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

[RunawayTrain]

Just me that took it for robgranted that all of Rimmer’s pieces had his name on and the end result isn’t quite the glorious raising of banners it started as then?

Not just you.  I hadn’t thought about it until the observation in this thread, but I did have the same thought before seeing your comment.  Totally in keeping with Rimmer’s character to do that.

But also in real-world terms, being transmitted onto relatively small late-80s TV screens, it helps highlight just how badly he’s lost, since it might not be immediately obvious in the short length of time that shot was on screen.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Just me that took it for robgranted that all of Rimmer’s pieces had his name on and the end result isn’t quite the glorious raising of banners it started as then?

Na I assumed the joke was “Rimmer puts little military type flags on his pieces”

[Ben Saunders]

I have absolutely no recollection of this. I racked my brain for which episode of Series 3 this could possibly be. Not Backwards, not Marooned, not Polymorph… Timeslides? The Last Day?

then I looked it up on smega drive…. it’s QUEEG?!

⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛

[Flap Jack]

[Warbodog]

it’s QUEEG?!

It’s the classic board games episode. Watching/helping Rimmer play draughts so terribly gives Holly the idea for his chess finale.

[Flap Jack]

Realised this while posting in the other thread.

Cassandra says “All the Canaries will be dead within one hour, except for Rimmer, who will be dead in 20 minutes.”

But 20 minutes is within an hour, so this means she made a self-contradictory prediction purely to fuck with Rimmer, in spite of the fact that as far as she’s concerned (supposedly), Rimmer isn’t in the room and can’t hear her say this.

So I’m counting this is as proof that Cassandra knew full well that Arnold was the real Rimmer, but she just played along with (and effectively seeded) the Knot/Rimmer ruse in order to further mess with them.

It explains why she isn’t confused by Arnold’s delighted reaction to hearing that “Rimmer” might survive, given she must have foreseen him being totally nonchalant as Knot-Rimmer dies right in front of him. The contradiction could even be how Kryten legendarily figured out that Cassandra could and would lie.

Of course, like all Cassandra motivation theories, you have to assume that she still has effective free will somehow.

[International Debris]

Or they were just rounded-up times and it was an easy way of saying everyone else will die in 58 minutes and 13 seconds time but Rimmer will die in 19 minutes 42 seconds time.

[Flap Jack]

Well, if it was rounding she would have said “All the Canaries will die in one hour, except for Rimmer, who will die in 20 minutes.” Saying “within” explicitly avoids rounding by making it a range.

If she had no intention to screw with Rimmer with the way she said it (and it’s not like it’s out of character, we know the Canaries all dying aspect was just a lie to manipulate Lister), then she could have said “All the Canaries will be dead within one hour, and Rimmer will be dead within 20 minutes.” No reason other than trolling to throw an incorrect “except for” in there.

[Ben Saunders]

I always just assumed she was fucking with Rimmer because she performs it so smugly, she’s straight up smirking

[Flap Jack]

There is that.

It is a flaw of the episode that they hinge so much on this “hang on, does she actually know that I’m Rimmer?” revelation, but aren’t willing to compromise the laughs in the earlier scene to make it truly fit. Sure, on paper she didn’t experience anyone directly say that he was Rimmer, but being real, how could she not know?

Not helped of course by the wild leap of logic that Cassandra’s only visions of Rimmer were of times when he was physically in the same room as her, which is based on nothing.

[loadoftottnumb]

Well also all the Canaries don’t die anyway, we see them again in the next episode. Unless they were all replacements, I don’t want to watch Cassandra again, despite it being probably the best of Series 8 (very low bar), to check. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> It is a flaw of the episode

just the one flaw?

[International Debris]

Well also all the Canaries don’t die anyway, we see them again in the next episode. Unless they were all replacements, I don’t want to watch Cassandra again, despite it being probably the best of Series 8 (very low bar), to check. 

The only one we explicitly see is Kill Crazy, and he’s shown to have spent the episode in the travel pod with a nasty red mark on his head.

[Flap Jack]

Well also all the Canaries don’t die anyway, we see them again in the
next episode. Unless they were all replacements, I don’t want to watch
Cassandra again, despite it being probably the best of Series 8 (very low bar), to check.

Right, the “Canaries are all going to die, including Arnold” bit is definitely a lie, that’s just the text of the plot. But Knot’s death – and Cassandra’s belief that he’s Rimmer – is never doubted as a legitimate foretelling by any of the characters. So relative to what is confirmed in the episode, I’m only doubting that she really believed Knot to be Rimmer.

just the one flaw?

Hey now, I wield the indefinite article with careful precision.

[International Debris]

Given how ludicrous  her prediction of Lister’s death is, I honestly question whether any of her prophecies was true, other than the one that Kryten Figured Out.

[Flap Jack]

All the ones we don’t actually see play out are suspect, for sure. But at the very least Knot’s death and the dialogue based predictions in her first scene were for real.

What makes my head hurt is the “no free will” interpretation of Cassandra, where she genuinely can’t see anything other than her own personal future, and she only has answers to people’s questions because she’s had visions of herself giving those answers. That she didn’t – and couldn’t – plan to trick Lister. That she knows that Kryten will realise her key prediction is wrong, and that she will die.

With that interpretation in mind, it doesn’t matter whether she deduces that Arnold is Rimmer or not. She’s compelled to troll him with the false and self-contradictory prophecy but then act like she believes Knot is Rimmer regardless.

[Formica]

Are we all forgetting that Somehow, Knot Returned by Pete Pt. I?

[Flap Jack]

Oh definitely. I’d forget Pete Part 1 in its entirety if I could.

[Warbodog]

Are we all forgetting that Somehow, Knot Returned by Pete Pt. I?

Somehow = deleted scene from earlier episode as flashback padding.

[Formica]

Are we all forgetting that Somehow, Knot Returned by Pete Pt. I?

Somehow = deleted scene from earlier episode as flashback padding.

[Moonlight]

I think they should have cut the entirety of Pete and added it to Back in the Red Part 3 to fill out the timeslot.

[Moonlight]

Courtesy of my friends in Australia:

Norman Lovett gets Mike Wazowskied.

[Flap Jack]

Ah ha, for a second I thought this was going to be a complaint about the price.

Off topic, but the Australian DVD ratings labels are such an eyesore. Like I know the UK ones maybe aren’t amazing either compared to the virtually clean US DVD covers, but I don’t know why Australia decided the labels needed to be quite that large.

[Moonlight]

I’m American so I think DVD ratings are inherently an eyesore.

[Warbodog]

I find BBFC ratings tragically nostalgic (if they’re even still the same, even “12A” was getting after my time). The thrilling blood-red of an 18 and the mildly cheeky red-on-whites amid the yellow triangles on the shelf when I was slightly underage.

[Moonlight]

I find BBFC ratings tragically nostalgic

[Nick R]

[Moonlight]

Honestly I feel like BBFC ratings would be a lot more fun if they were as deeply arbitrary as MPAA ratings.

[Flap Jack]

To be fair to them, the BBFC did bump Marooned up to a 15 just because it didn’t have a shot of Starbug after the credits.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I was with a group of Europeans from various countries at the weekend. Including a Bulgarian. 

A Latvian (I think) was telling me how their languages are similar but that Bulgarian is basically backwards. Like they have the same words but mean opposite things. Chair means table, that kinda thing. I’m sure slightly exaggerated but found it quite amusing in the context of Backwards. 

[loadoftottnumb]

In Bulgaria Chair sits on you. 

[Warbodog]

Cat shouldn’t have needed the visual/audio reminders that Rimmer was a projection in The Promised Land, since he should already be noticeably and uncannily “absent” by smell all the time. It could even be an innate reason he finds Rimmer so objectionable, besides the other stuff.

Unless he got used to it.

[Moonlight]

Cat doesn’t smell things outside Series VI anyway.

[Technopeasant]

[Warbodog]

Rimmerworld’s the most touché of episodes.

Look how pleased he is to see/smell him!

[RunawayTrain]

The first one kinda made sense, in that the human flesh-and-blood clones would have a different smell – which could have been ‘different from Rimmer’s usual absence of smell’.

The handwave would probably be ‘because he’s in hardlight and can interact with physical substances’.  But on Rimmerworld he doesn’t have any hypothetical usual toiletries or the usual substances on Red Dwarf to interact with his form in the same way as normal.  So the implication is that he has his own scent (still perhaps only in hardlight) – but how?

I have no idea.

[Ben Saunders]

Holograms smell like pennies

[Technopeasant]

I wonder what Commander Binks smelled like.

[Warbodog]

The handwave would probably be ‘because he’s in hardlight and can interact with physical substances’.  But on Rimmerworld he doesn’t have any hypothetical usual toiletries or the usual substances on Red Dwarf to interact with his form in the same way as normal.  So the implication is that he has his own scent (still perhaps only in hardlight) – but how?
I have no idea.

I was only thinking about three-million-year-old light bee smell, hadn’t thought about his physical form gathering dust, gunk, etc, great point.

[Warbodog]

Hard light holograms can just clean themselves by winking into soft light and back.

[Technopeasant]

We know Rimmer can smell, so can he smell himself?

[Technopeasant]

In Give & Take Lister grabs the knife with his bare hand while describing the DNA on it. They’ll just have to take his word for it I guess…

And of course, the DNA of the man being stabbed being on the knife handle could easily be his own blood…

[Technopeasant]

They also could have tried using the rejuvination shower to regenerate his kidneys, but let’s not go there.

[Jenuall]

[tombow]

I was just looking at old reactions to BTE and someone asked, if Corrie is the TV set (and not actually in-soap-universe Corrie) why was the shop open and staffed?

[Hamish]

[Moonlight]

I was just looking at old reactions to BTE and someone asked, if Corrie is the TV set (and not actually in-soap-universe Corrie) why was the shop open and staffed?

There’s also a magic typewriter like 8 minutes later.

[Flap Jack]

I don’t think the shop is “open and staffed”. Michelle Keegan just happens to be in there, going over her script.

[Moonlight]

I mean, fair, but like, I contest the premise of the question that this world should make sense.

[tombow]

 there was a filming leak at the time that they go in the shop and people were taking that as confirmation that they go into the universe of Corrie and meet the characters. But I never thought about it before. Like..when they go in the shop, I did think they were in the actual world of the show. But I’ve never thought, “so how were they in the shop?” once it’s revealed they’re on the real life set. In face I’m pretty sure both the Kabin shop and Rovers interiors aren’t filmed there, the Rovers even had a replica for tourists when Granada had the Studios Tour. But BTE makes it look like the actors just pop in for a drink when they’re rehearsing.

[Author]

Replies