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Excellent. 👏

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Apu too. In the show his hair is grey but in merchandise, comics etc. it’s always black.

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I mean, I got the vibe it was commenting on social media to the extent that some people on it are extremely hostile to criticism. But if the commentary is “people on social media are just pretending to be camp because they’re childish and insecure” then that’s really bad! Portraying these differences as both harmful and fake is bad!!!

And even if dressing in elaborate pink costumes were genuinely just a way for people to hide their insecurities and pointing this out were insightful commentary, it’s a pretty big leap from “not being open about who you truly are” to “gets yourself and all of your peers killed”.

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Hmm, OK, I think I understand what you were saying now Rushy. I thought you were saying you preferred to interpret it as a retcon because that made the episode better. But actually you were saying it being a retcon is bad, but you just can’t see it any other way.

All I know is that I watched the episode quite a few times and not once did it occur to me they were retconning Rimmer’s literal role in the radiation leak. It probably never would have, if not for this site.

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The problem there is that the episode does directly portray them hurting people. The collision course is set to get everyone killed. So in that sense, Lister’s reaction is the correct one and the episode invites us to laugh at Ziggy’s crew without feeling bad about it.

This makes it sound like you wouldn’t have objected to Lemons’ commentary on Christianity if they had directly shown Christians hurting people on religious grounds, instead of just mentioning that it historically did happen. I’m… not sure I can believe that.

The problem is that you acknowledge the hand of the author for Lemons, but not for Timewave. The Enconium crew didn’t just already exist for Doug to make moral deductions about (like Christianity actually does). Doug himself was the one to construct this causal link between free, queer-coded expression and societal suicide.

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OK, so are you just seeing Justice as housecleaning for continuity? Because if Rimmer’s guilt doesn’t connect with you anyway, then it shouldn’t be worse to just cast reasonable doubt over his culpability than to outright prove he didn’t even touch the drive plate. The retcon doesn’t benefit the episode, it just benefits overall series continuity (if you happen not to like that particular aspect of the setup).

To me it gels pretty perfectly that Rimmer would deflect blame for the radiation leak on a conscious level, but deep down feel that it was his fault. It’s all part of Rimmer’s particular brand of self-hate. With the exams too, he makes excuses for his failures and probably half-believes them, but inside he knows they’re his own fault. The twist is that his excuses are legitimate in the case of the radiation leak.

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Lol, I should have known I’d be beaten to the punch.

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Lister just made a mistake. He didn’t have any reason to expect that (someone who he thought was) Jesus Christ himself would be so fragile. Lister clearly does believe in the positives of Christianity, because:

We also have Jesus pedantically taking the piss out of the Ten Commandments to spite Christianity, as if they’re not a perfectly reasonable set of guidelines (don’t lie, don’t kill etc) worth following independently of religion.

Except that’s just straight up false, isn’t it? 4 out of the 10 are about worship. Worship Me and Only Me, Don’t Worship Idols, Don’t Blaspheme, Dedicate This Particular Day of the Week to Worship. You think people should follow those commandments independently of religion?

And pretty much those are the ones Jesus is being pedantic about. He doesn’t say there’s anything wrong with “thou shalt not kill” or even “thou shalt not covet”, he just suggests that God ought to follow them Himself not just tell everyone else to follow them. Controversial!!!

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Well firstly, I’m not sure why the episode needs to include a retcon in order to justify its existence. If it’s cool for Kryten to get out of The Last Day (your favourite episode and mine) alive by just lying to Hudzen and tricking him into shutting down, then so too can Justice semi-conclude with them tricking the Justice computer in order to let them go.

Secondly, the lack of a hard retcon doesn’t reduce the episode to pure plot. It’s still a showcase of the guilt Rimmer felt for the deaths of his crewmates. Kryten’s defence doesn’t absolve him of the literal act of misrepairing the drive plate (although it allows the Justice computer to make that inference), but from Rimmer’s point of view it does absolve him of being truly to blame – while thoroughly insulting him, of course – because it was unreasonable for him to be given that job in the first place. Justice re-examines the circumstances that led to the radiation leak, and gives Rimmer a jumping off point to move past his repressed guilt.

If Justice was truly written to hard retcon the radiation leak so that Rimmer had no involvement at all, then what it would actually be revealing is that Rimmer had lost his mind and imagined an event which did not happen. That Rimmer had mentioned at various points that he caused the accident, but for some reason Holly never corrected him or considered this serious delusion a problem. That would be extremely stupid, and it would also be extremely out of character for Rimmer to take the blame for something that he had no hand in.

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The Simpsons Movie was some of the best new Simpsons produced in its decade. So I’d give it a solid 3 stars.

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I did just mean in general, to be clear. In that particular Back in the Red scene I think Robert genuinely would always have gone as ham as physically possible. I’m sure it would have been twice as funny if he wasn’t constricted by the mask, as the DD shows!

_{0 x 2 = 0}

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I think that’s a bit of a backwards way of looking at it, because Robert is only pulling such extreme faces to show emotions that he could convey more subtly if he weren’t wearing the mask. He isn’t just trying to go as big as possible and then being held back by prosthetics. He’s getting the outcome he’s aiming for.

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Yeah most of my knowledge of 2010s and onwards Simpsons comes via TheRealJims (and The Simpsons Theory) too to be fair.

By the way, I went to the Simpsons fandom wiki to grab those pictures (which I didn’t realise at the time were completely different sizes for some reason), and Shauna’s page opens with this gem:

If this was like an intentional meta joke made within the show itself, don’t tell me. It’s funnier to read this as unironic.

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The general impression is that The Simpsons is still nowhere near golden era quality but it has significantly rallied compared to the doldrums it was in from its late teen to late 20s seasons. Al Jean finally stepping back to let Matt Selman be the “main” showrunner in Season 33 (although still not fully quitting, as he really ought to) was a turning point, and it coincided with the era where Carolyn Omine was at her peak influence on the show, so people give her a lot of the credit for the upswing.

Speaking of Carolyn Omine, if you haven’t watched “A Mid-Childhood Night’s Dream”, you should correct that. It was a really good one.

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We know Kryten was at risk from the wavelet on account of the fact that he was shut down by the wavelet. And had to be rebooted like a car battery that ran out of juice. 

Ah ha, OK, my memory of Twentica clearly isn’t so hot.

I’m personally going to chalk it up to a difference between Kryten being out of power generally, and his battery being damaged such that it can’t be recharged when it hits 0. Holly just spoke too generally, and it’s only Kryten in his current state that needed to be kept charged up in order to stay alive.

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I guess by default the electron wavelet is more focused and so just hits Starbug. But when they convert it into an EMP to take out the Expanoids, it covers the whole area at once, so Kryten is at risk. And we know he is, because it’s a plot point.

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Gil Gunderson might be the best of the Season 9 intake.

I’m surprised Manjula stumped you because she was pretty early in the grand scheme of things. Try identifying these recurring characters:

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Because he didn’t get hit with an EMP in Twentica… ?

And the specifics of how long his power lasts without a service doesn’t really make a difference, but presumably it’s decades.

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Another sandwich related uncertainty – is it a triple fried egg chilli chutney sandwich because it has 3 eggs, or 3 slices of bread?

(By the way, it was the recent food focused episode of Better Than Life The Podcast which drew my attention to these things.)

I’d always assumed it was 3 eggs, even though you can see he has 3 slices there, and you wouldn’t be able to evenly distribute 3 eggs between 3 slices.

My logic is that a standard sandwich is 2 slices, therefore mathematically if the whole sandwich were tripled it would be 6 slices, not 3.

Or alternatively 4 slices if you were arguing it was the spaces for filling that were tripled. But still not 3.

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There were three seasons of shorts before that, but I don’t know if anyone except me counts those as proper.

They’re canon, but they’re part of The Tracy Ullman Show, not The Simpsons. If you count the originating show as part of the spin off, then you could just as well put “The Sarah Jane Adventures – Sarah Jane Smith” on the list.

But yeah, they cast the net way too wide. Best Post-Season 1 Regulars / Major Recurrings would be a much more interesting list. I immediately thought of Chris Traeger from Parks & Rec, not Ewan Roy from Succession, a character who was intended to be a recurring character from the very beginning of the show but just happened not to turn up until a few episodes in. And Doctor Who should be exempt from consideration just due to the nature of it.

Although maybe The Master could be a legitimate example? Completely absent from the first 7 seasons, then was a full regular for Season 8, then never permanently went away. He represents a genuine paradigm shift.

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I liked it when he punched Rimmer in the balls.

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Why is Holly concerned about a hologrammatic sandwich messing up the floor? Is he stupid?

OK, my actual question is, is Holly’s hypothetical objection to the sandwich that egg yolk and chutney will drip onto the floor, or that whoever eats it will throw it up?

(By the way, the Smega-Drive was missing the “a” so I had to type it in myself, like a common caveman.)

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I’m showing my brother series VIII for the first time soon. Pray for him.

I like how you’re framing this as if you simply have no choice but to do this to him. You could end the cycle of violence. You could.

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03/12/2025 

1/5 

Day 3 of the Marooned Advent Calendar was a bit of a letdown.

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Maybe we all have our own threshold for how stupid Lister can be and have it feel in character, but my personal one is definitely below “being unable to spell the days of the week”. I also think Lister should be able to identify all the basic 2D shapes by sight, remember the order of the colours of the rainbow, and know what sounds are typically made by various common farm animals.

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For the record, I checked the script book for the Gideon’s Bible bit, and it does say “Lister is being a fucking idiot.”

OK it doesn’t really, but it doesn’t say he’s doing it as a wind-up either.

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Wow, Marooned has fewer frames than I remember.

Although to be fair the last time I experienced it, it had 0.

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It wasn’t a colour by numbers, it was a dot-to-dot. I guess it must be Misremembering Puzzles Completed By Lister Week.

I think you can rationalise some of Lister’s stupid Series VIII moments as just him messing with Rimmer, but there are so many of them it’s hard to believe they’re all like that. Plus after Back in the Red they become pretty chummy.

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Yeah, that’s a bad moment too. But in Series 1 Naylor and Grant had the excuse that they were still figuring out Lister’s character. They don’t have that excuse in Series VI.

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Ironically Lister re-proved he pronounces Thursday correctly in a later scene which was about an entirely different way he was stupid/careless.

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Maybe he put a T but just had poor handwriting… ?

It is one of those annoyingly basic “Lister is stupid and/or careless” gags that crept in during Series VI.

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Clearly there needs to be a service where you can order custom tees based on cherry picked moments from the Smega-Drive. Any filthy casual knows “Better Smeg Than Dead (sic)”, but only a hardcore fan would stroll into the club wearing one of these on their chest:

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Omnismegles

Smegregious errors

Stop smegging around and do the smegging scene already, for the love of smeg

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Clustersmegs

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Lister’s arm was made by Kryten’s nanos though. Maybe it’s just the creations of Holly’s nanos that degrade.

Missed opportunity to have Series VIII end like Avengers: Infinity War.

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I guess as they’re on probation in Only the Good…, at least a good chunk of their sentences must have passed.

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Is this anything?

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You may have to tweak the theory to account for the fact that Yvonne McGruder was on board Red Dwarf during Series VIII, tombow.

Actually now that I think about it, that was only confirmed to be true in a simulation, but Rimmer at least believed that she was.

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As a warden, was Knot technically a Canary himself? Presumably he was, but if not then Rimmer actually sacrificed the one guy on the mission that Cassandra hadn’t already prophesied to either die or survive. That would add an extra layer of darkness to the whole proceedings.

Either way though, the idea that Knot was going to die anyway (in theory – obviously it was almost all bollocks in the end) was clearly not part of Rimmer’s reasoning, because otherwise he would have realised the twist that someone else dying as “Rimmer” wouldn’t save him.

It is perfectly in character for Rimmer (and especially nano-Rimmer) to do this, of course, it’s just the complete absence of even the hint of hesitation that makes it kind of chilling.

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I mean Kryten is clearly suggesting Knot as the one to die.

I took it more as an accidental implication Kryten was making by acknowledging Knot at that moment. But either way, Rimmer was the one to actually start setting up Knot to die.

So I’m just counting the “marked for death” moment as when Rimmer silently agrees to target Knot, not when Kryten gives him the idea. Although if Kryten did intend to suggest Knot as the sacrifice, that’s obviously still pretty dark for him too.

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I’m happy just to take it as a coincidence. As issues with Back to Earth go, “why do they hallucinate locations that are currently available for filming in real life?” is low down on the list for me.

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He doesn’t mark Knot, Kryten did. Rimmer just spoke of someone taking his place in theory.

All Kryten does is point out that Knot has entered the room. Rimmer is the one who decides that the first person he comes across who hasn’t already been introduced to Cassandra should take his place. He even marks Knot in the literal sense by giving him his jacket.

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I’ve been thinking about Cassandra again, and I’m kind of surprised that my reappraisal here didn’t make any mention of how dark it is that Rimmer so casually marks Knot for death. Like “you can save your life, but only if you make someone take your place” is a moral dilemma from a horror film. That’s The Ring. That’s It Follows. Yet this plan doesn’t even give Rimmer a microsecond of pause. I know the wardens aren’t meant to be particularly likeable, but still, Rimmer as good as murdered a man.

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Profit.

Titillation.

Intellectually, imbalance.

Crest, profiterole.

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A warm welcome to you, FutureEchoes. As with everyone else, I’ll try my best not to hold your fondness for the blue spiny one against you.

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I once went to Todaycon, the convention for fans of the Today programme, but I accidentally let slip that I’d only listened to all the episodes going back to 12 years before I was born, and I got thrown out for being a filthy casual.

[Author]

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