Refresh For The Memory: Series X Byte 1

[Ian Symes]

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 TROJAN, FATHERS & SUNS and LEMONS. Have at it!

Previous threads:

Series 1 Byte 1
Series 1 Byte 2
Series 2 Byte 1
Series 2 Byte 2
Series III Byte 1
Series III Byte 2
Series IV Byte 1
Series IV Byte 2
Series V Byte 1
Series V Byte 2
Series VI Byte 1
Series VI Byte 2
Series VII Byte 1
Series VII Byte 2
Series VIII Byte 1
Series VIII Byte 2
Back To Earth

Topic

[Moonlight]

For the record – it feels like a mischaracterisation that Rimmer would be pro-Confederates.

Two things.

(1) I don’t see why he couldn’t apply the same “admire the military tactics of the generals and ignore the war crimes” shit he does for other fascist movements.

but more importantly:

(2) When does it even ever imply he’s pro-Confederate? He’s watching an alternate history drama. I watched Man in the High Castle but that doesn’t mean I want to live in that world.

[Moonlight]

How did Howard die in the first place, and end up 3 million years in the future? Considering that Crawford doesn’t know about the Simulant uprising and surely wouldn’t have waited that long to make her move, it reads like they fell through a time portal (… or Timewave), or have been in stasis, not that they’ve just been chilling out.

I keep seeing people asking this, and I always thought they pretty much spelled it out by explaining the rod contracts spacetime to bring things formerly connected back together again. Howard and Sim were dragged from post-accident days into the same region of time and space as Rimmer currently is, as he and Howard are connected. Kryten even says “Did the rod do this?” the moment it all happens, after explaining that the rod does exactly the kind of thing that just happened. The simulant uprising being a new idea to them just further cements that they’ve been yanked out of the deep past. 

I just cannot remember ever being confused by this, but it was a decade ago and my memory is utter shit. I do remember watching Trojan like five times before Fathers and Suns released because there was such novelty to having a new half-hour regular episode of Dwarf to watch. The show was seemingly long dead by time I originally found it. I even crushed Trojan down tiny to play it on my little Sansa mp3 player on the way to high school or back.

It’s like a time capsule of 2012 to hear Pree’s abilities described as being “like predictive text on a cell phone”. I feel like even at the time, “autocorrect” was rapidly overtaking that as the go-to term, if it hadn’t already fully supplanted it. 

I feel like predictive text is a more clear explanation considering it implies things like the word suggestions bar that anticipate what words are likely to follow the one you just used, vs. autocorrect guessing the word you are half-finished typing and then typing it for you when that isn’t at all the word you were trying to write. I can’t imagine any version of that explanation with “autocorrect” making it any clearer, or even reaching the same amount of clarity.

Autocorrect and anything else that automatically changes what I wrote without asking me first can absolutely fuck off. That shit is wrong 99% of the time when you’re hanging around in fandom spaces using lots of words that don’t exist in the wider language. And even when you aren’t, it’s still wrong most of the time. I live off the words suggestion bar because I am rubbish at typing on a phone screen, but that requires my input to alter or finish whatever I may have already typed. Once again, no, autocorrect, I did not tell that scam text to “Duck off.” Nobody has ever meant “Duck off” ever.

[Moonlight]

(Tried to append this to my last post but the edit timer ran out apparently and it was all erased. Good thing that modern browsers retain any field information when you go back a page.)

It’s not really reaching for greatness as all the commentary about Christianity is pretty shallow,

As a raging atheist who was only really seriously starting to consciously question the validity of her faith (and I’d never been super on board with any of it anyway) when Lemons aired, I can only help but wish this episode had made some points about Christianity that wouldn’t have scanned to me at the time as a parody of New Atheist talking points that don’t pick and choose the right targets.

If you want to criticize the ten commandments as the supposed most important rules to life here’s a few pointers:
 

(1) Three, count them, the first three of the commandments are just about stroking God’s vanity. 

(2) The fourth one encourages you to listen to your parents, right or wrong. Some nuance in these things might help avoid some pretty awful situations.

(3) Fifth one says don’t murder people. Took us this long to get to something you would consider reasonable for this list, and rest assured it is the ONLY one that should have qualified.

(4) Sixth and ninth are both basically the same thing. Don’t cheat on your woman or even want to cheat on your woman. Seems like we could have eliminated some of the redundancies in this very important list.

(5) Seven says to not steal, but there is no nuance to be found here. If I steal bread for my starving family I don’t think any reasonable person would call that immoral, unless you’re a Republican. Hardly worth the list, as is the tenth, which is about coveting things. That’s like stealing but without the stealing part. Treacherous! 

(6) Eight says not to slander people. Good idea, not worth the list of the ten most important things in the world that you should or should not do.

That covers the existing ones, but perhaps most importantly:

(7) There’s a whole WORLD of things whose absence from this list is jarring. Slavery apparently isn’t important enough to be worth mentioning – elsewhere the Bible has rules to regulate slavery without opposing its practice, and these passages were used in the Antebellum South to give legitimacy to the whole sordid idea. Meanwhile, sexual assault can’t be found either, nothing about physically abusing children, nothing about bigotry against outside groups. All shit that would have been profoundly useful either at the time or well down the line of history. And this feels all the more fucked up when you consider that three out of the ten commandments are about sucking up to God, but they couldn’t be bothered to include a pointer about not enslaving human beings. I’d say we could have used those extra five commandments that Moses dropped but I suspect it was probably just more stuff about coveting.

And this is all just off the top of my head. When Doug said he was listening to Christopher Hitchens when he wrote / thought of this episode, I definitely believe him. It’s got that New Atheist lack of nuance while being very smug about how right you are.

[Warbodog]

It’s got that New Atheist lack of nuance while being very smug about how right you are.

I was reminded of young Lister from Timeslides in that bit. Whatever you think of the message, the messenger is supposed to be a bit of a knob. But it’s hard to tell where the line is with Doug sometimes. I’m genuinely looking forward to rewatching Timewave and trying to get to the bottom of that one.

[Jonathan Capps]

(Tried to append this to my last post but the edit timer ran out apparently and it was all erased. Good thing that modern browsers retain any field information when you go back a page.)

Sooooo passive aggressive.

[Moonlight]

If it wasn’t for that safety net I would be burning your fucking house down after losing that much of a post. My only regret now is that I can’t go back to add more relevant memes to each point, like “Morally, ethically, hologram killing fine” after the one about murder.

[Flap Jack]

I keep seeing people asking this, and I always thought they pretty much spelled it out by explaining the rod contracts spacetime to bring things formerly connected back together again. Howard and Sim were dragged from post-accident days into the same region of time and space as Rimmer currently is, as he and Howard are connected. Kryten even says “Did the rod do this?” the moment it all happens, after explaining that the rod does exactly the kind of thing that just happened. The simulant uprising being a new idea to them just further cements that they’ve been yanked out of the deep past. 

Well, I took the “it bends space time” explanation of the quantum rod to mean it was able to instantly pull Howard’s ship from wherever it currently was in the universe to wherever Red Dwarf is, not that it pulled it from the distant past. As that’s more in line with the stated purpose of the rod.

I didn’t consider that Howard and Crawford might have time travelled 3 million years when I first watched the episode, but I think I just took it as a given that stuff from 3 million years ago does randomly turn up in Red Dwarf.

I guess it being straightforward time travel does make the most sense, but it would be nice if Doug constrained himself to giving the Dwarfers just 1 unlimited power time drive per series.

[International Debris]

I suppose if it didn’t have time travel qualities it would have been written as space rather than spacetime. But as I wrote in my thoughts, it’s the start of a run of bizarrely unexplained ideas in the Dave run. Kryten could have easily explained it rather than vaguely wondering if the rod did it. 

[Dave]

[Warbodog]

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Red Dwarf X. The plotting is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the explanations will go over a typical viewer’s head.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Red Dwarf X. The plotting is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the explanations will go over a typical viewer’s head.

As a consequence people who dislike Red Dwarf truly ARE idiots- of course they wouldn’t appreciate, for instance, the humour in Kryten’s existential catchphrase “Smeeee Heeee,” which itself is a cryptic reference to Turgenev’s Russian epic Fathers and Suns.

[Stabbim the Skutter]

Fun fact: I recently found out Kerry Shale was also the (uncredited) voice of Werner Von Croy from the Tomb Raider series. Make of that what you will.

[Rushy]

Trojan: Maybe it’s because the plot is a little ambitious or because it’s episode 1, but this is the Series X episode where the overtly stagey sitcom style of this year stands out the most. I’m not a fan of the reveal either. But the performances and jokes are all great, so overall I’d say this is a good time. 

Fathers and Suns: One of my all time favourites. Blackstone’s subtly maniacal performance is so perfectly judged (“Operation… sizzle.”) that I wish she stayed on the cast full time. I love the way Lister tries to deal with his own problems by using his ‘father’ as an avatar to talk to. I don’t think Taiwan Tony is intended to mock or stereotype Chinese culture so I don’t believe it’s inherently racist to include him. The joke is that they’re earnestly and foolishly taking advice from such a shameless commercial product.

Lemons: I’m not a fan of mocking Christianity and Christian dogma (given the positive effect it can have on people who seek comfort and guidance from it), so the jokes don’t really land for me. It’s one thing to make fun of how exaggerated and foolish Christianity can get, that’s wholly valid. But to chew on the foundation of the thing is in poor taste and reminds me of how Monty Python avoided making fun of Jesus in Life of Brian. 

“after an early brainstorming stage, and despite being non-believers, they agreed that Jesus was “definitely a good guy” and found nothing to mock in his actual teachings: “He’s not particularly funny, what he’s saying isn’t mockable, it’s very decent stuff”, said Idle later”

I will acknowledge that the script is mostly well constructed, but it’s just not my thing personally. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> Trojan: Maybe it’s because the plot is a little ambitious or because it’s episode 1, but this is the Series X episode where the overtly stagey sitcom style of this year stands out the most.

I’d not considered this (maybe because I was at the recording so my experience with the episode is quite different) but I do agree that it feels the most “sitcom shot in a tv studio” episode of the series.

I think it’s partly the Trojan set and partly the uniforms. It Red Dwarf “doing Star Trek” which is the sort of sitcom trope you don’t really get in Red Dwarf, not to this extent anyway.

> I don’t think Taiwan Tony is intended to mock or stereotype Chinese culture so I don’t believe it’s inherently racist to include him.

The character certainly isn’t there to mock, and that wasn’t the intent. But the performance *is* racist, it is indicative of performances that *were* intended to mock and demean Chinese / Asian people and that is what people take objection to.

> I’m not a fan of mocking Christianity and Christian dogma

I don’t believe it is. It does point out some hypocrisy (mostly in how the teaching have become twisted, which is what the Jesus in the episode objects to) but it isn’t mocking religion of faith.

[Rushy]

The character certainly isn’t there to mock, and that wasn’t the intent. But the performance *is* racist, it is indicative of performances that *were* intended to mock and demean Chinese / Asian people and that is what people take objection to. 

Why?

I mean, intent is everything. Simply having the concept of racist humour shouldn’t be offensive in its own right. The racism makes it racist. But if the writer isn’t being racist either actively or passively, then it isn’t. At least not in the real world sense. I suppose it could be frustrating that Lister and Kryten exhibit racism. But I think they’ve both done worse in the show anyway. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

The character certainly isn’t there to mock, and that wasn’t the intent. But the performance *is* racist, it is indicative of performances that *were* intended to mock and demean Chinese / Asian people and that is what people take objection to. 

Why?
I mean, intent is everything. Simply having the concept of racist humour shouldn’t be offensive in its own right. The racism makes it racist. But if the writer isn’t being racist either actively or passively, then it isn’t. At least not in the real world sense. I suppose it could be frustrating that Lister and Kryten exhibit racism. But I think they’ve both done worse in the show anyway. 

There’s lots of reason, and primarily because intent or not, fans don’t want outdated stereotypical performances that could be construed as racist in a show made in the 21st century – whether there’s intent or not.

At the time it greatly distracted from the discussion of the episode as it stood out as an incredible offensive performance.

One could argue, if there was no intent to be racist, there certainly wasn’t any care taken to ensure no racism existed, which isn’t exactly doing wonders for the production either.

On a much more philosophical note 

> Simply having the concept of racist humour shouldn’t be offensive in its own right

Whether the intent exists or not, the result is still the same. For example, a WW2 bomber pilot intends to drop its load on a weapons factory.  He misses, and hits a school killing hundreds of innocent children.  Whilst the intent may not have been to murder children, the result is the same. Those affected by the bombing won’t immediately forgive the pilot for their error, simply because it was not their intent.

It’s quite an extreme example, but it does highlight why at a minimum care should be taken to get things right, in this case the portrayal of an Asian stereotype in a storyline specifically about racism.  And it highlights why the result can still hit the same as if there was intent behind it.

[Dave]

But the performance *is* racist, it is indicative of performances that *were* intended to mock and demean Chinese / Asian people and that is what people take objection to.

Arguably the episode could have made this performance more palatable by acknowledging how dodgy it is and incorporating it into the wider discussion of racism.

It probably still wouldn’t make it a great story because the racism plot thread doesn’t ever really go anywhere interesting, but even just a single line about the awfully stereotypical vending machine voice units could have stopped it from feeling quite as inadvertently offensive, by making it more deliberately offensive. 

[International Debris]

On the plus side, on Discord we’ve now taken to going through the Ten Commandments and can confirm that Christian dogma is absolutely worth taking the piss out of.

[Flap Jack]

“Intent is everything” doesn’t work for a couple of reasons.

1 – Good intent doesn’t actually prevent harm.

2 – Anyone can just lie about what their intent is. (Or say nothing and let people assume.)

When it comes to Taiwan Tony, you can have all the good intentions about doing a subversive commentary on a white actor doing a stereotypical Chinese accent for laughs, but when it comes down to it, the main thing you’re doing is having a white actor do a stereotypical Chinese accent for laughs. It’s possible to thread the needle of doing that while making the intent clear enough to stop it being racist, but Fathers & Suns doesn’t.

[Rushy]

A conversation about whether Chinese whiskers are racist is followed by Kryten asking “Taiwan Tony” because Taiwan’s “a bit Chinese-y”.

I just don’t know how much clearer the intent can be. Someone is asking the most obvious racist stereotype their opinion about whether something else is racist. The comedy is absurdist, not racist. 

[Rushy]

I suppose it would have been in better taste if Doug did a similar joke but used something other than racial stereotyping to deliver the gag. 

[Moonlight]

We as a society just had this years long debate over the ethics of using satirical blackface in comedies and I think you can safely refer to those discussions on why we think Taiwan Tony is questionable. Doing something racist to make a point about racism is still doing something racist and maybe an old white guy with a sitcom isn’t the person to be attempting that sort of commentary.

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, you can argue that Doug had non-racist (or even anti-racist) intent, and I agree, but that only refutes the suggestion that Fathers & Suns is racist if everyone agrees with the “intent is everything” maxim. You can absolutely be racist by accident.

I think maybe there’s an instinct to be extra defensive about Taiwan Tony if he personally didn’t bother you that much, because people tend not to want to openly approve of racism. But these things don’t need to be that black and white (forgive the phrasing).

But honestly we’re doing a disservice to Kerry Shale’s work by focusing so much on Taiwan Tony. Medi-Bot is almost as bad and he managed that without racism, which is impressive.

[International Debris]

Guys, we’re arguing with someone who thinks LGBT people are fair game for jokes because they’re annoying, but Christian dogma should be left alone. Logic isn’t going to work.

[Rushy]

Everyone who is annoying is fair game for jokes (other than the poorly and disabled obviously). That’s why I specifically said that the issues that have arisen from Christianity are very much welcome to be mocked. 

But it’s one thing to mock annoying aspects about something and another to mock the well-meaning core of the thing. I’m not going to mock LGBT people for just trying to exist and do their thing, that’s sociopathic. 

[International Debris]

I’m genuinely baffled. Have you actually watched the episode? 

[Technopeasant]

I do think the real issue with Taiwan Tony is indeed the aimlessness of it. They never circle it around to actually mean or comment on anything, other than prompting Lister to think about stasis, which has nothing to do with racism whatsoever. A thought occurs that it might have actually been interesting if the racial stereotype vending machine actually did find Chinese whispers to be racist, and found its Asian “roots” to be important (and indeed, if it had been played by an Asian actor), but I could easily see that coming off as belittling accusations of racism itself.

[Rushy]

I’m genuinely baffled. Have you actually watched the episode? 

Yes, but now I’m confused what there is to be baffled about?

[International Debris]

The fact that the episode doesn’t mock the well-meaning core of the Christian faith. It mocks some of the hypocrisies in its teachings, but at no point does it actually turn Christianity into a joke. I don’t understand where you got this idea from. 

[Rushy]

At no point does the script bother to balance out the shock and horror of Jesus’ discoveries about Christianity’s future with any revelations about its positives. You’d think someone as empathetic as Lister might have a few words to say other than “you make a lot of people happy”. Or if he’s not familiar, then Kryten.

We also have Jesus pedantically taking the piss out of the Ten Commandments to spite Christianity, as if they’re not a perfectly reasonable set of guidelines (don’t lie, don’t kill etc) worth following independently of religion. Was he only being a decent person because he’s religious? That could be something worth commenting on, but Doug never bothers. 

It just comes off as Doug going on a rant irl, and its only response – from the supposed believer – is “God did not have time to proofread”? Which is just another jab really. That’s not Doug mocking deranged followers, the Crusades, or anything like that, but the most basic foundational text. If that’s not turning it into a joke, I really don’t know what is.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

> We also have Jesus pedantically taking the piss out of the Ten Commandments to spite Christianity, as if they’re not a perfectly reasonable set of guidelines (don’t lie, don’t kill etc) worth following independently of religion


Ok at this point you’re either not serious and actually the troll many people believe you might be, or you’ve never actually read the full list of commandments.  Even in the episode Jesus is calling out the ones that aren’t “don’t kill” – but lets look at the full list.
So important to all beings (apparently independent of religion) is a “you shall have no other gods before me”. We inferior beings must only follow and worship this one god, and not let those other pesky religions tempt us to follow their gods.  That’s tyrannical and not at all helpful in distilling any sort of common law or morality.
Second up is that we’re apparently not allowed to make anything that resembles god or the heavens or anything of the sort and bow down to those instead of God.  Which extends this sycophantic tyrannical behaviour.  Also, maybe every single church around the world should be a little worried about the depictions of Jesus they have on the cross as it could be every single follower of the faith is going to hell for this. Such a loving guy is this god.
More sycophancy and not a whiff of any moral teaching yet. Don’t use God’s name to swear. Which suggests swearing itself is actually fine (which it rightly is in a free world), just as long it’s in no way a religious swear.
At least keeping the sabbath holy is trying to introduce some sort of weekend and rest period of people. So four commandments in and we get our first one that actually benefits anyone. But even then, it’s designed entirely around worshiping the guy telling us to do it. No actual R&R to be found.
I take issue with being told to honour anyone, whether they’re parents or not, just on the say so of a list of rules. Earn honour and respect please.
Finally, past the halfway mark and we make it to the first commandment that is still and actual law to this day. Do not murder.
Seven is a morality push, and one I can understand people respecting, but in a free world people should be free to associate and sleep with whoever they choose so long as it’s consenting. Samsara shows us the perils of trying to enforce this one. And I don’t think there’s anyone coming away from that episode saying “well if they’d just kept it in their pants and followed the 7th commandment none of that would have happened”
Eight is again a law that continues to exist today, do not steal, and nine at least intends to ensure people don’t commit forgery and lie to each other.
Then number ten just tells us not to be jealous of each other, which is fine and all but is it worthy of being in the 10 most important rules a civilisation to live by? Well perhaps given the proceeding 9 where only 2 or 3 are actually in anyway needed then yeah it is.
Maybe Lister should have gone on a President Bartlet style rant about the bible (https://youtu.be/3CPjWd4MUXs?si=MLH8T6dz01eaQ6u3) rather than calling out a couple of the commandments instead? Or perhaps that would have been far to heavy for a light entertainment show, and instead pointing out some of the hypocrisy whilst keeping the well meaning spirit of religion untouched was a better course for Red Dwarf to take.

[Dave]

Also, he’s not Jesus 

[Flap Jack]

Lister just made a mistake. He didn’t have any reason to expect that (someone who he thought was) Jesus Christ himself would be so fragile. Lister clearly does believe in the positives of Christianity, because:

We also have Jesus pedantically taking the piss out of the Ten Commandments to spite Christianity, as if they’re not a perfectly reasonable set of guidelines (don’t lie, don’t kill etc) worth following independently of religion.

Except that’s just straight up false, isn’t it? 4 out of the 10 are about worship. Worship Me and Only Me, Don’t Worship Idols, Don’t Blaspheme, Dedicate This Particular Day of the Week to Worship. You think people should follow those commandments independently of religion?

And pretty much those are the ones Jesus is being pedantic about. He doesn’t say there’s anything wrong with “thou shalt not kill” or even “thou shalt not covet”, he just suggests that God ought to follow them Himself not just tell everyone else to follow them. Controversial!!!

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Also, he’s not Jesus 

[Flap Jack]

Lol, I should have known I’d be beaten to the punch.

[Warbodog]

There still should have been a bit like in Tikka to Ride where Rimmer confirms that JFK “was a fine man” in a reverential tone in case any Americans got upset. (Although JFK was actually real).

[Rushy]

That’s fair, perhaps I was being a bit too general. 

Still, the rules that aren’t specifically centered on God worship are fair. And the ones that are centered on God worship make sense in that context and aren’t inherently harmful in any way. 

I still feel they could’ve found a better balance, maybe a few lines from Kryten mentioning Christianity’s part in the development of laws/literature/music/medicine. 

Ah well

[Warbodog]

It’s a bit basic, but I always liked this David Baddiel bit on the Ten Commandments.

[Dave]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

That’s fair, perhaps I was being a bit too general. 
Still, the rules that aren’t specifically centered on God worship are fair. And the ones that are centered on God worship make sense in that context and aren’t inherently harmful in any way. 
I still feel they could’ve found a better balance, maybe a few lines from Kryten mentioning Christianity’s part in the development of laws/literature/music/medicine. 
Ah well

If only more people focused on the Nazi’s contribution to medical science and aerospace. Ah well. 

I’m being deliberately flippant because a lot of that stuff was arrived at through not very well meaning means

Red Dwarf is a comedy show. It doesn’t have to provide balance. And yet it still does go out of its way to make sure the digs it is giving aren’t completely offensive and still leave Christianity and religion with a little positivity behind them.

[Dave]

Just wait until the Seventh-Day Advent Hoppists get wind of The Last Day.

[Rushy]

I’m sorry for hoping for a little bit of nuance and emotional awareness from comedy writers who have shown themselves extremely capable of it in the past. 

[Dave]

I’m sorry for hoping for a little bit of nuance and emotional awareness from comedy writers who have shown themselves extremely capable of it in the past. 

I think if you look beyond Lemons you can definitely see a more nuanced discussion of religion in various Red Dwarf episodes, sometimes as asides but sometimes as a specific focus as in episodes like Waiting For God or The Promised Land.

I think Lemons, though, was set up more as a silly mistaken-identity farce that’s more akin to the lightest parts of Life Of Brian, rather than a meaty discussion of religion. It’s just a question of tone and focus.

[Rushy]

 I think if you look beyond Lemons you can definitely see a more nuanced discussion of religion in various Red Dwarf episodes, sometimes as asides but sometimes as a specific focus as in episodes like Waiting For God or The Promised Land.
I think Lemons, though, was set up more as a silly mistaken-identity farce that’s more akin to the lightest parts of Life Of Brian, rather than a meaty discussion of religion. It’s just a question of tone and focus.

That’s true. I definitely liked the Promised Land the most as far as Red Dwarf’s religious episodes go. I appreciated that there were foolish aspects shown, but it wasn’t really cynical about it. Cynicism can be fun to indulge in, but it can also poison people to ignore the earnestness in life. 

[International Debris]

>I’m sorry for hoping for a little bit of nuance and emotional awareness
from comedy writers who have shown themselves extremely capable of it in
the past. 

Which is kind the point people were making about Timewave and a ship with men being a bit camp and feminine and wearing daft clothes being unforgivably awful. Lister doesn’t look at Ziggy or the flautist and says “you know what, they’re not actually hurting anyone, they might be happier expressing themselves in a less conventional manner.” There’s no nuance or emotional awareness there at all. 

The difference is LGBTQ+ people are a marginalised group who face physical and emotional abuse on a daily basis, while the Christian church is a inordinately powerful organisation whose teachings directly define and regulate the laws and morals of most Western, and many non-Western, countries. 

Ultimately, one of those can take a bit of a kicking a lot more than the other, which is why I find the broad stance of “queer people should learn to take a joke, oh no poor Christians having the hypocricies of their faith mocked” in poor taste.

[Dave]

Which is kind the point people were making about Timewave and a ship with men being a bit camp and feminine and wearing daft clothes being unforgivably awful. Lister doesn’t look at Ziggy or the flautist and says “you know what, they’re not actually hurting anyone, they might be happier expressing themselves in a less conventional manner.” There’s no nuance or emotional awareness there at all. 

And in the same series where he’s happy to show that kind of empathy with Hitler.

[Rushy]

 Lister doesn’t look at Ziggy or the flautist and says “you know what, they’re not actually hurting anyone, they might be happier expressing themselves in a less conventional manner.” 

The problem there is that the episode does directly portray them hurting people. The collision course is set to get everyone killed. So in that sense, Lister’s reaction is the correct one and the episode invites us to laugh at Ziggy’s crew without feeling bad about it.

But if they had offered a different take to where the ship’s maintenance is juuust about scraping by (they’re not going to die, but Kryten is concerned enough to where the posse board to investigate), then they could have done a more hopeful and genuine message that I would personally prefer as well. How you don’t have to run things with 100% efficiency, how being true to yourself matters more than work work work. While also maybe learning to be more considerate of people who don’t fully understand you. Maybe even have Rimmer learn to tolerate Lister’s quirks a little bit more by the end of the episode, to really tie it together.

[International Debris]

The problem there is that the episode does directly portray them hurting people.

Not through the way they express themselves, though. The episode has the Incompetence style storyline of people doing jobs they aren’t skilled at, which can be life-endangering, and also expressing themselves in queer-adjacent manners which harms nobody (and gets enough criticism from mainstream culture as it is), and makes no attempt at differentiating between the two. It’s the conflating of ‘these people are clearly idiots’ and ‘this man is quite feminine and camp’ that is at the root of why people take issue with the tone and message.

[Flap Jack]

The problem there is that the episode does directly portray them hurting people. The collision course is set to get everyone killed. So in that sense, Lister’s reaction is the correct one and the episode invites us to laugh at Ziggy’s crew without feeling bad about it.

This makes it sound like you wouldn’t have objected to Lemons’ commentary on Christianity if they had directly shown Christians hurting people on religious grounds, instead of just mentioning that it historically did happen. I’m… not sure I can believe that.

The problem is that you acknowledge the hand of the author for Lemons, but not for Timewave. The Enconium crew didn’t just already exist for Doug to make moral deductions about (like Christianity actually does). Doug himself was the one to construct this causal link between free, queer-coded expression and societal suicide.

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The problem is that you acknowledge the hand of the author for Lemons, but not for Timewave. The Enconium crew didn’t just already exist for Doug to make moral deductions about (like Christianity actually does). Doug himself was the one to construct this causal link between free, queer-coded expression and societal suicide.

But that’s not really true. Twitter is full of unemployed self-righteous people who hide their misery and insecurities behind an infantilised camp veneer. That’s why I assumed the Enconium to be a parody of the site. I took the episode at face value and thought “oh, it’s Twitter”. I didn’t really think much deeper than that. But if that’s not what Doug intended, then I’ve genuinely no idea what he was going for. 

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