Why were Lister, Rimmer and Kochanski left behind in “Only The Good…”

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

When Hollister et al are made aware of the virus eating the ship, they evacuate leaving the prisoners behind. However, Hollister says that “unfortunately we don’t have room for all of you so most of you will be staying behind”. This suggests that at least some of the prisoners were taken in the evacuation.

In Back in the Red Part 1, Holly explains that the prisoners were being transported to a prison colony. These aren’t JMC crew or any affiliates of the space corp (that we know of) but Red Dwarf is just being used as a transport ship as presumably they’re heading in the right direction at the time.

Lister, Rimmer and Kochanski however are all JMC crew. They’re thrown in the brig for reasons but ultimately they are/were in the employee of JMC.

You would think that in an evacuation, if you have room for some prisoners, you start by taking your original crew with you, not some random prisoner transportees.

If nothing else you’d probably want your navigation officer with you, even if she doesn’t know the region I imagine their are course plotting skills there that would be useful.

And, Rimmer and Lister (are useless as they maybe as technicians) might just be handy in some capacity.

Not to mention the fact that Hollister accepts their story is legit. That the crew died and were resurrected and that Lister, Kochanski, Cat and Kryten had all been surviving alone in deep space until the nanobots resurrect the crew. They seem like the sort of people you’d want with you to try and survive with in a deep region of space you know nothing about.

So, why leave them behind (ignoring “because plot” arguments) – at the very least I’d expect Lister, Rimmer and Kochanski to be on the list of prisoners to be evacuated on the grounds they were more JMCs responsibility as (former) crew members than the prisoners were.

Topic

[Ridley]

Spite.

[International Debris]

Unfortunately, it’s hard to go with anything other than “because plot”, because this is VIII and nobody behaves in a remotely believable way. I mean, THEY were the ones who informed the rest of the crew of the microbe’s existence, without them the ship would be in a much worse state before anyone knew about it.

There is a deleted scene where some of the prisoners are allowed to leave with the main crew which, as you say, is absurd. You’d imagine they’d have a duty to protect their own registered crew. And, to be honest, the rest of the prisoners really.

[bloodteller]

hollister was probably fed up of rimmer and lister’s wacky japes by the end of series 8, and so leaving them behind was payback for that time they let a dinosaur shit all over him (or whatever it was that happened in Pete)

as for kochanski and the other main characters, they just get left behind for no reason. this is fine though, because they got imprisoned for no reason to begin with.

[JamesTC]

In a deleted scene Hollister says there are two more places which go to two “selected at random from the prisoner roll call”. Some guy called Polsen gets the first place and Lister gets the second. Lister goes to give the place to Kochanski but Baxter puts his hand on his shoulder and he gives it to him and Baxter says they are square for the hooch.

Presumably if the ship wasn’t already a Starbug down from the opening episode they’d have had room for all of the JMC crew with room spare.

[bloodteller]

i just noticed that in that deleted scene, surely all 400 prisoners would be required to be present to hear about the microbe that will soon kill them? yet in the scene there’s about 15 prisoners there, and none of them really look too bothered about the whole affair

[International Debris]

“Oh and by the way, tell everyone else. Bye!”

[Dave]

This is a bit like ‘how did a chicken-soup machine repairman end up responsible for sealing the drive plate’, isn’t it?

[JamesTC]

Maybe it was routine maintenance on the drive plate which ordinarily wouldn’t put the ship at risk if done wrong but Rimmer screwed up so monumentally (as in the floor repaired in Fathers and Suns) that it put the ship at risk.

The equivalent of Rimmer being ask to fix the DVD drive on a computer so he decided to take the whole modem apart and he fucked it up when he put it back together.

[(deleted)]

(Answer to that, because it’s asked often and bugs me – because he’s not a chicken soup machine repairman, he’s a 2nd technician, aka a callout engineer. In the same way a qualified electrician may sometimes rewire a house, may sometimes have to avert major disaster, but will find himself changing lightbulbs more often than not, Rimmer and Lister usually ended up servicing vending machines, but more critical repairs were also part of their duties.)

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

“In a deleted scene Hollister says there are two more places which go to two “selected at random from the prisoner roll call”. Some guy called Polsen gets the first place and Lister gets the second. Lister goes to give the place to Kochanski but Baxter puts his hand on his shoulder and he gives it to him and Baxter says they are square for the hooch.
Presumably if the ship wasn’t already a Starbug down from the opening episode they’d have had room for all of the JMC crew with room spare.”

This is probably as close to an actual answer as we’ll get with this, and I can’t remember if I’d just forgotten about that deleted scene or just not watched it but it makes sense. Also the lack of a Starbug owing to it being crashed.

I’d still argue you’d go to lengths to squeeze your crew onto the ships they have though, rather than taking a couple of random prisoners.

[JamesTC]

I don’t remember if the scene was filmed and is on the VIII DVD. I’ve just re-read it in the brilliant Series VIII script book.

[Ridley]

It is on the DVD. I’d forgotten about that.

Letting your secret prisoners die in a secret prison that’s secretly three million years from home would be a way to help keep it secret.

[cwickham]

There is, however, irony to Lister abandoning the escape attempt to save everyone else’s lives, and getting left to die as a result. And in the broadcast version Rimmer accuses Lister of only doing this to impress Kochanski, only for him – in the deleted scene – to then doom Kochanski to avoid getting beaten up by Baxter (even though he’ll be dead anyway if he gives up his seat to Kochanski so what does it matter).

It’s Series VIII, of course, so it doesn’t run with that or do anything with it at all, but still.

[Ben Saunders]

I don’t think the show’s budget would stretch to 400 extras, or a set big enough to contain them

[bloodteller]

well yeah, of course they can’t get 400 extras, but it feels at least a bit dodgy that a prison with 400 inmates only has about 15-20 of them present during a visit from the captain concerning their imminent deaths. like,were the other 380 prisoners just unaware of the fact that the ship was being eaten away at until the microbe began to devour them? thats a pretty grim way to go

the solution to this would have been to not state the prison has 400 inmates in Back in the Red

or better yet, don’t have the prison at all in the series

[flanl3]

To be fair, if you’re Hollister, millions of light-years from the nearest JMC authority who might care (likely dead), then you’re probably done enough with all of them that you’re willing to just leave them behind and ignore protocol and directives. Whoops.

[Plastic Percy]

I figured that when Hollister said ‘some’ he meant ‘all’. Presumably they were either killed by the chameleonic microbe or the crew dumped them somewhere (maybe they found another Justice World?).

[Captain Bollocks]

I wouldn’t worry about the 400 extras. When Doug gets round to VIII: Remastered he’ll just bluescreen the tops of his, Ed Bye and Chris Veale’s heads into the background to make up the numbers.

[Moonlight]

Of course, the most important thing a Remastered VIII could do is replace those awful mop heads with proper CGI Dibbley wigs.

[International Debris]

The best thing about the forthcoming VIII: Remastered is the reversion to the BtE-style CG model, whilst leaving in all the dialogue about the ship changing shape.

[Pete Part Three]

Maybe they can also work out the intention for the effect of Ackerman’s false eye.

[bloodteller]

the greatest change to VIII remastered will be a really crap CGI prisoner walking past added over the opening scene of Back in The Red Part 1.

in the ensuing making-of documentary, nobody will own up to adding this in.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Personally I can’t wait for Normal Lovett to re-record all his lines, and the 4K rendering of the inside of the rats anus as part of the new special effects shots.

[cwickham]

EPILOGUE: The second dinosaur, which was much less intelligent than the first, stowed away in Hollister’s arse – where it died of old age many years later.

[Ian Symes]

Excellent.

[International Debris]

The second dinosaur, which was much less intelligent than the first, stowed away in Hollister’s arse – until it was awoken by a single-fingered glove provided by Rimmer.

[Hamish]

> the greatest change to VIII remastered will be a really crap CGI prisoner

Which was actually filmed on a bluescreen and composited in of course.

[clem]

BY GOD

[cwickham]

One good thing about VIII Remastered is that we’ll get The Earth Collection, with Chris Barrie’s narration and storyboards realising the unmade finale.

[bloodteller]

honestly, i’m quite curious to what the “Earth” episode of VIII would’ve been. from what little it’s talked about in the scriptbook, it seems like it would’ve been at the very least an interesting episode

[flanl3]

I wonder if the picture of Rimmer waving through a window (that I believe exists) will be used in place of a storyboard for Earth

[peepingsignal]

My favourite bit of VIII Remastered will be in Cassandra when they film new scenes to replace Geraldine McEwan with Zoe Wanamaker. Also when she dies they’ll have her do the Spinning Beach Ball face.

[International Debris]

I’m also interested to find out how they’ll find worse fonts to replace the already terrible ones with.

[flanl3]

Is it too late to nominate something for Hall of Fame status? If not, I nominate this thread for Hall of Fame status.

If it is, I also nominate this thread for Hall of Fame status.

[peepingsignal]

I’m also interested to find out how they’ll find worse fonts to replace the already terrible ones with.

Comic Sans. Or that font that you see in every Indie film and Hipster cafe these days.

[Ridley]

Since most people don’t get that it’s an homage to the original Red Dwarf USA font, they’re just changing it red and playing the pilot’s theme music over it with an annotation that says “This is the Red Dwarf USA font.”

[International Debris]

Or that font that you see in every Indie film and Hipster cafe these days.

I have no idea what this is but I’m curious.

The actual answer is, of course, they will use Papyrus.

[Ridley]

Samurai Jack used Papyrus, leave it alone.

Also: papyruswatch.com

[Anonymous]

Isn’t the Avatar logo Papyrus?

Fucking shit is shit.

[peepingsignal]

> I have no idea what this is but I’m curious.

It’s basically this: http://www.dafont.com/dk-running-hipster.font

[International Debris]

Urgh. That.

[peepingsignal]

Pair that font with a cover of the theme song played on a ukulele and a triangle and you have a punchable TV show.

[Author]

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