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

[Technopeasant]

I know Lister’s in his longjohns this episode, but the splash of red really suits Craig Charles. It might be my favourite look for him. 

[Rushy]

I’m straight, but Craig doing his posh voice does make me giddy

[Technopeasant]

I’m straight, but Craig doing his posh voice does make me giddy

[Hamish]

[Ian Symes]

Every time I revisit the commentaries on the Bodysnatcher DVD, I’m left asking what smegging bee does Rob have in his bonnet. He seems to get along great with Doug, why not just chill and write something? 

Obviously I don’t know the guy and I’m not saying he has any obligation to write more, but it just seems a bit surreal to me that they still have this natural camaraderie and love for their past work, and seem to have no issue writing new material for Bodysnatcher.

But somehow, a new script is completely out of the question. That just doesn’t compute with my brain lol. 

I think Doug’s even said that he has no idea why Rob won’t work with him. Is Doug really that difficult that Rob cannot bear the thought of doing more than a few scenes with him? 

The amicability of Rob and Doug’s relationship has fluctuated over the years, from what little we know. Bodysnatcher must have been during a good period judging by the dynamic on the commentaries, although I believe their collaboration on the script was more a case of Doug writing a draft of the extra scenes, then Rob having a pass separately, rather than them sitting down and doing it together like the old days. I would imagine the whole bitter legal battle thing was a low point, and might just have made future collaboration that little bit less likely.

[Rushy]

How was Rimmer able to exist in either Backwards or Last Human, when Better than Life established that he had to be in range of Red Dwarf for the light bee to function? 

[Dave]

How was Rimmer able to exist in either Backwards or Last Human, when Better than Life established that he had to be in range of Red Dwarf for the light bee to function? 

Somehow, Holly had done it.

[Rushy]

When Aniter offers Lister a friend in Steve, that guy looks and sounds exactly like Jack Black in Minecraft. Weird crossover

[Rushy]

Given that Kryten rebooted Red Dwarf’s software to its factory settings in M-Corp, there’s no reason why Holly (in Promised Land) should have known that Lister was in suspended animation due to bringing an animal onboard. Nor should he have had access to the crew manifest. Unless Kryten recreated that data for some reason. 

[Flap Jack]

I assume the OS and the data storage were not tied together, so he could restore the former to factory settings without affecting the other.

The evidence for this is in M-Corp itself. Kryten wouldn’t have been able to recreate Lister’s memories from security footage if all the ship’s data – including the security footage – had been wiped.

[Hamish]

So does this mean Lister’s memories are in third-person overhead view?

[Dave]

So does this mean Lister’s memories are in third-person overhead view?

[Technopeasant]

We just watched The Meanagrie of TOS which handwaves the model shots and cinematic camera angles as “the Talosians did it.”

[Technopeasant]

When Aniter offers Lister a friend in Steve, that guy looks and sounds exactly like Jack Black in Minecraft. Weird crossover

So it was actually Ray Peacock that got replaced by Jack Black instead of Matt Berry then?

But seriously, these are both an example of blue shirt guy named Steve being your average white guy. I will grant you the full beard is a suprising coincidence.

[Rushy]

Craig Charles’ “Cash” is a genuine bop

[Rushy]

I’m watching the Making Of documentaries for the first time. Mac McDonald is so much funnier in real life than he is in the show. 

I didn’t mind VIII Hollister until I discovered that Mac is just as much the king of deadpan as Norman is. 

[Rushy]

Are Doug, Rob and Norman talking about Hattie at 1:24:23? If so, that’s very unkind of them. 

[Dave]

No I think they’re joking about when they got rid of Norman the first time.

[Moonlight]

Very rough edit but can we all agree Blue would be a top 5 episode with this one change?

[Warbodog]

Now fix The Inquisitor.

[Moonlight]

I could try but I think it would look way too dark.

[Dave]

Very rough edit but can we all agree Blue would be a top 5 episode with this one change?

[Rushy]

There has to be a better descriptor for this than ‘wall console’. Terminal? Access panel? Info-monitor? 

[Rushy]

Every time I see Skipper, I wish it was a Lister episode instead. I feel like pretty much every alternate universe would be funnier/more rich in pathos if it was him just trying to finally make it back to Earth. 

In the last reality, it could be the revelation that he’s married to a stripper named Crystal (“Kriss”) that pushes him to return home. That reveal was so terribly depressing. 

[Flap Jack]

Well I suppose it is called “Skipper” not “Arnie”.

But otherwise, I think it was already pushing it characterisation-wise for Rimmer to leave the others behind forever so easily. It would take a lot more justification for Lister to do it. He actually likes his crewmates. Well, some of them. Well, one of them. Maybe.

Plus I don’t personally read Lister as misogynistic enough to reject an opportunity to get back home just because he’s married to a stripper there. And if his complaint isn’t that she’s a stripper, just that she’s not Kochanski, then I think he needs more realistic expectations. Also if he doesn’t like his wife, he can just divorce her and look up Kochanski, who presumably is alive and well in that reality. Rimmer has no such escape option from Lister having a better career than him.

[Rushy]

And if his complaint isn’t that she’s a stripper, just that she’s not Kochanski, then I think he needs more realistic expectations.

According to Kryten, Lister had ambitions to win Kochanski back even before the alternate version entered the picture, when she was just a dead pile of dust as far as he was concerned. He’s always been extremely delusional about her. It’s probably a coping mechanism.

[Flap Jack]

It could maybe work as a decision if they established that his universe’s Kochanski (or actually the Ouroboros universe’s Kochanski) was definitely still alive and out there somewhere, but the Kochanski in the return to Earth universe was dead – but they’d need to actually follow up on it.

However it would be frustrating to me personally if he gave up for that reason, because his original mission statement in The End was just to start a farm on Fiji, and he totally could fulfil that there.

[Warbodog]

[Technopeasant]

He has, or course, had numerous chances to get to a version of Fiji.

[Dave]

He has, or course, had numerous chances to get to a version of Fiji.

[Rushy]

because his original mission statement in The End was just to start a farm on Fiji, and he totally could fulfil that there.

I feel like Lister’s original plan is one of those early episode things. Fiji is only mentioned again in Waiting for God and Confidence & Paranoia. It’s a pity, though, because the idea of Lister obsessing over a farm on Fiji is more interesting than pining for a dead woman. 

[Warbodog]

Also in the song at the end of every episode.

[Hamish]

Also in the song at the end of every episode.

[Technopeasant]

Does it specifically mention Fiji though?

[Hamish]

Yes, in the yet to be uncovered vocoder track. 

[Nick R]

I saw this shared on a TV series subreddit…

… and I wondered which Red Dwarf episodes best fit each of those tropes.

Time loop: We’ve never had an episode entirely based around a Groundhog Day style time loop, but repetitious time travel has been prominent in specific scenes: both Future Echoes and White Hole depict different kinds of involuntary time loop, and Tikka to Ride has a loop in the “repeatedly time travel back to try and fix an event” sense.

Whodunit: Thanks for the Memory is probably Red Dwarf’s big “mystery” episode, but is it a whodunit? I suppose the mysterious question of who finished the jigsaw gets answered. Beyond that, the second best candidate is probably Samsara.

Musical: Again, no full episodes, but Parallel Universe and Blue have the series’ biggest musical numbers. 

Beach trip: Better Than Life.

Genre change: Gunmen of the Apocalypse.

Genre change to noir: Again, Gunmen of the Apocalypse. And Twentica, a bit.

Randomly meta and fourth wall breaky: Back to Earth.

Unseen event via unreliable narrated flashbacks: Now this one doesn’t really have any good examples. There are lots of jokes that are based around telling anecdotes about unseen events, but Red Dwarf has never done a Rashomon episode where everyone retells the same story with their own different biases. (At least, that’s not how I remember it – ho ho!)

If there aren’t any full episodes, which specific events or jokes fit the theme? i suppose the closest we got was Skipper, with the joke about never revealing how Rimmer saved everyone at the end of series VIII? Or Blue, with Lister objecting to how Rimmer perceived him (“I swear that never happened!”)?

[Technopeasant]

I assume you mean The Beginning, and not Skipper.

[Hamish]

Unreliable narrator in’it.

[RunawayTrain]

I misread that one and was initially thinking Samsara, but Samsara is actually the opposite (and I think unique among Red Dwarf episodes, that we see the past that the crew don’t). 

I think Blue might be the closest, as it’s via Rimmer’s recollection even if he’s not the one directly narrating.

[Technopeasant]

In terms of unseen events, there is also Kryten lying to Lister about Kochanski’s death. Not sure that’s the same tone though.

[Warbodog]

EVERY tv show

Must… not engage… with light-hearted hyperbole.

[Hamish]

What we need is a whole episode showing us Rimmer’s Risk story from the perspective of his cadet school training officer.

[Nick R]

I assume you mean The Beginning, and not Skipper.

Yes. I often mix those two up, since they were both Rimmer-centric episode sixes in the Dave era, each of which could potentially have been the last ever Red Dwarf episode.

[Rushy]

When Rodon talks about the Cat’s past self, he describes him as being uncool and having “crazy teeth, mad hair”. 

Is this meant to be a nod to Duane Dibbley? 

[Moonlight]

I can’t wait for the next special, The One Where Everyone’s Duane Dibbley.

[Technopeasant]

I can’t wait for the next special, The One Where Everyone’s Duane Dibbley.

Back in Back in the Red, Part IV

[Ian Symes]

I can’t wait for the next special, The One Where Everyone’s Duane Dibbley.

This reminded me of a dreadful moment when we thought there was a possibility they were actually doing this. 

I’ve never readthrough… a script

[Ben Saunders]

[Moonlight]

This reminded me of a dreadful moment when we thought there was a possibility they were actually doing this.

The wording about pre-production on the next two series reminds me of the fleeting, glorious time when it was being seriously suggested by Doug that we might get another two series after XI / XII. They could’ve done so many Dibbley episodes.

[Unrumble]

[Author]

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