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

[Moonlight]

His eyes aren’t soulless enough.

[Dave]

[Renegade Rob]

[Technopeasant]

We really need a new special announced so we stop picking on Craig.

[Moonlight]

[Renegade Rob]

[clem]

[Moonlight]

I dug up an off the air copy of Trojan on an old PC backup of mine, and I finally confirmed my suspicion that the robot voice filters on the shopping channel droids are cranked way up on the DVD vs. broadcast.

[Warbodog]

I hadn’t dwelled on how overly harsh this line is before. Even if she’s not attracted to Rimmer in any aspect, it doesn’t seem he would smell noticeably bad, especially coming from someone who went out with Lister. And how does she know how he tastes?

[Renegade Rob]

Eh, they actually gave her some mildly decent one-liners in that episode. Compared to how she’s treated in the rest of VIII, I’d just let her have that. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Maybe Rimmer has a particularly unique aftershave and she’d just recognise him (and thus not want to sleep with him) by the smell

[Renegade Rob]

[Ben Saunders]

What do holograms smell like?

[Nick R]

What do holograms smell like?

Camphor wood.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

My hologram’s got no nose

What does he smell like

Camphor wood

In all seriousness, despite what Rimmer says holograms must produce heat, there is energy and light. Heat tends to have a smell of sorts. Maybe he smells of slightly warm plastic/metal. Whatever the light bee is made of. 

[Renegade Rob]

Which begs the question, do all holograms smell basically the same at that point? If it’s just the light bee and the electromagnetics, it would be the same for any hologram, no? Maybe Rimmer’s light bee still had Lister’s saliva scent from when he chewed on it and that’s what Cat recognized him by. Or maybe he’s just that good at smelling that he really can smell colors of light. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Cat would recognise Rimmer by the smell of hologram. And maybe as headlight he picks up scents or things around him. 

But he isn’t regularly running into other holograms, so maybe Cat mostly doesn’t make the distinction 

[Flap Jack]

When you record your hologram data they also take scent data, so they can program the light bee to emit accurate pongs.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Dave]

[Renegade Rob]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Moonlight]

[Ben Saunders]

My hologram’s got no nose… What does he smell like… Camphor wood

[GlenTokyo]

Rimmer 100% is clean but obnoxious, doused in Space Brut from his 5L duty free supply.

[Technopeasant]

So just to dovetail the two threads… does Rimmer’s package stink?

[Unrumble]

[Renegade Rob]

[Dave]

How did Lister manage to keep Frankenstein secret from Rimmer when she’s just stuck in a cupboard in their shared bunkroom? Surely he would have heard her miaowing or smelled cat piss at some point.

[Ben Saunders]

He was too obsessed with his damn astro-navigation exams when he should have been at the club.

[Warbodog]

How did Lister manage to keep Frankenstein secret from Rimmer when she’s just stuck in a cupboard in their shared bunkroom? Surely he would have heard her miaowing or smelled cat piss at some point.

I always thought that led into the ducts and Frankenstein would come and go, eventually getting locked out when Holly does whatever he does to seal the living space.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

How did Lister manage to keep Frankenstein secret from Rimmer when she’s just stuck in a cupboard in their shared bunkroom? Surely he would have heard her miaowing or smelled cat piss at some point.

I always thought that led into the ducts and Frankenstein would come and go, eventually getting locked out when Holly does whatever he does to seal the living space.

Yeah its just a vent or something 

It’s not helped that it looks to be under the desk, but in a small bunk like that you’d turn the space above the vent into a desk if it’s all the space you had

[Dave]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Renegade Rob]

[Technopeasant]

Pursuant to my observation in the Series VIII love-in, I was briefly considering if it was possible for the Cat to have picked up the Joy Squid in Nanarchy instead of Back to Reality, until I remembered that would not fix anything since he’d still have had to get it into the Red Dwarf water tank both after Starbug exploded and while being escorted under armed guard. And for the squid to have survived whatever happened at the end of Series VIII. I suppose he only says “that ocean planet planet, years ago”, so maybe it wasn’t from where they got the Esperanto, but it would require the despair squid to have spread to other planets or have convergently evolved (remember, it did evolve, rather than being engineered) elsewhere.

[Rushy]

*In Trojan, Rimmer claimed to have failed his astro-nav exam nine times but in Balance of Power, it was eleven. This actually clicks, because the books specifically stated that on two occasions, his exam results were unclassified because of his mental breakdowns. 

*Taking into account the events of Psirens and Rimmerworld, it takes the crew chronologically 1000 years to recover Red Dwarf. 

*In Epideme, Kochanski wasn’t actually in Lister’s quarters, so Kryten barged in there to find her at 3 am for no apparent reason. 

*Doug names the Simulants from Twentica “Expanoids”. Before this, the only Simulant villains to be called ‘-noids’ were the Agonoids in Rob Grant’s Backwards novel. 

*The Rimmer Munchkin Song was created for Series VI, so presumably it was intended to be in Rimmerworld. 

*Chris Barrie still gets his wigs stolen, because it’s the only way to explain what happened to his head between series 10 and 11. 

[Dave]

*Doug names the Simulants from Twentica “Expanoids”. Before this, the only Simulant villains to be called ‘-noids’ were the Agonoids in Rob Grant’s Backwards novel. 

The flyer for the Red Dwarf movie also refers to “homo sapienoids”.

[Flap Jack]

I think we just have to accept that Back to Earth de-canonised Prelude to Nanarchy. It’s the only way to square things.

*In Trojan, Rimmer claimed to have failed his astro-nav exam nine times but in Balance of Power, it was eleven. This actually clicks, because the books specifically stated that on two occasions, his exam results were unclassified because of his mental breakdowns.

I don’t think you can use the books to explain away this inconsistency. For one because the books are explicitly in a different continuity to the TV series, and for two because the books are all over the place when it comes to Rimmer’s failed exam count even by themselves. (Plug: the G&T articles I wrote about the books.)

And anyway, why would Rimmer consider the unclassified results as failures in Balance of Power but not as failures in Trojan?

[sleepey]

Future Echoes

Waiting for God

Trojan

Two different exams

[Unrumble]

*In Epideme, Kochanski wasn’t actually in Lister’s quarters, so Kryten barged in there to find her at 3 am for no apparent reason. 

Isn’t the point that Kryten’s jealousy/paranoia makes him think she might be in there, engaging in ‘rumpy-pumpy’. The humour then arises from Lister trying to cover it up, as at that point he actually thinks she is. 

[Flap Jack]

Two different exams

Nah, they’re clearly two different ways of referring to the same exam (astro navigation being a type of engineering), but I respect the attempt.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Has it not occurred to anyone that he is talking about two different sets of people exams
Engineering exams = 11 times
Astro-Navigation exams = 9 times

Edit: oh balls, I wrote that before the rest of the thread has updated 

in Response to Flapjack … no way is Astro-Nav a form of engineering 

[sleepey]

Building a road to the stars 🤩

[Dave]

[Nick R]

The strangest thing about his failed exam count is that it hasn’t increased at all between series 1 and series X. Even though in Trojan Kryten seems quite familiar with how Rimmer behaves after an exam failure:

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

The strangest thing about his failed exam count is that it hasn’t increased at all between series 1 and series X. Even though in Trojan Kryten seems quite familiar with how Rimmer behaves after an exam failure:

Maybe that was his Esperanto exam

or maybe it’s just failure in general 

[Flap Jack]

I mean, of course you’re welcome to keep disagreeing with me.

But the way I see it, astronavigation exams and engineering exams are like service droids and skutters.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Whilst in both instances they might have been scripted with the same intent in mind, Skutters can easily be said to be a type of servicedroid, whist navigation and engineering can’t be said to be the same.

Being an Officer is going to require a whole heap of qualifications, it makes sense Rimmer would need to have both.

[Flap Jack]

Well, if he needs to pass 2 different exams, that doesn’t line up with them acting as if he’s just one exam away from becoming an officer. And if he’d already passed one of them (presumably the engineering one) then surely Rimmer would brag about it at every opportunity, and Hollister wouldn’t just say that he constantly failed it.

[Author]

Replies