Pool Table

[RealBigOleDummy]

I don’t post much but check in at least weekly, sign in less. I always thought I was a huge fan of the show but some of you make me feel like a piker lol. Own and still watch regularly all the series and Promised Land , I have the Omnibus edition of the first 2 novels. I know I’m  missing a couple of the novels but can’t help that atm. (Old, retired, sick) 

Now, I have a question. How did Dave get left under the pool table? Who put him there? Physically? 

Been a fan and have watched the some of the episodes literally 100’s of times. ALL of them at least once yearly in order. Been doing that for over 20 years for some of the series, but I’m stumped. Have I missed something? Is so, when/where/who/episode.

Thanks for your patience and enlightenment. 

Topic

[Dave]

Lister puts him there at the end of Ouroboros, right?

[International Debris]

[Flap Jack]

Yes, Lister puts himself under that table. It is the whole last scene of the episode so it’s not a subtle detail. However I do understand your confusion, because:

A – He uses the time drive to do it, and it’s inherently weird that they still just casually have that available to use whenever they want after Tikka to Ride, yet still don’t use it to go back to Earth properly, or to find Red Dwarf.

B – There’s no direct narrative link between the final scene and the one before it, showing Lister engaging the time drive or showing the present day status quo. You just have to notice that he’s holding the drive and appearing with the same visual effect as in Tikka.

C – The “Eighteen Months Later” gap to give time for a full pregnancy, birth and early infancy to occur is very jarring and doesn’t sit well with the events of the rest of the series. Lister and Kochanski having and abandoning a child together (side note: why didn’t Kochanski and Lister leave baby Lister together???) and processing Lister’s fucked up self-parentage would be like the most significant event in the series/their lives, yet after Ouroboros it’s never acknowledged at all, and they’re still stuck on basic will they/won’t they schtick. Logically these 18 months must have happened before they could even entertain the possibility of getting Kochanski back to her home universe (and that would seriously affect Kochanski emotionally), but it never feels like it happened, given both the lack of direct acknowledgement and what Lister and Kochanski’s Series 7 relationship is like.

[RealBigOleDummy]

*Blush*

Thank you all for answering. In my defense Ouroboros is not one of my favorite episodes so I guess I just never noticed him doing it. I “remember” the hands placing the box under the table but not Dave coming in. Will be watching that episode later tonight lol. 

This place is great btw and thank you again.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Yes, Lister puts himself under that table. It is the whole last scene of the episode so it’s not a subtle detail. However I do understand your confusion, because:

A – He uses the time drive to do it, and it’s inherently weird that they still just casually have that available to use whenever they want after Tikka to Ride, yet still don’t use it to go back to Earth properly, or to find Red Dwarf.

B – There’s no direct narrative link between the final scene and the one before it, showing Lister engaging the time drive or showing the present day status quo. You just have to notice that he’s holding the drive and appearing with the same visual effect as in Tikka.

C – The “Eighteen Months Later” gap to give time for a full pregnancy, birth and early infancy to occur is very jarring and doesn’t sit well with the events of the rest of the series. Lister and Kochanski having and abandoning a child together (side note: why didn’t Kochanski and Lister leave baby Lister together???) and processing Lister’s fucked up self-parentage would be like the most significant event in the series/their lives, yet after Ouroboros it’s never acknowledged at all, and they’re still stuck on basic will they/won’t they schtick. Logically these 18 months must have happened before they could even entertain the possibility of getting Kochanski back to her home universe (and that would seriously affect Kochanski emotionally), but it never feels like it happened, given both the lack of direct acknowledgement and what Lister and Kochanski’s Series 7 relationship is like.

Lister uses the time drive to go forward in time, steal baby Lister from himself and take it back in time. Returns to his present and carries on as normal in a slightly new and altered timeline. It’s the only way to make it work with it being a huge time jump, that makes no sense to the rest of the series 

[Dave]

Or… Kochanski is in the early stages of pregnancy all through the rest of series VII and VIII, and the Lister that we see at the end of Ouroboros is from after Only The Good.

[International Debris]

Yeah, there are loads of times she could be pregnant, the whole thing could occur after Only the Good…, only she’s clearly trying her hardest to get back to her universe in VII, which she surely wouldn’t do until after the baby was born?

[loadoftottnumb]

I think at the back of my mind the 18 months later was a flash forward and we then jumped back to present day. Much of the next few episodes include dialogue about her being new there and as others said, trying to get back ‘home’. 

I think when I first saw it I thought the baby was ‘grown’ a different way, not in Kochanski’s womb, some sort of test tube type thing. Actually this has given me another idea. 

[Warbodog]

Or… Kochanski is in the early stages of pregnancy all through the rest of series VII and VIII, and the Lister that we see at the end of Ouroboros is from after Only The Good.

I liked this idea, but of course:

[Dave]

Yet another reason to hate that scene.

[Dave]

Maybe Kochanski didn’t have the baby at all, but the nanobots tried to recreate Lister for the new nano-Red Dwarf and Kryten told them to make a baby-Lister instead, and that’s the one they took back, just before they crashed into the cargo bay.

It would explain how Lister can have exactly the same DNA as his dad.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Or… Kochanski is in the early stages of pregnancy all through the rest of series VII and VIII, and the Lister that we see at the end of Ouroboros is from after Only The Good.

I liked this idea, but of course:

Also, Only the Good is itself something like 18months into their prison sentences.

[Dave]

Also, Only the Good is itself something like 18months into their prison sentences.

Does that much time pass in VIII? I’d forgotten that.

[Flap Jack]

I would like the idea of the pregnancy happening post-Only the Good…, but “Eighteen months later” is a pretty clear code for “They start this basically immediately”. Otherwise it could work, but for 2 weaknesses in my mind:

1 – The longer they passively have a fully operational handheld TARDIS hanging around and refuse to do anything useful with it, the more I hate it.

2 – It means they actively search for a way to get Kochanski home without realising that they can’t possibly succeed because then the time loop wouldn’t be able to complete (although perhaps they planned to give Kris the time drive and the sperm, and expect her/her Dave to do the abandonment from their universe, in keeping with the “they were actually the same universe prior to the divergent point” interpretation).

The idea of Lister being a clone or nanobot duplicate of himself makes a lot more sense overall (for reasons of both genetics and practicality), but it does have the major downsides of making the revelation from Ouroboros of Kochanski being his mum a red herring, without that ever being acknowledged (and it leads you to wonder how they would even work that out – if Kryten just said “hang on, if Kochanski is your mother, surely you would get some of her DNA rather than just being identical to yourself”, you’d think “OK, I must be destined to clone myself then” wouldn’t be as likely a conclusion as “OK, the entire theory is obviously bollocks then”). Plus it makes the 18 months timeline completely arbitrary.

[Dave]

The longer they passively have a fully operational handheld TARDIS hanging around and refuse to do anything useful with it, the more I hate it.

Let alone the luck virus.

[Dave]

(although perhaps they planned to give Kris the time drive and the sperm, and expect her/her Dave to do the abandonment from their universe, in keeping with the “they were actually the same universe prior to the divergent point” interpretation).

Oh, I like this.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Also, Only the Good is itself something like 18months into their prison sentences.
Does that much time pass in VIII? I’d forgotten that.

I’m not sure where I got that number from.  I think them being on probation in Only the Good suggests they’ve been in prison quite a while.

[Flap Jack]

If Hollister did literally spend 12 months in the hole after Pete Part II, then Only the Good… being 18 months into the sentence is pretty plausible, considering how settled they were in their roles as prisoners by Pete Part I.

Of course, if he didn’t, then maybe the solitary confinement of just a short while gave Hollister time to think and he finally realised that their charges were total nonsense, so he fast tracked their probation afterward (or some other higher up did so in Hollister’s brief absence).

[Ridley]

Good thing Lister put himself under the table rather than on it otherwise he would have snookered himself.

[Hamish]

I think when I first saw it I thought the baby was ‘grown’ a different way, not in Kochanski’s womb, some sort of test tube type thing. Actually this has given me another idea. 

[LISTER present]

[Enter KOCHANSKI]

<LISTER holds out the small in-vitro tube>

LISTER
This is for you.
Just pop that in the uterine simulator in your medi-lab and… bingo.

KOCHANSKI
Wow…

So yes, Kochanski herself is explicitly stated to never have been physically pregnant. It happened in the uterine simulator.

[Unrumble]

Good thing Lister put himself under the table rather than on it otherwise he would have snookered himself.

Plus he says himself, once he’s on a table you can’t get rid of him

[loadoftottnumb]

I think when I first saw it I thought the baby was ‘grown’ a different way, not in Kochanski’s womb, some sort of test tube type thing. Actually this has given me another idea. 

[LISTER present]
[Enter KOCHANSKI] LISTER
This is for you.
Just pop that in the uterine simulator in your medi-lab and… bingo.
KOCHANSKI
Wow…

So yes, Kochanski herself is explicitly stated to never have been physically pregnant. It happened in the uterine simulator.

There you go, Lister was growing in Starbugs Uterine Simulator (which of course it had) during the events of VII. When Starbug crashed inside the Nano Dwarf Kochanski saved it, hid it somewhere, then Lister was born however way and I dunno 9 months something time drive again I don’t know. 

[Flap Jack]

Good point. They don’t make it explicit that the machine fully simulates the entire pregnancy instead of just being an automatic IVF, but I guess that’s what we’re meant to take from the name.

So that clears up the issue of them trying to get Kochanski home, although you’d think having to choose to miss her child’s birth to get home might be a point of drama, IDK. I wonder if she would have brought even more of Lister’s semen back to her universe as well, given she presumably still wants a child she and Holo-Dave can actually raise.

But it’s still a very weird unspoken plot point. Watch Duct Soup with the understanding that there’s an embryo gestating in the med lab, and the lack of anyone mentioning it suddenly becomes inconspicuous. Are they not concerned the power issues are affecting it, same with any of the other dangers they run into over the next few episodes? (Or alternatively, they could be confident they’re guaranteed to survive due to predestiny a la Cassandra, but nope.)

And uterine simulator or no, there’s no way the final scene of Ouroboros doesn’t occur pre-Epideme. Starbug blew up in Back in the Red, and nobody is carrying a presumably not even portable uterine simulator as they abandon ship, and moreover nobody has the opportunity to rescue it from the wreckage (and obviously nobody mentions it either).

[Formica]

Most of VII takes place over about two weeks but there’s around a 17-and-a-half month gap between Epideme and Nanarchy

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Yes, Lister puts himself under that table. It is the whole last scene of the episode so it’s not a subtle detail. However I do understand your confusion, because:

A – He uses the time drive to do it, and it’s inherently weird that they still just casually have that available to use whenever they want after Tikka to Ride, yet still don’t use it to go back to Earth properly, or to find Red Dwarf.

B – There’s no direct narrative link between the final scene and the one before it, showing Lister engaging the time drive or showing the present day status quo. You just have to notice that he’s holding the drive and appearing with the same visual effect as in Tikka.

C – The “Eighteen Months Later” gap to give time for a full pregnancy, birth and early infancy to occur is very jarring and doesn’t sit well with the events of the rest of the series. Lister and Kochanski having and abandoning a child together (side note: why didn’t Kochanski and Lister leave baby Lister together???) and processing Lister’s fucked up self-parentage would be like the most significant event in the series/their lives, yet after Ouroboros it’s never acknowledged at all, and they’re still stuck on basic will they/won’t they schtick. Logically these 18 months must have happened before they could even entertain the possibility of getting Kochanski back to her home universe (and that would seriously affect Kochanski emotionally), but it never feels like it happened, given both the lack of direct acknowledgement and what Lister and Kochanski’s Series 7 relationship is like.

Lister uses the time drive to go forward in time, steal baby Lister from himself and take it back in time. Returns to his present and carries on as normal in a slightly new and altered timeline. It’s the only way to make it work with it being a huge time jump, that makes no sense to the rest of the series 

[Flap Jack]

And then you said “Well it probably is deja vu”.

Most of VII takes place over about two weeks but there’s around a 17-and-a-half month gap between Epideme and Nanarchy

Fun fact: if you rewatch the final scene of Ouroboros, you’ll notice that Lister actually only has one arm.

[cwickham]

Fun fact: if you rewatch the final scene of Ouroboros, you’ll notice that Lister actually only has one arm.

[Captain Bollocks]

But who puts Lister under the pool table in the first place? Presumably there has to be a point where baby Lister needs to grow up into adult Lister before adult Lister can put baby Lister there for the first time, thus creating the Ouroboros loop? Where does Gen 1 baby Lister come from? Does original adult Lister actually come from somewhere else then change the timeline by placing his infant self there? Wouldn’t that give us two Dave Listers existing in parallel in the same universe? Who’s eating all this chicken? What the hell is going on? 

[Flap Jack]

There is no “Gen 1 baby Lister”. It’s all the same person, and there is no causal origin. That’s just the nature of stable time loops in time travel stories.

[Warbodog]

It doesn’t have to make sense because it’s not real.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Yeah there’s no original point with bootstrap paradoxes. The past and future are linked and always happened. So the very first baby Lister is put under a pool table because that grown up Lister went back and put him there. 

[Dave]

But who puts Lister under the pool table in the first place? Presumably there has to be a point where baby Lister needs to grow up into adult Lister before adult Lister can put baby Lister there for the first time, thus creating the Ouroboros loop? Where does Gen 1 baby Lister come from?

It’s the same person who originally steals his kidneys in Give & Take.

[RealBigOleDummy]

Got to say that you guys took an embarrassingly basic question from me and turned it into this entertaining thread. Well done :D 

[Jonathan Capps]

Got to say that you guys took an embarrassingly basic question from me and turned it into this entertaining thread. Well done :D 

There are no stupid questions here, just endless memes.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

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