When was George McIntyre turned off?

[International Debris]

So, going with pre-Meltdown canon, the early series have the ship’s hologram as being projected from the ship rather than a light bee, thus unaffected by any physical occurrences onboard. If this is so, when the crew were wiped out, McIntyre would surely have been left alive. Did Holly turn him off immediately, or was he left to watch his friends and co-workers be turned into radioactive dust, and then spend time on his own, mourning the death of everybody? Maybe he was alive for thousands of years to keep Holly company before going completely mad and being turned off.

I can’t be the first to wonder this, surely?

Topic

[Ridley]

Radiation messed with his disk or summat.

[peas_and_corn]

He’s still on somewhere in the bowels of the ship and is the real reason why Holly can’t sustain another hologram.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

I love the idea that George set up a nice life for himself in the mining decks and they were simply unaware of each other the whole time and with Holly being Holly, he simply forgot to tell them all.

[Paul Muller]

My theory is that he endured a torturous existence alone on the ship for the full 3 million year stretch, and was then abruptly switched off after Lister came out of stasis.

On a similar note I’ve always found it a bit odd how Rimmer just strolls into the drive room in his first appearance. Did he literally just materialise outside the door, or has he been around for a bit beforehand? His lack of surprise about the whole thing seems to indicate the latter.

[International Debris]

Doesn’t Holly talk about having nobody to talk to for three million years? Which suggests he can’t have been around for all that long.

Rimmer I imagine has had a debriefing and, in typical Rimmer style, makes it his priority task to immediately go and blame Lister.

[Ridley]

McIntrye is Birdman and is therefore not worth talking to for. Holly also doesn’t want to talk to Taiwan Tony, the skutters, the Medi-Bot, Denti-Bot, the garbage droids…

[Ian Symes]

I would imagine he was switched off automatically when the crew were wiped out. Some JMC bureaucracy adhered to by a pre-senility Holly – holograms are expensive to run, and as such are only used when vital to the mission. No mission, no hologram. When Lister is woken up, there’s a new mission – to ensure the welfare of a registered crew member – so a new hologram is allowed.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

Did Holly generate the mission to keep Lister sane and happy using his survival algorithms or was it plucked and adapted from the big book of JMC Emergencies (And How To Tie 50 Knots)?

All crew are dead bar one in stasis, cannot return to base due to massive radiation leak and there is strange power draw from the sealed decks and theft of the grooming supplies.

[peepingsignal]

>McIntrye is Birdman and is therefore not worth talking to for.

That makes me wonder. In VIII, from what specific point in time were the crew resurrected? Was it from the point of the accident or from sometime before? If it’s before, there’s a possibility that McIntyre is alive and is once again a threat to everyone’s marriages.

[si]

Well, Rimmer’s there, so presumably pre-accident.

[Ian Symes]

Yeah, but how far pre-accident? McIntyre died while he was a crew member, so did the nanobots reboot to a point *just* before the accident, or was it from way before McIntyre died and Lister got sent to stasis?

I’ve never thought about this at all – and presumably neither has Doug – but given that a rebuilt Lister doesn’t appear to be kicking about in Series VIII, maybe there is one, but he’s in stasis. In which case, McIntyre would be dead, but he could be there as the ship’s hologram still.

On the other hand, given that there’s also no Grogan-Kochanski knocking about, perhaps the nanobots just deliberately didn’t build a new Lister, as they were aware that there was no need for a new one, and they were possibly working under Holly’s instructions anyway. In which case, the presence or otherwise of a rebuilt Lister wouldn’t necessarily have any bearing on the status of McIntyre.

It’s a good one, this.

[Phil]

“perhaps the nanobots just deliberately didn’t build a new Lister”

I figured that was down to Lister never having died in the first place, so there were no “parts” from which to rebuild him.

That doesn’t explain the obvious Kochanski discrepancy, but I thought they were rebuilding from what they had.

And if that’s what they were doing, then that means no George, because his remains were blasted into space and not onboard Red Dwarf when the nanobots dismantled it.

It’s definitely a good question, but I don’t think it’s one that can have a definite answer. There are probably discrepancies no matter how you slice it.

[Ridley]

I thought it was clear that the nanobots didn’t duplicate Lister and Kochanski because they were already present.

We have been deprived of some cracking plastic surgery gags for Kochanski though.

*McIntyre’s corpse bounces off window* “That was George!”

[Ridley]

Presumably if Lister had been sent to stasis it would have come up when he was accused of smuggling stowaways etc.?

Post-Frankenstein being brought on board (since the rat was supposed to be her) but pre-stasis?

[Smeg4Brains]

> Post-Frankenstein being brought on board (since the rat was supposed to be her)

The rat was Frankenstein? Have I missed something?

[si]

Starbug was originally supposed to fly up Frankenstein’s arse. It encountered a rat’s instead

[Ridley]

Holiest of Holies.

[International Debris]

Yes, I’ve often wondered at what exact point the crew were revived. Did they notice notice any changes at the moment of resurrection. Anybody in the same room as Lister or Kochanski would notice they’d disappeared. Unless Lister was meant to be in stasis by that point (if so, why no “why aren’t you in stasis?” conversation?)

Guys I think I’ve found a slight flaw in the premise of series 8.

[Ian Symes]

Flaw?

[Jonsmad]

Captain Hollister was recreated from all remains of captain Hollister and also all the remains of George McIntyre put together.

[Jonsmad]

I always assumed, based on reading the books, that as Saunders (an engineer) was turned off to resurrect George (a flight co-ordinator) as “superior rank takes precedence”, [which is similar the TV show saying “anyone more vital to the mission “] that McIntyre would have been turned off sharpish after the accident and someone officer level, maybe even Hollister activated in order to issue any command codes or orders necessary to carry out anything like sealing parts of the ship, authorising the change of course for deep space or anything of that nature that Holly needs any human mind back up for in authority and/or communicating back to JMC any message regarding the accident.

Following that the captain may have been turned off and anyone else turned on at any point that required any skills a hologram could aid in supervising skutters or ships systems to repair or maintain themselves during the journey to deep space for the safe removal of a ship full of radiation away from living planets etc, but most of the time Holly ran without a hollgramme as the only crew was in Stasis and hollogrammes take 40 percent of Hollys run time.

He resurrected Rimmer shortly after the “everybodys dead dave” speech when he realised that Lister wasn’t getting what had happened and was in shock, picking as stated, the person who knew him best.

[Pete Tranter’s Sister]

There’s a good novella waiting to be written about the hours and days immediately after the accident and the moments before Lister was taken out of stasis.

[Jonsmad]

“so did the nanobots reboot to a point *just* before the accident, or was it from way before McIntyre died and Lister got sent to stasis?”

This resurrected Rimmer refers to Lister drunkenly taking a photograph of his snoozing todger and pinning it on a notice board as an event happening “Last Week” for him. Although that doesn’t pin anything down, it’s probably the case that Lister hasn’t been in stasis yet within Rimmers current memory timeline. If he had, he could only have been there for a maximum of about a week, and that would be a memorable event in recent memory for Rimmer more likely that he would mention it now Lister was in trouble again for a different crime not cat smuggling related.

It presumably wouldn’t be safe to go to a time “Just before the accident” as Rimmer would be likely to wrongly repair the drive plate again and cause the accident again if it was an hour or so before the repair they reset to. So when Holly claims to have instigated the plan for the nanobot’s to recreate Red Dwarf with the Crew, he would have instructed them to do so a safe amount of time pre accident and said dont recreate Lister or Kochanski, or this particular Starbug, either, and then he just forget to say don’t recreate Holly on the ship. So I’m guessing he would have wound it back about a week and the accident is then prevented by Rimmer reading the files and learning of the accident and then getting sent to prison where he no longer has that job. Also that Doug writing Rimmer saying “Last Week” is a rough nod to the time being about a week before the accident.

Based on The End Funeral scene, happening near to Lister going into Stasis, a week might enough for George to have been recreated as Alive,

Based on the book, it wouldn’t be Georges death happens months before around the time of Lister first joining up with Red Dwarf. Continuity of latter series tended to follow the books a bit closer.

[Somebody]

On the reboot point… I tend to think the resurrected crew’s memories must stop about the beginning of The End. Otherwise, why isn’t Kochanski in trouble for freeing Lister from stasis? (Or, alternatively, if there was a rebuilt Lister in stasis, why aren’t the crew bamboozled by this second Lister? Not to mention the lack of a second Kochanski. And why isn’t Lister in trouble all over again about Frankenstein unless the crew haven’t discovered her “yet”.). So Macintyre’s either recently dead or doesn’t have long to go (unless he was rebuilt in perfect health)

[Ridley]

So Macintyre’s either recently dead or doesn’t have long to go (unless he was rebuilt in perfect health)

He was brought back with the bullet still in his head which is why he’s Birdman now. IT’S ALL CONNECTED.

[Paul Muller]

It turns out that the ball in the Cons v Guards basketball game was actually evolved by the Time Wand from McIntyre’s rubber plant.

[Smeg4Brains]

What about the people Lister had eaten bits of when they were in dust form? Would they not be able to be resurrected? THATS WHY YOU DON’T SEE PETERSON!

[Ridley]

He was drunk not eaten. PAY ATTENTION.

[Jonsmad]

What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?
Ask a glass of Peterson.

[Smeg4Brains]

Maybe Selby and Chen just assume he’s drunk because they haven’t seen him and that’s Peterson’s natural state.

[Ben Paddon]

There’s a good novella waiting to be written about the hours and days immediately after the accident and the moments before Lister was taken out of stasis.

As luck would have it…

[clem]

> What about the people Lister had eaten bits of when they were in dust form? Would they not be able to be resurrected?

For that matter, where did the nanos get any of the crew’s remains? Are we to assume something like the deleted funeral scene from The End happened at some stage, or did the skutters just sweep everybody up and put them in the bin?

Btw it’s “Petersen”, because he’s Danish.

[Author]

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