Jenuall

[Jenuall]

Where do we think they actually are in space at this point?

They travelled 3 million years whilst Lister was in stasis, but do we know what speed they were going? Were they constantly accelerating all that time? Was Red Dwarf just on cruise mode the whole time and so not actually going very fast?

Do we even know if they were going in a set direction? Holly may have been going around in circles for 3 million years and so they didn’t actually get THAT far away from “populated space”.

Then you have to consider what they’ve done since Lister was brought out of stasis. In The End they establish the goal of returning home so presumably they have redirected their course back toward Earth at some point. In Future Echoes they achieve (or even break) lightspeed for a period of time, how much further back toward Earth did this realistically get them? How much of that 3 million years at “non-LS” in one direction was reclaimed during their brief foray into faster than light travel? Theoretically it could be quite a lot, but I don’t think the rules of FTL travel are ever really that well established in the Dwarf universe.

Throw in 30 real-time years of bumbling along, presumably broadly still in the direction of Earth, plus some deep sleep journeys as well, and well who know where the fuck the boys could be now. 

All that said I don’t think it’s THAT unrealistic that 3 million years of potential progress in travel and technology could result in a scenario where at least some other beings have come to occupy the same areas of space that the Dwarfers now find themselves in. I always thought the Holoship was a pretty valid case for other people they could realistically meet, but as you open that up to more GELFs, Simulants and just pure human derelicts it does start to become a little bit harder to accept that they would be so lucky (or unlucky!) to keep meeting people

[Jenuall]

On that note I think Tom Baker as a computer character is a great shout, he’s got the right special sauce in his delivery that could have saved the likes of Medi-Bot from being so insufferably shit.

[Jenuall]

In a genuine “you can have anything you want” scenario I would love for a final Grant Naylor combined something to exist. Whether that’s a book or a special or a new series of six, I’m not too fussed. I would just love to have something else created out of that combined entity.

In reality the most we’ll probably get is Can’t Smeg Won’t Smeg 2

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

Idiots.

It’s clearly been shit since series II!

[Jenuall]

The experimental pile surgery finally caught up with him.

But in all seriousness yes, hopefully it’s nothing too serious and I wish him a speedy recovery

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

Mechanoids are just capable of standing incredibly still!

[Jenuall]

Chris Eigeman’s character from Gilmore Girls.

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

The 21 Jump Street movie told me that it’s no longer the cool thing to wear your bag only on one shoulder and that “two strapping” is actually the favoured choice as the more health conscious students of the day care about not fucking their spines.

And yes I appreciate the irony of referring to a now 13 year old movie as an authoritative source on what kids are doing these days

[Jenuall]

I do know what you mean in that it looks very familiar, but I wonder whether as a pose and framing that is kind of just quite a popular choice for ads?

[Jenuall]

Lets not forget that Cat was thrilled about the prospect of getting to fuck an incapacitated Lister – pretty sure they are up for anything.

[Jenuall]

I mean that’s kind of the point isn’t it? The article is supposed to be dull so picking something that Estonia is not known for makes sense

[Jenuall]

That feeling when you’ve had over 100 replies before you realise you made a typo in the thread title

[Jenuall]

At the very least, even if they’d have kept the Out of Time limitation that it could only travel in time and not space, I always thought they should have gone to a location where they knew Red Dwarf had been, and hopped back to the time when it was there.

You did indeed always think this – I was just listening to the Rimmerworld Dwarfcast commentary this morning where you mention this very point! So well done for maintaining consistency with 2011 Ian

[Jenuall]

Yeah I had a look on the Twitter account and a quick google to see if I could find any other social media presence but couldn’t really see anything informative. Hopefully all is well!

The last episode ended with them saying all the fun plans they had for doing series VI and implying it was coming imminently so it certainly doesn’t seem like this was a planned hiatus

[Jenuall]

Caught up on this now – it’s a fun listen even if the aforementioned annoyances around accuracy and misinformation remain.

Anyone know why they haven’t done anything since January though?

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

That’s his hoover attachment

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

Yeah I often think that as well – BtE catches them just at the last point where they still just about hold on to their younger features before they really start to look older from X onwards 

[Jenuall]

The “something bigger than god” section with Rimmer on the scanner could have been good but it obviously suffers in comparison to the direct equivalent scene in Back to Reality which is just better in every way. (obviously it’s always going to be unfair to compare anything to Back to Reality but there we are – blame Doug for trying to reference it so much!)

I always quite liked Rimmer’s throw away murder of Katerina and Kryten’s fourth wall breaking reference to it

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

Just point out the typo in the burn, undercuts it wonderfully 😉

[Jenuall]

Doesn’t seem quite as appealing a fantasy. Still not bad mind.

[Jenuall]

It definitely does come in tubs, especially when you’re buying it in larger volumes. Admittedly it’s not necessarily what most people might think of first as I suspect the vast majority of us only ever come near glue in the context of minor repair jobs in which case yeah you’d just have a little tube of it.

[Jenuall]

I get not wanting to spoil anything, but you can be non-spoilery in a way that is also not just y’know – wrong!

[Jenuall]

I’m sure this has been discussed before but I spent all of 60 seconds looking and couldn’t find a relevant thread so apologies if this is bland repetition, but I was just watching Kryten via the iPlayer and still can’t get over how utterly shite this episode synopsis is:

“Things are fine”? Everybody’s dead The BBC!

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

It is a trope for sure, “where do all the calculators go?” is of course yet another Dwarf example of it, but it can be implemented in many different ways that impact how satisfying it feels. 

I think it all largely comes down to how well established the rules are that govern how such a trick solution can be made by the characters in the story. Does it track with what we’ve learned so far? Is it plausible that the heroes would have the knowledge to apply the required ruse? Does it make sense that the computer adversary would not have suitable guards or protection against what they are doing?

Of the examples of it being used on Dwarf I think The Inquisitor being tricked probably feels the most satisfying, even if the route to it is more convoluted than necessary! 

M-Corp in particular feels quite “cheap” as a resolution. In my opinion at least!

[Jenuall]

The ending doesn’t help in that it feels like it treads on very similar ground to the Pree “you should uninstall yourself” bit, which I also don’t find particularly satisfying but is at least based on elements previously well established in the story

[Jenuall]

 “… fiendish oriental humour” 

[Jenuall]

Good old Oasis, the boys have always been fans. Rimmer never did get his vinyl copy of Whatever sadly

Spectacular.

[Jenuall]

Good old Oasis, the boys have always been fans. Rimmer never did get his vinyl copy of Whatever sadly

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

I blame the electronic old men

[Jenuall]

I assumed the order on the box was like that because they couldn’t fit Confidence and Paranoia on the same line as Me2 and couldn’t be arsed to change the font size.

No remote projection cage for Rimmer there – must have had his light bee upgrade

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

Who’s the woman with the spear in the Rimmer/Rimmer fight scene?

Dona DiStefano

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

[Jenuall]

It is a shame that nobody has provided transcripts for the Dave era episodes, especially considering some of the crap online that manages to get that treatment – I mean FFS you can get transcripts for Mr’s Brown’s Boys! Red Dwarf fans clearly not dedicated enough!

Also whilst googling around on this I ended up on the Amazon page for Primordial Soup and remain baffled at how wrong their description of the book is able to be:

The seventh series didn’t arrive until 4 years later Mr Bezos, and it didn’t coincide with the release of any series – it was famous in fact for coming out with a script for an episode that nobody would see for months!

Also what a weird order to list their other publications, I’m assuming it’s just alphabetical because why not just put them in publication order?!

[Jenuall]

Nice! I did something similar myself a while back when I was interested to see how Hattie’s lines stacked up against Norm’s.

However, line numbers is one thing but word count is another. I’d be interested to see how this evolves over time as well as I suspect it would tell even more of a story. For example I suspect that not only is Cat getting a very low number of lines, but they are also some of the shorter ones so his overall percentage contribution could be even lower than suggested here.

Likewise it would be interesting to see if some of the longer lines that characters get at times are significant enough to influence their overall percentage contribution in a meaningful way – as someone’s quantity of lines drop is that offset by an increase in the length of those lines etc.

[Author]

Replies