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

[Ben Saunders]

Rimmer’s other quarters from Me² would have their own toilet also, surely. Even if those are the only two non-contaminated sleeping quarters available at the time, you could easily designate one as the shitter. Although Lister might be too lazy and Cat might not care.

[Ben Saunders]

Thumbing through the Smega-Drive and stumbled upon this frame that looks like a telesnap recreation of Can of Worms, which was tragically junked by the BBC in 1976

[Technopeasant]

So by Series II Cat has worked out the amenities rather than shitting in lockers and doing laundry with his tongue?

[Rudolph]

On the subject of showers, I’ve always noticed that Lister and Rimmer are afforded the luxury of a shower in their cell, whilst the women’s wing of the prison only has a communal one.

[Rushy]

I could nitpick that one image of Kryten endlessly. Why would he even go in the shower? Why would he risk damaging his book? Who gave him an umbrella in prison? What’s with the skin-coloured suit? Why don’t they just dismantle him???

[Flap Jack]

It’s all part of the Series VIII ideology – the logic of the story doesn’t matter if it gets a laugh.

To try my best to defend Kryten in the shower though, it is kind of just the natural conclusion of the already established idea that the Red Dwarf officers are so stupid they don’t understand what Kryten is, so they classify him as a human woman for prison purposes and refuse to think about it any further (shame that BitR didn’t get that memo). Then the processes are so rigid that Kryten is forced into routines that don’t make any sense, and Kryten – being big on obedience and people pleasing – participates beyond what would actually be enforced, e.g. by not just joining the girls for the communal shower session but letting the water run. It’s essentially an inverted (both in concept and in quality) “Insane in the Mainframe” from Futurama.

He risks damaging the book because he finds showering so tedious that he considers it worth it, but he might be skilled enough at protecting it with the umbrella and drying off any moisture afterwards that it’s not a problem. The umbrella he plausibly got by bartering with Bob to retrieve it from storage, or he just asked the guards for it and they were nice for once.

But of course Kryten’s nude casing is unimpeachable, because it originates from the G&T official 4th best episode of Red Dwarf ever.

[Warbodog]

It’s pretty funny, aside from the skin suit, which being reused so soon after Back in the Red feels less like a joke and more just an established alternate costume. Kryten being able to go naked humanises him, which works against the joke that they‘re making a robot do these things.

[Rushy]

In the episode Timewave (I swear I’ll shut up about it after this), Rimmer derides the criticism-bottling machine as being cheap and ‘Minervan’. 

The question is, what exactly is Minerva in this context? And why would Rimmer mention that instead of something more immediately recognisable like Ganymede, Io, Mimas etc? 

It’s likely that Doug simply got confused and thought that Minerva was a moon because, y’know, Roman goddess. But that still doesn’t answer why he’d pick that over a more famous name. 

According to Wikipedia, Pluto would’ve been named Minerva if someone hadn’t pointed out that the name had been used for an asteroid. So maybe Doug’s going for some sneaky worldbuilding here, and suggesting that Pluto finally got its rightful name all these years later? 

Either that, or Rimmer is holding a centuries-old grudge against a shop he once visited on a passing asteroid. 

[Warbodog]

Pluto’s referred to as Pluto in Marooned.

I think it’s just plucking a classically celestial sounding name out of the ether, like whatever Adelphi XII in Series VIII was. Interstellar travel is mentioned as early as The End, so it could be anywhere.

[Jonathan Capps]

It’s likely that Doug simply got confused and thought that Minerva was a moon because, y’know, Roman goddess.

The moons tend to be from the Greek pantheon while the planets are Roman. Terrible bias if you ask me.

[Rushy]

Pluto’s referred to as Pluto in Marooned.
I think it’s just plucking a classically celestial sounding name out of the ether, like whatever Adelphi XII in Series VIII was. Interstellar travel is mentioned as early as The End, so it could be anywhere.

I get what you’re saying, but interstellar travel in Red Dwarf always seemed to involve spending a lot of years in stasis rather than using an FTL drive. With that in mind, why would a planet in a distant solar system – far away from its main customer base – be producing so much cheap tat that its name becomes ubiquitous with it?
I feel like this is the sort of thing Rob Grant would write entire chapters about, lol. Minerva, the Plastic Planet. Ruled entirely by China. 

[International Debris]

I think it’s fair to say the solar system limit of Red Dwarf’s journey was retconned at some point. I know it’s technically a different timeline, but in the final universe of Skipper it’s going up and down the Milky Way, and that’s suggested that the ‘split’ only happened around the time of the drive plate accident (or not).

[Moonlight]

but in the final universe of Skipper it’s going up and down the Milky Way

Maybe I’m just biased because I’ve always treated the book’s take on interstellar travel as canon, but I always read that line as an expression and not to mean they’re literally going across the galaxy. Maybe to nearby star systems, but not further than that.

I just generally prefer the universe of Red Dwarf as it exists in Lister’s time to not have interstellar travel be a very regular thing people do.

[Rushy]

More a mundane observation about myself than the show, but I always thought that Back to Earth was the last story before Chris Barrie started wearing a hairpiece. 

But rewatching series 10, I noticed they’ve covered his head in some sort of gunk to try and mask the hair loss and emulate his curls. His hair looks really damp and weird in those episodes. 

[Technopeasant]

[sleepey]

They could be talking about the dog there

[Technopeasant]

Captioning her as Kris annoys me somehow…

[Ian Symes]

Those are most likely taken from the original DVD subtitles, which form the basis of the Smega Drive. And for them, you can see why they’d do it as a four letter name rather than nine.

[Unrumble]

As an aside, Kryten has possibly never looked more sinister than in that single frame.

[Dave]

As an aside, Kryten has possibly never looked more sinister than in that single frame.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

It’s a bit dark, but guiltless Kryten in Polymorph

Or Psirens Kryten

Or guiltless Kryten in Tikka

[Rushy]

How is no one choosing this?

[Rushy]

This one might be the winner, though

[Rushy]

I was watching Mechocracy and became curious about where the footage from the smear campaigns was taken from. The BBC era scenes are easy to trace. There’s one shot of Rimmer in Starbug that is from Siliconia. 

This one eludes me though: 

I pored through the Smegadrive and the best I could come up with is that it must be an alternate take from Skipper, because this was the closest equivalent I could find.

He’s standing in the same place, same expression. Not the same footage, though. 

[Dave]

Seems like it could be a slowed down version (and slightly extended take) of this shot from slightly later in that scene.

[Ian Symes]

Either way, how does Rimmer have access to footage of events that haven’t happened yet?

[Dave]

Oh I bet Kryten does shit like that all the time.

[Flap Jack]

This is the smoking gun – Red Dwarf episodes canonically occur in a different order than the one they get shown in. And not even filming order, that would be too easy to work out. Doug’s keeping us on our toes.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Either way, how does Rimmer have access to footage of events that haven’t happened yet?

[Ben Saunders]

[Moonlight]

[Jenuall]

[Moonlight]

[Moonlight]

[Dave]

[Nick R]

I notice that none of these Sinister Kryten examples are of the Low Kryten from Demons & Angels, who’s supposed to be sinister but tends to just look silly:

Compare that to Original Kryten in that episode, who looked like this:

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Dave]

[Rushy]

“Let’s do a promotional picture about the scene where Rimmer forces women to be attracted to him”
Chris: “YES”

[Rushy]

Why is Lister dressed so spiffy in Justice?

The little tie he has at Arnold’s trial isn’t bad either. 

[Moonlight]

[Rushy]

The cover art for series 11 and 12 is horribly cheap. Series 10 looks fine, a nice heroic pose of Rimmer saluting at the front with the crew right behind him. They’ve got some kind of digital overlay to make it look more artistic. It’s cute. 

Series 11 is literally just a promotional picture of the crew with a star background. 

And series 12 is the worst, with them all mugging in the Kryten outfits. 

[Flap Jack]

So you must be thrilled that the Series XI promo image is the general image for the show on iPlayer.

[sleepey]

They didn’t even line up the spines on the blurays, which normally wouldn’t be surprising because home media cover designers are all psychopaths who do that on purpose (sorry you can’t convince me otherwise), but I expected better from Red Dwarf after the DVDs & the remastered VHSes & such.

[Technopeasant]

[Ben Saunders]

obligatory

[Warbodog]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

obligatory

Presumably some sort of deliberate irony given the character’s OCD?

[Rushy]

That Motion Picture DVD looks gorgeous. I’ve always felt that movie was terribly underrated. It has a horrible 2nd act, but the first and third acts are some of the best cinematic Star Trek. 

And it’s really the only film – besides maybe V – that tries to aim for a TOS style story. I love the films, but most of them are just glorified blockbusters. 

[Nick R]

Big fan of Star Trek Star Trek Insurrection Insurrection Special Collector’s Edition Edition Spéciale De Collection.

[Author]

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