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  • #276694
    Ian Symes
    Keymaster

    You asked for it. Ahead of the forthcoming 35th anniversary poll, the G&T community is embarking on a big old rewatch, tackling half a series (or one feature length special) per week. This is your designated thread to make notes, share observations and start pondering your rankings.

    This week, we’re watching STASIS LEAK, QUEEG and PARALLEL UNIVERSE. Have at it!

    Previous threads:

    Series 1 Byte 1
    Series 1 Byte 2
    Series 2 Byte 1

    #276696
    Ian Symes
    Keymaster

    (Sorry for the delay, Bank Holidays fuck with my delicate grip on reality)

    #276697

    Stasis Leak: there are some musical stings in this that I don’t recall from other episodes. The one before they get in the lift and the one after they decide to bring someone back.

    Pre-accident Rimmer and Lister are definitely series 2 era here, Lister’s apology seeming genuine. It ties in with Rimmer’s “I don’t know…” suggesting that he kind of likes Lister despite hating what he stands for. 

    Having the pre-accident ship with Hollister and Petersen must have been exciting at first. For a long time this would have been the only pre-accident footage people would have seen.

    Rimmer having green paint feels like an unintentional reference to Starbug. 

    This really feels like the start of Cat existing to just deliver superb one liners that steal every scene. 

    Why did the porter leave Rimmer with a thermometer in his mouth?

    Another rare Remastered improvement: the chaos near the end followed by Rimmer’s last line is much better longer.

    Always really enjoyed that episode, and today is no different. Second or third favourite in series 2.

    #276698
    Jenuall
    Participant

    Yeah the interaction between past Rimmer and Lister is definitely fairly amiable (y’know ignoring the fact that one drugged the other for a laugh!) in a way that doesn’t really scan with how much they are suggested to despise one another in the implied pre-accident series 1.

    The stasis leak is on floor 16 and the lift says they are going down 2,567 floors, so that would make their starting point of the sleeping quarters floor 2,583? Not sure this is particularly consistent with what we’ve seen to this point, I’m sure the LEVEL/NIVELO signs on the walls that we see dotted about at times are in the hundreds – 159 is where the Stasis Booth is in The End for example, then again ship geometry consistency is not really a strong point for the show in general!

    Speaking of which has anyone ever attempted to map the various floors/levels of the ship based on visual clues and direct references before? Surely this must exist somewhere otherwise I’m going to have to make one myself!

    #276699
    Warbodog
    Participant

    Stasis Leak

    I’ve always lumped this in with Better Than Life as ones I feel I should like more than I do, and not being sure how much of that is down to unconvincing location shooting spoiling the illusion. This time, I went from feeling like I was finally getting it to ending up a bit let down again, though overall I should rank it a lot higher than usual.

    – I loved the opening flashback, a bit more Hollister and those old, not-even-that-long-ago Z-shift interactions. Seeing random background crew on those usually empty sets was really effective.

    – Rob and Doug probably weren’t intending this as a red herring for where Lister’s babies came from (since there’s no reference), but that thought could occur if you were watching in order, especially binge watching.

    – Although it’s the first proper time travel story, it feels in the same vein as Future Echoes, but here taking an active investigative approach and getting answers rather than submitting to Time.

    – I love the predeterminism of early-series time travel, and I like the two time streams continuing in parallel like Goodnight Sweetheart (to choose a high-brow example), but other mechanics are wobbly. Why is the stasis field leaking into a random location? (For shower gags). Why do things from the past turn to dust, but not our characters going back and forth? (It’s a magic door).

    – A nice balance of Lister and Rimmer as they pursue their different objectives. Rimmer has disappointingly failed to learn a recent lesson (almost referencing “2 Mes” by title), but his goal is better than just having him try to ruin Lister’s plan out of spite or vague series 1 anxieties.

    – Cat mainly serves as dumb audience surrogate, but they get good lines out of it.

    – Swapping the wedding photo to show Lister’s changing interpretation is dishonest but creatively sound. It might be from Hitchcock or something.

    – “You may as well marry a box of Daz” was the funniest line for me.

    – Rimmer mocking Holly’s general ignorance sets up Queeg. I can’t remember if they’ve really done that before.

    – Gone with the Wind (3 hours, 40 mins) is their go-to reference for a long film, but I only know that detail because of these references. Is there a more modern reference today’s audience would get?

    – Rimmer’s talking head scenes are distractingly failed by the effects, especially the smooth vertical motion and (polo?) neckline. The delivery feels off too, but Rimmer could be reciting from memory rather than reacting (probably why the dialogue rhymes to aid memory in the first place… whenever the first place was).

    – The Xpress Lift video is a bit goofy. In-universe, they presumably saved her life after she foolishly swallowed the cyanide and lift passengers aren’t watching her real death footage every trip, but leaving her blooper in is still poor taste.

    – The detail of Floor 16 being so far away should be epic, but it makes it odd that they go all the way back to the sleeping quarters in-between.

    – The Run for Your Wife bit is probably one of the worst jokes in Red Dwarf.

    – Cat explains “that is definitely the decent thing to do” like he’s from series VIII. Cats have a saying about dogs, despite Cat not knowing what one was before (nitpicking for the sake of it now).

    – Are they going to repaint Red Dwarf green?

    – Some of the stasis leak effect is missing in the first frame.

    #276700
    Stilianides
    Participant

    Stasis Leak –

    I always forget until I rewatch this episode how much certain sections are a precursor to Series VIII. Lister forcing Rimmer to eat magic mushrooms and the whole idea of Hollister in a chicken costume isn’t too far removed from the stuff that happened fairly constantly six series later. I think it works fine as short sections of this episode, but I’m glad that Rob and Doug didn’t overdo that stuff across the first few years.

    I love Howard Goodall’s music for the lift sequence and so, of course, they removed it for the Remastered version. Morwenna Banks’ performance is also perfectly judged.

    The alternate version of Tongue Tied fits well with the hotel sequence and they did a pretty good job of making a modest Manchester hotel look futuristic.

    There are strong laughs again for all of the characters and Holly travelling on the watch was a smart idea to include him in the action. A great story about him falling in love, too.

    A couple of things that haven’t aged so well are the jokes about Olivia Newton John and Run for Your Wife. 

    The Remastered ending is a nice alternate, and they did a better job with the wipe during the excellent two Listers scene.

    #276701
    Jenuall
    Participant

    I always like how the “In 5 years times you’ll find another way to go back in time” does work out with them finding the time drive in Out of Time

    #276702
    Dave
    Participant

    Gone with the Wind (3 hours, 40 mins) is their go-to reference for a long film, but I only know that detail because of these references. Is there a more modern reference today’s audience would get?

    Avengers Endgame? LotR: RotK?

    #276703
    Flap Jack
    Participant

    – The Xpress Lift video is a bit goofy. In-universe, they presumably saved her life after she foolishly swallowed the cyanide and lift passengers aren’t watching her real death footage every trip, but leaving her blooper in is still poor taste.

    Possibly it was a fake pill in-universe too, and she was just really into the role?

    #276704
    Stabbim
    Participant

    for me, at least, they did a nice job of not overdoing the flashbacks in the early episodes, giving me just enough glimpses of life aboard ship pre-radiation leak and the people living it, to “miss them” in the same way Lister would have.  “Always leave the audience wanting more” etc.  Sure enough, for me it was just enough to want/hope they’d eventually do a finale where Lister somehow managed to go back in time/open an alternate universe/etc. and restore the crew.

    So on paper I liked the premise of Series 8 very much, though it eventually became a case of “getting what you want until you don’t want it anymore.”

    Rimmer talking his past self into a stasis pod and thus accidentally saving the ship because with Lister and Rimmer both in stasis pods, drive plate repair would have to fall to someone more competent who ended up repairing it properly?  Feels like a classic Red Dwarf gag of which I am so fond, a scenario in which their flaws and incompetence back into saving the day (Rimmer’s self-loathing breaking Better Than Life, Lister’s delusions about his guitar skill exposing the Psiren, etc)

    Of course, preventing the accident stops Felis Sapiens from ever existing.  And that’s my going fan-theory for why the future “promised” at the end of Stasis Leak never comes to be in future episodes:  as much as Lister does want to return to Earth and/or find & marry Kochanski, he’s unwilling to consign the cats to non-existence to do it, being fond of Cat personally and feeling responsible [guilty] for the holy wars suffered in his name.  So he undid that marriage, brought the cats back, and resolved to keep looking for a way to save both.  If/when he does, that will be the conclusion of Red Dwarf.

    #276705
    Flap Jack
    Participant

    Of course, preventing the accident stops Felis Sapiens from ever
    existing.  And that’s my going fan-theory for why the future “promised”
    at the end of Stasis Leak never comes to be in future episodes:  as much
    as Lister does want to return to Earth and/or find & marry
    Kochanski, he’s unwilling to consign the cats to non-existence to do it,
    being fond of Cat personally and feeling responsible [guilty] for the
    holy wars suffered in his name.  So he undid that marriage, brought the
    cats back, and resolved to keep looking for a way to save both.  If/when
    he does, that will be the conclusion of Red Dwarf.

    That’s an interesting idea, because I never interpreted Stasis Leak as meaning that Lister was destined to go back and save the crew, just that he would rescue Kochanski only, so they could get married.

    I personally just subscribe to the fan theory that the Stasis Leak future crew are from the exact same future timeline as the Out of Time future crew, just not as far along – and that the future crew wiped out the timeline where Lister marries Kochanski by attacking their younger selves. (I also have a complementary theory that says future-Lister wasn’t actually able to rescue KK from the accident after they had their wedding due to that being a time paradox, but it’s not totally needed.)

    #276706
    Unrumble
    Participant

    (acknowledging Warbodog has covered the same points about the photo and Holly’s IQ, but I’d typed out all me notes before I looked at the thread, so I’m leaving them as is) 

    – Norman visibly stops himself delivering the punchline to the Felicity Kendal gag, as he waits out the laugh.

    – It’s an interesting spin on Rimmer’s character that he supposedly has the utmost respect for the chain of command, but has two incredibly angry, violent outbursts toward Hollister in this episode.

    – The disdainful comments about Holly’s intelligence feel like nice seeding for the following episode. 

    – Never been sure about the two different versions of the wedding photo we’re shown. Is it that the photo hasn’t really changed, just Listers perception of it has now that he no longer thinks he’s the groom? Or something to do with the past/future being fluid, depending on the characters actions during the episode…? 

    – Craig Charles’ eyelines during the split screens aren’t quite up to Me2 levels of excellence. Not terrible or owt. 

    – The leak itself is a great, simple effect.

    – Its a weird face that table-head Rimmer pulls after saying “you won’t be dead either, and neither will I!”

    – it’s been discussed ad infinitum, but: why do they not just stay in the past and 

    a) prevent the leak from happening at all/warn people somehow

    B) if that is considered too much timeline-fuckery (and why should it be considering their rescue plans), why not leave the shop and continue their lives elsewhere? 

    #276707
    Stabbim
    Participant

    Lister’s a fundamentally decent guy, plus he clearly misses the Petersen-Selby-Chen drinking crew; he might not succeed in saving anyone else but as long as he’s going back in time to rescue Kochanski anyway he might as well try.

    I also enjoy the irony of Rimmer’s craven selfishness actually being the correct choice in terms of saving the most {human} lives.

    #276708

    Just real quick – who is that bloke on the left of Kochanski in the Stasis Leak wedding photo? Does anyone know? I don’t even just mean in-universe, who’s that guy in real life? Has he ever been identified? Has Gazpacho Soup tried to interview him?

    #276709

    – The Xpress Lift video is a bit goofy. In-universe, they presumably saved her life after she foolishly swallowed the cyanide and lift passengers aren’t watching her real death footage every trip, but leaving her blooper in is still poor taste. 

    I’m still not convinced they would’ve had any chance to reshoot, irrespective of whether she lived or not, after a gaffe like that. Assuming of course it was a real one and not a placebo.

    #276710
    Warbodog
    Participant

    Chris Barrie singled out Stasis Leak as his least favourite episode in that early Smegazine interview, maybe he found that stuff more of a challenge than he did usually. There might be a more recent reference for that than 1992.

    What if Morwenna Banks (lift hostess) had also played the hologram newsreader in Better Than Life and then got this backstory.

    #276711

    You know what, I need to stop posting single replies when I keep having more to say. Well since I’ve been watching Stasis Leak recently anyway, for reasons entirely unrelated to RftM, I’ll say my piece now – 

    Rimmer has disappointingly failed to learn a recent lesson (almost referencing “2 Mes” by title), 

    I never got the impression that the living Rimmer would be around all the time – in fact him saying “one for the week and one for Sunday best” made me think he was planning on keeping his living self in stasis for as long as possible to keep him alive longer. I can even see him trying to use the mind-swap to use the body for himself, though I would imagine the other Rimmer would object strongly to that.

    I never interpreted Stasis Leak as meaning that Lister was destined to go back and save the crew, just that he would rescue Kochanski only, so they could get married.

    I agree, and the dialogue would seem to support this too – Rimmer saying “for three weeks, you’re going to give up your life?” doesn’t make much sense if you consider being the last human being alive, running down on the clock on your life in a futile effort at finding some meaning in your life, destined to spend eternity alone with the same three people to be ‘a life’. That makes me think Rimmer’s being more literal – Lister is planning on spending every second with her, right up to the fatal moment.

    Huh, I thought I’d have more to say. Nevermind then.

    #276716
    Flap Jack
    Participant

    Stasis Leak – Decently fun episode, but the story really feels like SUCH a mess to me. The time travel rules being applied here are barely explained, and a discussion of limitations and risks beyond the soap disintegration ought to be in here, but isn’t. It sets it up for Lister and Rimmer to go on time travel missions that are directly opposed to each other, but instead of this leading to interesting conflict between them, Lister just pivots to “I’ll just spend 3 weeks with Kochanski and we can die together” rather than trying to save her. Lister’s story doesn’t even really have an emotionally satisfying ending, he just isn’t able to keep going. Cool.

    Further to that, Rimmer has no reason to give up trying to convince his past self to go into stasis at the end, but… I guess he does anyway! The episode also feels like a serious missed opportunity to give more characterisation to the past crew. Kochanski gets nothing except for reinforcing her role as an extrememely generic eventual prize for Lister, and Petersen and Hollister just get jokes (not bad ones or anything, but still). I won’t be sure until I rewatch Parallel Universe, but at this stage I think this is my least favourite episode of the series. (Which means that, of course in the Pearl Poll I ranked it as 2nd best behind only Queeg. That young fool!)

    – Lister gets sentenced to 2 weeks painting duty. Is this when the Series 1-2 opening sequence canonically happened? Not much reason to keep on top of paintenance 3 million years after the radiation leak.

    – Holly’s “12,000 car park attendants” line is just a lazy rehash of the “6,000 P.E. teachers” line, so I’m not a fan. Maybe it would have worked somewhat if it had been a running gag, where each time it’s a different profession and a different IQ-point-to-person ratio. But just doing 1 variant is the worst of both worlds.

    – Nice to get another acknowledgement of the enormity of the ship with the Xpress Lift journey, but it does seem utterly bizarre to have 2,500+ floors for 169 people (at this point). Maybe it’s like 95% storage and machinery.

    – Continuity Watch: Rimmer says he’s been with Lister for 3 years now, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say he’s both rounding up to the nearest year and counting his 8 months with Lister pre-stasis, so it’s not necessarily a huge leap from the last time.

    – To this day the very basics of how the stasis leak is meant to work confound me. I’m happy to just accept the idea that stasis leaking would be more like creating a save file in real life than freezing the leaked-into area in time, but beyond that… has the leak been going for 3 million years? Why was it never fixed? Why was it never noticed by Holly? Why is stasis leaking so far away from the other booths? If it ‘preserves’ a particular time, why does their second trip through the portal deposit them at a different time than their first?

    – The premise of this episode always invites so many questions about how they easily could have better used the time travel, and they all would have been a non-issue if they’d just established that (A) you have a time limit inside the portal, it eventually pulls you back to the present, so no staying behind, and (B) you can’t or shouldn’t do anything that would create a time paradox, so no preventing the radiation leak even indirectly. But they didn’t.

    – Rimmer and Lister’s sleeping quarters in the past is decorated exactly like it is in the present, with the banana and everything. Literally unwatchable.

    – If Rimmer’s encounter with his future self is already in his diary, then Rimmer should know that his attempt to convince himself to go into stasis will fail, or else he would already find his own body in a stasis booth. What an idiot.

    – Lister will be looking down on Rimmer in a couple of weeks for doing cheesy chat up lines and generally being a bit creepy around women, but Lister confesses to something far, far worse here with his anecdote about using shoe mirrors to look up skirts. This is a character betrayal on the level of or worse than the end of Dear Dave. This just isn’t Lister. Thanks, Rob and Doug, I hate it. Fucking hell.

    – Some more early Tongue Tied in the hotel! I generally enjoyed the early hotel bits with the talking suitcase and the robot concierges and whatnot.

    – The in-flight movie is Gone with the Wind. Surely that’s not still a go-to in the late 21st century. You can’t even stream it now without getting a warning about how racist it is.

    – Bizarre how Holly gets to make his debut in watch form, when there’s no actual reason for him to come along on the adventure, and he does nothing to help out, he just does some gags. You’d think he would be reminding them to avoid running into themselves too much and trying to keep the timeline mostly intact… or something.

    – So: Lister says there’s “a spare” stasis booth. Confirmation that there’s only two? Although there is ambiguity with the leak. Is stasis leaking from one of the 2 main stasis booths without hindering their operation, or is it leaking from a third booth (in doing so breaking it) that’s actually on the right floor? (Or the third, silliest option – is there a finite quantity of “stasis” stored somewhere on the ship?)

    – Continuity Watch 2: AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. OK, OK, so this confirms that March 2nd was approximately 3 weeks before the accident, but Me2 confirmed that November 25th was 6 weeks before it. Goddamnit, Rob and Doug. I’m just going to not think about this too much and say that Lister misspoke when he was reading about Gazpacho Soup Day. He meant to say “months” and was rounding up the 4 months to the nearest half-year. Or whatever.

    – Continuity Watch 3: Given Lister was a free man just 3 weeks before the leak (uh, the other one), that confirms he was definitely Rimmer’s bunkmate on Gazpacho Soup Day regardless of how you measure it. I guess Rimmer was discreet about his invitation to the Captain’s table after all.

    – When talking about Me2 the other week, I suggested that maybe that fateful dinner went better for Rimmer than he thought it did, because not long after it he was entrusted with essential drive plate repairs. Well that’s clearly bollocks, because according to this episode, even physically assaulting the captain twice and undergoing an apparent psychotic break wasn’t enough to dissuade them from giving the job to Rimmer. Kryten would have won the case even faster in ‘Justice’ if he’d brought this incident up. Honestly, just the fact that he wasn’t sacked (especially as they’re in orbit around Ganymede and could just leave him there) for all this is a miracle.

    – I echo the sentiment that it is ridiculously out of character for Rimmer of any age to be so wildly disrespectful of and openly violent towards the Captain. Rimmer should be quietly seething, or just get his 8 weeks P.D. for talking back, not because he all of a sudden went apeshit. Even the second incident with Hollister in a chicken costume doesn’t feel like Rimmer. Because Rimmer isn’t actually high, and he can definitely see Hollister’s face, and he can hear Hollister’s voice saying only things Hollister would say, so if he suspects he’s hallucinating, why would he discount the possibility that he was only hallucinating the costume???

    – Minor pondering: why does Rimmer have a load of green paint in his sleeping quarters? Does he have some custard pies and an air horn lying around too, just in case he has to do farce at short notice?

    – Future Lister is characterised a bit weirdly. Because he’s being a patronising jerk, but we’re meant to root for Kochanski ending up with him I guess?

    – If Rimmer had succeeded in convincing his past self to go into stasis, he would have had to somehow keep past Holly unawares, or he never would have brought Rimmer back as a hologram, causing a time paradox. And that’s before you consider the possibility that Rimmer going to stasis might have outright prevented the radiation leak. Between this and Rimmer being assigned the drive plate repair after this, it’s like Rob and Doug actually forgot Rimmer was responsible for the accident when writing this episode.

    – Future Lister and Rimmer have a serious disregard for the integrity of the space time continuum, don’t they? Future Lister presumably accidentally left his wedding photo somewhere and kicked off the plot (or maybe it was on purpose to complete a stable time loop), and then they and Kochanski and present Lister just stroll into the bunkroom where past Rimmer and Lister are without a care! I don’t even know why they chose to go there.

    – Yet another instance of pre-accident Rimmer not wearing his regular uniform; it’s getting kind of strange. It might be just so you don’t get past and present Rimmer mixed up, but present Rimmer is wearing a huge ‘H’ on his forehead, and you barely see his whole body in the past anyway.

    – Just to prove it’s not all complaints with me, The Cat was great throughout this episode. He stole every scene he was in, and had a bunch of classic lines (“What is it?”, “Let’s do it.”, “You can tell all that from a photograph?!”, “Who’s eating this chicken?”), and him stealing the champagne at the end was quite sweet too.

    – I enjoyed Lister’s reunion with Petersen as well; his enthusiastic embrace of him felt like the most genuine emotional reaction to this situation for me.

    – Maybe the Listers could work out a deal with Kochanski: Future Lister can date Grogan-Kochanski, and Present Lister can date DiStefano-Kochanski. DiStefano-Kochanski has cooler hats, so it’s not a bad arrangement.

    #276717
    Dave
    Participant

    – I enjoyed Lister’s reunion with Petersen as well; his enthusiastic embrace of him felt like the most genuine emotional reaction to this situation for me.

    Yeah, I’ve always liked this bit. A lot of my imagining of the novels’ version of Petersen and his relationship with Lister is very much rooted in this scene.

    #276718

    Lister will be looking down on Rimmer in a couple of weeks for doing cheesy chat up lines and generally being a bit creepy around women, but Lister confesses to something far, far worse here with his anecdote about using shoe mirrors to look up skirts.

    I suppose it was him as a teenager which makes the awfulness of it slightly less relevant to his adult character than Rimmer’s adult behaviour. But yes, it’s an unpleasant gag.

    #276722
    Flap Jack
    Participant

    It sets it up for Lister and Rimmer to go on time travel missions that
    are directly opposed to each other, but instead of this leading to
    interesting conflict between them, Lister just pivots to “I’ll just
    spend 3 weeks with Kochanski and we can die together” rather than trying
    to save her.

    Oh wait, I was getting this the wrong way round in my memory. Staying with Kochanski in the past is Plan A, then he comes up with the stasis booth plan. So he and Rimmer are in direct competition for the booth, which makes the lack of direct conflict between them in the plot even weirder.

    #276724

    The same IQ as 60,000 first year teacher training students.

    #276725
    Warbodog
    Participant

    Queeg

    I probably don’t rate this one quite as highly as consensus (more teens than top ten), but it’s one of the best outright comedy episodes and some light relief after a complicated one like Stasis Leak. As such, there’s not much to dissect.

    – It feels misleadingly like a ‘sci-fi lite’ episode, but it’s all about a sentient computer and it’s got the dramatic meteor impact and repair scenes early on, so more sci-fi than Balance of Power or Marooned.

    – It feels like the first real ensemble episode, with Holly’s most prominent role ever and Cat being caught up in things with his shipmates rather than just tagging along.

    – Something about it felt like a transition to series III, maybe being the last episode filmed (and maybe last written). I thought the incontinent sheep dog bit was from The Last Day and might have guessed the space scouts anecdote being from that series too.

    – Rimmer’s method of cheating at draughts in the opening doesn’t turn out to be the key to Holly’s salvation after all. (A remnant of an earlier ending possibility?)

    – It seems like it’s only really Rimmer who deserved this (though Holly seemingly confuses who said what), so he could have done a solo wheeze on him like with the garbage pod. Holly starting their ‘lesson’ immediately after his mistake almost kills Lister is a bit insensitive and self-absorbed, doesn’t really gel with the reveal.

    – Norman’s clear and infectious delight through the last scene makes it all the better. Great knackered, sweaty acting by Barry earlier too.

    – The music sting before the pea on toast scene always makes me think of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.

    #276728
    Flap Jack
    Participant

    – The music sting before the pea on toast scene always makes me think of Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Title Font: Is he? Well, I want me pea back

    Or alternatively,

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Title Font: Golfish shoals, nibbling at my toes

    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Title Font: Fun, fun, fun in the sun, sun, sun

    #276735
    Dave
    Participant

    Norman’s clear and infectious delight through the last scene makes it all the better.

    Yeah, it’s brilliant as it also works in-character.

    #276738
    Warbodog
    Participant

    – Continuity Watch: Rimmer says he’s been with Lister for 3 years now, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say he’s both rounding up to the nearest year and counting his 8 months with Lister pre-stasis, so it’s not necessarily a huge leap from the last time.

    I’ve always thought Lister said he’d been with the company for 18 months in Waiting for God, but turns out he does say 8. Maybe I was getting confused with stasis. A shame, these time references generally made sense when I had it wrong, at least this far.

    #276739
    Jenuall
    Participant

    The slow motion effect added to the meteor impact in Queeg is always a bit OTT in a way that is off-putting, makes me think that the shot looked so shit “clean” that they had to mess around with it a bit in the edit to disguise it! Bit surprising given how good the explosion stunt is later in the episode.

    Queeg quoting article 5 as the reason for retiring Holly should have been a clue to the rest of the crew that this was a wind up. “Gross negligence, leading to the endangerment of personnel.”? Holly allowing Rimmer to try and fix a drive plate and kill all the crew doesn’t count as negligence and endangerment!? Letting Lister wander off into contaminated areas of the ship and catch space pneumonia didn’t count? If there really was a backup computer that would kick in if the primary had been compromised it would have happened a long time before now!

    #276740

    – It seems like it’s only really Rimmer who deserved this (though Holly seemingly confuses who said what), so he could have done a solo wheeze on him like with the garbage pod. Holly starting their ‘lesson’ immediately after his mistake almost kills Lister is a bit insensitive and self-absorbed, doesn’t really gel with the reveal.

    I always assumed him ‘forgetting’ about the meteor was the start of his plan, and it was in response to ongoing questioning of his ability; it just sets up the ‘Article 5’ excuse. Also, Cat is just as critical as Rimmer, really.

    – why does Lister refer to Cat’s audiobook as a ‘tape’ when it’s clearly a CD?

    – “they were only bullying you” – lovely sympathy from Lister there.

    – how on Earth does Holly open his game with a knight?

    – the way April, May, June, July and August Fool is stated makes pretty sure that it’s just a funny way of saying it. The way the sentence starts with “we’re talking” suggests it’s not literal.

    My other second or third favourite of 2, there. Not sure if I prefer it or Stasis Leak. 

    #276741
    Stilianides
    Participant

    how on Earth does Holly open his game with a knight? 

    The horsey is the only piece other than a pawn that can move first. 

    #276742
    Flap Jack
    Participant

    Queeg – A perfectly judged Holly spotlight episode that also gives good material to the other 3 principals, and features a top notch guest turn by Charles Augins. It’s undeniably light on the sci fi, but it being so character based is its strength.

    – Continuity Watch: Holly lies that they’ve been flying around in circles for 14 months, so it must have been at least that amount of time since Lister came out of stasis, but that doesn’t contradict anything that’s already been established.

    – As good as Rimmer doing all his impressions is, I feel like his first one of Brannigan the ship psychiatrist, a character we’ve never met and who doesn’t have particularly amusing mannerisms, was a bit weak. Why not imitate Petersen, Hollister, or Kochanski? I’d even take Todhunter or McIntyre.

    – The hologram projection suite looks suspiciously similar to the drive room.

    – Neat writing to establish that Holly’s screens were out in the damaged area of the ship, so they had an excuse for him to be in CRT mode, so when Queeg turns up he can be on screen and still share the scene with Holly.

    – Warbodog raises a good point about how Rimmer’s draughts game could have been seeding a solution to Holly’s chess game against Queeg. In its current form it still works as a bit of ironic comeuppance for Rimmer: he ‘wins’ (or is planning to win) his draughts game by playing to the letter of the rules but to the detriment of his opponent and of the entire point of the game. Queeg follows the letter of JMC rules but in doing so sacrifices the happiness and well-being of the crew, which under current circumstances is his whole job.

    – Aside to the above point: does Rimmer forfeit the draughts game by going to check out the meteor damage? Nice immediate petard hoisting, if so.

    – I spoke too soon after Thanks for the Memory. One more instance of Rimmer thinking something is aliens!

    – Love Holly’s night watchman get up, but does he actually have a torch attached to his monitor anywhere, for his references to shining it to make sense? I didn’t spot it.

    – So if Rimmer imitates The Cat, does that mean Cat uploaded his data into the holo-suite at some point? Or is Rimmer just copying people at that stage, not ‘becoming’ them?

    – I agree that it is weird in retrospect how quickly after they’re angry at him that Holly starts his Queeg prank, and how cruel it is to punish Lister when Lister was the most harmed by his cable mistake and the least vocal in criticising him. Perhaps he wasn’t planning on keeping the ruse going for so long initially, but was motivated to do it by nobody sincerely defending him from Queeg’s accusations.

    – I always found the effects on Rimmer’s wandering legs a bit unconvincing. There ought to be a cleaner line between the two halves. (Totally understandable of course, but it does take me out of it just a little.)

    – So with Cat needing to work in order to get food, does that mean Cat officially became a member of the crew at this point? Not that Holly needed to be 100% accurate with his rigid rule following as long as it was believable, but we know that Cat was on the books by The Inquisitor, and he probably didn’t have a reason to be before now.

    – I love Lister’s story about the smart shoes, just because it’s great when characters in sitcoms intentionally tell long winded jokes that work for the audience too.

    – Is anyone here able to visualise chess games based purely on verbal descriptions of the moves? Bit strange we never got a close up of those screens showing the board and pieces, but I guess it doesn’t matter and it’s better to focus on the performances. I just wonder if the moves actually made sense.

    – I often get quite emotional at the end when Holly is saying his goodbyes. Even though it’s revealed to be a wind up just moments later, it feels genuine, and the understated responses from the others work well.

    – Holly’s farewell statement to Rimmer about his unrealistic goals for happiness feels particularly incisive, but his comment to Lister of “I hope things work out between you and Kochanski” is a bit strange. Like yes I know there’s the meta “eventually find a way to travel back in time and save her” plot going on in theory, but still, she’s dead and Holly actively chose not to bring her back as a hologram. So it doesn’t feel quite right.

    – The moral of the story is: never trust a ship computer if it has an American accent. That’s why the Red Dwarf USA Holly is still English.

    #276744
    Flap Jack
    Participant

    Queeg quoting article 5 as the reason for retiring Holly should have been a clue to the rest of the crew that this was a wind up. “Gross negligence, leading to the endangerment of personnel.”? Holly allowing Rimmer to try and fix a drive plate and kill all the crew doesn’t count as negligence and endangerment!? Letting Lister wander off into contaminated areas of the ship and catch space pneumonia didn’t count? If there really was a backup computer that would kick in if the primary had been compromised it would have happened a long time before now!

    Ah ha, that is a fair point! But I think we’re meant to assume that Holly is designed to afford the crew a certain level of independence and freedom, and that  therefore the backup computer would only kick in if the endangerment were caused by something Holly did or said directly.

    If the backup computer were real, probably Future Echoes would have been the most likely time for it to start up before now.

    #276745

    – I spoke too soon after Thanks for the Memory. One more instance of Rimmer thinking something is aliens!

    Funny you say that…

    #276746
    Rudolph
    Participant

    I never thought Rimmer was specifically imitating Cat in Queeg, just that the screeches and spasming was basically like static/interference. Cat being a bit dim interpreted it as an impression of him.

    #276747
    Jenuall
    Participant

    – Love Holly’s night watchman get up, but does he actually have a torch attached to his monitor anywhere, for his references to shining it to make sense? I didn’t spot it. 

    It’s the same mobile TV rig we see from Thanks for the Memory where he shows off his flashlight capabilities most effectively:

    #276748
    Jenuall
    Participant

    – I always found the effects on Rimmer’s wandering legs a bit unconvincing. There ought to be a cleaner line between the two halves. (Totally understandable of course, but it does take me out of it just a little.)

    This is one of those that I think has suffered with the increased fidelity of modern technology, I always thought it was reasonably well done when watching the VHS back in the day but these days in HD it’s quite alarming how bad the image quality is at times – you can really see the line where the images are merged and clear compression/editing artefacts on the lower half of the screen.

    – So with Cat needing to work in order to get food, does that mean Cat officially became a member of the crew at this point? Not that Holly needed to be 100% accurate with his rigid rule following as long as it was believable, but we know that Cat was on the books by The Inquisitor, and he probably didn’t have a reason to be before now.

    Is Cat officially on the books in The Inquisitor, he refers to alternate Kryten and Lister as “crew mates” but that seems more informal than anything. Kryten referring to his ident as “Additional 001” also implies that he is the first member officially added to the system beyond the original crew?

    #276749
    Warbodog
    Participant

    I always thought the malleable timeline didn’t start happening until Timeslides, and contradicted earlier episodes, but if Kochanski can be rescued and no longer becomes ashes in the Drive Room, Stasis Leak is already rewriting history.

    I find that a bit disappointing conceptually, but it makes things easier to handle. I don’t have to wonder whether Kochanski in The End was already secretly married to Future Lister and stuff (she wasn’t), and it retrospectively makes the Future Echoes less set in stone than they thought at the time.

    It means Red Dwarf’s attitude to time travel didn’t really change, until maybe Cassandra where the future seems to be fixed again (or they’re under that impression again).

    #276750
    Stabbim
    Participant

    I always take it that Cat has been added to the roster in at least some minimal/provisional way that allows him to access the vending machines and, as we’ll see next episode, the dream recorder.  He’s in the database now (hence him being one of the impressions Rimmer goes through while malfunctioning in Queeg).

    [Any connection between how the dream recorder works and how frequently/constantly each crewmember’s file in the hologramatic archive is updated is purely speculative on my part, but I assume they’re related somehow.]

    #276751
    Flap Jack
    Participant

    It’s the same mobile TV rig we see from Thanks for the Memory where he shows off his flashlight capabilities most effectively:

    Ah, of course. Would have been funnier in Queeg if he just had a completely normal torch taped to his monitor though.

    Is Cat officially on the books in The Inquisitor, he refers to alternate Kryten and Lister as “crew mates” but that seems more informal than anything. Kryten referring to his ident as “Additional 001” also implies that he is the first member officially added to the system beyond the original crew?

    Oh darn it, I was misremembering that as “002”. Maybe my brain was filling in the logic of Cat being first.

    OK, forget that point then. Cat not officially being a crew member fits better for the Pree thing in Fathers & Suns anyway.

    #276752
    clem
    Participant

    Lister gets sentenced to 2 weeks painting duty. Is this when the Series 1-2 opening sequence canonically happened? Not much reason to keep on top of paintenance 3 million years after the radiation leak.

    Makes sense, but I really don’t like the idea of that epic opening being set pre-accident. Maybe when Lister was obeying Rimmer to get cigarettes in Series 1, the painting was one of the pointless tasks he had to complete. Easy to imagine Rimmer insisting on the upkeep of the paintwork.

    #276753
    Dave
    Participant

    I always thought the malleable timeline didn’t start happening until Timeslides, and contradicted earlier episodes, but if Kochanski can be rescued and no longer becomes ashes in the Drive Room, Stasis Leak is already rewriting history.

    Unless you subscribe to the “he was always going to come back and prevent Kochanski from dying” closed loop approach, which Red Dwarf sometimes does use with time-travel, like future-Kryten coming back and jumping the Inquisitor before present-Kryten has even worked out a plan yet.

    #276754
    Warbodog
    Participant

    Unless you subscribe to the “he was always going to come back and prevent Kochanski from dying” closed loop approach

    For this one, I’ll go with the less intellectually satisfying but simpler Timeslides approach. In five years’ time, Kochanski’s ashes in her space coffin fade out of existence shortly after Lister goes back in time to marry her. The coffin is still weirdly there.

    #276755
    Stabbim
    Participant

     
    – Holly’s farewell statement to Rimmer about his unrealistic goals for happiness feels particularly incisive, but his comment to Lister of “I hope things work out between you and Kochanski” is a bit strange. Like yes I know there’s the meta “eventually find a way to travel back in time and save her” plot going on in theory, but still, she’s dead and Holly actively chose not to bring her back as a hologram. So it doesn’t feel quite right.

    well, as you say, it’s a windup.  Holly knows what emotional buttons to press to get the boys to feel rather than think and, thus examine the logical holes that they could (and several posters here have) punched in the premise of where and when Queeg asserts control over the ship and why and, thus, cease to be taken in by his “jape of the decade”.  Similar to the Psirens:  there is no possible way Kochanski could’ve ended up on one of those derelicts, especially with Jim & Bexley.  And when Lister “tunes into Sanity FM” and actually stops to think about it he realizes this.  But first there is that purely emotional gut reaction. Lister hears it, sees it, and the Psirens so tap in to what he wants, and give it to him, that he starts to bite on it anyway.  Mention Krissy and the logical part of Lister’s brain is going to switch off and the emotional part is in the driver’s seat.

    The whole premise of the episode is that Holly is willing to mess with their heads.  Invoking the ghost of Kochanski isn’t that much more manipulative than pretending to be Queeg, really.

    #276756

    Minor pondering: why does Rimmer have a load of green paint in his sleeping quarters?

    They decided to rebrand the ship. Tension sheets are only just coming into fashion and red is still seen as an aggressive colour.

    Some more early Tongue Tied in the hotel!

    New headcanon: Cat dreamed up the music for Tongue Tied after hearing the lobby music in the Titan Hilton.

    The in-flight movie is Gone with the Wind. Surely that’s not still a go-to in the late 21st century. You can’t even stream it now without getting a warning about how racist it is.

    It’s the definitive remake. With Myra Binglebat and Peter Beardsley.

    AAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. OK, OK, so this confirms that March 2nd was approximately 3 weeks before the accident, but Me2 confirmed that November 25th was 6 weeks before it. Goddamnit, Rob and Doug. I’m just going to not think about this too much and say that Lister misspoke when he was reading about Gazpacho Soup Day. He meant to say “months” and was rounding up the 4 months to the nearest half-year. Or whatever.

    Considering Geldof is a month in the future, I can buy into the idea of a few of the existing months being shuffled around and losing or gaining a few days. I bet you can even fit a third, really short month between the two that serves no practical purpose whatsoever. All I can say is, I pity the calendar makers of that period.

    #276757
    Dollar Pound
    Participant

    it’s not paint it’s lister’s urine

    #276758
    Flap Jack
    Participant

    well, as you say, it’s a windup.  Holly knows what emotional buttons to press to get the boys to feel rather than think
    and, thus examine the logical holes that they could (and several
    posters here have) punched in the premise of where and when Queeg
    asserts control over the ship and why and, thus, cease to be taken in by
    his “jape of the decade”.  Similar to the Psirens:  there is no
    possible way Kochanski could’ve ended up on one of those derelicts,
    especially with Jim & Bexley.  And when Lister “tunes into Sanity
    FM” and actually stops to think about it he realizes this.  But first
    there is that purely emotional gut reaction. Lister hears it, sees it,
    and the Psirens so tap in to what he wants, and give it to him, that he
    starts to bite on it anyway.  Mention Krissy and the logical part of
    Lister’s brain is going to switch off and the emotional part is in the
    driver’s seat.

    The whole premise of the episode is that Holly is willing to mess
    with their heads.  Invoking the ghost of Kochanski isn’t that much more
    manipulative than pretending to be Queeg, really.

    I get what you’re saying, but the way I see it, the way that Holly would nail the final step of his ruse would be to just act exactly as he would if he were genuinely being erased, so the fact that it’s a prank shouldn’t really make a difference.

    I just think that “I hope you find your way back to Earth” would have been a better sentiment, or if it has to be Kochanski related, it could be described better, like “I hope you find a way to rescue Kochanski”. The line as it is kind of makes it sound like Kockanski’s just living in another part of the ship, and she and Lister had an argument.

    #276759
    Dave
    Participant

    Honestly, having just seen an episode where Lister finds out he’s going to go back in time and get together with Kochanski in the end, it if anything seems like a weird thing to say for the opposite reason – because we already know things will work out.

    #276760
    Dollar Pound
    Participant

    it’s not paint it’s that day-glo mint sauce that never washes out.  lister needs it to paint his friends’ naked body parts

    #276761

    I agree, and the dialogue would seem to support this too – Rimmer saying “for three weeks, you’re going to give up your life?” doesn’t make much sense if you consider being the last human being alive, running down on the clock on your life in a futile effort at finding some meaning in your life, destined to spend eternity alone with the same three people to be ‘a life’. That makes me think Rimmer’s being more literal – Lister is planning on spending every second with her, right up to the fatal moment.

    And yet he then expects her to get into a stasis pod so she can wind up three million years into the future with him, Rimmer and Cat for company. What an offer.

    Honestly, having just seen an episode where Lister finds out he’s going to go back in time and get together with Kochanski in the end, it if anything seems like a weird thing to say for the opposite reason – because we already know things will work out.

    He could be saying “I hope you don’t end up getting divorced.”

    #276762
    Flap Jack
    Participant

    One small detail about Queeg I appreciate: how into it Queeg seems when he tells Rimmer he asked to be woken at 6am.

    So, enjoy whatever this is.

    #276766
    Warbodog
    Participant

    Parallel Univvers

    I’ve always singled this out as my least favourite of the Grant Naylor run, but it’s still not so bad. It’s mainly dragged down by some really basic jokes around its half-baked concept, that idiotic Dog and those shite Skutters. It’s still on top form until all that starts, and has a classic cliffhanger, so it’s not going in the bin.

    – I was caught off guard by the opening. I forget Tongue Tied is actually a thing in an episode, probably filing it under extracurricular content. I’m not the biggest fan, but it made me smile.

    – You can’t hear Lister’s assessment of Rimmer today without being reminded of incels. It’s not pleasant seeing his grottiness hang out, but it’s not like it’s surprising. He fucks sex dolls.

    – I wonder how self-deprecating and fourth-wall-breaking the ‘Hop prop was intended to be.

    – With no on-screen title to spoil things, and the possibility of it being the final episode, there’s a brief window where you could believe they might actually make it back to Earth.

    – Female Lister good. Female Rimmer too short, for a start. Her lechery can be explained as her having more to drink than Arnie.

    – Were the various ‘Arnolds’ around the bunkroom set really visible before the DVD?

    – The ending is a big point in its favour, actually resolving a mystery brings back that sense of an ongoing story. It may be cruel to Lister and more generally problematic, but I enjoy Rimmer’s wicked glee anyway. Have they said whether the story was conceived around this or if it was a eureka moment during the writing?

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