Captain Bollocks

[Captain Bollocks]

Hitler was pretty well known at the time he filmed Backwards, I think? 

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

I really enjoyed this. 

Could you argue that Hollister is just as much a part of the core cast in VIII as Holly?

Given his frequent antagonist status, there are points where Ackerman flirts with almost feeling like part of the main cast to me.

Or maybe I just like how much they all seemed to love Graham McTavish. 

[Captain Bollocks]

Not really newsworthy, but I figure this is the best place to mention the latest She’s a Rec, which features a quick anecdote from Tim Key about going for a drink with Steve Coogan, and Coogan offering up thoughts about his and Chris Barrie’s varying impressions of Neil Kinnock on Spitting Image. 

“His was really good, but mine was better” was the gist of it. “He pitched it in the wrong octave.” 

See? Told you it wasn’t really newsworthy. 

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

I’m rather tickled that the press release for this mentions stuff like Q.I. that neither broadcaster had a hand in producing, but manages to ignore UKTV’s most successful and enduring original commission having been well ahead of the curve in making a successful transition (and expansion) to Channel 4.

(Though I guess that’s less of a novelty since the Dave episodes have already been on 4OD since the switch.)

[Captain Bollocks]

Looking forward to the G&T article comparing their episode thumbnail choices to those of iPlayer and UKTV Play.

You’re welcome.

[Captain Bollocks]

Captain Bollocks strip

Don’t get too excited folks; I have not agreed to disrobe in this tattyrag. 

[Captain Bollocks]

My apologies for running afoul of the comedy police. 

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

More seriously if we get to IV it will be interesting how they handle Meltdown.

On the recent BBC Four run of the Top of the Pops, they’ve made it to the summer of ’96. I think most of us know they no longer broadcast episodes with performers noted for noncery (Gary Glitter), or presenters noted for noncery (Gary Glitter), but they recently skipped two episodes because a competition winner was recently done for noncery (not Gary Glitter). 

I’m not sure why they couldn’t cut the wrongun’s name out of the first episode and stick a few cutaways into their more prominent appearances in the second one (they’re shown in an empty amphitheatre watching Def Leppard), but the BBC dropped both episodes cold, and didn’t add them to iPlayer with a warning. 

Obviously Meltdown is still on the iPlayer, so I’ve no idea if it’s a different department, haven’t caught onto it yet, or if it falls under different rules since it’s technically a post-watershed program. 

[Captain Bollocks]

Red Dwarf: Just the Episodes in Alphabetical Order 

1. Back in the Red (Part 1)
2. Back in the Red (Part 2)
3. Back in the Red (Part 3) 
4. Back to Earth (Part 1) 
5. Back to Earth (Part 2) 
6. Back to Earth (Part 3) 
7. Back to Reality 
8. Backwards 
9. Balance of Power 
10. (The) Beginning 

11. Better than Life 
12. Beyond a Joke 
13. Blue 
14. Bodyswap 
15. Camille 
16. Can of Worms 
17. Cassandra 
18. Confidence and Paranoia 
19. Cured 
20. D.N.A. 
21. Dear Dave 
22. Demons and Angels 
23. Dimension Jump 
24. Duct Soup 
25. Emohawk: Polymorph II 
26. (The) End 
27. Entangled 
28. Epideme 
29. Fathers & Suns 
30. Future Echoes 
31. Give & Take 
32. Gunmen of the Apocalypse 
33. Holoship 
34. (The) Inquisitor 
35. Justice 
36. Krysis 
37. Kryten 
38. Krytie TV 
39. (The) Last Day 
40. Legion 
41. Lemons 
42. M-Corp 
43. Marooned 
44. Mechocracy 
45. Meltdown 
46. Me2 
47. Nanarchy 
48. Officer Rimmer 
49. Only the Good… 
50. Ouroboros 
51. Out of Time 
52. Parallel Universe 
53. Pete (Part 1) 
54. Pete (Part 2) 
55. Polymorph 
56. (The) Promised Land 
57. Psirens 
58. Quarantine 
59. Queeg 
60. Rimmerworld 
61. Samsara 
62. Siliconia 
63. Skipper 
64. Stasis Leak 
65. Stoke Me a Clipper 
66. Terrorform 
67. Thanks for the Memory 
68. Tikka to Ride 
69. Timeslides 
70. Timewave 
71. Trojan 
72. Twentica 
73. Waiting for God 
74. White Hole

I’ll leave it up to someone else to work out what the best rated run of six out of that lot is, but I reckon it’s either Future Echoes/Give & Take/Gunmen/Holoship/Inquisitor/Justice, or Polymorph/Promised Land/Psirens/Quarantine/Queeg/Rimmerworld. Stasis Leak/Stoke/Terroform/Thanks for the Memory/Tikka/Timeslides would be another contender.

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

Makes me yearn for the simpler times of the 90s, when the worst you could do was bring down the entire country’s television broadcasts, organise a group of strippers in soldier uniforms show up in a flat 20 minutes, and get a direct line to the president of the United States, all from a 56k modem. 

[Captain Bollocks]

Lister is written as a Dougal-level idiot for some reason. Only a series ago he was comfortably explaining time paradoxes so complex they blew up cameras, and now he’s struggling to do a dot-to-dot.

I don’t mind it because it’s such a stupid throwaway joke, but I also like to assume he’s just doing it to wind Rimmer up. 

I am sure this has been brought up, but did the nanobots resurrect George McIntyre? 

Why did they rebuild the ship to the original design specification but still include the faulty drive plates? Are drive plates just something destined to fail? 

Were holograms a common thing on Earth or did you only ever see them in places such as groovy, funky Channel 27? 

Given we’re now entering the age of AI I’m sure this is going to have to be addressed sooner than later, but surely there are laws in place against this? Presumably Channel 27 don’t have to pay a hologram and there would be laws in place protecting living workers?

I can see a corporate studio looking at the pure profit from artificially generating a stable of on-air performers, unless they have to pay royalties to the hologram’s estate? In which case, surely there’s union rules against that sort of thing? Dead people don’t need to worry about the cost of living. 

[Captain Bollocks]

I ALWAYS crack up at “post’s arrived”, before sadly remembering which episode it is, and resigning myself to ignoring the next 20 minutes before another guilty pleasure comes along when Rimmer just blankly accepts Lister’s pubes. 

One thing I only noticed for the first time is how the whole story is built around Lister’s appeal, but in the opening scene, Lister has only just discovered he isn’t allowed strings a few seconds before the letter about the appeal even arrives.

I did go back and watch it again and it’s worded in a way that doesn’t explicitly refer to the appeal coming from Lister himself, so I guess we just have to assume another prisoner was in the same situation, otherwise the wardens pre-emptively decided to appeal their own rules and create extra work for themselves? 

[Captain Bollocks]

Interesting that they still have a Dave-era publicity shot as the header. 

[Captain Bollocks]

What does the red spectrum tell us about polymorphs, when the state of Rimmer’s and Lister’s personality-altered subconscious is for Rimmer to attempt to create C.L.I.T.O.R.I.S., while Lister just wants to get out there and twat it? 

[Captain Bollocks]

Until this video, I’d genuinely never spotted Kochanski doing air quotes with her right hand then swiftly moving it to her left side before, and I now proclaim it to be my favourite joke of VII.

I’ve always liked her saying “Van Goch” and quickly moving on though. Same with the One-Armed Bandit gag, but neither of them seemed to laugh. Is that not a popular term in America, or has it just fallen out of general use? (In fairness, I don’t think I’ve heard it since, well, 1997). 

[Captain Bollocks]

I understood that reference. 

[Captain Bollocks]

If Norman Lovett had been cast as Rimmer as he initially auditioned for, what would have been the fate of Red Dwarf III? Would he have grumpily agreed he needed to attend rehearsals, and would he have used this as collateral in order to get his ball back off Dona DiStefano? 

[Captain Bollocks]

As brand new Red Dwarf is EXCLUSIVELY CONFIRMED by us copying an off-hand remark on a personal vlog, we celebrate the original cast… 

… and CLICK HERE as YOU WON’T BELIEVE who the producers ORIGINALLY WANTED to star in the show!!!!!!!!

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

Something something sexy details. 

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

BobByC One for general entertainment. BobByC Llew for slightly more niche subject matter. BobByC Three for the yoof demographic. BobByC Four for highbrow repeats. 

[Captain Bollocks]

I still remember the comic con Q&A he did where he was asked if he still had any connection to video games, and he said (paraphrasing) that he had no interest in them and that he wished people would stop wasting their lives on them and spend more time doing things of value instead (such as collecting classic cars I guess, because presumably if it’s his hobby then it isn’t a waste of time?) 

Still, take the money, eh Chris? 

[Captain Bollocks]

But what are Rob’s favourite Doug-era episodes? 

[Captain Bollocks]

Had a dream last night that I had begun using my bed to cultivate potatoes. When I began repurposing them into chips, I was proudly declared “the king of the potato people”.

I woke up shorty after, thinking “What a funny Red Dwarf reference!” (I’m still on painkillers and Benalyn, so who knows at this point). 

[Captain Bollocks]

What if Cappsy, Danny and Ian had all grown up to be big Hancock’s Half Hour obsessives instead, and the rest of us just had to make do with Facebook pages full of Smeg toasters, series VIII praise, and replies of “Just enjoy the show!!!!!!” when you raise reasonable discussion points about the consequences of changing history in Stasis Leak? 

[Captain Bollocks]

All it needed was a few lines from Holly saying that the stasis leak only allows them to stay in the past temporarily, and also that preventing the radiation leak or compelling any crewmembers to abandon Red Dwarf would cause too big a paradox.

I could imagine a scene where Lister says he’ll just go back into the past to fix the drive plate, only for Holly to remind him that he’ll not only cause a massive paradox that could potentially destroy the universe, but at the very least he’ll wipe out the entire cat race (Rimmer – “well that’s hardly a big loss!”). Lister defeatedly asks “So there’s nothing we can do then?” and Holly says “Well, you could always put someone in that spare stasis booth and bring them here”. “But wouldn’t that cause one of those paradox things?” “There’s not much difference between being dead and being missing for three million years, so I wouldn’t have thought so.” And thus, Lister has no cause to prevent the meltdown, but has the goal of saving Kochanski. 

Although, presumably they must know it’s a fruitless mission, otherwise Holly would have already detected the other stasis booth being occupied? Unless he can’t since it’s a none-event mass with a quantum probability of zero. I suppose he’d have to not be able to spot a stasis booth being active anyway, since he would surely be alerted of it in the past when either Kochanski or Rimmer uses it (and of course, Rimmer has been using it in secret in the novels, so presumably it’s not on Holly’s radar). 

It also feels like there’s a potentially heartbreaking subplot, where Lister doesn’t see his future self with Kochanski, can’t fix the drive plate, and is resigned to not being able to bring her into his timeline, so chooses to save her life by convincing her to go AWOL, believing she’ll live a full and happy life but having to live the rest of his life knowing she’ll have likely ended up with someone else. Which is pretty bleak, though I suppose she’s already met future Lister before present Lister has even gone back through the stasis leak. 

I suppose the next question is why don’t Lister and Cat just stay on Ganymede? Lister avoids being detected on the ship  when he should be in stasis, he and Cat avoid the meltdown and live in a place populated by more than just themselves, and Rimmer is condemned to being stuck alone with Holly three million years in the future, who probably just switches him off anyway. Or, they end up meeting Kryten, and it’s just the three of them until all of their batteries finally go flat. (I think the answer probably goes back to – because Lister sees his future self with Kochanski, that’s his motivation to return to the ship.) 

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

Too smacked off my tits on honey and lemon cough syrup to know if this is even funny or not, but it’s you lot who have to scroll past it now, not me. So there. 

[Captain Bollocks]

I know I’ve had a few, although I don’t remember any specifics off-hand, but how about a tangential one? 

Last night, I dreamt I had been selected to appear on a special edition of Taskmaster, alongside Ian “Ian” Symes, of this very parish. At one point he had to climb up a ladder in pink flip flops, while I boarded a ferry to Ireland. 

Yes, I am delirious with flu right now, why do you ask? 

[Captain Bollocks]

It does, but that also means he still has to allow the meltdown to happen and kill the crew, albeit made easier to digest by the fact he presumably hasn’t thought to do that.

In fairness, it also took me the best part of 35 years to realise it too, so I can’t really blame him. Lucky it still hadn’t occurred to him before they got to Justice World – imagine the Justice Field overloading itself trying to comprehend Rimmer and Lister sharing the same guilt over somehow separately being responsible for the same 1,167 deaths. 

Which has led me to a further query – Is there only one light bee? In Justice, after Lister, Cat and Kryten are allowed to leave, why don’t they just go back to Red Dwarf, turn Rimmer off, then reboot him again back on the ship? Is that aiding and abetting a criminal escape?

And hell, why is the Justice Field trying to convict a hologram? It’s not like the hologram did it, the actual guy is already dead! And it obviously knows what a hologram is, since “that has been accounted for”. Maybe it was just poorly programmed, or it was such an unlikely eventuality that nobody thought of it? 

[Captain Bollocks]

In Stasis Leak, does it simply never occur to Lister or Rimmer that they could theoretically go back in time and fix the faulty drive plate?

Is it not damaged yet? Is it took risky to attempt to fix it so close to the accident? Will somebody notice (our) Lister fixing it when (past) Lister should be in stasis? (I guess if it breaks after Lister goes into stasis then (past) Rimmer would report him for trying to help.) 

If Lister realises he could go back in time and fix the drive plate, does he then have a massive existential crisis about it? Would the Cat, having travelled through the magic door, continue to exist, or would fixing the drive plate essentially condemn him to certain death? Is one life more valuable than the entirety of the crew?

Does it create a paradox where (our) Lister ceases to exist and is therefore unable to travel back to fix it? Does Lister cease to exist but the drive plate remains fixed? Does there end up being two Listers on board since he already left the version of Red Dwarf that now no longer exists? How do they break the news to Kochanski that there’s two of them? One for the week and one for Sunday best? 

Does hologram Rimmer moan that, even though (old) Rimmer will continue to be alive, hologram Rimmer is now not only superfluous, but also outranked by McIntyre and therefore destined to be switched off regardless? 

COME ON ROB AND/OR DOUG, WRITE A ONE-UNIVERSE-TO-THE-LEFT NOVEL ABOUT THIS, PLEASE. 

[Captain Bollocks]

They changed it to military red from the dowdy, old, nasty ocean red. Or was it the other way around? 

[Captain Bollocks]

[Captain Bollocks]

That memes comes off as if Lister thinks that’s song is shit. When it is actually a banger. 

One of my bands once did a “Stars in their Eyes” all-dayer where we did a set of Terrorvision songs, Oblivion being a choice cut. 

[Captain Bollocks]

[Author]

Replies