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]

Bulk van der Huge!

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Bulk van der Huge!

Gristle McThornbody!

[RunawayTrain]

Perhaps:

All astronav exams are (a subtype of) engineering exams, but not all engineering exams are astronavs.

[Flap Jack]

THANK YOU

[sleepey]

Nah I don’t think that’s it.

[Technopeasant]

Please, she has a name. It’s Retrocrebbin or something.

[Warbodog]

Re: Rimmer’s exams, the equivalent line in RD USA says he’s failed the exam for “8 years running,” which is implied context I didn’t think of. So if it is an annual event, maybe the discrepancy was them trying to pin down or adjust Rimmer’s age.

[Rushy]

I love this tilted angle of Holly. 

[Rushy]

The uniform of the bioprinted captain seems to be based on Rimmer’s. It’s a similar tunic, only with epaulettes, piping and a different insignia. 

[Technopeasant]

I still think they should have made the eyes blink animatronicly or something.

[Moonlight]

I’d like to file a complaint. The American VHS has the episodes in the correct broadcast order but retains the UK tape order on the box. I just wanted to watch Confidence & Paranoia on VHS in 2025 at 1:40 AM like the obviously stable and functioning woman I am and here I am watching Waiting for God. The play button doesn’t work on the remote anymore and I’m too lazy to get up so this is my reality now.

Eh, I’m fine with that.

[Warbodog]

My memory of watching a rented VHS tape once in 1997 is obviously unfullible, and I thought Waiting for God was first on the tape (so the first Series 1 I saw).

[Dave]

I think the episodes were in the correct order on the tape, but they used the Confidence & Paranoia title upfront (rather than Waiting For God) so that the tape wasn’t confused with the BBC’s contemporary grumpy-pensioner sitcom that was also called Waiting For God.

[Jenuall]

I assumed the order on the box was like that because they couldn’t fit Confidence and Paranoia on the same line as Me2 and couldn’t be arsed to change the font size.

No remote projection cage for Rimmer there – must have had his light bee upgrade

[Moonlight]

What is a canonicity of events depicted on these early tape covers?

[Ian Symes]

[Nick R]

I did a search to remind myself what the UK version of that video cover looked like, and it’s impressive how many errors have made their way into Google’s AI Overview: 

The G&T icon is at the top as one of the sources – it says it got it from this article, specifically this highlighted section. IAN IS TO BLAME

[Dave]

[Unrumble]

“In Red Dwarf Series 1, Byte 2” (also know as “Confidence
and Paranoia”) is the second episode, following “The End” breaks my brain as a
sentence.

 

We’re in Series 1, Byte 2. Fine. But then “is the second episode”
doesn’t make grammatical sense following on from that. And of course, we all
know that “Waiting For God” is actually the second episode following “The End”.

[Jonathan Capps]

I really must investigate the best way to block AI scrapers

[Ian Symes]

Ask ChatGPT.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Someone should put that in AIdea for an Episode

[Nick R]

Someone should put that in AIdea for an Episode

[Technopeasant]

No remote projection cage for Rimmer there – must have had his light bee upgrade

Surely Holly floating in the sky is a touch more confusing?

[Ben Saunders]

Surely Holly floating in the sky is a touch more confusing?

He did this at the beginning of every episode for two series

[Technopeasant]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

[Nick R]

[Renegade Rob]

They’re canonically playing golf just offscreen when Holly is doing his distress signal intro narration. 

[Warbodog]

They spaced the projection cage bars really wide apart, like a Dyson Sphere, to give Rimmer and Holly’s projections more freedom.

[sleepey]

Holly and Rimmer are there because it’s the simulated world where they are all playing different roles

[Unrumble]

[Technopeasant]

So when Holly decides to blow up the moon in TPL it was actually a cry for help?

[Rushy]

In the Last Human’s acknowledgement of Rob, Doug says he’s looking forward to reading Backwards. This means that Doug has set his eyes on the Cat’s barbed penis scene. 

Below, a colourised recreation of Rob Grant and Doug Naylor’s 1992 effort to write this book together:

[Warbodog]

Doug says he’s looking forward to reading Backwards.

Have we had an update on the popular claim that Rob still boycotts Doug Dwarf? The only time I remember him definitely stating that was in his Carpool episode, way back before there was even Back to Earth. Fair enough if so, it would just seem a bit extreme at this point. Has he never been morbidly curious even?

[Warbodog]

[Dave]

Have we had an update on the popular claim that Rob still boycotts Doug Dwarf? The only time I remember him definitely stating that was in his Carpool episode, way back before there was even Back to Earth. Fair enough if so, it would just seem a bit extreme at this point. Has he never been morbidly curious even?

During one of the lockdown Quarantine Commentaries, one of the panellists mentioned something that happened in Series VII but couldn’t remember the episode, and Rob correctly identified it (I think it was Tikka). So I think he’s almost certainly seen at least some of it.

[clem]

Here’s what he said when G&T interviewed him a couple of years ago. 

C: Are you up to speed with Doug Dwarf, as it were?

R: Only in very broad terms. I mean, I have people who are very familiar with it, who would look at my stuff and say, “oh, actually, Doug’s done that.”

[Nick R]

Mundane observations that occurred to me while getting the BTE frame for the other thread:

In that scene, two movie posters are seen very clearly and prominently: Memento and Aliens.

Those posters have always been slightly distracting for me, because I think they’re the only two posters for real pre-existing films that are visible in that scene. (Although it might be three: on the left edge of this shot we can see the edge of one ending “-ers”, but I don’t recognise it. Does anyone know what it is?)

It occurred to me: for a production with such a limited budget as Back to Earth, how much did it cost them to clear the rights to show those posters on screen? If it was expensive to show posters for real movies, why did they splash out to get those two (or possibly three if that one on the edge counts), rather than making up some fake ones, like they did for the DVDs that are visible? Conversely, if it was very cheap to show real movies’ promotional artwork, why didn’t that scene include any more real films as either posters or DVDs?

Then I thought: why were those two films chosen, specifically?

Presumably the Memento poster is there because it uses a similar Droste effect to the Too Weird for Words poster:

… and presumably the other one was chosen because it’s the only time Red Dwarf would ever feature Aliens (aliens).

[Ben Saunders]

[Dave]

on the left edge of this shot we can see the edge of one ending “-ers”, but I don’t recognise it. Does anyone know what it is?

Could be “The Others”, the Nicole Kidman horror (which had a very dark, mostly black poster).

[Technopeasant]

And here I thought the joke was Aliens is a far more credible inspiration for Red Dwarf than Blade Runner…

As for the Capaldi, that implies the UNIT stories DO take place in the 1980s, as it had to be after Alien was released to tick them off…

There is also a horror movie called Species.

[Dave]

There is also a horror movie called Species.

Horror isn’t my main memory of it.

[Technopeasant]

[Warbodog]

[International Debris]

Do you have to pay to use a poster in something? Especially in the context of it being in a video shop. 

[Ian Symes]

If it’s set dressing that you’d placed there yourself, most definitely – it’s a copyrighted piece of artwork like any other. Even if you were filming on location and it was already there, you’d still have to pay if it was featured in any way, or was prominent in the frame. Certainly the Aliens and Memento posters in the close-up of Lister would need clearing. I’ve run into problems before filming on a location with murals on all the walls – it’s all somebody’s artwork. Even tattoos can be a problem.

But of course, there’d only be a problem if the copyright holders noticed and decided to pursue it. It’s not like ContentID on YouTube where it happens automatically. So a low budget production on a low budget channel might just say sod it. 

[Warbodog]

They missed a fund-raising trick by not renting out that space.

[Warbodog]

[International Debris]

If it’s set dressing that you’d placed there yourself, most definitely – it’s a copyrighted piece of artwork like any other. Even if you were filming on location and it was already there, you’d still have to pay if it was featured in any way, or was prominent in the frame. Certainly the Aliens and Memento posters in the close-up of Lister would need clearing. I’ve run into problems before filming on a location with murals on all the walls – it’s all somebody’s artwork. Even tattoos can be a problem.
But of course, there’d only be a problem if the copyright holders noticed and decided to pursue it. It’s not like ContentID on YouTube where it happens automatically. So a low budget production on a low budget channel might just say sod it. 

Oh, that’s fascinating. I always assumed stuff in public would run under fair use, much in the way you don’t need permission from every member of the public who happens to be in shot. I’ve seen so many things in, say, record shops, lined up with dozens and dozens of albums, would hate to have to deal with licensing all that.

[Author]

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