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]

It all seems very inefficient. 

[Ben Saunders]

He has all of eternity to burn, it doesn’t need to be.

[Dave]

The Inefficientquisitor.

[Hamish]

[Technopeasant]

Would he assess both a person and his hologram?

Maybe he mostly cares how you spent the first third of your life, time’s awasting.

[Ben Saunders]

The 1995/2007 Smeg Outs has a laughter track, even the stuff filmed on location/pre-recorded (but not the specially-filmed links). I take it it’s just completely fake and they didn’t show it to an audience, and it’s just added for consistency. But it is quite jarring to hear laughter where I know there shouldn’t be any.

[Ben Saunders]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

None of the smeg ups are real, they’re all staged with an audience present, just for the release.

[Ben Saunders]

None of the smeg ups are real, they’re all staged with an audience present, just for the release.

[Technopeasant]

[Ben Saunders]

Lister’s arm is slightly transparent in this shot

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

No Ben, that’s just good old fashioned in-camera light smearing. There’s a fair amount of visual noise there too that could further obfuscate it though so it’s an easy mistake to make. But the big question you have to ask yourself is – why would he be slightly transparent in what is clearly not an effects shot?

[Flap Jack]

But the big question you have to ask yourself is – why would he be slightly transparent in what is clearly not an effects shot?

Craig Charles died in 1988 and in all subsequent series Lister was played by his hologram, but he wanted to keep the news quiet to protect his reputation.

[Nick R]

Craig Charles died in 1988 and in all subsequent series Lister was played by his hologram, but he wanted to keep the news quiet to protect his reputation.

Oh, so that’s why the outro of Tongue Tied has Danny whispering some nonsense that sounds like it could be either “cranberry flake” or “I buried Craig”.

[Technopeasant]

Putting him on trial for rape was a helluva step to take for credibility. Ditto the crack cocaine thing.

The thing with Danny, the binman and the sword however…

[Ben Saunders]

Series 1 Grant Naylor: The sets are too grey, everything’s so grey, it looks like it’s in black & white. 

Series 2 Grant Naylor: Let’s make the first five minutes of this episode black & white.

[Formica]

Series 3 Grant Naylor: Let’s light these sets so dark it looks like it’s in black & black.

[Ben Saunders]

Rimmer’s bike has an H on it to indicate hologrammatic status. Probably a health & safety thing; climbing onto a bicycle that doesn’t exist sounds like it could go quite badly.

[Moonlight]

Series 3 Grant Naylor: Let’s light these sets so dark it looks like it’s in black & black.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Unrumble]

Danny, the binman and the sword

One of the lesser-know fables.

[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.

But then how would young Lister have patented it if Holden had already patented it? And if Holden forgot, then how would Lister’s patent have been undone? It doesn’t make any sense!

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Each event is basically creating/undoing timelines

Holden patents it in his late 20s, changed by Young Lister patenting it in his late teens. Which is further changed by Young Holden patenting it in his prepubescence.

Of course, Rimmer is older than Lister, an older Holden could still patent it before Lister reached his late teens.

[Technopeasant]

One of the lesser-know fables.

[solidbronze]

In Rimmerworld, when the crew use the teleporter and get dropped back in time, they end up ‘a week last Thursday’, then start to tell their past selves about the ‘Simulant ship they’re about to encounter’. The episode opens in the present day with Lister saying they’ve found the wreckage of the ‘Simulant ship we totalled a couple of weeks back’ (in Gunmen).

In order to make this approach approximately ‘ a couple of weeks’, this might suggest that Gunmen takes place on a Friday, and Rimmerworld takes place on a Wednesday 12 days later.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Very well reasoned. I’d buy it.

[Unrumble]

[Podey]

I’ve started having Red Dwarf GIF reactions in my head in totally unrelated contexts.

I just saw an article with the headline “10 Harsh Realities of Rewatching The Evil Dead Movies” and thought to myself, “huh, I wonder what harsh realities they mean?”

Then I clicked through and saw a warning that the article contains descriptions of a fictional sexual assault…

[Moonlight]

Kinda longing for the version of the Dave era that has a running joke of referencing insane offscreen adventures in the gap years without elaborating on them, much like the Series VIII cliffhanger joke except without the lore hook.

Although maybe Kryten being impressed “this region of space is so lively” because they passed a populated moon for the second time in a decade is funnier.

[Warbodog]

Kinda longing for the version of the Dave era that has a running joke of referencing insane offscreen adventures in the gap years without elaborating on them

I think Hogey’s the main one. We skipped right over the initial threatening, more rounded characterisation, possibly part of what made season IX so “awesome,” and only see the neutered Flanderized version from years later.

[Flap Jack]

I’m sure that if Snacky doesn’t return in spite of overwhelming fan demand, the next special will make reference to the many awesome adventures they had with him in between Give & Take and Officer Rimmer.

[Formica]

I expect they’ll reach Earth soon in a reveal that Snacky was steadily upgrading the ship’s engine all along.

[Technopeasant]

I’ve started having Red Dwarf GIF reactions in my head in totally unrelated contexts.

I just saw an article with the headline “10 Harsh Realities of Rewatching The Evil Dead Movies” and thought to myself, “huh, I wonder what harsh realities they mean?”

Then I clicked through and saw a warning that the article contains descriptions of a fictional sexual assault…

That is kind of the reason I despise those articles though, as the tree rape was obviously gross and awful in 1981. It is not suddenly “through modern eyes” that this should have become apparent. Morality may be somewhat subjective, but it is not temporal.

[Technopeasant]

I’m sure that if Snacky doesn’t return in spite of overwhelming fan demand, the next special will make reference to the many awesome adventures they had with him in between Give & Take and Officer Rimmer.

[Rudolph]

I’ve always been fascinated as to the identities of Jim Bexley-Speed and Grandma Lister in Future Echoes. Did they hire models especially, or were they just crew members they thought looked appropriate?

I assumed that they found the biggest, ugliest looking electrician or cameraman on set and stuck him in a balaclava.

[Warbodog]

It took many years to adjust my child perspective and realise the eyes aren’t eyebrows.

[Ian Symes]

I’ve always been fascinated as to the identities of Jim Bexley-Speed and Grandma Lister in Future Echoes. Did they hire models especially, or were they just crew members they thought looked appropriate?

That’s a very interesting question. The only uncredited extras listed on TOS are the babies who played Jim and Bexley. I assume they’d be crew members, for cheapness, but I’m really not sure.

[Rudolph]

That’s a very interesting question. The only uncredited extras listed on TOS are the babies who played Jim and Bexley. I assume they’d be crew members, for cheapness, but I’m really not sure.

They seem to have done at least a photoshoot with Craig Charles, as he appears in a photo with his grandmother in one of the photographs he has on his bunk wall.

[Ben Saunders]

Always bothered me that when Cat hits the Simulant with a shovel in Justice, it actually works and the Simulant goes down, which doesn’t make sense if the force is redirected to Cat. To be fair, the actor did just get hit in the head with a prop shovel and maybe just went down as a consequence of that reality.

[Technopeasant]

It took many years to adjust my child perspective and realise the eyes aren’t eyebrows.

It took me this many years.

[clem]

[Technopeasant]

[solidbronze]

Can Rimmer swim? Did he learn or was he just overly-proud of his limited ability?

[Technopeasant]

The real reason he refused to enter the diving bell in BTE.

[Warbodog]

There’s at least some changed continuity, as The Inquisitor only mentioned the BSc and Back to Reality reiterates that there’s only one certificate by then.

I think BSc SSc Rimmer could swim, as he says he “went swimming” (while still alive) in Me2, which also introduced the swimming certificates. I don’t think he’d let himself be spotted not really swimming in the shallow end while claiming reasonable competence, unless he knew no one was likely to be there at that time (but Lister messed up the timetable and he went at the wrong time, which might have been more noticeable to him in that case) (and what if he got in trouble and there was no lifeguard? Maybe that‘s how he died again after series VIII).

[Ben Saunders]

When and why did Rimmer buy Lister a birthday present? What did he get him?

[International Debris]

What did he get him?

A book token.

[Ben Saunders]

A book token.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

When and why did Rimmer buy Lister a birthday present? What did he get him?

[Technopeasant]

[Author]

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