Oh, THAT.

[Jimboid]

Just watching Justice.

Kryten’s case as to why Rimmer would never have been put in a position whereby he could endanger the entire crew is compelling.

In fact, why was a vending machine repair man charged with something so important / potentially hazardous as mending a drive plate? Surely there were other more skilled technicians about?

This logical inconsistency has entirely ruined my enjoyment of the show. I put my foot through my television and will be sending Rob Grant and Doug Naylor the bill (40/60 split).

Topic

[Connell]

JMC being the cheap and nasty corporation they are, always looking for shortcuts and cheats. Probably gave Rimmer the job to avoid having to pay one of the real technicians extra or something. Whoops.

[Pecospete666]

Conell! your Logic is indisputable!

[JEZZMUND]

Or is it that Rimmer is just woefully incompetent, and any third technician should be more than qualified to perform that maintenance?

[Connell]

‘something so important / potentially hazardous’. Sounds like a hefty task to me. Probably a large amount of paperwork needed filling out or something, give it to Rimmer to make him feel important.

[Michael Warren]

Well, the job, at least in series 1, seemed to be more than just reparing vending machines – remember, in “The End”, the other jobs on their docket included dealing with sticking doors and replacing faulty porous circuits, and Lister suggests that they do general maintenance. Rob and Doug seem to have latched on to the vending machine stuff specifically since then, though.

[srmcd1]

Well, there’s one theory that Rimmer *wasn’t* in charge of the drive plate. Holly just planted that memory is his head so he’d feel compelled to stick around.

[Ian Symes]

That’s a mental theory! He’d have had to have somehow faked the security footage of Rimmer’s death though.

[srmcd1]

Rimmer *did say* that Holly made the video for him…

[Pete Part Three]

>Holly just planted the memory in his head so he’d feel compelled to stick around.

I’ve occasionally wondered how often the crew members “update” their hologram discs. Does Rimmer even have a memory of his last few days? Or is he just aware that he’s died because he’s been told and seen the video?

It’s a shame we never got to find out what exactly Holly told Sam Murray, for example. Lister is interrupted before we find out.

[Jonsmad]

Why was a vending machine repair man charged with something so important / potentially hazardous as mending a drive plate?

I’d say that series 8 probably has the answer to that given, “anyone who miss-repaired one of these plates would have to have a brain the size of a leprechaun’s testicle” says Rimmer when pointing out the safety procedure in question, and so the crew, who were under the command of a doughnut runner rather than a qualified captain, failed down the chain of command in overestimate rimmers competence, leaving him incharge of something dangerous. He blames Lister for leaving him on his own to do all the work on shift when Lister went into stasis, where as Kryten here is defending him on the basis that the crew shouldn’t have left it to him.

[Blisschick]

>>I’ve occasionally wondered how often the crew members “update” their hologram discs. Does Rimmer even have a memory of his last few days? Or is he just aware that he’s died because he’s been told and seen the video?

I have wondered this exact same thing. My theory keeps coming back to him having a memory gap, and he only knows what he does because of Holly’s input.

>>Why was a vending machine repair man charged with something so important / potentially hazardous as mending a drive plate?

The theory of JMC being nasty, cheap, bastards is a very good one. I’ve thought that maybe he managed to get the task somehow to prove he was promotion material, then obviously failed miserably at it.

I’ve also wondered this: knowing that advanced vessels like ships and airplanes, etc. usually have several feedback loops to detect malfunctions to give ample warning of an impending breakdown or disaster, why wasn’t Red Dwarf better equipped with that kind of thing? I know the book gives us an outline of how things supposedly failed, but it just seems like it should have been more complicated than that. Artistic licence won out, I guess.

[anniescribe]

Doesn’t Rimmer say at one point if Lister hadn’t been in stasis, he could’ve helped mend the plate? That would suggest one of three things:

1. Rimmer is trying to deflect blame any way he can (duh, but too easy?)
2. Lister is smarter than Rimmer normally credits to him, and Rimmer knows it
3. It really IS such a simple job that a pixie’s right nut could do it

I like the idea of Holly implanting the memory and video of Rimmer’s death. Also means Rimmer might not have died next to Hollister – it’d be just like Holly to command the skutters to relocate Rimmer’s ashes from wherever he was to the drive room, flake by flake, over a couple thousand years.

[Pete Part Three]

My theory is that there never was a radiation leak, it was all a cover-up by the shady JMC who had everyone murdered. Because of stuff.

>“anyone who miss-repaired one of these plates would have to have a brain the size of a leprechaun’s testicle” says Rimmer

“It is unsinkable! God himself couldn’t sink this ship”

Aaaaah. Do you see?

[peas_and_corn]

>I’ve also wondered this: knowing that advanced vessels like ships and airplanes, etc. usually have several feedback loops to detect malfunctions to give ample warning of an impending breakdown or disaster, why wasn’t Red Dwarf better equipped with that kind of thing?

Well, they did have some warning, Hollister was yelling at Rimmer about not doing it right when the explosion went off, so there must have been some sort of alarm… just one with little use.

[Smeg4Brains]

>Well, they did have some warning, Hollister was yelling at Rimmer about not doing it right when the explosion went off, so there must have been some sort of alarm… just one with little use.

They can’t have thought there was that much danger or someone would have ended up in the other Stasis Booth. Or maybe someone is in it but they’ve never bothered to look.

[Carlito]

Maybe maintainence of the drive plate was part of Rimmer and Lister’s core duties. The initial damage was caused by Rimmer pottering about, trying to ‘improve it’, trying too hard to impress. Maybe he didn’t actually know HOW to perform the routine maintainence as Lister was the one who usually performed that task, a job delegated to him by Rimmer who, as we all know, struggles with his grasp on just about anything technical. With Lister in stasis, and Rimmer too proud, arrogant or embarrassed to admit he couldn’t do it, he went about the job Lister usually did and fucked it up.

Then, when the damage was done and Rimmer was out of his depth in trying to repair it, there just wasn’t enough time to call for back-up. So Rimmer wasn’t strictly tasked with this life-or-death repair, he was the only person in close enough proximity to repair it in the limited window of time they had, simply because he caused the damage to begin with.

[Ian Symes]

They can’t have thought there was that much danger or someone would have ended up in the other Stasis Booth. Or maybe someone is in it but they’ve never bothered to look.

Rimmer was in it. History changed during Timeslides, and Rimmer survived the accident.

[Pete Part Three]

So the events of Me2 and Thanks For The Memory, for example, never happened. Fuck this timeline.

[HelloMabel]

> So the events of Me2 and Thanks For The Memory, for example, never happened.

Wait. What?

[Connell]

A big round of applause for continuity, ladies and gentlemen.

[Ian Symes]

If Rimmer didn’t die in the accident, then his last words weren’t “Gazpacho Soup”, they were “I am ali-“.

[si]

In a parallel universe, Red Dwarf fansite I Am Ali- is celebrating it’s first birthday.

[anniescribe]

Well, if you subscribe to the theory I do, that each episode takes place one dimension over from the previous one anyway, you can reconcile all those incontinuities as typical.

[Author]

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