Flap Jack

[Flap Jack]

Why would anyone even design a robot doctor that has four flashing buttons on its front, is a massive fucking blob, and has a flipper spinning on its head? They wouldn’t, that’s for sure, but it doesn’t stop the whole crew from thinking it’s him.

I mean, it was probably a bad idea for me to go down the “the robot designs should be totally logical” rabbit hole, but there’s quite a difference between building a robot doctor that looks like a chunky, generic robot from classic sci-fi and building a robot doctor based on the design brief “What if Freddy Krueger was a Sentinel?”.

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I guess at this point you might as well wait for the Blu-ray set just to see if it’s a better alternative.

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Why would anyone even design a robot doctor that looks and sounds so terrifying? 100% Asclepius is a haunted house attraction that got infected with a violence virus, killed the real Asclepius and then assumed his identity.

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Maybe Asclepius was going to transplant a kidney from Cat to Lister.

Maybe he was going to transplant the kidneys which were out in the open to Lister.

Maybe he was going to transplant Cat’s lungs into Lister’s arse and then transplant Lister’s legs onto Cat’s face.

The episode doesn’t tell us. It just shows Asclepius getting up to some ambiguously dodgy business.

[Flap Jack]

I suppose it’s inevitable that an ‘Unpopular Opinion’ thread would ultimately lead to “Timewave is good, actually.” but… sorry, I… seriously though?

Really we could close the thread at this point, but I would like to at least see if anyone’s going to come out as a fan of Pete Part 2.

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If him having a pair of kidneys is enough evidence that he was a good guy just trying to help, why did he take The Cat? The Cat didn’t need a kidney, nor was he missing any afterwards (and if Asclepius were doing a Cat-to-Lister transplant, he would have only taken one kidney anyway).

But, yeah, fair distinction as far as Queeg is concerned. If there was proper indication in the episode that Asclepius was a goodie all along, I’d agree with you, but ultimately all that’s revealed was that he hadn’t yet mutilated Lister when Rimmer and Kryten arrive.

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£40 isn’t too expensive to justify a purchase of 3 series of Red Dwarf with a heap of great extras (even if the episodes themselves are the worse versions), but it’s still very expensive. The Bodysnatcher Collection came out over 10 years ago, and I’ve no idea what it’s original RRP was, but getting a used copy now has got to be as expensive now as a new copy was in November 2007, after you could get it for less than £15 new in 2011. That’s… not good.

Also, you can get the individual Series 1-3 DVDs (which have the definitive versions of the episodes, with just as many – though different – extras) for just £2.50 collectively from CeX. You could literally buy Series 1, 2 and 3 almost 17 times for the price of 1 Bodysnatcher Collection!

So sure, there’s obviously pricier RD merch out there, but Bodysnatcher is definitely up there as far as DVDs go.

[Flap Jack]

Oh, whether the show is now too silly in general is another matter entirely. I just can’t anally quantity that.

I will say that the Dave era isn’t entirely free of serious stories or moments. Back to Earth, Fathers & Suns, The Beginning, Krysis and M-Corp all have dramatic elements to them.

I’m still not sure how Asclepius is a villain?

I like how you question the villain status of Asclepius – a scary-looking robot who knocks Lister and The Cat unconscious, kidnaps them, and prepares to perform invasive surgeries on them without their consent, all while creepily speaking to people who aren’t there – but didn’t question the villain status of Queeg.

It’s important to remember that “Oh, Asclepius was actually trying to help Lister!” is really just a fan theory, not something which was confirmed in the episode. As far as we know he was just planning to remove and add organs to Lister/Cat at random, because Asclepius is a badly malfunctioning robot.

But, even if Asclepius was secretly only trying his best to be good and kind, the fact is that he still functions in the role of the villain for that part of the episode, so he still counts as a villain.

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The best that particular interior has looked or the best interior they series has ever had?

The best the collection of Interior sets for Red Dwarf has looked overall.

I don’t mind the more Star Trek-esque aesthetics of certain sets or series – mining or no, it IS a giant, high-tech, futuristic spaceship with a lot of varied facilities – but I just really like the red/orange colour scheme of X in particular.

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You don’t want to know how much The Bodysnatcher Collection playset is going for on ebay.

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OK, I may have another one:

The Red Dwarf interior in Series X is the best it’s ever looked.

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I suppose I only consider characters which exist outside of a virtual or imaginary world to be “real”, so to speak. So that’s why I excluded them. I already explained why I didn’t include monsters or villains that are just clones or versions of our main 4.

I definitely agree that the Serious/Silly binary is way too simplistic and many villains are more nuanced than that – this is just interesting to think about.

As for Telford, I stand by my classification. The cured evildoers around him are very silly, but Telford himself is played as just a normal dude for most of the episode, and then he gets violent – but not silly (except for the specifics of Kryten’s decapitation, but that’s just one thing).

[Flap Jack]

The good news is that I deliberately excluded the hallucination squids as being more “monster” than “villain”.

It’s debatable whether a person who only exists as a hallucination or simulation can be considered a villain in their own right, but ultimately they derive from the crew’s minds, so wouldn’t count for this anyway.

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If this isn’t an indication Rob is going to return to co-write Red Dwarf, I don’t know what is

Imagine how surprised we’ll all be when Red Dwarf is put on permanent hiatus so that Doug can commit to co-writing Series 2-12 of The Quanderhorn Xperimentations.

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This “the villains are too silly nowadays” complaint has me wondering how this has trended over time. So let’s do this (I’ll exclude monsters with no particular personality and villains that are just versions of the main characters):

• Confidence/Paranoia (Confidence & Paranoia) – Silly
• Queeg (Queeg) – Secretly Silly but played as serious.
• The Polymorph (Polymorph) – Serious, but with a silly facade.
• Hudzen-10 (The Last Day) – Serious
• The Simulant Convict (Justice) – Serious
• The Wax Droids (Meltdown) – Silly
• The Inquisitor (The Inquisitor) – Serious
• Dr. Lanstrom (Quarantine) – Serious
• The Psirens (Psirens) – Serious, but with a silly facade.
• Legion (Legion) – Serious
• The Rogue Simulants (Gunmen of the Apocalypse) – Serious
• The Surviving Simulant (Rimmerworld) – Serious
• The GELFs (Emohawk – Polymorph II) – Silly
• Captain Voorhese (Stoke Me A Clipper) – Silly.
• The GELFs (Ouroboros) – They don’t really do enough to say?
• The Simulant Captain / GELF Tribesman (Beyond A Joke) – Serious
• Epideme (Epideme) – Silly
• Captain Hollister (Back in the Red) – Kind of serious but the Dennis the Doughnut Boy thing made it silly.
• Cassandra (Cassandra) – Serious
• Warden Ackerman (Series VIII in general) – Silly
• The Other, Meaner Prisoners (Krytie TV / Pete) – Silly
• Sim Crawford (Trojan) – Serious
• Pree (Fathers & Suns) – Serious
• The BEGGs (Entangled) – Silly
• The Simulants (The Beginning) – Silly
• The Exponoids (Twentica) – Silly
• Asclepius (Give & Take) – Serious
• The Mercenoid (Can of Worms) – Serious
• The Lady Cat Polymorph (Can of Worms) – Serious, but with a silly facade.
• Professor Telford (Cured) – Serious
• The MILFs (Siliconia) – Silly
• Captain Ziggy / Crit Cop (Timewave) – Silly
• Aniter (M-Corp) – Serious

SO, provided these judgements are fair (which they may not be), this means the different eras of the show have serious and silly villains in the following proportions:

Grant Naylor Era: 53.8% Serious / 23.1% Silly / 23.1% Mixed

Naylor Solo Era (BBC) – 25% Serious / 62.5% Silly / 12.5 Mixed

Naylor Solo Era (UKTV) – 50% Serious / 41.7% Silly / 8.3% Mixed

So there, according to these incredibly scientific calculations, you have it. The Dave era proportionally has almost as many serious villains as Series 1-6, but also more villains that are more easily categorised as silly.

However, keep in mind that this is only if we exclude the times where a member of the crew (or a version of them) has been the villain, which is inherently silly and happened a lot more in 1-VI than X-XII.

[Flap Jack]

– Can’t Smeg, Won’t Smeg, Red Dwarf Night, Remastered, and VHS cross-promotions with Doctor Who would never have happened.

– Craig Charles would have presented Gladiators instead of Robot Wars, and he would have had a regular role in EastEnders rather than Coronation Street.

– Danny John-Jules wouldn’t have been in The Story Makers and M.I. High, he would have been in… I don’t know, My Parents Are Aliens or something.

– They wouldn’t have been able to fudge the filming schedule to redo The End, meaning The Original Assembly would now be the canon (and only) version of that episode.

Also Red Dwarf would have been cancelled after the first series, because The End: The Original Assembly is Not Very Good.

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The pink policeman in Timewave would have been played by Al Murray instead of Johnny Vegas.

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Series VIII is better and funnier than Series VII, and is truer to the spirit of Red Dwarf, which is meant to be a TV sitcom, not a cinematic comedy-drama.

I don’t actually hold this opinion, by the way. I just figured I’d save John the trouble of posting it.

[Flap Jack]

I don’t think there’s any real chance of that happening. The Simpsons’ longevity is due to:

(A) It being a global mega-franchise, so merchandise and syndication sales are too great to want to stop – not true of Red Dwarf.

(B) The actors only being needed for voice work, so it’s easier to get them to record 20+ episodes per year: no need for costumes, lighting, lengthy rehearsals, live audiences, getting all of them on set at the same time etc. – not true of Red Dwarf.

(C) The writing/direction being shared by dozens of staff rather than forever tied to 1 or 2 people with a specific personal connection to the show – not true of Red Dwarf.

I wouldn’t want RD to overstay its welcome either, but limiting it to just 1 more series seems too soon. It’s got more potential life in it than that!

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There’s not much I can say here, because while I like the Dave era a lot, the things I like about it aren’t unique to it, so I’d just be saying “I like this episode”, “Oh, and that episode”, “This bit was funny” etc.

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‘Dear Dave’, ‘Entangled’ and ‘Can of Worms’ are perfectly decent episodes despite their problematic elements.

‘Stoke Me A Clipper’ is outright bad.

Hayridge’s Holly is easily better and more definitive than Lovett’s Holly overall (actually, this might not be an unpopular opinion at all, but Doug doesn’t seem to agree or realise).

Kochanski has the potential to be great as a regular character.

‘Bodysnatcher’ is nowhere near as good as ‘Me^2’, and as far as unmade episodes go, I feel we lost more for not getting ‘Identity Within’.

The phrase “THE END? THE SMEG IT IS.” (along with most other instances of over-reliance on “smeg”) doesn’t actively annoy me, outside of it being an unresolved cliffhanger.

The 2 Grant/Naylor novels are just OK.

‘The Last Day’ is the best episode of Red Dwarf ever.

[Flap Jack]

The shadow is also a hologram?

I mean, it’s not exactly a massive reach.

A shadow made of light? I love it!

Overall my favourite headcanon explanation for “Why does an opaque object cast shadows?” is still “because it’s opaque”, but that’s just personal preference.

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I agree that it would have been nicer if Rimmer’s heroism actually had an impact on the outcome, but it was Out of Time which first showed Starbug blowing up, not Tikka to Ride.

It’s even made clear by the editing that the explosion was caused by future Starbug, not by Rimmer shooting the time drive; it cuts away to the explosion before the bazookoid shot hits the time drive.

But for me, the heroism is largely about the intent. Neither Kryten or Rimmer knew that would happen (especially as changing history works completely differently in Timeslides and Tikka to Ride), but they tried their best to save everyone anyway.

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Once one of them had been killed by their future selves, any plan they could come up with would ultimately just be stalling while they waited for the paradox to take effect and undo everything.

But hey, Kryten didn’t know that would happen. Saving 2 of them and immediately jumping to the dark “should Kryten and Rimmer even continue living?” fan fiction was possibly the best option on the table.

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We all assume that the idea Kryten had before he was killed in ‘Out of Time’ was to destroy the time drive, but what if his actual idea was to do another time jump, thereby losing their future selves, whose own time drive is broken?

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What if Lister drank milk instead of lager?

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However, the solidity of holograms does affect whether or not they produce bodily fluids.

Hardlight holograms can produce poop, softlight holograms can only produce wee wee.

It’s just simple chemistry really.

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Rimmer appears opaque, therefore light does not pass through him, therefore he casts shadows. Simple as that. His solidity or lack thereof doesn’t make a difference.

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Who should play Holly in Series XIII?

Well, I would go with Norman… but I’d be thinking of Hattie.

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I think Kryten and Rimmer would have survived the group suicide attempt, but they might – might – have been affected by Lister and The Cat’s deaths.

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But If it is a void, even if it were just “space” her own momentum from falling out of the tear would keep her moving indefinitely.

That makes sense for the first time, but what about the second time? She does a forward jump, but the momentum doesn’t let her keep drifting forward until she reaches the other half of the tunnel; she falls short and plummets into non-space. There must have been an external force which caused her to change direction and fall “down”.

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Why does the AR suite simulate a flirtatious ground controller that grants take off clearance to people based on their ability to make a shuttle craft dance???

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rimmer getting painfully melted by the Apocalypse virus in Backwards while being conscious the whole time was a bit much, even for me though. the description of it being “pain beyond pain. a million agonies. and he was still conscious.” didn’t exactly help, either. that’s just a tad too brutal

Jesus H. Jon Benjamin, I still haven’t read either of the post-Grant Naylor Red Dwarf novels, and every time someone references them it puts me off for longer.

Does Rob Grant not understand that we genuinely like these characters, or is he just too addicted to being subversive?

[Flap Jack]

Rimmer essentially has an inferiority complex. It doesn’t matter how much he wants to succeed or how hard he works – he’ll always subconsciously sabotage himself, because deep down he doesn’t feel he deserves success, or happiness. (Better Than Life shows this aspect of Rimmer most transparently.)

Of course, as others have mentioned, deep down he doesn’t want to be an officer either. But he’d rather chase that false idea of happiness forever than catch up with it. Because if he did, he’d realise he was no happier, and end up without any sense of direction or purpose in life.

Still, it’s nice to see that people still take their exams with regular pen and paper in the future.

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I think revealing what happened to Earth, especially when it’s so bleak, would seriously undermine the show.

Because sure, we know that they’ll never make to Earth and find something hopeful, but the lingering possibility that they might gives Red Dwarf at least a glimmer of optimism in its premise.

Doing Garbage World on TV would just make their situation too real, making it clear that there is no human race anymore, and their only purpose is to run down the clocks on their lives. You could maybe do that as the absolute end to the series, but you couldn’t go back to episodic comedy adventures after that bombshell.

And the “Lister spends decades barely managing to survive, completely alone – then is reunited with his friends for mere hours before dying” aspect. JFC, that was rough. I thought that was too dark for a novel, let alone a sitcom. No way would they adapt that part. I’m actually feeling slightly upset just recalling it.

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That very much depends on the person, and the outcome of a discussion that they and Ace would have beforehand.

[Flap Jack]

Specifically, it’s that everyone is panic-buying condoms when they hear Ace Rimmer is back, just in case they have the opportunity to fuck him.

It’s not about Ace’s personal prophylactic usage, because then it would be a joke about his libido, rather than a joke about how attractive he is.

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What is “Death? It’s like being on holiday with a group of Germans.” in German? A reference to a different nationality I assume, but which one? I know that Uter from The Simpsons is Swiss in the German version, so maybe it’s a similar deal?

[Flap Jack]

This Google Translate game is WILD:

“Back to Reality” becomes “Return to Reality”

“Timewave” becomes “Time Wave”

“Future Echoes” becomes “Future Echo”

“Skipper” becomes “Star Knot”

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I relate to Talkie Toaster the most, because I constantly badger everyone in my life about the same topic so much that I drive them to murderous rage.

And I judge people’s worth by how much they like toast.

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The Inquisitor can’t be any of the Red Dwarf crew, because The Inquisitor was erased from history at the end of the episode, and none of the crew disappeared along with him.

Sorry, ambitiously dark fan fiction!

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I’m sure Rimmer would say that he only fainted so early because he knew he didn’t have enough time. Lies all round, but they aren’t necessarily inconsistent with each other.

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Only one of those dates is in the future, and it’s next week. XD

Wherever you copied those dates from, it needs some updating…

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?! Then why even bother- oh, forget it.

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Me² Remastered fixes the continuity error, doesn’t it?

Looks like you should track down a copy of The Bodysnatcher Collection if you haven’t already got one, Timewave Part Two!

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I’LL PACK MY BAGS, AND HEAD INTO HYPERSPACE

[Flap Jack]

Rimmer has the photo in his possession because it’s the future and everyone just has thousands of photos encompassing their entire lives stored on their computers.

It doesn’t really make sense that a picture like that would be taken in the first place, so… let’s say young Rimmer really wanted a picture of himself with his “friends”, but he wasn’t confident enough to ask them for a proper photo, so he just set up his camera to take an automatic picture of them while they were sleeping near each other instead.

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Like many viewers, I didn’t notice this famous continuity hiccup any of the times I actually watched the episode before it was pointed out to me, therefore I can’t quite persuade myself to care.

I do sympathise with anyone who is bothered by it, but it ruining the whole episode is a touch dramatic. Me² is the best episode of Series 1 and 31st best episode in all Red Dwarf! (According to the true Pearl Poll i.e. my individual entry in the Pearl Poll.)

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I’d like to formally thank the Simpsons episode “The Way We Was” for obliterating any possible barrier I could have had to understanding that Cat line.

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Oh dear, it’s this discussion again

But is Series VIII really worse than Series VII? Let’s think seriously about this.

[Author]

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