What would you expect of Red Dwarf XIII?

[flanl3]

With reassurance that Red Dwarf XIII will happen at every turn despite no actual confirmation that there will be a Red Dwarf XIII, it seems like approximately the appropriate time to start this thread.

If we do actually get a Red Dwarf XIII, what would you want out of it? Would you want it to have a bit of an arc to it or would you want it to be entirely separate episodes? Would you want it to remain six half-hours? Would you want it to keep to the (mostly) traditional format or try something different for a change?

Most importantly, in what way should an explosion be forced into the series to enable them to put one in the title sequence?

Topic

[Jawscvmcdia]

>you can’t tell me that he can never wear red or green again.

HE WILL NEVER WEAR RED OR GREEN AGAIN. There, I just told you.

[International Debris]

The blue is what highlights that Rimmer is a hard light Hologram.

Out of Time would suggest otherwise.

[Ben Saunders]

That yellow was so fucking ugly I hope we never see it again

Also Rimmer has worn other clothes in 9-12 already like in Officer Rimmer and Skipper for example, and they weren’t blue. Also Howard Rimmer’s clothes weren’t blue. They don’t need to be blue.

[Dax101]

The audience associations blue with hard light.

Probably hasn’t helped that they have highlighted it by acknowledging he was wearing red in gunmen because his hard light drive wasn’t on and in entangled his outfit turned red when he switched to soft light mode and then back to blue for hard light.

stirs the pot abit to change that now.

[Dax101]

Its like how they have the seating for Starbug and Blue Midget where the crew seem to alway sit in the associated series 6 positions where Cats always front left, Lister is always front right, with Rimmer back-right and Kryten back-left

Now thats not how Series 3 to 5 was because they never had seating positions but now they seem to be associated with those sitting position and people have come to expect that now every time now.

I know Kryten was sitting in the Driving seat in Krisis but thats not exactly a sign they have suddenly decided to switch things up abit.

[Ben Saunders]

The line in Gunmen was Grant Naylor overthinking it tbh, I’m not quite sure how they managed to give him the wrong costume though. The bit in Entangled was some nice fanwank. Yes that does sort of muddy the waters a bit, but there are so many things in Red Dwarf that have changed with little to no explanation and I feel like changing Rimmer’s colour isn’t going to confuse anybody at this stage of the game, especially since all holograms have been hard light for about 20 years. It doesn’t need to be red – it could be green or purple or yellow, none of those colours have the connotations of soft light attributed to them via Gunmen and Entangled.

Them having their own seats is just an indication that they’ve all got their roles within the team and it took ’til 5 to really iron that out, I would say. I don’t really want them to change the seating positions particularly and don’t see any reason why they would.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Those searing positions are true except in the Blue Midget scenes in The Beginning, which always bugged me.

[flanl3]

I think Rimmer would work in a black/dark uniform if Kryten’s costume got a little lighter and Lister returned to his t-shirt theme.

[bloodteller]

i don’t mind seeing Rimmer in blue but i wish they’d change him out of that tunic, i’m sick of seeing it.

[NoFro]

So let me get this right, soft light can be anything but hard light HAS to be blue… no not buying that. And when we’re saying the audience associate blue with hard light – at least 95% of the audience probably don’t associate any particular look with Rimmer being hard light. People who go on Dwarf fan sites POSSIBLY do but more casual viewers probably don’t give what Rimmer’s wearing a second thought.

[Lily]

I doubt that the majority of the audience even remember the whole soft light / hard light thing. Even when he was soft there was a bunch of inappropriate touching of things anyway.

I preferred the earlier series when it comes to clothing. Both Rimmer and Lister had a naturally varied wardrobe. Casual comfy stuff for chilling in the bunks, jackets etc for going out and about in. Rimmer’s captain emerald outift had different levels of formality, with the t-shirt underneath, smooth jacket or big padded jacket for going out.

More recent stuff it’s like they’re cosplay of their own characters. Like we wouldn’t recognise them if Rimmer wasn’t in a blue tunic or Lister in a leather jacket. ALL THE TIME. I mean, only weird creepy people wear the same thing every day. Looking at you Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.

[clem]

It does irk me a bit that Rimmer’s in his blue VII outfit rather than red or green in the locker room game flashback in Blue, but not really because he’s soft light. It looks wrong especially because Lister’s in his old III jacket.

[Ben Saunders]

>Even when he was soft there was a bunch of inappropriate touching of things anyway.
No comment.

But yes he fluffed his pillows a couple times in the first two series and stuff like sitting down and lying down just doesn’t really make sense. He also shuffles around boxes and walls in for example Polymorph when really he could walk right through them or even hide in them.

Wasn’t Lister in his III jacket for BtE or X? I thought I remembered Howard Burden mentioning that.

The biggest Rimmer-style-offence in BtE was his hair, to be fair.

[Dax101]

I preferred the earlier series when it comes to clothing. Both Rimmer and Lister had a naturally varied wardrobe. Casual comfy stuff for chilling in the bunks, jackets etc for going out and about in. Rimmer’s captain emerald outift had different levels of formality, with the t-shirt underneath, smooth jacket or big padded jacket for going out.

Well Rimmer was wearing a blue dressing gown in samara which is some what similar to the early shows like series 3 where he wore green PJs.

Rimmer also changed to his nostalgic admiral outfit in XI… its just moreofte consistent for Rimmer to have a consistent colour scheme.

[Dax101]

The biggest Rimmer-style-offence in BtE was his hair, to be fair.

I do think the current outfit is more flattering on Chris as it makes him look slimmer and younger then he did in BTE… although that could be maybe down to the hair

[Dave]

Why aren’t hardlight holograms just generated naked so that they can wear real clothes instead of holographic ones? Logically, hardlight Rimmer could wear anything he liked, even if it (gasp) wasn’t blue.

[flanl3]

Can Rimmer take off his tunic, or would it require its own separate light bee?

[bloodteller]

>More recent stuff it’s like they’re cosplay of their own characters. Like we wouldn’t recognise them if Rimmer wasn’t in a blue tunic or Lister in a leather jacket. ALL THE TIME. I mean, only weird creepy people wear the same thing every day. Looking at you Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.

even in VIII they had more costume variety than XI/XII and they were in purple boiler suits for half of that

[bloodteller]

lister’s jacket must smell really awful if he’s been wearing it every day for the past eight years

[Dave]

Can Rimmer take off his tunic, or would it require its own separate light bee?

Did Ace Rimmer’s wig require its own separate light bee?

[Lily]

Considering the light bee has clearly been upgraded at some point, to the level it could survive a 6 month trek across Roman Europe without a recharge … then yeah sure, it can project a separate piece of clothing.

[flanl3]

Is Ace Rimmer’s wig real then?

[flanl3]

Oh, or that

[bloodteller]

>It does irk me a bit that Rimmer’s in his blue VII outfit rather than red or green in the locker room game flashback in Blue, but not really because he’s soft light. It looks wrong especially because Lister’s in his old III jacket.

isn’t the continuity explanation for this that it’s just lister misremembering things? i always took that to be why there’s loads of continuity errors in the flashback sequences in Ouroboros (like how he’s coming back from shore leave on Mimas with the cat even though it’s stated in The End he got it on Titan, and why the crew are all in shit blue suits)

[Dax101]

Ace Rimmers wig was real untll series 7… then it was a wig.

[Ben Saunders]

I always thought Ace Rimmer’s wig was an actual wig he bought in a shop, not a holowig

[Jawscvmcdia]

>I always thought Ace Rimmer’s wig was an actual wig he bought in a shop, not a holowig

Yes, I can just imagine now Ace just nipping down to his local corner shop or supermarket (wonder if he shops at Tesco or Aldi?) and buying a wig so that he can give to his successor.

[si]

I think Rimmer would work in a black/dark uniform

And a goatee beard.

[Flap Jack]

It’s probably best we don’t bring up how Rimmer can be sustained for 6 months without a recharge, because if that’s true then there’s absolutely no reason not to revive other members of the crew as holograms too.

Seriously, I can understand them not doing that because Rimmer refuses to be switched off or because doing it would significantly impair Red Dwarf’s performance, but once it was established in Series VI that Rimmer could be maintained by Starbug alone – before he got his hardlight upgrade, even – those excuses went out the window.

I’m so surprised that Doug/Rob never put in a throwaway line about all of the other holo-disks being destroyed, that I’m wondering if they actually did and I’m just not remembering it.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Maybe they were destroyed when Confidence blew up taking his helmet off?

Though that wouldn’t tally with them interviewing crew members in Holoship

[Lily]

I always presumed the Holoship interviews were with ex-Holoship crew. The ones that had been turned off when someone better had come along?

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Oh I’d never thought of that …

But if that were the case, why wouldn’t they be wearing Holoship uniform? They are all wearing variants of Rimmer’s uniform.

[International Debris]

I preferred the earlier series when it comes to clothing. Both Rimmer and Lister had a naturally varied wardrobe. Casual comfy stuff for chilling in the bunks, jackets etc for going out and about in. Rimmer’s captain emerald outift had different levels of formality, with the t-shirt underneath, smooth jacket or big padded jacket for going out.

More recent stuff it’s like they’re cosplay of their own characters. Like we wouldn’t recognise them if Rimmer wasn’t in a blue tunic or Lister in a leather jacket. ALL THE TIME. I mean, only weird creepy people wear the same thing every day.

This. The Cat is the only character who behaves remotely normally when it comes to clothes these days.

Holoship

There’s no logic here at all. I can’t imagine they’d take on Holoship crew members, but if it was Red Dwarf crew then surely they’d go with Petersen, Selby, Chen, Kochanski, Hollister… one of them would have said yes, surely? Instead of trawling through people they never even met.

[Ben Saunders]

Do you think any attempt was made at getting familiar faces back for that scene? I think the jokes of that woman being repulsed by what the guys do and the guy being incredibly handsome wouldn’t work with previous cast members, and might have been the point of the scene from inception

[bloodteller]

>This. The Cat is the only character who behaves remotely normally when it comes to clothes these days.

what about kryten?

[Lily]

>But if that were the case, why wouldn’t they be wearing Holoship uniform? They are all wearing variants of Rimmer’s uniform.

Huh, yeah. Good point. I guess I only thought they were ex-holoship as they were ‘good’ crew. But I guess Dwarf must have had intelligent competent crew somewhere. We only saw Lister and his mates.

[Flap Jack]

If Holoship isn’t enough evidence that they still have the holo-disks, then there’s also Bodyswap.

The copy of Officer Brown’s mind they put into Lister’s body is surely from the same source as the holograms, and the fact they can put Rimmer’s mind inside Lister’s body too pretty much proves it.

Although… now a question about Bodyswap occurs to me: why do they make Lister’s mind inhabit a Rimmer hologram when they could just put him in a Lister hologram (similar to how Rimmer could become Kochanski in Balance of Power)? I think the ‘H’ and the outfit choice would be enough to tell them apart…

OK, forgetting that point, let’s say: some of the holo-disks were destroyed after Me-2, including all of the obvious people they would choose first to resurrect but leaving enough people to interview in Holoship, then the rest of the holo-disks were accidentally destroyed later, at some point between Only The Good… and Back to Earth (Or before Psirens, assuming that everyone in Series VIII was too stupid to make new backups while the crew were alive again).

[flanl3]

Chris Barrie as the voice of Rimmer, Craig Charles as Lister and body of Rimmer

[Ben Saunders]

>why do they make Lister’s mind inhabit a Rimmer hologram when they could just put him in a Lister hologram
That wouldn’t be as funny and you’d have to do a lot of complicated splitscreen work, and Chris Barrie would be pissed that he was being sidelined for an entire episode x

Holodisks being destroyed in Only The Good… would be an easy thing to pretend happened.

Is Lister’s mind (the backup they use to restore his memories after M-Corp) stored in the same place as Officer Brown’s was? Is that on holodisk, or just on a shipwide backup?

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Wait I got it.

Nanobots reconstructed the original ship and crew. Original ship doesn’t have the holodiscs yet. Job done.

[Moonlight]

The blue is what highlights that Rimmer is a hard light Hologram.

We are long, long, LONG past the point where that distinction matters. Rimmer’s been solid for six series now, nobody is going to get confused about his tangibility if he changes color.

[Jawscvmcdia]

Maybe Rimmer just really likes the colour blue?

[Moonlight]

I think Chris Barrie is around the right age for them to break out the yellow quilted jacket.

[Pete Part Three]

I think Chris Barrie is around the right age for them to bring back as a Hologram.

I’m sorry; I must have bypassed my Good Taste Chip.

[Moonlight]

G&T hasn’t had a Good Taste Chip since we swapped it out for Spare Head 2.

[Flap Jack]

Is Lister’s mind (the backup they use to restore his memories after M-Corp) stored in the same place as Officer Brown’s was? Is that on holodisk, or just on a shipwide backup?

I’d guess so. It seems like each crew member gets their own external hard drive, and sometimes those hard drives remain constantly connected to the central computer for quick access and blending of hologrammatic assets, and sometimes Rimmer unplugs them and hides them in a cupboard to be a prick.

It could be that the holo-data is not stored on the main computer at all and the holo-disks are the only copies, but it could also be that holo-data is stored on both the main computer and in disk-based backups, and Rimmer deleted some/all of the original hologram data in Confidence & Paranoia, because he is a prick.

[clem]

It doesn’t even make sense for them to still have their own voices when they’re in each other’s bodies in Bodyswap does it?

[Ben Saunders]

Interesting how Skipper implies that mind backups for hologrammatic projection are performed manually, since Lister’s last one was at 23. I always assumed Rimmer remembered everything right up until the moment of his (first) death, but I guess it’s slightly less horrifying not to remember something like that.

[flanl3]

It does make sense for them to mostly have their own voices, since an individual voice is some anatomy and a lot of how you use it.

[Ben Saunders]

Have they done body transplants irl yet? I’m interested to see how the voice changes. Obviously going from a male to female body would change your voice somewhat (right?) and man to man might have less of an effect.

[Author]

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