Refresh For The Memory: Series XII Byte 2

[Ian Symes]

You asked for it. Alongside the current 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 MECHOCRACY, M-CORP and SKIPPER. 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
Series X Byte 1
Series X Byte 2
Series XI Byte 1
Series XI Byte 2
Series XII Byte 1

Topic

[Unrumble]

Excuse the font, this is BS (Before Smegadrive) 

[Jonathan Capps]

Fucking brilliant, Future Producer. 

[Dave]

One point to consider on the acting front (particularly when it comes to the perceived weaknesses of Chris and Robert’s performances) is that Doug’s direction might be playing a significant role here too. Given how relatively cartoonish the rest of the show has become in the Dave era, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine him actively pushing for these broader, more pantomime performances as part of his vision for the series.

It may be a combination of things, but the acting approach might not be solely down to the actors here.

[Stilianides]

Meltdown comes to mind, the only relations to it in Doug Dwarf I can think of at all are:
– They roll dice in Samsara, just like in Rimmer’s Risk campaign. 

Well, I would say that the similarity there goes a little further than, “They roll dice.”

Each episode starts with them playing a board game which has obvious links to the main plot of the episode. Not that I’m particularly criticizing this as many sitcoms introduce an idea in the first scene which is paid off later, but the board game thing is a little more specifically similar than most.  

[Frank Smeghammer]

I’m wrong on the Cured Waxdroids it seems, my bad. I’ve just watched it again and it isn’t mentioned but I was sure Telford referred to them as waxdroids and I just wrote it off as a twee callback which is so regular in this era of Dwarf.

My mistake

[Flap Jack]

M-Corp – Legitimately great. The idea of a corporation monetizing people’s basic access to their senses is a brilliant concept that is fresh territory for the show (though by a weird coincidence Doctor Who had “Oxygen” in the same year with a similar core idea), and can naturally be taken as commentary on the still-pervasive issue of video game microtransactions and such, but it’s not too specific about it, so I don’t feel like it’s going to age poorly. Craig Charles really shines here with all of Lister’s reactions to his sudden isolation from his surroundings, and Helen George and Ian Boldsworth are great too (and Oliver Maltman as Chippy is… fine). George as Aniter does well to tread the line between sounding like an automated system and being directly sinister. The episode does give in to using nostalgia at the end there, but it was just one short scene so I’m happy to forgive it. If Skipper weren’t a thing and this was episode 6, I think we would all appreciate that scene as a good bookend to the show, similar to the “the slime’s coming home” moment from The Beginning.

– It was slightly confusing for Kryten to say “MC”, presumably referring to the Medi Comp, but then immediately start talking about a “monitoring chip”. Even in the best Doug episodes, acronym syndrome strikes.

– Cat recalling how he unplugged something important to the ship to plug in grooming equipment is disappointingly just a not-as-good retread of DNA (because he’s only talking about it, not actually doing it), but I do like how Red Dwarf still exists in this alternate technology future where you would plausibly need to plug in a dedicated device just to receive software updates. I’m imagining it has like a USB port, and Kryten loads in flash drives they get in the post or find on derelicts. (Although they did download an SOS virus last episode, so it maybe it’s not quite as analogue as that).

– Speaking of the SOS virus, it maybe feels a bit repetitive for them to fall victim to malicious software 2 episodes in a row, but that was only the set up for Mechocracy, so it’s not too big of a deal.

– The way the M-Corp supplies pop into thin air the way they do makes M-Corp seem like outright magic, but considering Lister teleports to the M-Corp station later, it’s fair to assume that they were just teleported onto Red Dwarf, and that in the future they perfect “teleporting without visual effects” technology. (Instinctively I think that their teleporters would only be one way, and Lister was able to get to them because they, uh, teleported a teleporter to him.)

– The idea that M-Corp’s perception filter (oh hey, Doctor Who again) is simply hiding everything that isn’t owned by M-Corp but M-Corp has equivalent products for doesn’t quite add up to me. It explains Kryten and Rimmer, but what about The Cat? Cat is a person. So my interpretation is that M-Corp simply considers “ability to see and hear other people” a privilege that is not available without extra payment. That does raise the question of why they wouldn’t offer to sell Lister the upgrade later, but that question is there regardless, and it could be that they know they can squeeze more payments out of him overall if they deny him the one thing he wants the most.

– The perception filter seems like something that would need a hardware upgrade, not just a software one. But that’s not too hard to explain. If they’re in teleport range of the M-Corp station, then let’s say they’re in perception filter range too, so it’s not Red Dwarf that’s actually doing it. Of course, in the end Lister’s brain was the thing that was doing it, but the perception filter must have come from somewhere else to begin with.

– Nadir of an otherwise superb episode is the crap “women say loads more words per day than men” joke. It’s not true, it’s not funny and it’s a bad stereotype. And there isn’t even any reason why Aniter would need or want to tell Lister this.

– I wonder, how “real” do we all feel that the things happening to Lister on the M-Corp station are? For my money, some of the objects he has are real, but things like the fire and his aging are 100% just the perception filter, and being actually on the station itself where the filter is being projected (as per my other theory) allows the trickery to become way more extreme, and it’s powerful enough there to affect Cat, Kryten and Rimmer too. This explains why he goes back to being younger after the system shuts down.

– The defeat of M-Corp is admittedly incredibly quick and easy, but I don’t mind it. In a way it makes sense that M-Corp has been so starved of custom for so long, that it has allowed itself to open up to these obvious exploits just for the chance of getting another sale. The desperation may have even been caused by Lister only being able to spend in “life” rather than cash (which, as per my theory, wasn’t actually benefitting them, they were just making him think he was losing his life so he would definitely buy from them when he did get more money).

– For ages the idea of the perception filter being permanently in Lister’s brain independent of M-Corp has baffled me, but on this rewatch and thinking about it afterwards, I think I’ve just about put it together. Initially the perception filter was just being broadcast from the M-Corp station, and if they’d thought to just fly Red Dwarf out of range, it would have stopped working. But after Lister went to M-Corp, they had direct access to his body, and were able to upload his brain, modify it to have the perception filter permanently, and then download it back into his body (we know this is possible in the Red Dwarf universe, because the Dwarfers do it themselves in Thanks for the Memory, and obviously they do it again at the end of the episode). By tempting Lister into that teleporter, they’ve secured themselves a lifelong customer (not accounting for Kryten’s virus purchase), because even if he leaves and flies Red Dwarf out of range of their powers, he’ll need to come back to them for fixes.

– They joke about the perception filter not affecting The Cat, and sidestep actually explaining it (I’m not counting “he’s too stupid” as an explanation), but again I think this can be reasoned. Lister is a proper member of the crew and The Cat isn’t, so either The Cat doesn’t have a version of his brain stored in Red Dwarf like Lister does (because who knows how they handled the temporary copies of brains in Bodyswap), or the perception filter needed to recognise him as an employee in addition to having his brain scan to work properly. There’s a good chance that there’s some T&Cs in the M-Corp software update that say they have the right to apply the perception filter to employees of the ship, but not to anyone else, and that M-Corp abides by this.

– An alternative, simpler theory to the above – the perception filter just can’t quite work out The Cat’s brain because he isn’t human.

– The real quandary regarding who the perception filter does and doesn’t affect – why doesn’t it affect Rimmer? Rimmer should be easier to mess up really, as he’s literally a computer program already, and he’s directly networked with Red Dwarf. My theory on this is that because his light bee was upgraded by Legion, it had additional security that M-Corp wasn’t able to crack. It permits the basic backing up and restoring they do, but not the kind of brain-altering hijinks that Lister managed in TFTM.

– Lister’s last brain backup being from when he was 23 doesn’t make any sense for multiple reasons. Firstly, considering that Rimmer remembers his own death, these backups ought to be pretty automatic (or at least very frequent – maybe Series 1 Rimmer got the “making up the rest from CCTV footage” treatment?). Secondly, Lister was 25 in Future Echoes and said he’d only been with the company for 8 months in Waiting for God, so he shouldn’t have even been around to make a brain backup when he was 23. I guess maybe M-Corp messed with the data in a lot of ways? I also echo Warbodog in preferring to think that they did find a more recent backup eventually, because I know that Doug wasn’t thinking “OK, from now on, Lister only remembers stuff he did while on Red Dwarf or Starbug, while in range of a working camera” when he wrote this. I mean, come on, Lister remembered playing pool with planets, and that didn’t even happen! Don’t let that memory and so many others be lost, like tears in the rain.

[Loathsome American]

There’s an element to Rimmer that’s become increasingly contrarian and bitterly cynical. Like how he’s gone from considering Shakespeare the Greatest Writer Ever to totally dismissive of his work.
I like the dynamic more when it’s Lister who’s ignorant of or uninterested in history, politics or culture, and Rimmer is left to defend them. Like now, I can’t imagine Rimmer defending JFK as a liberal icon, and would just make some sneering joke about him shagging Marilyn Monroe instead.

I can headcanon this. (Or…head-characterization it?) Early Lister was fairly ignorant about history and culture (also iguanas), so Rimmer showing him up about this sort of thing was a way of asserting dominance (in that sad Rimmer way). Now that Lister has matured over the years and become more worldly and generally seems to know more, Rimmer has to take a contrary view to remain in opposition to Lister. It’s like putting someone down for not knowing about a cool band…and then when the band becomes really popular you go, “Ahh, I never liked them anyway.”

Alternatively, Rimmer never really thought Shakespeare or classical music was so great but used to pretend to, so as to project an air of refinement to his peers. As the years have gone on, maybe Rimmer has become less and less concerned about putting on this pretense. 

[Warbodog]

The amount of headcanon, interpretation and forgiveness required to make sense of M-Corp shows that we don’t just excuse the old episodes when a newer one’s good enough.

[Flap Jack]

OK, I just finished rewatching Skipper, and I want to make one thing clear straight away:

Parkinson’s name badge absolutely does say “Parkinson”.

And to think Formica thought they could get away with such a scurrilous lie!

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

An outrageous, scandalous piece of libel.

[Moonlight]

Taking them out of that context would be like randomly bringing back Duane Dibbley or something.

OK, we get it, you hated Dibbleyworld. As if it wasn’t an outstanding special way in excess of The Promised Land.

[Ridley]

OK, I just finished rewatching Skipper, and I want to make one thing clear straight away:
Parkinson’s name badge absolutely does say “Parkinson”.

A man who dimension skids and a woman called Parkinson? We should have known it was a callback to the supper to the movers and the shakers gag that everyone loves and has no problems with whatsoever.

[Moonlight]

The movers and the shakers gag feels like Doug wrote that down beneath “SOMETHING LIKE THIS – THINK OF REAL GAG LATER”.

[Dave]

A man who dimension skids

SKIDDER

[Unrumble]

[Warbodog]

[Warbodog]

[cwickham]

[Dave]

[Warbodog]

[Warbodog]

[Dave]

[Unrumble]

[Dave]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Dave]

[Ridley]

[Warbodog]

[Warbodog]

Do you think that user’s enjoying these?

[Warbodog]

A bit racist, but I saw the vending machines.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Ridley]

Dave ja poo

[Unrumble]

[Unrumble]

[Flap Jack]

Skipper – The last regular episode of Red Dwarf (so far… oh who am I kidding) and thankfully it’s another great one to round off the best Byte of the solo Naylor era. It’s not exactly a cohesive story with its 2 distinct halves and its second half being more like a series of loosely connected skits, but it’s all so fun that it doesn’t bother me. Does a lot of this fun come from craven fanservice? Yes. Do I care? No. Both the universe skipping and the opposite-day halves are excellent, the “Mr. Rat” sequence is the obvious highlight despite probably being the least nostalgia dependent parallel universe, and overall it’s a very good episode to end these 2 series on. The only major drawback is that it’s lacking in pathos and depth when it comes to Rimmer (and everyone else too, but Rimmer is the one whose story it is). If it were possible to get an episode with the best qualities of both The Beginning and Skipper, you’d have the best possible final episode of Red Dwarf I think (assuming actually resolving the plot of the whole show is off the table).

– The Captain’s appraisals are an obvious repeat, but I guess it’s been 11 more series and 4 hiatuses, and they needed to remind the audience about Hollister in a way that wouldn’t overly hint at his appearance. So I’ll forgive them finding that he made multiple sets of appraisals/reports and stored them in completely different places.

– Hey, who knew that Red Dwarf had an automated emergency announcement system?! Makes you wonder why none of the previous emergencies have been serious enough to trigger it. At least in the Dave era anyway, assuming that Holly would have done the job before that.

– Rimmer and Kryten both have worryingly specific knowledge about Michael Jackson’s exact weirdness levels over the course of his life.

– The space-time lesion is a major problem, but it could have been way worse. It could have worked off the decisions they were actually making in their heads, rather than just the ones they declare out loud and/or start to act out. Then not only would they not be able to resolve the problem, but Lister and Cat would quickly die, because every time they decided to eat or drink they’d end up not doing it.

– Kryten’s resentment about being considered a “bog bot” by his former crew was a bit unexpected. Was that about the Augustus? Because his role surely wasn’t limited to just cleaning toilets on the Nova 5, was it?

– Quite egotistical for Rimmer’s dreams about parallel universes to focus on other people making different decisions, re the women who said no to him. Unless he meant that he would have made decisions that lead him to being the kind of person they would have said yes to?

– Oh, they just happened upon a quantum research station last month, and they had a dimension skipping device? Pretty convenient, only a minor disappointment that them finding this kind of tech isn’t worth being part of the story. A part of me is surprised that, given the ‘quantum’ connection, they didn’t say this was also from the Trojan.

– The lesion in space-time had the potential to kill them all, and it’s totally Kryten’s fault, yet he doesn’t act guilty or apologetic at all. But was it his experience with the MILFs that made him this arrogant, or his new role as Machine President?

– Lister’s reason for not leaving the universe is pretty weak. He says he has responsibilities as the last human, but like what? He doesn’t mention Earth and getting back there in a way that could be planned for is not going to happen in his lifetime, and he isn’t going to create a new human race all by himself (and even Katerina’s bizarre logic said that he should take the opportunity to find other humans if that was his goal). It feels like such a major decision that is just breezed over. Lister and Kryten decide to stay easily and Rimmer decides to leave easily… and Cat doesn’t get an option I guess. It’s a big reason why this episode’s strong point is not its drama. (Although as a minor note I do like how both this and Twentica show that Lister and Kryten are bros to the end.)

– More fuel for the “They found Kochanski in between Series X and XI and found a way to get her back to her universe” theory in this episode: (1) Lister yet again states matter of factly that he’s the last human, and even adds “in this universe”. (2) Lister doesn’t bring up the quest for Kochanski as a reason for staying in this universe, which he definitely would have done in Series X. (3) They happily let Rimmer take the quantum skipper with him, when surely if Kochanski were still out there it would be better to hold onto it, so if they find her they can take her home.

– Feels a bit slapdash how they have this whole conversation about alternate universes and the possibility of one or more of them leaving before Kryten fixes the lesion in space-time that was making their decisions have opposite outcomes. Shouldn’t it have jumped to Lister leaving after he decided to stay? Kryten putting off fixing the lesion after he decided to fix it?

– Alternate pre-accident Holly is still a bit senile, with the whole “I failed the tests” thing. Draw your own conclusions about whether that means that must have been true for Holly Prime as well.

– “Nobody’s dead, Arnold”. Aww, so George McIntyre got to survive a little longer in this timeline. I’m made up for him. (Rimmer is a hologram here too, but I’m just going to interpret this as the skipper being inconsistent in how well it merges him with the native Rimmer, and that this universe’s Rimmer is meant to be alive, and that only Rimmer and the audience can see his H.)

– Holly repeats his “I wish I’d never brought this up now” as the new version of “I should’ve never let him out in the first place”, but he didn’t bring it up. Rimmer brought it up.

– The radiation leak happens A LOT slower here than how it was described in Universe Prime, even if we take Rimmer’s death video as being totally legit, but especially in comparison to how it was described in IWCD.

– Interesting how there are no headline changes in Universe 1, it’s just the past. We can infer things like “George is alive”, “Hollister is a coward” and “radiation moves slower”, but those are ambiguous. Nothing here couldn’t happen if this were just time travel.

– So logistically, this is a Quantum Leap situation, and Rimmer is outright un-personing his counterparts while he’s in their universes. I assume that Kryten didn’t know that would happen (second screw up of the episode!), because that seems incredibly unethical, especially as his plan was to settle down.

– Rimmer seems to give up on finding a new universe relatively quickly, given there must be countless ones where he didn’t even join Red Dwarf. Then again, if the skips are wholly luck based, he was probably worried that he would never chance back to Universe Prime a second time.

– At first I thought that Mr. Rat was actually called “The Rat”, and “Mr. Rat” was just Kryten’s thing of referring to everyone formally (as he’s the only one who refers to him). But then I remembered that Cat not having a proper name is a quirk of him being a cat, and being the only one. Mr. Rat is one of thousands, so now I’m pretty confident that Rat is literally his surname.

– Sure, the skipper’s recharge time seems inconsistent, but we’ve already seen a universe where radiation moves slower, so why not ones where time or energy works differently? (Also, it might just be edited that way and Rimmer is spending longer in those universes.)

– The final alternate universe is brilliant, both in terms of the production of it, and the core idea of the divergent point. It’s a huge shame that Rimmer’s rejection of it is so shallow, and that he directly explains his feelings too – because there was potential for a more layered story, where he initially stays because everything is on-paper great, but finds himself not connecting with his new family and friends and missing his original crewmates too much not to leave. But even so, seeing them in the original bunkroom again and seeing the view of Earth out of the window made me feel quite emotional.

– Impressive that alternate Red Dwarf managed to find a planet rich in helium 7, when they were only operating within the solar system. Must have been hiding in plain sight.

– Shout out to the special features on the Blu ray release of this series, which felt like a step up with the number of featurettes included, despite the lack of commentaries and such. The conversation between Ed Moore and John Pomphrey was a highlight.

[Rudolph]

[Warbodog]

More fuel for the “They found Kochanski in between Series X and XI and found a way to get her back to her universe” theory

Or Series XI did a Series IV on Series X and the Kochanski continuity is just different now. Maybe a result of the time meddling in Twentica or whenever.

this universe’s Rimmer is meant to be alive, and that only Rimmer and the audience can see his H

He makes a point of not being a hologram later in the no-H, near-perfect universe, so that’d just be overly complicated.

The radiation leak happens A LOT slower here than how it was described in Universe Prime

I found it surprisingly chilling (for a ‘lightweight’ episode), hearing that the port side had already been wiped out and it was coming for them.

seeing the view of Earth out of the window made me feel quite emotional.

They could never have pulled off a homecoming episode, but that image is very nice to have.

[Formica]

This line landed incredibly well for me sumply because I’m coming off a watch of all the Star Trek movies, in which they certainly do spend 10 straight films just sort of all falling about on the bridge.

[Flap Jack]

Or Series XI did a Series IV on Series X and the Kochanski continuity is just different now. Maybe a result of the time meddling in Twentica or whenever.

That feels like it would be way too much. Retconning the one detail of Lister and Kochanski’s relationship in DNA doesn’t really change the plot of any past episodes, just the emotional context for a few of them. A change like this would be ambiguously saying maybe major events of 3 different series didn’t happen.

He makes a point of not being a hologram later in the no-H, near-perfect universe, so that’d just be overly complicated.

I agree for sure, but that complication is there whichever way you take it.

As well as it being implied by”Nobody’s dead” and Rimmer touching things, it’s kind of important for the storytelling that Rimmer is alive here, because otherwise there’d be no peril with the radiation leak being upon him, and no consequence if the skipper didn’t recharge in time.

Plus you’d think Hollister would object to Rimmer asking to get into the escape pod, on grounds of him already being dead.

I’ve never watched Quantum Leap, but from what I’ve heard it’s also ambiguous and inconsistent in that show whether the leaper just takes over the brain of the leapee, or replaces their body. Or like kind of replaces their body and kind of doesn’t? So this uncertainty is fitting, really.

Probably if Doug hadn’t wanted to make a thing of Rimmer realising he wasn’t a hologram in the last universe, he would have just been unambiguously alive in the first universe.

[Warbodog]

I’ve never watched Quantum Leap, but from what I’ve heard it’s also ambiguous and inconsistent in that show whether the leaper just takes over the brain of the leapee, or replaces their body. Or like kind of replaces their body and kind of doesn’t?

From what I remember, they leaped into Sam’s body in the ‘future’ (I think it was set in a ridiculously near future, like less than 10 years on) and Al would sometimes remark on their confusion or something they’d said, but very much an afterthought to the whole concept.

Early Quantum Leap was some pretty nice, wholesome, all-American cheese. I think it got increasingly sci-fiey smeg later on, but can’t remember those so much. Hilariously long intro sequence too.

[Flap Jack]

My QL knowledge does 99% come from Allison Pregler videos, but from those I did learn that there was an episode where Sam leapt into a pregnant woman and still experienced the symptoms of the pregnancy, and also an episode where he leapt into an amputee but was still able to use the “missing” limb, which obviously contradict each other.

Obviously Quantum Leap has the excuse of those being different episodes at least, unlike here, but still I think maybe Doug was being true to the vague way that leaping works in that show.

[Dave]

I loved Quantum Leap! And as regards the precise mechanics of leaping, the TV show and books of Quantum Leap treat it slightly differently.

In both versions, the mind of the displaced Leapee transfers into the future, and is kept in the Waiting Room while Sam is replacing them, with the same amount of time passing in parallel for both of them.

In the TV show, Sam’s body also invisibly leaps into the Leapee (even though outwardly he looks the same) and he can do anything that he could in his own body – so, to use the example of one episode, if the person he leaps into doesn’t have legs he can still stand up and walk around – he’d just appear like a body floating in the air.

However, in the books it’s slightly different and only Sam’s mind leaps into the body of the Leapee, with the Leapee’s mind inhabiting his body in the future. So he’s more restricted by the physicality of the Leapee.

If we wanted to square the apparent inconsistency of Skipper’s first universe having a hologram Rimmer who can also touch things, we could say that either he’s a hardlight hologram, or our Rimmer has the same powers as Sam does in TV Quantum Leap – ie. his (small) physical presence replaces that of the person he leaps into, and he can do everything that he could in his usual hardlight body in his own dimension.

Either that or it’s a similar approach to the TV Quantum Leap device of showing us Sam even though everyone around him sees him as the Leapee – so maybe the H is just for the audience’s benefit and the Leapee Rimmer is actually alive and not a hologram. But then that would be contradicted by the final universe where we see Rimmer without his H.

I may have watched too much Quantum Leap as a child.

[Dave]

My QL knowledge does 99% come from Allison Pregler videos, but from those I did learn that there was an episode where Sam leapt into a pregnant woman and still experienced the symptoms of the pregnancy, and also an episode where he leapt into an amputee but was still able to use the “missing” limb, which obviously contradict each other.

The pregnancy one was all a bit of a fudge and (from memory) I think there was some confusion about the Leapee leaping into Sam’s place in the future but the unborn baby staying in his body in the past, with him somehow being able keep the baby alive but likely not actually being able to give birth to it. (The episode ends just as he’s about to actually give birth.)

[Warbodog]

(The episode ends just as he’s about to actually give birth.)

So he didn’t find out if it was a girl oh boy?

[Dave]

V. good.

[Unrumble]

The pregnancy one was all a bit of a fudge and (from memory) I think there was some confusion about the Leapee leaping into Sam’s place in the future but the unborn baby staying in his body in the past, with him somehow being able keep the baby alive but likely not actually being able to give birth to it. (The episode ends just as he’s about to actually give birth.)

Big QL fan, have not long finished a re-watch. Nice summarising in your posts, the show was a bit nebulous about the mechanics in the early episodes, but settled fairly quickly on “he is physically swapping places with people, but everyone sees him as the person he’s replaced due to an ‘aura'”. Another one to add to your examples are where he leaps into a blind concert pianist, and has to try and act like he can’t see anything.

‘Fudge’ quite accurately describes the pregnancy episode. On one hand, despite the fact his body physically leaps, this could be seen as an early-ish example of the ‘psycho-synergising’ with the leapee that occurs more frequently towards the end of the series run (see ‘Lee Harvey Oswald’ from Season 5 for the most intense version of this), where characteristics of the person he’s replaced bleed through or straight-up ‘take over’ Sam.

On the other hand, as the episode progresses towards the climax with Sam going into labour, Al (having rubbished all Sam’s claims that he could be feeling any effects of being pregnant) reports with shock that the baby has disappeared from the leapee’s womb in the future. The doctor states that the baby is crowning, just as Sam leaps out. It’s one of those where they’re carrying you along on the highly-charged emotion of the situation, and not worrying too much about whether it makes ‘sense’. So yeah, fairly fudgy.

Just to muddy the waters, the reboot/sequel series currently showing on NBC, despite making plenty of references and outright continuations/through-lines from the original, has made it explicitly clear that the protagonist is inhabiting the bodies of people during his leaps, and is therefore bound by the physical limitations of whoever he is that week. They’ve not made it clear what happens to the mind of the ‘host’, whether it’s somewhere else, on hold, or somehow co-existing alongside his. Also, despite not stating it out loud, all the dialogue suggests that in the present day Ben is completely ‘gone’, so if it is just his mind leaping, it’s not clear where his body is…

[Flap Jack]

If we wanted to square the apparent inconsistency of Skipper’s first universe having a hologram Rimmer who can also touch things, we could say that either he’s a hardlight hologram, or our Rimmer has the same powers as Sam does in TV Quantum Leap – ie. his (small) physical presence replaces that of the person he leaps into, and he can do everything that he could in his usual hardlight body in his own dimension.
Either that or it’s a similar approach to the TV Quantum Leap device of showing us Sam even though everyone around him sees him as the Leapee – so maybe the H is just for the audience’s benefit and the Leapee Rimmer is actually alive and not a hologram. But then that would be contradicted by the final universe where we see Rimmer without his H.

If we did go with the latter explanation, which is the one I prefer, then we only need to assume that the skipper is getting better as it goes along. First trip it tries to skip a hologram into a living person, ends up with the skipper still seeing their H, but by the last time, it’s got it nailed.

Interesting to hear so much info about the episode’s inspiration, either way!

[Dave]

Just to muddy the waters, the reboot/sequel series currently showing on NBC, despite making plenty of references and outright continuations/through-lines from the original, has made it explicitly clear that the protagonist is inhabiting the bodies of people during his leaps, and is therefore bound by the physical limitations of whoever he is that week. They’ve not made it clear what happens to the mind of the ‘host’, whether it’s somewhere else, on hold, or somehow co-existing alongside his. Also, despite not stating it out loud, all the dialogue suggests that in the present day Ben is completely ‘gone’, so if it is just his mind leaping, it’s not clear where his body is…

Ah, interesting. I haven’t seen any of the reboot yet, although I’m interested – it just hasn’t found a home yet in the UK.

Another QL question that I always found interesting is whether/how the Leapee remembers the events of the leap. My memory is a bit vague on this but I think it’s implied or stated that they forget having been in the Waiting Room and eventually remember the events of the leap as though they lived it, which would make for some odd “what was I thinking?” situations.

[Unrumble]

Another QL question that I always found interesting is whether/how the Leapee remembers the events of the leap. My memory is a bit vague on this but I think it’s implied or stated that they forget having been in the Waiting Room and eventually remember the events of the leap as though they lived it, which would make for some odd “what was I thinking?” situations.

This is one of the things that’s addressed in the reboot, via a main character who was leapt into by Sam earlier in their life (as in an character actually from a mythology-significant televised episode). They describe their experience of being ‘leapt into’ in a very interesting, moving way, and how they discovered the truth about dying in their ‘original’ history through access to files at Project QL.

My interpretation was similar to yours, that they didn’t remember the Waiting Room, but had somewhat muddled, hazy recollections of events Sam experienced in their place, and so assumed they’d had some kind of ‘episode’ for a few days that accounted for the holes in their memory.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Quantum Leap is a great show. Incidentally, the person who introduced me to Quantum Leap was also a huge Red Dwarf fan, a freelance transcriber from Maine with a soft spot for Jamie from Doctor Who. Ay, she was a timorous beastie.

 – Rimmer and Kryten both have worryingly specific knowledge about Michael Jackson’s exact weirdness levels over the course of his life.

– The space-time lesion is a major problem, but it could have been way worse. It could have worked off the decisions they were actually making in their heads, rather than just the ones they declare out loud and/or start to act out. Then not only would they not be able to resolve the problem, but Lister and Cat would quickly die, because every time they decided to eat or drink they’d end up not doing it.

Wouldn’t make for a very enjoyable episode though, would it?

He doesn’t mention Earth and getting back there in a way that could be planned for is not going to happen in his lifetime

To be fair, he’s already passed up multiple opportunities to take a shortcut back to Earth. I get the impression he almost doesn’t actually want to know what happened to Earth and the human race because he already knows the answer.

(3) They happily let Rimmer take the quantum skipper with him, when surely if Kochanski were still out there it would be better to hold onto it, so if they find her they can take her home.

Assuming Lister doesn’t revert to some weird immature pseudo-Series VII characterisation and try to sabotage it so she’s stuck with them again.

– Alternate pre-accident Holly is still a bit senile, with the whole “I failed the tests” thing.

Is he? It’s an easy enough mistake to make, not flipping the page. Even Arnold’s been caught out by that.

 – The radiation leak happens A LOT slower here than how it was described in Universe Prime

I’m still assuming this is a case of Back in the Red logic where the action will conveniently slow itself down to make time for dialogue.

– Interesting how there are no headline changes in Universe 1, it’s just the past. We can infer things like “George is alive”, “Hollister is a coward” and “radiation moves slower”, but those are ambiguous. Nothing here couldn’t happen if this were just time travel.

Aside from George being alive at the time of the radiation leak.

– Impressive that alternate Red Dwarf managed to find a planet rich in helium 7, when they were only operating within the solar system. Must have been hiding in plain sight. 

They never said it was Red Dwarf that found it; it could just as easily have been another JMC ship operating interstellar.

[Author]

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