Unintended recurring themes in episodes/series

[Warbodog]

Have you ever noticed a Red Dwarf episode being preoccupied with something, seemingly obliviously and random, that’s not the actual focus of the story? Here are some I catalogued before immediately losing interest in thinking about this after series 4.

Fish

Series 1

Theme: Goldfish shoals nibbling at my toes
The End: I am a fish
Future Echoes: Robot goldfish / Little fishy song
Balance of Power: Trout a la créme / Fished to death
Confidence and Paranoia: Fish rain

Series 2-4

Better Than Life: Gone to the same place as me goldfish / Cat orders an aquarium and sings / Half woman, half fish mermaid
Polymorph: Silly old trout / Fish puns
Timeslides: Junior Angler / Luigi’s Fish ‘n’ Chip Emporium
Dimension Jump: Fishing holiday / Smoke me a kipper / Kippers

Chicken

Series 1

The End: Chicken soup machine (basis for most recurring chicken references in Red Dwarf) / No, it’s a chicken
Balance of Power: 140,000 rehydratable chickens
Waiting for God: Chicken vindaloo (recurring variant) / Quagaar Warrior
Confidence and Paranoia: Chicken Marengo

Series 2

Kryten: I think I’ll try the chicken / cleaned the gunk out of the chicken soup machine / Chicken __Nugget
Better Than Life: I’d prefer chicken

Stasis Leak (big time): You should apologise for the chicken / Half man, half chicken / Who’s eating this chicken?

Also prominent in DNA: Turned into a chicken / Boiled chicken ovulations / Changing a mutton vindaloo into a chicken vindaloo

Bodyswap: Sexual organs

– “Why have I got male sexual organs?” / in orbit around the nearest planet
– “It’s the sound you get when you get your sexual organs trapped in something.” / Mimes
– Rimmer shocked by Lister’s schlong
– “You’ve given me breasts.”

Dimension Jump: Salt

– “I’ll be down in the mess with the salt-of-the-earth engineering boys as per usual.”
– Salt, an Epicure’s Delight / Extracts x2
– “Series 4000 mechanoid, am I right? Salt of the Space Corps.”

Back to work.

Topic

[Warbodog]

Great analysis! But you forgot ‘Bodyswap’ for Lister/Rimmer, so you’ll never live that down.

[bloodteller]

I think Back To Earth is the only one of the Lister episodes that really deals with Lister the way that the Rimmer episodes deal with Rimmer, though. Getting deep into the psychological aspects of the character, their loneliness, insecurities etc.

Confidence and Paranoia does technically also explore the psychological aspect of Lister, but the way the two of them act makes it hard to believe they’re a part of Lister in any way. They just feel kind of generic and not really characters tied specifically to Lister’s mind. And of course you get the stories about Lister’s childhood in Marooned and Duct Soup, but they’re not really the focus of the episodes and don’t really say much about Lister’s state of mind in the present. I think Lister’s character is explored best in the novels, really. You really get an understanding of how he feels there, and it’s done excellently imo

[International Debris]

Lister is a much more grounded character so there’s definitely less to explore – most of the exploration of Rimmer comes from his neuroses in one way or another. There’s definitely a bit of meat to Fathers and Suns though.

[Warbodog]

Red Dwarf as horror movie according to someone/s on TV Tropes. Occasionally stretching and with omissions (no Back to Reality), but good that the novels are covered.

[International Debris]

The wording of this made me laugh a lot

There’s a good reason he’s considered the most evil character in the entire franchise, which is saying something considering that Adolf Hitler is a semi-recurring character.

[bloodteller]

VIII and Days Of The Week

Back In The Red
-“I was hoping for a manicure and a leg wax tomorrow, how about Thursday?”
-“See you on Friday. Incidentally, it’s black tie.”

Cassandra
-“Give me a chance, it’s only Monday!”

Krytie TV
-“It replaced the Wednesday night movie.”
-“I have a date with Miss Patricia Carling from Supplies on Saturday night”

Pete
-“I did, we’re meeting for drinks on Thursday!”

[Warbodog]

It might say more about you, bloodteller, that you interpreted Rimmer’s “insert it in you” as being about Lister’s arse.

Because it follows VI’s similar “fridge-free diet” bit, I always assumed the guitar was going in the mouth.

Pop guitar in mouth. Not up the arse.

Maybe this is another of those Bodyswap / Only the Good cock dilemmas?

[bloodteller]

>Because it follows VI’s similar “fridge-free diet” bit, I always assumed the guitar was going in the mouth.

I thought that bit was about the arse as well…

[bloodteller]

How the fuck did Rimmer wrench a fridge out of the wall and lift it up anyway?

[Warbodog]

https://www.strawpoll.me/17123380/

[Warbodog]

Survey

[Ben Saunders]

I always thought he was talking about shoving them up Lister’s arse, as well. But I never cared for the VIII joke, it felt like retreading old ground.

[clem]

Either or both of those lines might well have been inspired by Basil Fawlty threatening to “insert a large garden gnome in [O’Reilly]”. When he sets off to do so at the end of the episode, it’s pretty clear from the way he’s carrying it and the shape of the gnome’s hat where we’re meant to think he’s gonna shove it.

[Warbodog]

The “neck end” follow-up could go either way. Since it’s VIII, I can see it being more anal fixation, but the idea of Rimmer struggling to turn Lister around and pull down his pants while wrestling for control of the guitar and then referring to this incident later without shame makes it harder to swallow.

[Moonlight]

According to the recently updated VIII section of the Complete Guide on TOS

I’m going to take credit for that, because I made a thread on TOS pointing out the VIII section was still living in 2007.

[bloodteller]

>The “neck end” follow-up could go either way. Since it’s VIII, I can see it being more anal fixation, but the idea of Rimmer struggling to turn Lister around and pull down his pants while wrestling for control of the guitar and then referring to this incident later without shame makes it harder to swallow.

To be fair, there are a lot of off-screen incidents in Red Dwarf it’s hard to imagine the characters actually doing. Although yeah, it is particularly hard to imagine Rimmer trying to shove a guitar up Lister’s arse. Maybe he tried to do it while he was asleep?

[Ben Saunders]

I’m in the boat of thinking he wasn’t talking literally with either “insert it in me” line, but this is an interesting discussion nonetheless

[Warbodog]

Most people think it’s the arse, it seems.

Hopefully we find at least one new thing to discuss about Red Dwarf in 2019 too.

[Warbodog]

Do we ever see Rimmer in a proper explosive rage outside of series 1? That’s the early Rimmer I can imagine lunging at Lister.

“Alphabetti spaghetti” doesn’t have the same force, though it looks like he’s still trying to hold some of it in. The “nooo!” when the mind patch fails in Holoship is pretty weak.

[By Jove its holmes]

For those who loved Round The Twist earlier in this thread, here’s Tamsin West (the first Linda) singing the theme song at age thirty on a TV show. I lusted after her in puberty and I lust after thirty year old Tamsin.

[GlenTokyo]

What about “WILL YOU SHUT UP!” from VIII. Pretty angry there, but not a shove a guitar up your arse angry in my opinion, close though, maybe a ukulele.

[Ben Saunders]

No toast

[Author]

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