Unanswered Questions

[Dave]

Who took the picture of young-Rimmer’s dorm room that he uses to go back in time, in Timeslides? And how is adult-Rmmer in possession of it in the future?

The more I think about this the more it bothers me.

Topic

[Jonathan Capps]

It looks like our web hosts decided to put the server clocks back an hour early. All your replies were waiting for the real 1am to show up.
Should be good now.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Oh yeah there it is. Thanks for the info Cappsy.

[Jenuall]

I’m sure this has been gone over a load of times before (what hasn’t by this time lets face it!) but I’ll bring it up again any way: what is sustaining hologram Rimmer when he goes back in time in Stasis Leak?

Is it the past Red Dwarf or the future/current Red Dwarf? If it’s the past one then what happens to any other hologram that might have been around at the time? (Based on Macintyre’s “for those of you who’ve never travelled with a hologram before” I’m guessing there wasn’t one active?) Does past Holly become aware that he’s now powering a hologram that wasn’t there before? If so, surely he should have told someone about that!

In fact, seeing as we know Holly has the ability to detect/locate people on ship shouldn’t he have flagged up that there were multiple Listers around?!

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

The non-human life form Holly has detected on The End is in fact The Cat from the future. 

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

There’s a comic in Cat seeking out Frankenstein isn’t there? Like, he knows the story and by now must believe the history of the evolution of his species to be true. Nothing about his telling of the story suggests he doesn’t believe it to be true in the first place.

I don’t know what the motivation would be but there has to be some story in him finding Frankenstein and have a little Cat to cat convo. Maybe even inspire Frankenstein to go and hide somewhere safe before the radiation leak. 

[Dave]

I don’t know what the motivation would be but there has to be some story in him finding Frankenstein and have a little Cat to cat convo. Maybe even inspire Frankenstein to go and hide somewhere safe before the radiation leak. 

[Warbodog]

what is sustaining hologram Rimmer when he goes back in time in Stasis Leak?

Maybe the Holly Watch was a mobile power source in the pre-bee days, and was still connected to the future ship wirelessly through the magic door. Explicitly not used in Thanks for the Memory because Holly says he wanted to stretch his cables.

Based on Macintyre’s “for those of you who’ve never travelled with a hologram before” I’m guessing there wasn’t one active?

Holograms seem (initially) like they’d be a rarely-used temporary measure for critical personnel before a replacement can be found, since they’re no use physically and a large power drain. More a technology for the deceased’s estate to finance long-term than their employer, unless it’s something like Groovy Channel 27 seeking alternative cred.

[Jenuall]

Maybe the Holly Watch was a mobile power source in the pre-bee days, and was still connected to the future ship wirelessly through the magic door. Explicitly not used in Thanks for the Memory because Holly says he wanted to stretch his cables.

I think given the whole idea of Holly being remote projected into a watch through a stasis leak magic door is ridiculous in the first place that to extend it to also powering our Rimmer is probably the most reasonable “in universe” explanation. Red Dwarf has always been good at making us suspend our disbelief long enough to go along with the ride!

Holograms seem (initially) like they’d be a rarely-used temporary measure for critical personnel before a replacement can be found, since they’re no use physically and a large power drain. More a technology for the deceased’s estate to finance long-term than their employer, unless it’s something like Groovy Channel 27 seeking alternative cred.

Yeah this was generally my read on it as well, only used in circumstances where it absolutely has to be. Presumably the ship could cope with losing a lot of people without needing to bring them back but a “Flight Co-ordinator” seems pretty essential for their ongoing mission (although, given Holly seems to be able to run the ship pretty much solo for 3 million+ years you do question why they needed anyone really!)

But that means it would be even more reasonable to expect that past Holly would be interested to detect that a random hologram has suddenly appeared!

[Flap Jack]

It must have been the future Red Dwarf that was powering both Rimmer and Holly, for all the reasons mentioned. Ragging on Stasis Leak is one of my favourite pastimes, but to be fair to it, the premise that Rimmer needs to be on or near to Red Dwarf to remain powered up is essentially abandoned after Series 1. By Stasis Leak you’d already had Kryten and Thanks for the Memory do the same thing, albeit without the time travel, and then later on you get much more egregious examples like Backwards, Meltdown, Demons & Angels and Rimmerworld. Timeslides is superficially similar to the situation in Stasis Leak, now that I think about it.

On the Holly front, I just it find it funny that by bringing Holly with them on a watch, they raised these questions about how Holly works (as he’s even able to come with them to the Ganymede Holiday Inn, whereas Rimmer doesn’t), yet he doesn’t give them any help or advice while they’re time travelling at all. Literally useless.

That’s a good point about Holly detecting non-human life forms as well. I guess that either travelling through the stasis leak makes it harder for past-Holly to detect you somehow, or Cat is similar enough to a human that he hadn’t learnt how to distinguish them yet.

[Moonlight]

I just it find it funny that by bringing Holly with them on a watch, they raised these questions about how Holly works (as he’s even able to come with them to the Ganymede Holiday Inn, whereas Rimmer doesn’t),

Rimmer has no motivation to go to the hotel because he’s trying to finagle his own bullshit scheme, so I’m not sure if the power problem comes into it. I’m sure if they wanted him to go they’d have excused it somehow.

[Flap Jack]

Right. I wasn’t saying that Rimmer doesn’t go to the hotel for technical reasons, I was just noting that the particular question of being powered up despite being away from both Red Dwarfs never comes into it for Rimmer, but it does for Holly.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Right. I wasn’t saying that Rimmer doesn’t go to the hotel for technical reasons, I was just noting that the particular question of being powered up despite being away from both Red Dwarfs never comes into it for Rimmer, but it does for Holly.

Holly is just powered by a 1.5v watch battery. 

[International Debris]

They’re not noticed in Stasis Leak because Holly is off-ship on shore leave, obviously.

[tombow]

I browsed through some old posts last night and people were discussing the timeline of Rimmer being scolded for the drive plate. So somehow it must have been seen, and believed to be dealt with (as people weren’t running around and panicking while Hollister yelled at Rimmer), but then the leak happened? Not sure of the science behind it. I was thinking maybe he left a second (un-noticed) plate wrongly repaired too?

[Unrumble]

Maybe they knew it was too far gone, and they were all dead anyway, so Hollister decided he might as well go out venting at Rimmer. Rimmer for his part remaining professional even in the face of impending doom. And Holly’s warning was just automatic.

[Flap Jack]

I think I said this when we were discussing it before, but my assumption is that they noticed the drive plate was in a “this could incur a critical failure at any moment” state (or they just realised it was mis-repaired in general, but didn’t realise how serious it was), and they sent someone to fix it while Hollister gave Rimmer his bollocking, but they just didn’t fix it quickly enough and got unlucky. So I don’t think Hollister willingly chose to spend his last moments shouting at Rimmer.

[International Debris]

Yeah, I’ve always assumed Hollister would have sent a more competent repair team at the same time he sent for Rimmer. Or one of the First Technicians would have arranged another repair and informed Hollister, who then sent for Rimmer. It was just too little, too late. 

[tombow]

what do all the people actually do on the Dwarf? How many people does mining take? Does the 100s/1000s people change mean the size of the operation changes (like a much bigger mining operation)? Do the actual mining staff just hang around studying during the journey, with only the navigators and technicians who keep the ship running actually needing to do anything? Why are there officers? (not really sure how mining works, but are they military?) On a ship with 1000s of staff, could Rimmer request to be stationed on the other end for a fresh start (after embaressing incidents like the soup gaffe)? 

[Jenuall]

There were less than 200 people on the ship in the gazpacho soup timeline so it would have been harder to avoid the fallout from that. My assumption was always that the ship itself is huge but the primary inhabited parts of it represent a relatively small space – most people are together in the same areas of the ship most of the time – I just don’t think it would make sense to have everyone spread out too far logistically. Super long xpress lifts journeys would have been an exception rather than a common occurrence I think.

I think for the most part it’s a relatively skeleton operation – just enough people to do what they need to for the mission, officers would have been the key people in charge of managing/operating the ship – navigation, security etc. and the vast majority of others would have been there for maintenance, the actual mining activities (which primarily would have been machine driven?) and the usual stuff you need to keep stuff ticking over – doctors etc.

[International Debris]

There’s a lot of weird stuff about it. The exams taking place during operations – if the people taking the exams (as seen in The End, there were a few) all pass, do they get new jobs? Are there that many openings for navigation officers on the ship? And if so, who takes their jobs? Or are they expected to carry on working as technicians and similar until their next posting, despite having passed the exams? Do exams even guarantee a job? 

There’s definitely a suggestion that the ship is basically more like a community, but that doesn’t work if everybody has a vital duty and people are getting promoted and it’s all self contained. What happens if a couple of the most important crew members end up in stasis or on floor 13 for being naughty? Does the ship just stop functioning? What if someone resigns? 

169 seems reasonable for mining, repairs and hospitality. 1,169 (or indeed 11,169) suggests there’s more going on. I suppose that ties in with the science experiments on Z deck.

[Flap Jack]

The promotion aspect aside, I don’t think it’s all that complicated. Like any (not entirely shit) company, they just hire more people than they’d strictly need if everything was 100% efficient, to account for things like sickness, resignations, sackings etc. (Although in the case of resignations I assume that employees are bound by a contract to stay working there for a certain amount of time.) And they dock on various planets and moons frequently enough to drop people off and pick up new recruits, as they did with novel-Lister, Petersen etc. on Mimas.

[Moonlight]

Yeah, I’ve always assumed Hollister would have sent a more competent repair team at the same time he sent for Rimmer. Or one of the First Technicians would have arranged another repair and informed Hollister, who then sent for Rimmer. It was just too little, too late. 

I like the answer I came up with in the short story thread that Rimmer is given the job due to a clerical error, doesn’t speak up because he sees it as an opportunity to prove himself, then when initiating a repair has a panic attack realizing he has no idea how to fix it and goes into quasi-I am a fish mode, choosing to believe he fixed the problem and marking it as complete without having done anything.

[tombow]

I was thinking that because the actual mining staff isn’t needed until they reach whatever moon, they cultivate a culture of studying so RD is basically a big college in space. Should someone get qualified they’d still do the job they had to, they’d just have the status and everyone would know they were just cleaning soup machines because it needs to be done. Plus, the navigators are over-qualified and under-worked for a journey they can do in their sleep, so there’s a David Brent like atmosphere of pissing around, which is how Rimmer managed to get the drive plate job. 

Or maybe Dwarf also had a big role in transporting people, like getting JMC staff to stops on the way, so there are people on board with no connection to the actual job of RD itself who are just kind of on a work/study cruise.

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, I guess that if Rimmer had passed his exam, he wouldn’t immediately start doing the job of an officer, but he would be automatically promoted as soon as a position opened up (as long as he was the most recent to qualify but not be promoted yet), and would be free to request a transfer to another ship that had an open position already if he chose.

And in the meantime he would be treated the same as other officers, and could substitute for them when they’re on leave or off sick.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

On the subject of exams, just because som was be is qualified doesn’t mean they’ll immediately get a job. They’d still need to apply to a role and be accepted. But being qualified would be one of the criteria. 

Doing them on the ship makes sense. They could have an onboard training or apprenticeship program. So maybe next stop that contingent swaps out for a new batch of recruits etc 

Rimmer could well be one of the few that’s a full time crew member also trying to take the exams. 

[loadoftottnumb]

In ‘Duct Soup’ when Kryten shrinks Mz Kochanski’s outfit he asks who on earth is going to tell her. He’d only been there once and that was backwards, also they had no idea who was on earth or if there still was one, so why on earth did he ask that? 

[Warbodog]

Why does Spare Head 2 say “my heavens,” when Silicon Heaven is singular?

[loadoftottnumb]

Cos he is Spare Head 2, everything is twice. 

[Formica]

How did the jigsaw puzzle’s image start moving at the end of Thanks for the Memory? Why are moving jigsaws never mentioned again in the show?

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

How did the jigsaw puzzle’s image start moving at the end of Thanks for the Memory? Why are moving jigsaws never mentioned again in the show?

The jigsaw mutated.

[Moonlight]

Three million years ago it was a jigsaw.

[Formica]

Why did the guards try so hard to cover up their erections during the basketball game? Were they embarrassed about how small they were?

[RainbowGazelle]

Why was Series 8 all about erections, degrading women, and a billion sex jokes, instead of, you know, space?

[Flap Jack]

Hey, now that’s unfair. It was also about dinosaur shit.

[Frank Smeghammer]

Why was Series 8 all about erections, degrading women, and a billion sex jokes, instead of, you know, space?

[RainbowGazelle]

Hey, now that’s unfair. It was also about dinosaur shit.

[Moonlight]

As a woman, I can confirm that we say “fuck” a lot and go on extended rants about giant marine reptiles.

[Warbodog]

[Nick R]

Why was Series 8 all about erections, degrading women, and a billion sex jokes, instead of, you know, space?

Hey, now that’s unfair. It was also about dinosaur shit.

[Moonlight]

Somebody email Rob. We need ichthyosaurs in Titan.

[Dave]

When Lister recovers David Ross-Kryten’s remains after the space bike crash and rebuilds him as Robert Llewellyn-Kryten, why doesn’t he try to help Kryten achieve his dream of finding a planet where he can create his garden again?

Does he just think “fuck it, you had your chance” and decide to make him a servant droid again? Or does the new Kryten not want a garden any more?

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

He’d just pour soapy water into the garden?

[loadoftottnumb]

Bit of both I think, after crashing Krytes was too scared to go again, and the bike was totalled anyway. He also felt tremendous guilt about the bike, so they all decided it would be best for him to stay as part of the crew. They come across planets with vegetation on occasion, he can plant some stuff.  

[Unrumble]

I always thought most differences between the Ross/Lewellyn versions were accounted for in the Backwards opening text: “Lister rebuilds the ‘noid, but he fails to recapture his former personality.”

Don’t think the shorthand ‘noid’ was ever used in actual dialogue on screen.

[Dave]

Don’t think the shorthand ‘noid’ was ever used in actual dialogue on screen.

Only once, I believe, in Psirens.

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

[Jenuall]

Don’t think the shorthand ‘noid’ was ever used in actual dialogue on screen.
Only once, I believe, in Psirens.

This was actually how I misinterpreted the line as a kid, spent a short period thinking that a “noid” must be some particularly shitty brand/variety of mech before realising what he was obviously actually saying.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I knew what he said, but I just preferred to hear it as that because it sounds more fun.

[Boy Was I Suckered… Into Using my Kidneys as a Full Stop]

Bet that Mister Burns is angry that Kryten got to be a cube before him ;)

[Author]

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