = 4.5
Series XI = 4.67
Series XII = 4.83
The Promised Land = 6

Are those mean or median?  Just wonder if the more guest-heavy eps in certain series skew those figures at all.

[Flap Jack]

Even with the mean you can test for outliers and exclude them, but I probably wouldn’t have thought to do that initially.

[cwickham]

Series I goes: 7, 2, 5, 2, 2, 1 — the only reason The End isn’t a massive outlier is because of the flashback scene in Balance of Power

Series II: 3, 9, 1, 7, 1, 4 — interestingly this series is divided between the ‘Populated Byte’ of Better than Life/Stasis Leak/Parallel Universe and Thanks for the Memory, Queeg and to a lesser extent Kryten

Series III: 4, 0, 3, 0, 10, 2 — Timeslides is obviously a massive outlier, take it out of the equation and the average of the five remaining episodes falls to 1.8

Series IV: 4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 10 — again, Meltdown is a massive outlier, without it the average is 2.2, that’s before you take into account things like the only credited guest actors in DNA and White Hole are voiceovers and all four guest actors in Camille are playing different perceptions of the same character

Series V: 6, 3, 2, 1, 0, 5

Series VI: 7, 1, 9, 4, 1, 0

Series VII: 4, 10, 4, 0, 0, 7, 2, 1

Series VIII: 5, 7, 4, 6, 5, 7, 3, 5

Back to Earth: 1, 9, 4

Series X: 6, 2, 5, 5, 1, 8

Series XI: 9, 3, 5 (note that both Snacky and Asclepius count as two since they have separate credits for the physical performers and the voiceovers), 3, 3, 5 — Twentica is a bit of an outlier but not as much as the others

Series XII: 5, 6, 5, 4, 4, 5 — possibly the most balanced series?

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Series I goes: 7, 2, 5, 2, 2, 1 — the only reason The End isn’t a massive outlier is because of the flashback scene in Balance of Power
Series II: 3, 9, 1, 7, 1, 4 — interestingly this series is divided between the ‘Populated Byte’ of Better than Life/Stasis Leak/Parallel Universe and Thanks for the Memory, Queeg and to a lesser extent Kryten
Series III: 4, 0, 3, 0, 10, 2 — Timeslides is obviously a massive outlier, take it out of the equation and the average of the five remaining episodes falls to 1.8
Series IV: 4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 10 — again, Meltdown is a massive outlier, without it the average is 2.2, that’s before you take into account things like the only credited guest actors in DNA and White Hole are voiceovers and all four guest actors in Camille are playing different perceptions of the same character
Series V: 6, 3, 2, 1, 0, 5
Series VI: 7, 1, 9, 4, 1, 0
Series VII: 4, 10, 4, 0, 0, 7, 2, 1
Series VIII: 5, 7, 4, 6, 5, 7, 3, 5
Back to Earth: 1, 9, 4
Series X: 6, 2, 5, 5, 1, 8
Series XI: 9, 3, 5 (note that both Snacky and Asclepius count as two since they have separate credits for the physical performers and the voiceovers), 3, 3, 5 — Twentica is a bit of an outlier but not as much as the others
Series XII: 5, 6, 5, 4, 4, 5 — possibly the most balanced series?

Are the two in Future Echos, Jim and Bexley?

[cwickham]

Both Future Echoes credited guest roles are voiceovers — the John Lenahan incarnation of Talkie Toaster and a vending machine voiced by Tony Hawks

[Podey]

Apologies for bringing Godwin’s Law into things, but are we counting Hitler?

[cwickham]

Not in Timeslides, no.

(I think I might be able to get an entire article out of this so watch this space)

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Hitler is archive footage so isn’t officially credited. But, is ironically credited at the start of episode 

[Podey]

Is this a Gallifrey Gals comments section? 😜

(just kidding, yeah, that’s what I was thinking, that he is specifically credited as a Guest Star at the beginning. I think he should be in!)

[cwickham]

Thought that came up in the course of researching this line of inquiry:

The original Radio Times billing for “The End” credited Danny John-Jules as playing ‘?’ to avoid giving away the twist. (https://www.ganymede.tv/2012/02/a-comedy-series-set-in-space/)

The issue of the Radio Times with the billing for “Future Echoes” would’ve gone on sale the same day as “The End” was broadcast. Did it also credit DJJ as ‘?’ for people reading on the day of publication?

[Moonlight]

[Flap Jack]

Lukewarm take – people who appear in stock footage shouldn’t count. “Adolf Hitler as Himself” is just a gag and should be treated as such.

I’m willing to be argued into making exceptions to this stock footage rule, but not for Hitler, come on. I have higher standards than that.

[Warbodog]

[Technopeasant]

[Ben Saunders]

the quality of the cameras on series 1 was so shite, Craig looks CSO’d in there like it’s an X episode

[Unrumble]

[Warbodog]

[Dave]

[Ben Saunders]

That’s DNA, right? They’re about to be chased by some stock footage. It looks like they’re just walking to my school. Even with Rimmer and Kryten in full makeup my brain is not parsing this as “Red Dwarf” lol

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

It’s the really shitty fancy just poking out amongst the trees. It makes it feel like the edge of a park. Which I guess is where they are meant to be. But the edge of a park in West London, not another plant in the future 

[Nick R]

[Flap Jack]

That’s DNA, right? They’re about to be chased by some stock footage.

Happy to confirm that it’s not DNA.

[Author]

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