Flap Jack

[Flap Jack]

To play devil’s advocate: It’s possible someone wanted it to be made clear that Ncuti had left the show and a more ambiguous ending didn’t suffice for that.

Annoying if so, because a press release could have done that job. But I guess it wouldn’t have done the extra job of creating a false impression that Ncuti’s departure was planned in advance and that Davies knew what was going to come next.

In fairness though, Gatwa changing outfit every story made it difficult to do the unplanned exit the traditional way – putting the new Doctor in the old Doctor’s outfit and filming them falling off an exercise bike.

[Flap Jack]

The lying about the scripts is absolutely horrendous. Honestly,
that group of people have done amazing things for the show in the past,
but Who fans are better off rid at this point. 

If you’ve read The Writer’s Tale, then you know this is kind of just how Russell The Davies is. In public he bigs up what a wonderful new railway he’s built, then it gets to opening day 6 months later and he’s like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrmZIgVoQw4&t=90s

I’m sure at the time he had every intention of writing a Christmas special that included those words, and I guess he didn’t consider the dubious present tense of “contains” a lie because they were contained in whatever vague outline or pitch he did have written, but his marketing strategy does depend on things not going totally tits up like this.

[Flap Jack]

I’m sure that once they knew Susan wasn’t making it into the finale, they could have just edited The Interstellar Song Contest so that The Doctor saw flashes of a different character. But I’m betting the reason they didn’t was something along the lines “oh fuck we can’t finally bring Carole Ann Ford back as Susan and then use literally none of the footage oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck”.

To which I say – do an actual story about Susan and not just 2 scenes that exist purely to tease something in the future you haven’t decided on yet. 

[Flap Jack]

I love how even with today’s news, the Classic Doctor Who thread is still mostly focused on RTD2 Doctor Who, while this thread has pivoted to being about Star Wars and Lost.

[Flap Jack]

One detail is that this makes the decision to pretend that the 60th Anniversary Specials were the start of a whole new version of the show even more ridiculous. The gap between The Reality War and whatever comes next is now guaranteed to be much longer than the gap between The Power of The Doctor and The Star Beast (and almost definitely it’ll be the first gap since The TV Movie/Rose to span multiple full years, making the hiatus longer than the whole Disney era itself), and it has a good chance of having less direct continuity too, yet the latter transition was the one they tried to sell as a full reboot??

Can’t wait to open iPlayer and see “Doctor Who (1963-1996)”, “Doctor Who (2005-2022)”, “Doctor Who (2023-2025)” and “Doctor Who”.

I mean, legitimately too, because that’ll mean new episodes have happened.

[Flap Jack]

The thing is, I’ve heard “Lindsay Salt says Doctor Who is going nowhere” too many times now. I can’t get my hopes up when even if they strike a deal, it could be, and in fact almost certainly will be years until they get production started again. It’s been over an entire year already without any Doctor Who.

Lindsay WHAT.

Anyway, the promises of new Doctor Who aren’t a lie unless it actually does go away for good. Even if you’re pessimistic, we’re not quite at that stage yet.

But yeah, we’ll need to brace ourselves for a long wait.

I have personally prepared for this moment by being really bad at filling in my Classic Who gaps, and only having a human amount of time and money for Big Finish.

[Flap Jack]

One thing that shines through all of this is that I genuinely believe the BBC are committed to keeping the show going. This is not like the 1980s where they were just embarrassed by it and actively trying to kill it – the landscape has totally changed. The industry is extremely risk averse now (which is bad, to be clear) and so BBC absolutely want to keep supporting an IP like Doctor Who which has a strong and international core fanbase.

What kind of Doctor Who we’ll get, how many episodes, how high a budget etc., who the fuck knows, but we will get it.

[Flap Jack]

I understand the desire for something new and fresh, but I don’t agree with the implication that the show has been conscious in its picking white writers/producers only.

There is no implication to disagree with – I literally used the word “unconscious” .

Talent, talent, talent is what’s important. Whoever comes around and has the magic should get the chance. Fan, non-fan, white, black, it doesn’t matter. Nothing should come before talent. 

And nothing would come before talent. The fact is that for a role like this there’s always a person of colour or woman (or both at once) who is equally as talented as the best white man option. The reason why the white man still gets picked most or all of the time is because of the unconscious racism and sexism. (Incidentally, seeing a talent selection system that selects a white person every single time and concluding “I assume this was done fairly and without bias”? Kind of racist! Whether unconsciously or consciously.) That’s why it requires a conscious effort to counteract the unconscious bias.

Thankfully you don’t need to believe me that unconscious racism and sexism are real or agree with me that positive discrimination is good. I just hope the BBC higher ups are forward thinking on this.

[Flap Jack]

There’s no logic behind this. A hardcore fan isn’t necessarily going to behave as such. Professionalism does exist.

There absolutely is logic behind it. It’s not that hardcore fans are guaranteed to be bad, it’s that someone who isn’t a hardcore fan is more likely to bring a fresh perspective. And all 4 of the modern era showrunners have been hardcore fans, so regardless of how good they were, it’s past time to change things up.

And this display of racism is very distasteful, to be polite. By all
means, give everyone an equal chance to write for the programme and pick
the best one regardless of age, gender or race. But excluding someone
based on their skin colour? I’d like to think we’re above discrimination
even towards those who aren’t historically discriminated against. 

No, the racism is in appointing a white person as the showrunner – or producer and script editor – every single time since the show began in 1963 (and a man every time except for the first). The racism is in saying that you’re giving all types of people equal opportunity but then only ever hiring white men anyway, as if it’s an unspoken truth that white men are simply better. Positive discrimination is a thing for a reason, and it’s to counterbalance the unconscious racist bias that occurs if you don’t do it. Intentionally excluding white men from taking this one position one time is not racist, because racism is structural and is set up to benefit white people. White people in top TV positions will be fine.

Plus it’s not just arbitrary. Picking a different kind of showrunner means you get a fresh perspective on the show, similar to picking a non-fan.

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, if they just want to be pragmatic, doing it Series 1 style and then just acknowledging the cliffhanger when regeneration comes up (“my last one was chaotic, I took a few different forms before it settled… “) would work fine.

The positive is that this is a genuine chance to take things in a different direction. With that in mind, here are a few easy points for the BBC to check off when they’re looking for a new showrunner:

– Not a writer for the RTD1 era (stretch goal: not a credited Doctor Who writer at all).

– Not a fan of the show (casual fan is acceptable, hardcore fan is not).

– Not a white man.

I’d also say “split the role of showrunner into 2 roles again, for the love of god”, but I know that’s not going to happen.

[Flap Jack]

Oh my fucking god.

So, the BBC finally listened to the wisdom of the revival’s best Doctor?

The fact that they announced the Christmas special but it was only ever a placeholder and they never did substantial work on it seems appalling to me. The idea that merely pretending a new episode will exist secures the show’s future makes no sense, but maybe if you work at the BBC or Bad Wolf it does, somehow.

And the Billie Piper choice is now revealed to be more foolish than it even was to begin with, because whoever picks up the show – if it does indeed continue – will have to be the one who deals with that mess at the same time as starting afresh. Jeez.

[Flap Jack]

Obviously if he were sued Doug could just defiantly insist in court that “the BBC” does not refer to the real life broadcaster, but is in fact “the Backside Bothering Club”, a fictional organisation that existed only in the Red Dwarf universe.

Realistically though he would have been fine. Many of the sexual crimes committed at the BBC are a matter of record now, and the line is just an exaggeration for humour, and it’s still an exaggeration even if you limit the scope to a particular decade. It is not libel.

I think sometimes people are just paranoid about legal action even when it’s actually fine. (See: “Chicken McNugget”.) But in this case maybe Doug just didn’t think the joke would land if he didn’t get specific.

It is Timewave though. If the joke were good it would have been out of place.

[Flap Jack]

I find it really hard to compare classic and modern-era Doctors as they feel like such different shows, but if your favourite nu-Who Doctor isn’t Eleven then I’m not sure we can be friends.

Oh.

That’s OK… I didn’t want to be friends anyway.

[Flap Jack]

FAN THEORY: 

He’s Rimmer.

[Flap Jack]

Tom Baker was truly something else as the Doctor. Quite simply a league above anybody else to ever do it. To ever do anything. With time and with further viewings my appreciation of him only grows.

Absolutely. As far as I’m concerned any Best Doctor ranking should leave #2 blank just to acknowledge how perfect Tom Baker is in the role.

[Flap Jack]

I remember when the UNIT Files DVD set came out, folks were baffled that the dinosaur from Invasion of the Dinosaurs – one of the most infamously bad special effects in all of Classic Who – was not given the “updated special effects” treatment. Presumably it’s just because box sets had a worse budget per story than individual releases, and they’d already spent so much money trying to restore the colour to Episode 1, but maybe they’ll do it for the Season 11 Collection.

[Flap Jack]

And Ben comes out swinging against the very concept of director’s cuts and fan edits! The main thing I’ll say in opposition to that is just that I do in fact watch Doctor Who for fun, not purely as a solemn act of historical observance. If my goal was to recreate the experience of watching Classic Who on its initial broadcast as closely as possible, no way would I be watching it via a restored DVD/Blu-ray on a 4K widescreen TV hooked up to a sound bar. Era authentic CRTs and VHS tapes all the way!

[Flap Jack]

Having literally just watched it, there is a reason. Rimmer hid all the other discs, missing Lister’s as it was still filed under living crew. He asked for Kochanski first. Also would still fit with the discs being absent later in the series.

Ah, fair enough! Clearly it’s overdue for a rewatch on my part too.

Though I would still think that if Lister were able to unilaterally switch Rimmer off and become the highest ranking member of the crew, he should have been able to just demand Holly tell him where Rimmer hid the disks. Even if Rimmer somehow did it while evading Holly’s monitoring, he would have needed either the skutters or The Cat to actually do the physical work, and so they could surely be persuaded to share the info.

Probably for the best that they left this plot hole in instead of making it so Rimmer had the other hologram disks destroyed though. That would be too much, and his behaviour in Bodysnatcher is already too much.

[Flap Jack]

Even the ‘in Colour’ home releases include the full length black and white versions of the stories too. Never go full George Lucas.

[Flap Jack]

THE TWO KRYTENS

Mech²

[Flap Jack]

Does Me² make sense as an episode title? I mean, 1² = 1, so does that mean just one Rimmer? Important questions.

Me² = 2Me

Me² / Me = 2

Me = 2

The solution is just a number that could correspond to anything. Me = 2, but that doesn’t mean 2 people. Could be arms. Or swimming qualifications.

[Flap Jack]

That’s deliberately an outlier, though, and the degradation of Lister’s
personality into something resembling Rimmer is directly commented on in
the script. He quite literally paints an H mark on his head. 

I don’t think you can call it an “outlier” when the sample size for “times Lister tries to take control of deactivating holograms” is a whopping 3. Confidence & Paranoia definitely contradicts Balance of Power by suggesting that as long as Lister had access to the physical hologram disks, he could overrule Rimmer, but that doesn’t mean Balance of Power is the outlier (especially not a “deliberate” one) and Confidence & Paranoia is normal. It just means you have a personal preference.

Plus it never actually gets to the point where Lister’s authority is directly tested – in C&P he just activates “Kochanski” as a second hologram and doesn’t deactivate Rimmer (and Rimmer secretly approves because he knows what will happen), and in Me² he has like 3 loophole options (he can deactivate 1 Rimmer as long as he doesn’t deactivate both / the Rimmers both agreed that one of them should be switched off so that’s some level of consent / Holly may have overruled Rimmer’s authority to stop the madness).

As for whether Lister could have deactivated Rimmer but chose not to because he respects him as a lifeform, even outside of Balance of Power, the evidence suggests this is not the case. In Confidence & Paranoia, before they discover a way to run 2 holograms at once, Lister explains that the reason he hasn’t activated Kochanski’s hologram is that Rimmer has hidden her disk. No mention of “I’d have to switch off Rimmer, and that would be murder” or any other reason. Just “I don’t have the disk”. The 2-hologram solution was clearly an attempt to convince Rimmer to hand over the disk willingly, but if Lister had found (what he thought was) Kockanski’s disk before coming up with that idea, I’m pretty sure he would have just switched off Rimmer.

And in Me², Lister is pretty darn untroubled about switching off Rimmer2, who is just as valid a lifeform as Rimmer1. That’s not very respectful of him! I wouldn’t trust Series 1 Lister to save Tuvix, I’ll tell you that much.

Also… Lister’s personality degrades to resemble Rimmer’s in Balance of Power???

[Flap Jack]

He doesn’t?

I always just assumed Lister didn’t disable Rimmer without his consent because he respects Rimmer as a lifeform. 

He doesn’t! That’s the whole impetus of Balance of Power. Lister wasn’t trying to qualify as a chef just so Rimmer couldn’t generally boss him around. The fact that Rimmer wouldn’t consent to be switched off in favour of Kochanski was the key thing that pushed him into doing it. If he had succeeded, he was absolutely not going to turn around and say “actually I won’t switch you off after all because I respect your autonomy too much”, he was just going to do it, and count the promise that he would switch him back on as the respect.

[Flap Jack]

I like Bodysnatcher, but even if Me² wasn’t literally the replacement for it, it covers too much of the same ground so you couldn’t have both, and as Moonlight says, no way would I want to sacrifice Me².

Bodysnatcher does have some positives about it that Me² doesn’t replicate. I like the idea of it being about how Rimmer genuinely has competence that is useful to the crew, and Lister learning to appreciate that. However, this is more of a theoretical positive, because in context Lister switches Rimmer off due to him being an overtly villainous creep, not just because he was being his usual level of annoying – and the crucial info Lister gets from Rimmer in the end is really just something Holly should have been able to tell him.

Ultimately the 2 Rimmers was just a more compelling premise than the 2 Listers (plus it has the whole episode to be explored, instead of just the latter part of it). Lister should already have the self-awareness to know that living with a copy of yourself would be a disaster, especially accounting for the extra inequality of the copy not getting to have a body, and IIRC there wasn’t even a justification given for why Lister chose himself instead of literally anyone else. Rimmer though, he absolutely is deluded enough to think a copy of himself would be great company.

Funny how both episodes ignore the “Lister doesn’t have the authority to decide which hologram is enabled” detail, but at least Me² (as well as Confidence & Paranoia) has the implicit loophole of him never fully deactivating Rimmer. Maybe Holly allowed it in Bodysnatcher because of how fucked up Rimmer’s behaviour was? As a trade-off though, Bodysnatcher doesn’t break the “Red Dwarf can only sustain one hologram at a time” rule.

Also, I found it strange how Bodysnatcher went out of its way to set up that Lister loses his hair seemingly just so Holo-Lister is visually distinct from him, but in practice Holo-Lister would have had a massive ‘H’ on his forehead, so… why? It would have just made it even harder to film.

unless it directly referenced Bodysnatcher.

I don’t think any amount of acknowledgement would make up for the episodes being so similar and being in the same series. And it would be seriously weird if in Bodysnatcher Lister can switch off Rimmer without permission and actively chooses not to replace him with Kochanski, but then for the rest of the series he’s fighting to get permission to switch off Rimmer so he can temporarily replace him with Kochanski.

[Flap Jack]

#RedDwarf #Smegle

Bodyswap in one.
Try for yourself:

No way, I also got it in one! When I clicked the link there was no way of knowing beforehand that the correct answer was in fact Bodyswap, and so this was a genuine test of my Red Dwarf knowledge. Thank you for suggesting I try it myself so we could have a fair competition on this Casual Continuous. I’m glad that it’s now been proved that I’m just as good or better than you at this.

[Flap Jack]

“I’m sure you’ll come up with some Bland pseudonym. And the serial is so different now, it’s not like you’re Robin me. When you’re finishing up the editing of Da vid, don’t Ag onise over it, just give me a New name in the credits.”

[Flap Jack]

The War Games in Colour adds a whole new regeneration of Patrick Troughton into Jon Pertwee. In that context I find it hard to be upset by them including a musical nod to a popular fan theory/outright canonical fact (if you go by the novelisations). Like not even confirming it, just referencing it.

Even if you take it as a confirmation, it’s nowhere near as offensive to the character of The Master as getting James Dreyfus to play him.

[Flap Jack]

Just wait until you hear about Pizzak’Rapp.

[Flap Jack]

But the theme of “don’t believe the populists” is so clearly related to
what was happening at that time (and is still happening) that I can’t
personally just watch it as a bit of Red Dwarf escapism.

[Flap Jack]

Unfortunately this makes too much sense. He had the perfect opportunity
to do this, but decided to fuck with the very foundations of the show
and open up an enormous can of ridiculous worms for no fucking reason
(why does she have a police box, what was the point of Hartnell’s
character development, isn’t it all a MASSIVE coincidence, should you be
locked up, etc).

Honestly, while I oppose the Timeless Child twist on basic principle (The Doctor should not be inherently special among their own kind), I think it could have otherwise worked if they made it clear that whoever they were before was NOT The Doctor. They didn’t call themselves “Doctor”, they didn’t have a police box shaped TARDIS, they didn’t dress in quirky outfits, and most importantly they were not a hero. All those aspects of the character were forged in their new life as Hartnell and beyond, but the proto-Doctor was a ritually tortured and exploited alien refugee who was pushed into doing unspeakable things as a Division agent. Learning this is a fine motivation for an existential crisis on Thirteen’s part, but the self-doubt is kind of undermined if she’s already met her old self and found she was fundamentally the same sort of person as she is now. (Except now she tells people to shut up less.)

But I guess revealing that this other Time Lord is actually The Doctor in a previous life without using the name “Doctor” or a police box TARDIS as clues would have just been too hard.

Well he basically went and did this with Belinda anyway as well.

Kind of, yes, though the way I remember it is that reality was actively changed to make single mother Belinda a thing, not that it was this way all along but the true nature of things was being obscured.

In any case it’s a very different vibe because it’s replacing one normal situation with a different normal situation, not explaining away anything supernatural.

[Flap Jack]

I don’t think it really matters. It’s so obviously saying, “Don’t
believe the populists.” That would be fine if there was some interesting
spin or twist, but the good guy wins and the bad guy gets his
comeuppance. It’s not particularly interesting imo.

Oh no, it really, really matters. The 2016 election was a big rubicon crossing moment in politics; pretty much all political comedy prior to it treated the Trump candidacy as inherently a joke that was destined to fail, and watching any of it back after November 2016 was outright painful. If Doug had written an intentional commentary on the 2016 US Presidential election in late 2015, then it would have aged horribly by November 2017 when it ultimately aired, and then only aged even worse after that.

I remember as Series XII was coming out and the synopsis for Mechocracy was revealed, we were dreading it, but we were so relieved when it didn’t go for such specific commentary. Sure, in trade off we got an election episode that is pretty generic, but that actually works better for Red Dwarf because Lister and Rimmer’s politics originate hundreds of years in the future (or at least decades). It means I can watch a fun episode of Red Dwarf without being actively reminded of the world’s most unpleasant mass murdering paedophile.

Sure, “it’s better if good people win elections instead of bad people” isn’t saying much of anything politically, but it doesn’t need to be because the episode can just be an exploration of how the characters act when pushed into playing these games, and it can be about who they actually are instead of twisting them into being caricatures of current political figures.

[Flap Jack]

I forgive you.

https://www.ganymede.tv/2026/02/red-dwarf-titan-covered/#comment-111577

[Flap Jack]

I never bought into the omnirumour, but I did – and kind of still do – believe the rumour that Web of Fear Episode 3 was found along with the other episodes but was stolen before it could be recovered.

I bought into the theory that The Fugitive Doctor was between the 2nd and 3rd Doctors, and that Chibnall was effectively using her to canonise the old Season 6B theory (although I guess it would technically be Season 6C?). That theory honestly still makes way more sense than the strong implication that she was a pre-Hartnell Doctor.

For at least a brief time I thought they might reveal a level of unreality had been secretly at play in the RTD2 era, what with the overabundance of outright fantastical premises, fourth wall breaks, Ruby’s whole deal, “I made a jigsaw out of your history” and all that. Obviously those kind of theories were pure uncut wishful thinking from people who just thought that those being the surface level stories was shit, but given everything was so different from the way RTD did things before, it did seem somewhat plausible. Especially when the S15 finale was revealed to be called “Wish World / The Reality War”.

Of course, revealing that some or all of the events you’ve already seen never actually happened is almost always hack bullshit, so it’s not even bad that it turned out not to be true, but it does show how desperate folks became for coherence.

I also bought into the popular theory that because Susan appeared as a vision in The Interstellar Song Contest, that meant she would be coming back properly before the end of Series 15. What a fool I was!

[Flap Jack]

I’m pretty sure Jodie Whittaker says it the other way.

[Flap Jack]

Cartoons, a video game, a new special… it’s a fantastic era for Red Dwarf almost getting made but then not getting made. It’s a shame that Titan is about to ruin the trend.

[Flap Jack]

I think the joke is just that the Master is British. And even if he understood the expression, he’d be pedantic enough to pretend otherwise.

If the joke is that The Master is British, then it’s a really bad one, because the movie contains exactly 0 hints that The Master is British. In fact it’s a major piece of trivia that the execs fought hard to ensure that The Master definitely wasn’t British.

The way I see the joke is that The Master is an alien who is unfamiliar with human idioms, not that it’s a US/UK divide thing. It works on its own terms, it just doesn’t fit if you know about the history of the character.

[Flap Jack]

I think they were looking at it like the Master was well-spoken, and he had even corrected Grace on her grammar earlier, so modern wording would go over his head.

The Master not having heard the expression before is plausible, but he’s smart enough to know from context that obviously Lee is not asking to be killed. Maybe the idea is that he does know, and he’s just messing with Lee because he dislikes slang? But Roberts doesn’t play it that way. He plays it with genuine confusion.

Although modern Who has such Zany Masters that they make Roberts look fairly tame. He got the full load of hate in 1996 for being different, but man, I can’t imagine what it would have been like with Simms version.

Eric Roberts definitely paved the way for zanier Masters, though I’d say his particular brand of zany is still pretty unique. The New Who Masters get unhinged and over the top but they also demonstrate that they know how to self-restrain and blend in when it benefits them. The Eric Roberts Master is running a scheme that (in theory) needs him to act casual, but every indication is he has no clue how to do that. Every scene is like he’s following the prompt “without revealing it, make it seem like you’re a space slug who has never been to Earth before and is assuming human form for the very first time”.

So, I actually can imagine what the John Simm version would be like in this story. He would have been genuinely convincing when trying to find The Doctor as Bruce, and believably sympathetic when bringing Chang Lee onto his side, but when close to victory he would have let the persona slip and started dancing around and laughing maniacally and such. He would have been a more threatening villain, but less funny because he’d no longer be constantly encountering people who are just shrugging off how openly weird and suspicious he’s being.

[Flap Jack]

[Flap Jack]

Gave the TVM a watch last night. Still thankfully a lot of fun, and it looks fantastic in 4K. I honestly don’t mind that Eric Roberts is playing The Master and how aggressively he’s chewing the scenery, but it is weird how one of The Master’s major skills is blending in to achieve his goals via subterfuge and manipulation, yet here he goes around looking and sounding as openly evil as possible, and doesn’t seem to understand human/American customs or idioms a lot of the time. Like at one point Lee says “You kill me!” and he responds with “You… want me to kill you?” as if he’s a robot who has never encountered a metaphor before. It’s cool if he wants to ham it up for fun or because his current situation has made him emotionally volatile, but he should at least retain his general intelligence and experience.

I do have to admire Jacobs’/Segal’s/Sax’s commitment to cramming in so many superfluous continuity references. There’s a bit where Eight is having verbal lore diarrhoea about being a Time Lord in front of Grace, and I was just thinking “They’re alienating so many viewers in this moment in order to achieve basically nothing, I love it”. Fuck you RTD, with your sensible easing the viewer in and telling everything from the point of view of a relatable human character, we’re frontloading this bad boy with The Master, Daleks, Skaro, Time Lords, Gallifrey, the TARDIS and regeneration.

Obviously it’s easier to appreciate this movie for what it is now that it’s no longer burdened with being either the grand finale of the show or the start of a reboot, but it is funny to hear about some of the things 90s Whovians were upset about. Oh no, the Doctor described the chameleon circuit as a “cloaking device”! How could he???

Also, did anyone else find it odd how after a certain point Grace stopped questioning what was going on or asserting herself and sort of slipped in to “default Dr Who assistant mode”. Suddenly it’s all “Yes, Doctor”, “What now, Doctor?”, “Here’s this thing you asked for, Doctor”. Come on, 90s feminism, you can do better than this. It’s not 100% but she does become fully passive for quite a few scenes.

[Flap Jack]

[Flap Jack]

Don’t think this actually invalidates the theory though. An eject button will eject if pressed regardless of the user’s agility. If anything how well Rimmer recovers confirms it.

It does if you count “knowing which button is the eject button” as one of Ace Rimmer’s skills.

[Flap Jack]

When Ace programmed Rimmer to look like him, it’s possible that he also copied his entire skillset over. And Rimmer just had to build up courage before he could properly access it. All of Ace’s training for Rimmer seemed to involve becoming confident rather than anything practical.

Given Rimmer’s ejection seat snafu at the end of the episode, it feels like a no on that.

But even if Rimmer did inherit Ace’s skills digitally, it’s never mentioned, so neither Rimmer or Lister know about it, and go ahead with the plan for Rimmer to become Ace thinking that he doesn’t have the practical skills to pull it off. So this theory would explain why Rimmer doesn’t just get killed off screen, but it wouldn’t explain why Lister and eventually Rimmer think it would actually work. Actually if Ace had said to Rimmer “you now have all my skills” that would have helped a lot with the confidence side of things!

This does draw attention to the good episode/bad episode fan theory dichotomy. If an episode I like has elements that don’t make sense, I’m eager to come up with theories that explain away those things. But if it’s an episode I dislike, I instinctively just go “yeah the episode doesn’t make sense because it sucks and it sucks because it doesn’t make sense, who cares”.

[Flap Jack]

Biggest part of being Ace is believing you’re Ace, and Lister facilitated that. Doesn’t really matter if it’s a lie, it all is.

No, I’d say that Ace Rimmer is meant to be legitimately skilled and not just confident/deluded. But given how massive the light bee graveyard is, maybe a vast majority of Ace Rimmers are actually total incompetents who arrogantly run into their first mission and get double-killed immediately.

Actually the expected skill level is another way that SMaC undermines itself. If it had stuck to the Dimension Jump characterisation of Ace as just being an expert and courageous pilot and explorer, that would have at least been a more plausible gap for Rimmer Prime to close. But instead Doug decided to reinvent Ace as this interdimensional superhero figure who has ‘saving random people across the multiverse’ as an active responsibility. That’s stupid enough just in concept, but the idea of our Rimmer both willingly doing that and working out how to do it on the hoof is totally unbelievable. Rimmer could genuinely have become a great pilot without realising it just through years of going on Starbug jaunts, and he just needed Lister to point this out to him and give him the confidence to go that extra step. But no way in hell is Rimmer doing James Bond shit.

[Flap Jack]

Despite Stoke Me a Clipper being one of the better episodes in VII, I don’t think having an Ace episode was a great way to get rid of Rimmer.

And there was me, putting it in my bottom 2 Series VII episodes, with the joint lowest score to boot, largely because of how bad I thought it was as a send off for Rimmer. I do feel like “he becomes an Ace” was a good idea for an eventual endpoint for Rimmer, but it just doesn’t work when done so suddenly. In Stoke he doesn’t really complete that journey, he’s just emotionally manipulated by Lister into pretending he has so he can fuck off as soon as possible.

[Flap Jack]

Thank you so much!

You’re welcome!

The GIF is looking pretty darn good. Although I do find that whenever a Doctor face gets added to a title sequence that didn’t originally have one, it never quite looks like it’s meant to be there. (To be fair though the official Season 18 one also kind of has that problem.)

[Flap Jack]

I’ve been waiting for someone to upload the clean title sequence to
YouTube cause I don’t have the means to do it myself. Want to make a
more conventional McGann title sequence using the footage.

Ah ha, when I read this I really thought “Damn, I would do it, but I only have a Blu-ray drive for PC, not a 4K UHD one. :-(“.

Then 2 hours later my second brain cell woke up, and reminded me that the clean title sequence is a special feature, and therefore on the special features disc.

TV Movie Titles | Dropbox

[Flap Jack]

So I picked up the hot new release of the week, and decided to grab The Sea Devils – 2025 Edition while I was at it! For some reason they threw in an obscure Sea Devils spin-off as an extra, but I guess that’s fine.

Only disappointment before actually watching TVM is that the standard 4K release doesn’t include a regular Blu-ray version. Like of course I know I don’t need it, but virtually every other 4K movie I own includes Blu-ray versions too. It feels weird for it not to be there, and the steelbook version includes it.

[Flap Jack]

Yes, it’s a shame that none of the actors from Red Dwarf have ever appeared in Doctor Who, especially not enough of them to warrant a whole G&T feature about it, written by Ian Symes (of Symes’ Law fame) and published in November 2024. That would have been cool.

[Flap Jack]

– “You can’t whack death on the head” Was Doug thinking of this with Only the Good’s ending? Probably not.

If he was, then he was only half-remembering it. Or it was initially going to be more of a direct callback but he decided that kneeing death in the balls was funnier.

– In fact, I’ve never thought about this but at what point in the show does Rimmer gain control over himself?

I don’t know if he gains more direct control (other than in Series VI onwards obviously) so much as he stops changing his appearance in the middle of scenes. I do assume that it is possible to tweak the hologram simulation from regular computer terminals as an alternative to asking Holly though.

Better question is why doesn’t Holly just switch him off in either Bodyswap or Meltdown, when she was still able to do so at the end of Meltdown?

Meltdown has always been a quandary, but in Bodyswap she doesn’t have much opportunity. Most of the times she would have been justified in switching Rimmer off, his mind was in Lister’s body, so she couldn’t do it. The one time she should and hypothetically could have done it is when Rimmer and Kryten nonconsensually mindswap Lister while he’s asleep, but in that case I assume Holly just wasn’t actively monitoring what was going on. After all, in Thanks for the Memory he literally says he needs to sleep.

[Flap Jack]

If you ignore the visuals…

[Author]

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