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]

I believe it was Curtis Threadgold who first posited the theory that Rimmer’s newly-changed experience of being visited by a future self as a child made him less sceptical when he was visited by his future self in Stasis Leak, thus he heeded the warning.

[Dave]

OK, time to post my Timeslides fan theory again.

————–

This all hinges on why Rimmer is now alive in the first place. It’s because young Rimmer (as he grows up) realises that he must have met a hologram of his older self that night, thus giving him a good idea of the age at which he will die. This makes him extra sensitive to risks at this age, meaning that when the radiation leak hits he is primed to run to the nearest stasis booth and freeze himself alongside Lister.

Unfortunately, this alternate timeline is very short-lived, because as the ending of Timeslides plays out and Rimmer is celebrating being alive – and hits the crates and they explode – a small piece of shrapnel is fired through the timeslide portal that is still open, into the dormitory, and lodges in young Rimmer’s leg. This then gives him a slight limp for life that, decades later, just prevents him from running fast enough to get to the stasis booth in time. As a result, Rimmer dies after all and (seconds after the televised events of Timeslides are over) reality is once again rewritten so that Rimmer died in the accident all along.

[Unrumble]

OK, time to post my Timeslides fan theory again.
————–
This all hinges on why Rimmer is now alive in the first place. It’s because young Rimmer (as he grows up) realises that he must have met a hologram of his older self that night, thus giving him a good idea of the age at which he will die. This makes him extra sensitive to risks at this age, meaning that when the radiation leak hits he is primed to run to the nearest stasis booth and freeze himself alongside Lister.

Unfortunately, this alternate timeline is very short-lived, because as the ending of Timeslides plays out and Rimmer is celebrating being alive – and hits the crates and they explode – a small piece of shrapnel is fired through the timeslide portal that is still open, into the dormitory, and lodges in young Rimmer’s leg. This then gives him a slight limp for life that, decades later, just prevents him from running fast enough to get to the stasis booth in time. As a result, Rimmer dies after all and (seconds after the televised events of Timeslides are over) reality is once again rewritten so that Rimmer died in the accident all along.

[Warbodog]

What if those random exploding crates are a callback to Lister and Cat’s games earlier in the episode?

[Podey]

Watching someone watching Taskmaster and I never noticed this before. 

Several things on the board are clues to the word “hop”, is this a reference to Seventh Day Advent Hoppists?!

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Watching someone watching Taskmaster and I never noticed this before. 
Several things on the board are clues to the word “hop”, is this a reference to Seventh Day Advent Hoppists?!

I just pointed this out to Morwen a few days ago 

It’s not 7th day advent hoppists. Though for us fans it could be 

a lot of the clues are hop, others are H, O, or P

above Rimmer is “No J Simpson”, the clue being O.  Rimmer is just H for his hologram symbol

[Podey]

Haha no way, that came up here recently?!

[si]

Only Connect Spoiler warning for anyone who hasn’t seen last night’s episode.

[loadoftottnumb]

OK, time to post my Timeslides fan theory again.
————–
This all hinges on why Rimmer is now alive in the first place. It’s because young Rimmer (as he grows up) realises that he must have met a hologram of his older self that night, thus giving him a good idea of the age at which he will die. This makes him extra sensitive to risks at this age, meaning that when the radiation leak hits he is primed to run to the nearest stasis booth and freeze himself alongside Lister.

Unfortunately, this alternate timeline is very short-lived, because as the ending of Timeslides plays out and Rimmer is celebrating being alive – and hits the crates and they explode – a small piece of shrapnel is fired through the timeslide portal that is still open, into the dormitory, and lodges in young Rimmer’s leg. This then gives him a slight limp for life that, decades later, just prevents him from running fast enough to get to the stasis booth in time. As a result, Rimmer dies after all and (seconds after the televised events of Timeslides are over) reality is once again rewritten so that Rimmer died in the accident all along.

So what happened to his limp? Holly didn’t recreate it? Not much of a simulation 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

That begs a question doesn’t it. 

What’s to say a hologram has to be an accurate recreation of you at the time of death? 

If you were blind would your hologram be blind. Should they be blind?

If you’d had a leg amputated why shouldn’t you have two post death?

[Flap Jack]

George McIntyre still used glasses as a hologram, although perhaps this was just aesthetic, and if he had taken them off his sight would be unchanged. (Try not to think about how a hologram even sees from the perspective of where their eyes are being projected to begin with.)

One possibility is that Holly did simulate the limp, but Rimmer insisted he take it away.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Oh yeah, good points! I wasn’t considering the timeline of the episode about timelines. There’s still the possibility that neither kid bothered going to the patent office (or understood how to do that) until Holden remembered as an adult, but that would be another unnecessary complication. Or the Tension Sheet was already around, but Young Lister hadn’t heard of it.

[Formica]

The answer would seem to be that the hologram should be able to decide, but that also opens up a question of where the line is/should be. Should Rimmer, or any hologram, be allowed to be given personality tweaks at a simple request? Made taller? Given more muscles? Fangs? Gills? Branches and leaves? A massive p

[Formica]

Given the typical demographic for furries and presumably the sheer number of spaceships, surely many furries have been brought back as holograms. Would they want to be brought back as their fursona full-time? If not, would they want to be able to morph into it at a moment’s notice, or does that take part of the fun out of it compared to actually going through the process of dressing up in a holofursuit?

[International Debris]

I’m assuming you’re referring to Hollister and his chicken outfit here.

[Dave]

Given the typical demographic for furries and presumably the sheer number of spaceships, surely many furries have been brought back as holograms. Would they want to be brought back as their fursona full-time?

Let’s not spoil the plot of the upcoming special Thanks Fur The Mammalry.

[Flap Jack]

Should Rimmer, or any hologram, be allowed to be given personality
tweaks at a simple request? Made taller? Given more muscles? Fangs?
Gills? Branches and leaves?

Personality quirks, I’d say no, at least not available by default (obviously the “personality tuck” is a concept in Can of Worms, and they mess with Rimmer’s mind in Holoship as well). Someone’s personality is too fundamental to their identity. If you’re recreating a person without their body, allowing them to tweak their personality seems like a bad idea.

For physical changes, I think for the sake of keeping the hologrammatic person grounded, you’d want it limited to changes that are physically possible for a human. But beyond that (and uniform requirements, and the “must have an H on your forehead” rule), I don’t see why holograms shouldn’t get free control over their appearance.

[RunawayTrain]

Should Rimmer, or any hologram, be allowed to be given personality
tweaks at a simple request? Made taller? Given more muscles? Fangs?
Gills? Branches and leaves?

Personality quirks, I’d say no, at least not available by default (obviously the “personality tuck” is a concept in Can of Worms, and they mess with Rimmer’s mind in Holoship as well). Someone’s personality is too fundamental to their identity. If you’re recreating a person without their body, allowing them to tweak their personality seems like a bad idea.

For physical changes, I think for the sake of keeping the hologrammatic person grounded, you’d want it limited to changes that are physically possible for a human. But beyond that (and uniform requirements, and the “must have an H on your forehead” rule), I don’t see why holograms shouldn’t get free control over their appearance.

Having the same free will as a living member of the crew makes sense.  Although you then get into the area of, if they want to make choices that aren’t acceptable for a crew member, living people would have the option to leave whereas a hologram’s only options are to comply, or be turned off (or find another way to stay on, likely by another organisation and probably with its own set of conditions).  So is it really free will?  It could be argued that’s what they agree to in return for being switched on, but should a sapient hologram have a fundamental right to life once switched on?

There are lots of sci-fi concepts I wish we had in our lives, but I’m grateful the ethics of holograms are not (currently) a real-life issue.

[Renegade Rob]

It almost seems like (although admittedly this was probably more for plot expediency than worldbuilding rigor) holograms are both mentally AND physiologically derived from their base person’s algorithm, which is why Rimmer could have a nervous disorder in Rimmerworld and could be affected by Polymorphs and despair ink. Give or take a short-term switch-out for Kochanski’s body, that would seem to point to a hologram body being a living “actual” body of a sort. This might also explain Kryten’s very matter-of-fact statement that Rimmer’s hologram body would be “made flesh” on the psi-moon, because it’s less of a leap if you think about it already being a living digital body instead of a purely ephemeral avatar. 

It kind of reminds me of that show Dollhouse (the show where they can reprogram people’s personalities for various rich people’s purposes) when they explain why the programmed personalities have personality flaws. Because if I recall they needed a hostage negotiator personality or something so they programmed Echo to be an ace hostage negotiator but she had severe crippling PTSD and it begged the question of why you couldn’t just give her the skills and not the drawbacks, and the tech guy was like, when you see someone running, is it to somewhere or from somewhere, because the answer is always both. The personality was based on a real person, and you don’t get the skills without the motivating trauma, etc. 

All of which is to say, it seems like you can make the argument that, at least for the long term, holograms are largely tied to their base body in some fundamental way, based on how they record the original person into an algorithm. 

[Hamish]

So is it really free will?

I’d say that is a “no” then.

[cwickham]

Didn’t want to bump the thread for it but I started reading Among the Trolls: My Journey Through Conspiracyland by Marianna Spring this week and I sincerely think it is required reading for anyone who followed the saga of “Chris Barrie has updated his website” two years ago

[Technopeasant]

Didn’t want to bump the thread for it but I started reading Among the Trolls: My Journey Through Conspiracyland by Marianna Spring this week and I sincerely think it is required reading for anyone who followed the saga of “Chris Barrie has updated his website” two years ago

I don’t need to, my mother-in-law already lives upstairs…

[sleepey]

Given the typical demographic for furries and presumably the sheer number of spaceships, surely many furries have been brought back as holograms. Would they want to be brought back as their fursona full-time? If not, would they want to be able to morph into it at a moment’s notice, or does that take part of the fun out of it compared to actually going through the process of dressing up in a holofursuit?

Corporate-run holograms would be strictly 1:1 recreations of the original person, because the company doesn’t want liability for the consequences of any changes, and workers don’t want to be brought back to life with banner ads and no sleep cycle. But there would definitely be demand for it in the private space, and maybe you’d see a few Google-esque casual workplaces where the lead engineer is a dragon or something.

[Dave]

[solidbronze]

‘Yes Mum, I’m just packing my satchel,’ is a particularly weird thing to say for someone who went to a boarding school.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Maybe he boarded only for secondary education. 

[Flap Jack]

“Mum” was the name of his head of house.

[Unrumble]

“Mum” was the name of his head of house.

[Starbugger]

[Ian Symes]

Maybe he boarded only for secondary education. 

He was aged eight in the photo that was inexplicably taken in the dorm room in the middle of the night in Timeslides. So maybe he only boarded in primary school. By the time he turned eleven, his parents were either running low on funds, having sent all the others to “The Academy”, or they’d already decided Arnold was a waste of space, so they just sent him to the local comp. 

[Moonlight]

I somehow never registered the sandwich dripping a stream of liquid until now.

[Ian Symes]

[Moonlight]

[Dave]

[Ben Saunders]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

He’s a little biddy.

[Moonlight]

I think the entire site needs to go on a hunt for whatever library music track is serving as the theme to RDUSA. I love how cheesy and dated it sounds.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I think the entire site needs to go on a hunt for whatever library music track is serving as the theme to RDUSA. I love how cheesy and dated it sounds.

Well it’s credited to this guy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Todd_Rundgren

its written as if he wrote it for the show however his very extensive wiki doesn’t mention it, or TV work at all

So it might just be a case of going through his catalogue or recorded work

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

https://www.discogs.com/release/4087850-Todd-Rundgren-TRTV-Volume-2

Track 2: Red Dwarf Pilot
– “The score (in 17 segments) for the unaired American version of the popular Brit space spoof.”

[Moonlight]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Kmjf8PL03AAwWeb6H2tA_C8UyChFn1s4/view?usp=drive_link

Oh would you looky here. I found the file and uploaded it. Seems to be the stings and music for the whole episode too.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Well that was fast. And didn’t take the whole site. Just me 30 mins to search Todd Rundgren Red Dwarf and KT 5mins to find the file

[Moonlight]

Five minutes is an overstatement. I found it on SoulSeek in like 20 seconds. The mistake I made was assuming it was library music based on how generic it sounded and not checking the credits.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Fair

I wish I’d just searched his name and the show first rather than scanning through the guys cataloguing music 

[Moonlight]

Somehow I get the feeling if anyone wanted this audio it would’ve been found already.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

It was comically easy to find. And really surprised it’s not something that’s already known, talked about, shared in the fan community

[Moonlight]

I’m making a YouTube upload for convenience. Assuming that this isn’t something that’s in their copyright system.

[Moonlight]

Boom.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

There is an article in this somewhere 

[International Debris]

I’m just amazed I managed to go for this long without realising Todd Rundgren did the music for Red Dwarf USA.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I’m just amazed I managed to go for this long without realising Todd Rundgren did the music for Red Dwarf USA.

Same.

[Author]

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