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

[Warbodog]

October was just when they filmed it. With all the post-production stuff and scheduling, hopefully it’ll be out by spring

[Nick R]

[Unrumble]

Hey those series were pretty good. Have they ever thought about making a Series XIII? Just a crazy idea that came to me. 

It’s just taking a little longer due to unforseen delays… 

[Unrumble]

October was just when they filmed it. With all the post-production stuff and scheduling, hopefully it’ll be out by spring

[Technopeasant]

* Lister aging in M-Corp * 

Hey, on that score, Craig has aged pretty good.

[Dave]

[Moonlight]

I still remember an online comment to the effect of “Back to Earth wasn’t funny because the audience wasn’t laughing” and I choose to interpret that as them claiming Back to Earth had a live audience and it was the same people who watched the first shoot of The End.

[Warbodog]

Back to Earth has its merits, but being funny isn’t one of them.

[Moonlight]

I’m still trying to wrap my head around any reason Part 1 would have beat the other two in the last episode poll other than people voting it higher because “it was on the ship.”

[Moonlight]

It’s that time of year again.

[Technopeasant]

I’m still trying to wrap my head around any reason Part 1 would have beat the other two in the last episode poll other than people voting it higher because “it was on the ship.”

[RunawayTrain]

I’m still trying to wrap my head around any reason Part 1 would have beat the other two in the last episode poll other than people voting it higher because “it was on the ship.”

For me it was because it was a huge relief going back to the core cast after VIII, and yeah it’s on the ship and while it’s a bit silly in places, it’s like a sigh of relief and comfort to come back to Dwarf.  Then parts 2 and 3 get meta and weird and tricky to follow (for me, anyway).  I’m not saying they’re bad, necessarily – they’re no Krytie TV – but I don’t enjoy them anywhere near as much as part 1.

[Moonlight]

For me, Part 1, despite many redeeming qualities, is pretty weak at delivering on the more typical Red Dwarf fare while Parts 2 and especially 3 are weird and different and interesting. They’re offering something I couldn’t just go to another, better episode for. If Back to Earth is going to be this strange, one-off alternative take on Red Dwarf, I prefer when it’s fully committing to that vs. when it’s trying to recapture something Doug was perhaps a bit too rusty for at the time.

Before my main point, I want to strongly gesture at my great appreciation for trippy episodes of shows that use their weirdness in service of exploring a character. Back to Earth goes full into that territory in Part 3. As I’ve probably said before, my favorite episode of Futurama is The Sting which is perhaps my favorite ever example of this. Perhaps one of my favorite episodes of anything, ever.

The way I think about Back to Earth is heavily informed both by the fact that I had only turned 13 a month before it aired, and that I had discovered the show less than two years earlier as one big giant block of eight series. I was totally uncritical of VII and VIII at the time, so Part 1 was never the big, exciting return to form for me as much as it was “Yay! This long dead show I got obsessed with pretty recently is making new episodes!” This makes me a weirdo by this forum’s standards, because I heavily suspect all of you are borderline geriatric and have been yelling about VIII for 25 years.

Until I was a bit older, I wasn’t at the point of feeling like the show had lost its way in the final years of its BBC era, so while I can recognize Back to Earth as a huge return to form on paper it’s not something I emotionally associate with it the way it seems a lot of you do.

In closing, you’re all old and I spent way too much time on this post.

[Dave]

I heavily suspect all of you are borderline geriatric and have been yelling about VIII for 25 years.

[Nick R]

I heavily suspect all of you are borderline geriatric and have been yelling about VIII for 25 years.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Dave]

[Unrumble]

[RunawayTrain]

For a bit of context for my previous comment about relief going from VIII to BtE:

Borderline geriatric, probably yes.  But I’m a late fan – first introduced to Dwarf in the early 2010s, then properly fell into it in early 2020.  So not even 5 years shouting about VIII for me really, let alone 25  ;)

[Technopeasant]

I mean, I turned 14 a month after BTE aired and had already gotten a few years of yelling about VIII in.

For me personally I still kinda wish Doug had just done an extended bottle episide on board ship, even if it only had one standing set.

[Starbugger]

I heavily suspect all of you are borderline geriatric and have been yelling about VIII for 25 years.

[Moonlight]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Frank Smeghammer]

I liked the non-existent Series IX best

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Cheers, Frank.

[Frank Smeghammer]

Cheers, Frank.

Well it’s the only series that stars me, Frank SmegHammer. Shame about the way you guys killed me off at the end which is probably why all the copies were destroyed. Particularly brutal way to go, fed into the SmegChipper, but it was beautifully produced so hats off to you

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

[Moonlight]

Whoever wrote the Wikipedia page for Holoship is a punk ass bitch who doesn’t deserve Red Dwarf. Somebody help me append the Coral Canvass poll results to every episode’s Wikipedia page to balance out this nonsense.

Holoship rules. Fuck you.

[Ben Saunders]

[RunawayTrain]

I don’t know what the difference is between sacrilege and heresy but this feels like it’s at least one of those things!

[Moonlight]

You can smell the bias of the page editor by, aside from choosing to focus on only negative reviews, how they used the phrase “out of place moment of pathos at the end of the episode” as if it’s an objective statement and not something from a review being quoted.

Also, did they watch the episode? How little attention do you have to be paying to think that came out of nowhere and isn’t the obvious thematic culmination of the entire fucking story?

[Technopeasant]

The limitation of Wikipedia is that it can only reflect what the sources it deems reliable say, though yeah “out of place moment of pathos” is pushing it, unless it is a direct quote from the SciFi Dimensions review.

If you put on the Coral Canvas I can pretty much guarantee it will get reverted as it comes from a “fan site”, and they especially privilege printed over digital sources.

[greendarmok]

Also, on that note felis sapiens are especially aliens. Not only has no “current era” cat person ever had Earth as a home (and it’s unlikely any of them other than Felix have been there at all), that’s true for the entire species throughout history. Felis sapiens aren’t “from Earth”, they’re from Red Dwarf.

For all the talk that Red Dwarf went downhill when it “started” introducing GELFs and whatnot as a way of getting around their “no aliens” rule… this started in the very first episode with the introduction of the Cat… and established a precedent for other distant descendants of Earth creatures to crop up throughout the series.

It’s also notable that “Waiting for God”, the episode that seemingly lays down the “no aliens” rule with Lister’s line about “There’s just you, me, the Cat, and a load of […] rocks”, also establishes that there’s a whole ark full of Cat People out there.  I get that the episode’s “A” and “B” plots are meant to be thematically linked (blind faith, self-delusion, so what else is new), but they fit kind of awkwardly together when one of them is based on the premise that there is no other life out there, and one of them is based on the premise that there is other life out there.

[Technopeasant]

but they fit kind of awkwardly together when one of them is based on the premise that there is no other life out there, and one of them is based on the premise that there is other life out there.

[greendarmok]

[Warbodog]

they fit kind of awkwardly together when one of them is based on the premise that there is no other life out there, and one of them is based on the premise that there is other life out there.

I think that makes it better. Rimmer’s daydreaming about idealised aliens who can give him a body and have sex with him and obsessing over a hoax artefact, while not giving a shit about the fascinating new species under his nose (even though they have the specific number of breasts he desires) and dismissing Lister exploring their culture because it doesn’t benefit him.

[Technopeasant]

[Technopeasant]

The amount of Smegadrive entries for “chicken” is truly daunting.

[Moonlight]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Rudolph]

[Unrumble]

[Technopeasant]

In terms of my spoon of destiny meme in the other thread, what is with the Dave era fixation with weaponized cutlery?

[Moonlight]

Kryten farting on spoons doesn’t weaponize them. I think.

[clem]

No but there’s also the weapons in The Beginning consisting of two forks and a pencil sharpener, and the vegan forks they fight the cats with in TPL.

[International Debris]

The phrase “is that a quagaar you’re smoking, Lister?” has me in fits of giggles every time I read it. Thanks, Rudolph. 

[Technopeasant]

Kryten farting on spoons doesn’t weaponize them. I think.

That’d depend on the smell I suspect.

[Dave]

[Starbugger]

Whoever wrote the Wikipedia page for Holoship is a punk ass bitch who doesn’t deserve Red Dwarf. Somebody help me append the Coral Canvass poll results to every episode’s Wikipedia page to balance out this nonsense.
Holoship rules. Fuck you.

[Author]

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