The Theory of Relativity

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

This may have occurred to other or been mentioned before, but a thought crossed my mind last night …

Ignoring for the moment it’s just an excuse for a shit joke to extend an already overextended story.

Why the hell doesn’t Kochanski, a navigation office, understand the theory of relativity. She’s a bloody bridge office who is involved in moving a bloody great big space ship around the solar system. Granted Red Dwarf isn’t meant to travel at speeds anywhere close to the speed of light … although it clearly has the capacity too. … but I’d have thought any sort of space office training / examination, even if just for a navigation officer aboard a mining ship, would require you to at least be vaguely aware of what relativity is.

Hell even Rimmer knows (originally anyway … in Future Echos, so might have been something he learnt post death to explain why he doesn’t know in series 8)

Kryten doesn’t have any excuse either has he knows bloody everything, unless he wiped that from his memory along with how to launder women’s underwear.

But yeah, Kochanski ought to know above anyone else.

This one minor detail literally makes series 8 unwatchable for me.

Topic

[bloodteller]

the AR machine taps into their subconscious mind and so they don’t know stuff they usually would, and they also know stuff they usually wouldn’t

this also explains how Cat is inexplicably able to figure out the puzzle that frees them from AR

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I can buy that as an explanation.

But if that is the case, using the AR escape as judgement of the crew is even more terrible if they are being manipulated on a subconscious level

[Dax101]

There would be no joke if the characters were not dumbed down for abit.

[International Debris]

That would probably be a good thing.

But yeah, it’s just a case of the severe dumbing down of the characters in VIII. Not remotely believable human beings.

Here’s one: how did the psychotropic drugs affect Kryten and, particularly, Holly?

[clem]

Kryten says the DNA machine can turn him into a human because his brain is part-organic. As for Holly, fuck knows.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Holly’s program can easily be loaded into the AR. He does it himself in Better Than Life. I’m sure it wouldn’t be impossible to do so without him noticing the switch. It’s not as though he is going to try and look around the universe and realise it’s no bigger than the room he is currently in.

[cwickham]

Isn’t Hollister unaware of the Dwarfers’ Holly, though?

[bloodteller]

i think that’s just a symptom of Back In The Red 3 being hurriedly written last- it’s established in Part 1 they don’t know about the holly watch and that “it might be an idea to keep it that way”- and indeed, in all the other episodes the revived crew seem to have no idea that lister owns a watch with a senile version of their computer inside it. yet in Part 3 hollister is actively watching senile Holly onscreen and (somehow) sends him to jail with the others. i think it’s literally just Doug forget Holly was meant to be a secret from the revived crew

[cwickham]

Wouldn’t that still be the case even in the originally-planned hour-long version, though?

[bloodteller]

i don’t think so, look at the Deleted Scenes on the VIII DVD- the original hour-long version ends shortly before they get in the elevator, and so there’s none of Holly also getting arrested (how do you arrest a computer?) and none of it being part of his plan to keep Dave sane by resurrecting the crew and such.

so in the hour-long version it would’ve worked that Holly was a secret from the revived crew- which he is, in all the other episodes of VIII except BITR 3. so i think it genuinely is just a case of doug forgetting that he was meant to be, but i couldn’t be sure.

[cwickham]

But the shot of Holly in the identity line-up was presumably something filmed for the hour-long version.

[Ben Saunders]

Maybe in the future science has evolved to a point past Einstein’s antiquated theories, which (forgive me if I’m wrong) don’t account for quantum theory, similar to the way in which we have (not entirely) moved on from Newtonian physics

[Piplup2003]

Maybe, about Holly, when the guards took the guys and Kochanski to AR, they found the watch on Rimmer/Listers (I can’t remember who had it at that time) wrist and subsequently found Senile Holly, and loaded him into AR aswell. That’s my theory.

[Warbodog]

I don’t think Holly’s supposed to be a secret while they’re in the Tank. It’s not like he has inside access to Red Dwarf’s systems to help them all out, just reading material like the National Enquirer.

[Moonlight]

the AR machine taps into their subconscious mind and so they don’t know stuff they usually would, and they also know stuff they usually wouldn’t

Please explain to me how this doesn’t totally compromise the intended function of the simulation.

[Ben Saunders]

It doesn’t, but the Captain and the committee are portrayed as antagonists to whom bending the rules/reality slightly just to get a guilty verdict and get the trial over with isn’t out of the question.

[Moonlight]

But that’s never depicted in the episode. The simulation is intended to monitor their behavior in a hypothetical escape from prison, and that function is totally compromised by anything that alters their behavior. If they aren’t behaving exactly as they would in reality, then this scenario is worthless, no? There’s also no possible reason for totally divorcing from reality like with the Blue Midget dance. Up to that point, the simulation was accounting for their escape through the luck virus which makes sense. Why not find a Blue Midget somebody left running? Or with the keys in? Another coincidence explainable by the luck virus that doesn’t betray the reality of the situation. Blue Midget dances should not be possible in a simulation whose explicit function is to mimic reality. It makes no sense.

You cannot justify it by arguing that anything can happen in AR. AR is not a dream, it’s a video game. Video games are designed. If you were playing Call of Duty and suddenly the controls locked out and everybody broke out in song and dance, you wouldn’t then think “Oh, well this makes perfect sense because it’s a video game and anything can happen in a video game.” Games have rules. The simulation has a specific purpose that is compromised multiple times by the various wacky reality-bending things things that happen. None of them are justified logically in the story.

Back in the Red makes no sense.

[Dave]

I don’t think we’ve spent enough time establishing that VIII is full of nonsensical plotting yet. I think we need a few more conversations about it to be sure.

[Moonlight]

I always see the Blue Midget dance given a pass because “anything can happen in AR”.

[Flap Jack]

Why does the AR suite simulate a flirtatious ground controller that grants take off clearance to people based on their ability to make a shuttle craft dance???

[Moonlight]

Because we need to spend all the money on SOMETHING.

[Ben Saunders]

To be honest I was just talking in general about the committee being okay with tampering with the evidence, and wasn’t looking to go into specifics, and definitely wasn’t prepared for another discussion of how stupid the Blue Midget dance is.

Also yes videogames are designed but things like the Holodeck and Better Than Life will have their own artificial intelligence and their own features generated thereby, so can break/alter established rules/conventions much more readily than a Call of Duty game developed in 2018.

[International Debris]

I never got the idea that they were in any way being coerced into making themselves look guilty. Hollister is completely ok with letting them off the original charges.

[Moonlight]

The only person tampering with the simulation was Rimmer.

[bloodteller]

>Why does the AR suite simulate a flirtatious ground controller that grants take off clearance to people based on their ability to make a shuttle craft dance???

one of the Red Dwarf computer guys was into tapdancing, but out of fear of ridicule from his fellow coworkers, programmed the AR machine’s blue midgets to be capable of dancing so he could get some practice in secret.

the flirtatous ground controller is because he is lonely

[Author]

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