Flap Jack

[Flap Jack]

When I was 11 or 12, I remember hearing the news that Rimmer was being “killed off” in Red Dwarf and I was devastated.

Wow, news about “The End” sure did spread fast.

[Flap Jack]

The VIII episode was absolutely dire, almost unwatchable shite with next to no plot, just the cast sat around talking utter nonsense and making the odd really broad joke.

So it was faithful to the quality and style of Series VIII, but with a better story?

[Flap Jack]

The negative/mixed reaction to that scene is I think more about it making you go “Wait, is this offensive/about to get offensive?” rather than making you go “Hey, this is offensive!”.

The “sex change” terminology and the false equivalency drawn between gaining the ability to give birth and “becoming a woman” are both really old fashioned, surface-level-understanding-of-biology things to say, the kind of things that encompass a TERF’s entire view of gender. So it might well put you on edge that the episode is about to get overtly transphobic, even though it ultimately doesn’t. (Particularly if you remember the “Kryten has no penis, therefore is a woman” nonsesne from Series VIII.)

Also, every time someone brings up this scene I’m reminded how weird it is for Kryten to suggest that Cat needs to become a woman to give birth when Lister has already given birth as a man in canon.

[Flap Jack]

I want a Red Dwarf novel set entirely in the Mr. Rat universe.

[Flap Jack]

I’d like to see Snacky brought into focus in the same way Talkie Toaster was in Better Than Life.

Then I’d like to see them find Kochanski, and for her and Snacky to fuse into one gestalt entity called Kosnackski.

#Justice4Snacky #BringBackSnacky #HeyDougWhereTheFuckIsSnacky

[Flap Jack]

Wow, I wasn’t expecting a new search option to be added that quickly! Nice. <3

[Flap Jack]

So many times I’ve visited a forum just out of a general interest in a topic, and all I want to do is have a look at the most recent discussions overall, but the only option is to check every thread category one by one, and I decide I can’t be bothered. This way is better.

You could argue that you can provide for both needs by having an ‘All’ option in addition to the multiple sections, but it’s still dubious whether it’s wanted enough to be worth the development effort and the potential extra clicks (given that G&T is a forum only secondarily). I’m not even sure what the sections for G&T would be. “Red Dwarf” and “Not Red Dwarf” probably. Plus “Archive”, unless someone wants to volunteer to manually categorise nearly 3,500 threads.

Ganymede & Titan is the only forum I actually post to, and that’s because… well, it’s because it’s blatantly the most active Red Dwarf forum and it’s both run by and frequented by lots of cool people. But also, because it’s simple and intuitive to use. Lots of forums have a bit more of an intimdidating, secret society vibe about them (though admittedly that is often due to the attitude of established users more than the web design).

Having said that, I wouldn’t say no to some sorting and/or filtering options on the forum page.

[Flap Jack]

Rimmer returning from the mirror universe in Only The Good… was genuinely pretty well done drama for me. The ship being completely on fire, the antidote formula being destroyed, Rimmer being approached by Death. It all worked to evoke that feeling of “oh, shit just got serious!” which is pretty rare in the show.

The drama was undermined by the goofs of the “Only the good die young!” groin kick (which I did kind of enjoy, not gonna lie) and “The Smeg It Is”, which means it pales in comparison to Out of Time, but still.

[Flap Jack]

In the “See you in ten minutes?” scene, why does Lister keep zapping Hollister with the time wand? Why does he even do it once?

Even when first watching Pete Part 2 as a teenager who was completely uncritical about Red Dwarf, this completely baffled me.

[Flap Jack]

I feel bad, because I know there were good gags in series VIII, but if you ask me to recall series VIII moments, the bad stuff just all comes flooding in and makes it difficult to remember the good.

I liked most of Kill Crazy’s lines (not the ones where he’s being a pervert in Krytie TV).

I liked Cassandra’s facial expression as Lister’s accidentally setting off the chain reaction that kills her. Just that look of tired contempt.

I liked all of the principal cast having to casually repeat the name of the chameleonic microbe antidote one after another in that deleted scene, specifically because it was deleted.

[Flap Jack]

The Blue Midget dance probably wouldn’t even crack my top ten worst parts of the episode it’s in, let alone the whole series. The music is actually kind of catchy, honestly.

Obviously it shouldn’t have happened, but I’ve never got why it stood out as being particularly bad.

[Flap Jack]

ONLY THE GOOD DOUGHNUTS…

Red Dwarf picks up an escape pod from the SS Hermes, which was destroyed by highly destructive microbes. The pod’s sole occupant, Talia Garrett, seems to know Captain Hollister.

“… Dennis? The doughnut boy?!”

Hollister, looking suddenly very pale, declares Garrett delusional and orders her to be thrown in The Tank.

Flashback to 3 million years ago. Dennis Krytimmer is a simple doughnut deliveryperson on the Hermes – the flagship of the Neptune Mining Conglomerate. An orphan who worked tirelessly his whole life just to get any paying gig on an intergalactic vessel, Dennis dreams of becoming the Captain of his own ship.

One day, Dennis is called upon to deliver doughnuts to the Captain’s table. Finally, the opportunity to plead his case to the upper brass, and maybe get the opportunity to become an officer! He does the delivery, and Captain Garrett personally calls over Dennis to compliment him on the spread of the icing and the consistency of the jam. Seizing his chance, Dennis enthuses about his ambitions to her.

“I’ve wanted to be an officer as long as I can remember, m’am! I’d do anything to achieve that dream!”

The Captain exchanges a few glances with her officers.

“Anything, you say?”

It’s not long before Dennis is being trained in corporate espionage, and given a new cover identity: Frank Hollister. He is to be sent in as a low level officer recruit for competing outfit, the Jupiter Mining Corporation, aboard the ship that was the most desperate for personnel – the Red Dwarf.

As time passes Dennis settles into his new life as Hollister on Red Dwarf, regularly using his new spy skills to acquire any confidential company info that the NMC might use for competitive advantage and sending it back to the Hermes, as well as using a lot of the juicier info to schmooze his way up the ranks.

Eventually Hollister is Captain of the whole ship, and Dennis has been achieving his mission of undermining the JMC for many years, but then he receives a new directive from Garrett: to unleash a bio-weapon on Red Dwarf when it’s about to land back on Earth, thus destroying the ship, causing a devastating crash on the Earth’s surface, and ultimately destroying the JMC, so that the NMC can become a true monopoly.

Having become very attached to his new life and his new crew, Hollister does not deploy the chameleonic microbes that were sent to him, and even does multiple trips to and from Earth without incident.

All is fine until one day Hollister is called to the Drive Room, by Officer Frank Todhunter.

Hollister arrives, and Todhunter is standing there, holding the chameleonic microbe solution, and pointing a gun straight at him.

“So you did get your orders after all… Dennis. What’s the matter? Lost your nerve? Enjoying playing the boss? It’s a good thing they sent me to keep an eye on you. A stupid doughnut boy was never going to have the courage to do what has to be done.”

Todhunter moves to pour the microbe solution into the engine, but Hollister uses his momentary distraction to pull his own gun and shoot him dead. The microbe solution bottle was still sealed in the end, but the shot Hollister fired had majorly damaged the drive plate after going through Todhunter.

Not wanting to risk the engineers finding out what happened, Hollister calls down some low-level sycophantic technician to repair the drive plate, while he disposes of the body.

Back in the present, Talia has been put in the same cell as parallel-Kochanski, whom she immediately spills the beans to. She tells her that Hollister is actually Dennis the Doughnut Boy, that he designed the chameleonic microbes in order to destroy the Hermes, and that he murdered her good friend, Jerry Dotruthen, in cold blood. Word of this spreads quickly throughout the prison, and soon the rage from the prisoners against Hollister is so strong that they successfully organise a break-out, and manage to get the wardens and officers on board for a mutiny.

Overpowered, Hollister is tied up in his office alone, while every other crewmember abandons ship and the microbes tear apart Red Dwarf. Frank shares one last conversation with Holly before systems start shutting down and all around him is in flames.

Death approaches him, but Hollister kicks Death right in the groin.

“Only the good donuts fry!” he says, before burning to death off-screen.

THE END?

YEAH, PRETTY MUCH.

[Flap Jack]

The issue with “Dennis the doughnut boy” is that it’s a huge reveal that changes our understanding of the character of Hollister, but it’s also just a quick throwaway gag, and a pretty cheap one at that.

It’s all costs and benefits, ultimately. If you’re paying the cost of a major reveal about Hollister that recontextualises all of his previous appearances, then you need an equally weighted benefit – either this doughnut boy thing is setting up a significant and good story for Hollister that actually acknowledges it or it’s one of the most side-splittingly funny lines ever. It’s neither.

Also it doesn’t help that it doesn’t make much sense for Hollister to randomly confess this in a vlog. I guess we’re meant to assume that the vlog doesn’t actually exist and is purely a narrative device / in his mind.

But of course it happens in the same story that has magical robots resurrecting people who died in ancient history and the main cast being put on trial in their dreams, so I guess it’s not too unbelievable.

[Flap Jack]

If you can headcanon to fill in gaps, and canon can undo or contradict itself, can you also undo actual canon with headcanon?

The answer: not under normal circumstances, but if you have a powerful enough head, anything is possible.

[Flap Jack]

Considering all the spamming, I was surprised to find an actual Red Dwarf forum behind that link (quasi-endorsed by TOS, even) and not just an automatic ransomware download.

At some point this extremely try-hard all-agression, no-detail attempt to promote a Red Dwarf forum on a competing (and much better) Red Dwarf forum might have been good for a laugh, but right now it’s just sad.

[Flap Jack]

Red Dwarf Series VIII fails on so many levels.

[Flap Jack]

We need to just accept that “TV show” as a term is now broad enough to include programming that is not necesarily carried on a television signal or watched on a television set, just as films don’t need to be shot on film, video doesn’t need to be on a videotape, and comics aren’t necessarily funny.

[Flap Jack]

I’m too lazy to think about this fresh. I’ll just look up my Pearl Poll submission and assume my opinion is broadly unchanged.

So, the worst episode of Red Dwarf series 3-5 is… White Hole! Yeah, OK, why not. Still the 38th best episode of all time (not taking The Promised Land into account) so nothing to be ashamed of.

Compare the actual Pearl Poll result, in which Camille is the worst episode of series 3-5, but at the higher position of 30th.

And of course, anyone suggesting The Last Day – the no. 1 episode of the show as a whole – is just objectively wrong. Might as well suggest Back to Reality.

[Flap Jack]

Wow, I can understand cropping to widescreen for clips in a documentary to some extent, but doing this just for general repeats? Appalling.

Folks pushed for so long just to get them to stop showing Marooned Remastered. Now it feels like a waste of effort, if they’re just going to do this to all BBC-era episodes anyway.

It’s frustrating to argue against, because the demographic that will actively complain about this are mostly the ones who have the DVDs/Blu rays on their shelves so don’t exactly need to watch Dave, and the casual viewers will just assume that it always looked like shit.

[Flap Jack]

Ah, should have known to check there. So Universal only have the film for the parts that didn’t actually end up in the movie. Helpful.

And the finished master is on Digital Betacam, but it didn’t even get a betamax release? What a waste.

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, I don’t know where to get concrete information about the archive situation for the TV movie, unfortunately. All I know, I learned from a Blu-ray Dot Com forum thread about the announcement and then release of the Blu-ray version.

The upshot was that folks were not happy that the Blu-ray was just an HD upconversion, and there was much speculation about whether it was lack of the original film reels that was preventing a “true” HD release or just the lack of a Star Trek: The Next Generation-sized budget.

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, introducing the audience to The Doctor, The Master, the Daleks, the TARDIS and regeneration in the first ten minutes probably wasn’t the best idea. Plus the narration by a different Doctor than the one that’s on screen, which is pretty confusing.

I have a lot of respect for how determined Segal was to get the TV movie made, and how he stuck firm on certain things like casting Paul McGann, keeping it an explicit continuation etc., even if the end result was a mess and he tried flying before he could walk with regards to reinventing The Doctor’s family history. Philip Segal is like the non-dickhead version of Ian Levine.

And clearly people still have a lot of fondness for the TV movie, if Big Finish are getting Eric Roberts back for ‘Masterful’.

Swinging back to the actual topic, the TV movie is in 4:3. Even though it was shot on film in the mid 90s, obviously it was edited on video for TV screens of the time. I guess theoretically a wide-screen version could be made, if the original masters (lower case m) still exist and they want to pay for the film to be re-edited from scratch and for visual effects to be recreated.

Then again, that could lead to a Buffy effect where you ruin the composition of shots and see crew members and filming equipment at the edges of the screen. Maybe they could compromise and do a true HD version, but still in 4:3.

[Flap Jack]

I’d wager that Doctor Who had a relatively high budget in 2005, for a BBC drama series. The budget may have gone up a bit during the RTD era due to its massive success, but I definitely recall Moffat saying that the budget was being squeezed and shrunk throughout his tenure. Blame the Tories for that one.

Ultimately “how good does the show look” and “how high is the show’s budget” are not directly proportional, because it depends on how the budget is allocated and how the costs of those visuals change over time. It’s plain to see that Doctor Who has a lower budget now than in 2005, because back then they were producing 14 episodes every year, and now they’re producing 11 episodes every 18 months. Making more episodes is far more expensive than making fewer episodes but prettier.

Also, Series 1 looks good to me! Just make sure you watch it in crisp 576/25i SD, as God intended. Not any of this newfangled, slowed down upconverted HD nonsense.

[Flap Jack]

SITEDOWN

After failing to access the extremely popular and beloved fansite Ganymede & Titan, Lister tries to visit Planet Smeg instead, but finds that he does not have permission to access the resource. He then tells the rest of the crew that the website was up, but that sadly a skutter escaped from G.A.G. and killed Katerina. Nobody doubts the truth of this, or wonders why Lister is currently wearing a skutter costume and holding a gun with “Kill Katerina (Pretend)” written on it.

[Flap Jack]

The reason they immediately cut away after Lister says that an escaped AR knight killed Rimmer is because what followed was a full hour of confusion and arguing, where Kryten keeps coming up with reasons that it makes no sense but Lister just keeps digging his heels in, and Kryten will occasionally demand that “Ace” gives his opinion and he’ll just sort of uneasily and half-heartedly agree with Lister.

[Flap Jack]

A knight escaping from the AR machine isn’t even less believable than the existence of the cat race.

The part of Lister’s lie that is so incredible isn’t the knight escaping from AR (maybe it totally is possible and Kryten knows this, but it just didn’t happen on this occasion), but the knight being able to kill Rimmer. Unless this simulation of a medieval knight was carrying around an EMP grenade, he isn’t going to harm a being of pure light by running at him with a lance or whatever.

[Flap Jack]

To be fair that might be the premise of Series 11 and 12 but we all know how I feel about that shit. Please refer to the Doctor’s “because it’s kind” speech at the end of Series 10 for what I think the show is really about. The Doctor started off as a mischievous old man who ran away from home because he was bored, but slowly turned into something closer to a hero archetype, although he’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. “I’m the Doctor and I save people.”

The Doctor always saves people whenever she can, yes, but none of the Doctors saw themselves as a hero by profession. Just think of how many times he referred to himself as “a traveller” or “just passing through” etc. The character development you’re talking about is him choosing to prioritise saving people whenever the situation arises, not him making the search for heroic opportunities his life’s only goal. As has been said, The Doctor doesn’t need to look for trouble, it finds her.

There were occasions where The Doctor would boast about taking personal responsibility for the security of Earth, like in The Christmas Invasion or The Eleventh Hour, but this never reflected in his actual MO. The closest the show ever got to being like that was in the Pertwee era when he stayed on Earth and worked for UNIT, but that’s because he was pretty much forced to.

Anyway, maybe the Ace Rimmer/Doctor comparison is apt regardless. Despite the massive differences in motivation, like Ace in Stoke, The Doctor has no specific jurisdiction and no actual pending quests that need seeing to, so it would be equally dumb if she sought to pass on the mantle of “The Doctor” before she died, and it be so crucial that her successor leave in the TARDIS in under a week that the successor needs to participate in faked death hijinks.

[Flap Jack]

You refuted your own point about lying being immoral within seconds of making it, with reference to the show we’re currently discussing. So I don’t need to say anything, here, really.

… I did? No idea how. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t reference Red Dwarf making the case that lying is inherently morally neutral, because it’s never done that.

Also by your following logic, Doctor Who should just retire because all problems are hypothetical really

Ben you’re just joshing me now, because I know you’re aware that the premise of Doctor Who is that Ms Who travels around time and space for the primary purpose of fun, but helps stop alien invasions and such if she encounters them. She isn’t a Green Lantern. She wouldn’t be settled down in Devon if not for her sworn duty as an intergalactic agent of justice.

But that’s beside the point, which is that being a guy who just roams around space hoping to randomly find people who need saving is all well and good, but if Red Dwarf wants to convince me that “guy who just roams around space hoping to randomly find people who need saving” is a vital position that absolutely needs filling urgently, then there really needs to be something actually tangible at risk. We were losing a principal character to the Ace Rimmer cause; I don’t think it’s too much to ask for Ace to have one or more specific missions to complete.

[Flap Jack]

If Kryten and Cat took it badly he could just tell them the truth either then, or later. His lying being immoral hinges on their reaction to it and how he deals with that reaction

I mean… if they take it badly then it’s too late, isn’t it? Obviously coming clean at that point is not as harmful as continuing the lie, but coming clean doesn’t magically undo the harm he already unnecessarily caused.

Also this logic ignores the fact that lies are still immoral even if the lie is comforting and the truth is upsetting, at least as a general rule.

the act of lying is not in itself immoral.

Ummmmmmmmmmm????

OK, I know that the Ganymede & Titan forums is not the best place to get into a philosophical debate, but I’m pretty sure people generally agree that lying is in itself immoral, because lying to someone – even for a non-selfish reason – is unavoidably an act of disrespect or condescension. That’s why when characters in stories tell a “noble lie” (hmm, wonder if any Red Dwarf episodes discussed this topic) there has to be a major quantifiable benefit to the lie to out-balance the inherent immorality of deception, not just an absence of direct, immediate harm.

Of course, that weighing up of benefits to a lie is in play in Stoke Me A Clipper, I just find the calculation completely at odds with what Lister decides.

Because (A) Lister doesn’t know that Rimmer has to be manipulated like this to make him become Ace; the previous Ace only just passed, give him a chance, jeez, (B) there’s no real stakes to Rimmer not becoming Ace, because the problems Ace solves are hypothetical “someone out there will always need a hero… somewhere” problems; there’s no guarantee that Rimmer saved or even encountered a single person after he left, and (C) even if there being an Ace is absolutely crucial for the multiverse and it’s impossible to convince Rimmer to go without this ridiculous faked death farce… why does it have to be Rimmer? There were millions of Ace Rimmers beforehand, but so what? Just become Ace Lister if this is really such a priority for you, Dave, nothing’s stopping you. Or you could push your crewmate who is worse at flying, worse at fighting, more cowardly, less charismatic and generally worse at heroism than you into the firing line after receiving little to no training, sure. What a true friend of Rimmer’s you’ve grown to be.

[Flap Jack]

Flap Jack, it’s an interesting reading but I don’t see it that way. There’s no real indication that ‘losing’ Rimmer has hurt Cat and Kryten in any way. If there was, that would be different, and it’s what distinguishes the Kryten/Kochanski lie – the fact that it causes so much pain to Lister.

I think Kryten and Cat ultimately being chill about it makes Lister keeping the lie going not as bad as Kryten keeping up his lie about Kochanski, but it doesn’t excuse lying in the first place, because he has no reason to expect that Rimmer dying wouldn’t hurt them.

After all, if he, Lister, is experiencing empathy towards Rimmer in the episode and sadness at the prospect of him leaving, then he should expect that Kryten and Cat might feel something too if he not only left but died, right? Lister would be pretty pissed off if the shoe was on the other foot and he found out, even if it was about Rimmer instead of Kochanski.

This also touches on a particular thing that’s off-putting about the writing of the scenario: it feels like the only reason Cat and Kryten ultimately aren’t that affected by Rimmer’s supposed death is because Lister and the audience know that he’s fine. And for the rest of the series they treat his memory as if they all know that he’s just gone, not dead.

Like, if Doug actually did an episode where Rimmer for real double-died, you know that Kryten and Cat would be a bit more profoundly affected by it (compare the moment where Rimmer was thought dead at the end of The Promised Land for a taste), which makes their reactions in Stoke ring so false. That’s actually why I thought them being aware of the lie was a possibility.

[Flap Jack]

I appreciate the diplomatic response, Ben. XD

I may not have realised how controversial a take “telling people that one of their only companions is dead when they actually aren’t is bad” was.

Thinking about it, Kryten did the same thing in Backstory to Earth, didn’t he? Do people feel that Kryten was in the wrong there just because Kochanski was liked (or because she wasn’t a hologram), or do they think his lie was morally justifiable too?

In any case it was a missed opportunity to not have Kryten snap back to Lister when the lie was revealed: “oh, pretty rich for you, sir, of all people to be angry at me for pretending that a crewmember is dead when they just chose to leave, Mr. ‘ooh, it’s the knight from the AR machine, he’s killed Rimmer’… prick.”

[Flap Jack]

Can you expand on this? I’ve always seen it as part of Lister giving Rimmer the push he needs to become a better version of himself, and so the opposite of immoral and cruel.

Sure. The reason is that he’s being emotionally manipulative of Rimmer (not necessarily cruel, but not good either) and he’s being cruel towards Cat and Kryten. Now, obviously Cat and Kryten never really liked Rimmer per se, but it’s just been the 4 of them for the past 4/6 years alone in deep space, and Lister just unilaterally decided it was OK to lie to them and put them through the trauma and grief that comes with personal loss, while also denying them the chance to say an actual, honest, regular two-way goodbye to Rimmer as he goes off to become Ace… and for what? Because he knows that Rimmer is a socially awkward but confident-acting character in a sitcom and will therefore choose to embrace a life of danger just to avoid fessing up to a lie? It’s fucked up. If Rimmer is destined to inherit the mantle of Ace and has it within him to live up to it, then he shouldn’t need to be manipulated into doing it like that, and if it turns out he isn’t and doesn’t then it’s especially bad to manipulate him into doing it like that.

And to be clear, I don’t think Lister was wrong for encouraging Rimmer to choose a heroic life and speaking earnestly with him about it, and the gambit where he pretends to be the VR knight is fine, but the Ace/Rimmer death identity switcheroo is seriously crossing the line.

It is arguable that Kryten and Cat know what’s up and are just playing along with the sham second funeral and such to help Lister push Rimmer into becoming Ace, but them collectively lying to Rimmer to manipulate him is just fucked up in a different way, it’s not that much better.

[Flap Jack]

It’s a top 5 Red Dwarf episode of all time so if it’s shit then this show must be gutter trash

A Top 5 episode of Series VII, maybe.

To be fair, I was exaggerating… a little. Stoke has some good bits, but the absurd spike in importance of Arnold Rimmer to the universe and the extremely rushed character development of Rimmer embracing his apparent destiny as a professional hero is a misunderstanding of his character so extreme that if I didn’t know better I’d assume that Stoke Me A Clipper was written without the involvement or even the consent of Doug Naylor. It even does Lister dirty too, with his faking of Rimmer’s (second) death being as immoral and cruel as it is pointless. The episode tries to paper over its own cracks with good performances and fanservicey/heartfelt moments, but it just doesn’t work for me.

I do get why the redeeming qualities make it an episode people are broadly fond of for sure, though (e.g. the opening Ace action sequence IS awesome).

[Flap Jack]

Everyone’s avoiding the most obvious answer to why Ace Rimmer is a role that must be infinitely passed on to other versions of Rimmer, and why Ace is not just a charismatically charming adventurer with heroic leanings but a Superman-level hero so major that the entire multiverse actively depends on his continued service, and why every version of Rimmer inexplicably fits into this role despite Dimension Jump’s central point being that even a slight change to someone’s path in life can and will massively change how they end up as a person:

Stoke Me A Clipper is shit.

[Flap Jack]

POLYMORPH

Lister easily kills the polymorph while it’s in the form of a sausage, because it’s in the form of a sausage.

[Flap Jack]

OUROBOROS

Lister rescues Kochanski from falling endlessly in the infinite void between universes by shooting a harpoon through her leg. She dies nearly immediately from a combination of whiplash, shock and blood loss. Lister then disappears Back to the Future style.

EPIDEME

Epideme infects Cat and Kochanski as well as Lister – because it’s a more realistic virus that is capable of reproducing itself and transmitting itself through the air – and all 3 of them die.

[Flap Jack]

Can’t believe we both did The Last Day at virtually the same time. Great minds, eh.

[Flap Jack]

KRYTEN

No distress call is received from the Nova 5, because Kryten was forcibly retired by Hudzen millions of years ago, and Hudzen was advanced enough to realise the crew were dead and so voluntarily shut himself down.

BACKWARDS

They arrive in the backwards universe, but have no corporeal presence because them changing the outcomes of events that have already happened is impossible.

BODYSWAP

Rimmer takes over Lister’s body, but Lister’s biological brain can’t be made digital (only copied) so it just remains dormant while Rimmer is in control. Lister is still aware of everything going on though, and is powerless to do anything as Rimmer overeats and overmasturbates.

THE LAST DAY

Red Dwarf receives a message telling them that their mechanoid is due for an upgrade, and that one will be shipped to them as soon as they sign a contract agreeing to pay DivaDroid 4,500 dollar-pounds a month plus a 30,000 DP down payment.

[Flap Jack]

Wow, only just realised I copied one of Katy’s original examples. It obviously made a deep impression on me. Sorry!

I’ll do another, tangential one to make up for it.

STOKE ME A CLIPPER

Ace, realising he’s dying (again), travels to meet the Dwarfers, so he can use Starbug’s hologram suite to make a backup of himself, and restore to a new light bee.

Then, as thanks for the assistance, Ace helps solve the missing Red Dwarf mystery early, forgoing the need to go through any of that other series 7 bullshit.

The events of Back in the Red still occur when Red Dwarf is recreated by the nanobots, but the presence of the 2 extra Rimmers convinces Hollister that they’re telling the truth, and the gang keep their freedom, forgoing the need to go through most of that other series 8 bullshit.

Ace then departs to continue his life of superheroics. However, due to the change in leadership Holo-Rimmer is switched off in favour of George McIntyre. The rest of the series is then about the fully resurrected crew trying to find purpose in their new lives 3 million years after their original deaths, and the cast’s new relationship with nano-Rimmer. This is also where Kochanski comes in I guess (the original, but still Chloe Annett, still retconned dating history), and she and Lister can have some sort of meaningful interaction or whatever.

Eventually Red Dwarf is attacked by the ship-destroying microbes from Only the Good…, and nano-Rimmer dies trying to save the day. Rimmer is again resurrected as a hologram, at which point it’s revealed that the last Rimmer backup was the one made by Ace when he was saving himself. New Ace then uses his extreme situationally convenient expertise to MacGuyver the antidote to the microbe, and saves the ship.

At that point, Ace becomes a principal part of the cast, and insists that Red Dwarf go on a voyage to rescue the scattered crew members and generally be a force for good in the universe.

3 weeks into this, the others get extremely tired of New Ace’s righteous personality, and revert him to the next most recent Rimmer backup, which was made after their encounter with Legion.

Then Back to Earth, and the events prior to it and after it, happen in more or less the same way they always did – except in Fathers & Suns, the racism is now the whole episode.

[Flap Jack]

CONFIDENCE & PARANOIA

Confidence inspires Lister to take the chef’s exam again, and he passes and gets promoted. Paranoia tries to convince Lister that bringing back Kochanski would only lead to him being rejected and humiliated, but he eventually does it anyway. Lister falls into Rimmer’s switched holo-disc trap, but threatens to turn off Rimmer entirely if he doesn’t tell him where Kochanski’s disc is, and promises to run Rimmer and Kochanski at the same time. Upon being brought back as a hologram, Kochanski is immediately creeped out by Lister’s romantic intentions and resents being brought into this situation. She switches Rimmer off in favour of a higher ranking engineer, quarantines Lister, and starts to run Red Dwarf like Queeg v0. Confidence and Paranoia form a temporary truce and scheme to overthrow Kochanski so that they can get to Lister again, but are taken out by Stabbim the Skutter in the attempt.

ME²

Both Rimmers refuse to be turned off, and there’s nothing to be done about it because Rimmer is the highest ranking crewmember on the ship. Lister isn’t surprised by this because it’s been his issue for most of the series.

BLUE

They just make another Rimmer hologram.

THE PROMISED LAND

They get Holly to restore his last backup immediately after they boot him up.

[Flap Jack]

In a way the Rimmer brother thing is the only real fumble in Back to Reality, but thinking about it, the only issue with it is the way other characters recognise it.

Because it isn’t really “oh, Rimmer’s worst nightmare: he can’t blame his failure on his parents, because his brother is more successful than him, unlike in reality”, it’s “not only does Rimmer have a more successful brother, but the brother is massively more successful than any of his real brothers and he is massively more of a failure than his real self, and the brother has the visage of LISTER, one of the few people in his life that he convinced himself he was superior to, literally the only person in his career that he outranks”.

The Despair Squid didn’t need to invent an entirely new depressing scenario for Rimmer, it just had to exaggerate his existing circumstances. It highlights how much Rimmer already hated himself.

[Flap Jack]

Wait, Arthur Mathews wrote the score for Red Dwarf: The Promised Land? Bit of a strange career move, but he did a good job.

Or maybe it isn’t so strange. After all, isn’t he writing a Father Ted musical? It was announced in 2018 and was being written in 2019 with… Graham Linehan.

Shit.

[Flap Jack]

Oh, wow, I never realised that was a thing. Can’t say I’m really expecting to easily find it on any streaming services.

[Flap Jack]

I disagree that police have been left out of the conversation, because, well, if they weren’t the dominant voice in the conversation then people wouldn’t need mass protests just to be heard.

I’ve probably let this get a bit too off-track from Life on Mars, though, so I’m sorry about that. I just wanted to share my own feeling of whiplash from hearing so much anti-police stuff in the news to hearing about a new cop show.

[Flap Jack]

I do get that there’s nuance in the conversation about police powers and crimes committed by the police against their own populations – and that the UK is different from the US due to the police generally not being armed and such – but I’m not sure what that infamous footage of a New York police union official going on an unhinged rant about protests is supposed to demonstrate? Other than American police unions acting like protection rackets, obviously.

And come on now, I just semi-seriously referenced a popular slogan that exists to emphasise that the problems with the police are institutional and systemic, and institutions/systems are controlled by people. Ain’t nothing “deterministic” about that.

[Flap Jack]

NODNOLYMORPH

Lister finds the scattered body parts of a dead monster on board the ship. In front of Lister’s eyes, these charred and bloody organs float into the air and reconstitute themselves to form a fully grown polymorph, which then resurrects and shoots an energy blast into the barrel of Lister’s bazookoid. The polymorph then escapes and starts to stalk the crewmembers, cornering them one by one and blowing their dominant personality traits into them.

[Flap Jack]

I guess we’ll just have to see. If they can make a TV show with police protaganists and also say “all cops are bastards though” I’ll be impressed for sure.

[Flap Jack]

I’m still ride-or-die for the “the future crew from Stasis Leak are the same future crew from Out of Time” theory. It just makes too much sense.

[Flap Jack]

It’s true, but the basic point is that 70s/80s police (or rather, 70s/80s cop shows) were the ones who had issues with brutality and corruption, while the modern police that Sam and Alex are a part of are much more fair, reasonable and accountable. So one could still make the argument that it glorifies policing as a profession.

On top of that, as each series progresses the main character warms up to the old Gene Hunt way of doing things – and Sam eventually rejects his actual life in favour of it – so it isn’t even telling the audience that it’s so wrong, really. They always get the bad guys, so ultimately the past police are still depicted as righteous and successful despite their flaws.

Of course, Life On Mars and Ashes to Ashes aren’t so problematic in the grand scheme of things. I’m not arguing that this new project should be stopped or anything. It’s just hard not to view things like this through a post-George Floyd lense when I hear about them.

[Flap Jack]

Don’t worry, Ben, I absolutely agree that canon is stupid. Or at least worrying about it is.

I suppose The Timeless Children does retcon the TV movie, but arguably every in-universe discussion/observance of The Doctor’s species in between retconned it first.

And of course everyone is free to headcanon whatever they like about it (if you’ve read The Writer’s Tale you’ll know that RTD came close to including an explicit headcanon in an actual episode!), but if you have both The Doctor and The Master say that he’s half-human independently of each other, then that’s assuredly the movie trying to convey an unambiguous fact. ;-)

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