Loathsome American

[Loathsome American]

One thing that’s really well constructed about Frasier is that the show makes a lot of jokes based on social/cultural tensions and has arranged the central three characters on a spectrum, with Martin being an “average Joe” with kitschy tastes on one end, and Niles being fussy and elitist on the other. Frasier is positioned between them (not exactly in the center) so that in a scene between he and Martin, he can be the snob, whereas in a scene between he and Niles, he can be the relatively down-to-earth one. 

Red Dwarf makes a lot of jokes based on the characters’ stupidity, but they didn’t arrange the characters on a consistent spectrum like this, so “who’s the dumb one?” varies a lot from scene to scene depending on which character needs the laugh. 

[Loathsome American]

[Loathsome American]

I like serious responses. 

The idea of an animated show or some kind of spinoff on a streaming service seems unlikely, to be honest. (No reason not to shoot for it and pursue meetings or whatever, I suppose.) I could see someone in those circles possibly wanting to do a “Let’s grab an IP and do a total reinvention hanging on a familiar name” kind of thing, but would they be interested in “Let’s give a bunch of money to one of the creators of a show that’s never had a spin-off before so he can pursue his creative vision”? 

I’ll admit, though, that even as a fan of the Marvel Comics characters I would not have bet on Iron Man to launch a multi-billion-dollar omni-franchise and I was loudly telling people as late as 2011 that this Avengers movie was probably going to be a disaster, so my insight is clearly limited. But I am mostly just assuming we might get some books or modest audio productions out of this. 

[Loathsome American]

There’s an element to Rimmer that’s become increasingly contrarian and bitterly cynical. Like how he’s gone from considering Shakespeare the Greatest Writer Ever to totally dismissive of his work.
I like the dynamic more when it’s Lister who’s ignorant of or uninterested in history, politics or culture, and Rimmer is left to defend them. Like now, I can’t imagine Rimmer defending JFK as a liberal icon, and would just make some sneering joke about him shagging Marilyn Monroe instead.

I can headcanon this. (Or…head-characterization it?) Early Lister was fairly ignorant about history and culture (also iguanas), so Rimmer showing him up about this sort of thing was a way of asserting dominance (in that sad Rimmer way). Now that Lister has matured over the years and become more worldly and generally seems to know more, Rimmer has to take a contrary view to remain in opposition to Lister. It’s like putting someone down for not knowing about a cool band…and then when the band becomes really popular you go, “Ahh, I never liked them anyway.”

Alternatively, Rimmer never really thought Shakespeare or classical music was so great but used to pretend to, so as to project an air of refinement to his peers. As the years have gone on, maybe Rimmer has become less and less concerned about putting on this pretense. 

[Loathsome American]

Yep, it’s well-known generally and in its prime it attracted a very decent audience, so it’s definitely not obscure (even if it would probably still get labelled as a “cult” show just because of the subject matter).

It’s funny when I hear on a DwarfCast how there is a public perception of the show in the UK or it was discussed the next day in school and was reasonably popular, because nobody I knew growing up had even really heard of it. When my family got a computer and an internet connection, a lot of my early browsing was looking up websites about Red Dwarf just because, like…before that, I had zero context or information for anything about this show other than it exists. It was reassuring to have proof that I wasn’t just hallucinating it all, honestly. 

[Loathsome American]

I  still feel like a huge percentage of my casual cultural knowledge of the US is rooted in references to it on The Simpsons.

Hell, this is true for me and I live in the US.

I found Red Dwarf via PBS, pre-season VII. They’d play two episodes every Saturday night in order and then cycle back to the start, so if I missed an episode, I just had to wait 18 weeks and it would come around again. (They eventually switched to one episode of Blackadder and one of Red Dwarf, and so I used to resent Blackadder before finally coming around on it.)

I think one of the differences between American and British fans is that—correct me if I’m wrong, but in the UK, it is something that most people would have at least heard of, right? Even if they don’t have a good opinion of the show, they at least have a context for it? Over here it’s exclusively a “You like weird geek stuff” sort of thing. Even on the PBS pledge drives, I felt like the presenters weren’t really personally familiar with it and were just like “We hope you’re enjoying the way-out wacky space adventures of the Red Dwarf!”

[Loathsome American]

Chris’s performance lacks the subtlety of the early years and the “Hey ho pip and dandy” scene is predictable and repetitive. 

Yeah, when I first sat down to watch X, this was the biggest friction point for me. Rimmer as a character obviously has a bunch of affected mannerisms, but Chris’ performance in the bubble era has always felt like a naturalistic portrayal of a person who CHOOSES to adopt these affected mannerisms. Whereas in the early part of X (and I seem to recall it gets better as it goes on), Chris is playing a broad character who just has those mannerisms as part of their personality. So the affectedness comes from the actor Chris Barrie and not the character Arnold Rimmer. 

Assuming that makes any sense and is not just me overintellectualizing “He’s just a bit rusty.”

[Loathsome American]

I’m a little behind on this—just got through Epideme and Nanarchy yesterday and found them dispiritingly tedious. Really not looking forward to VIII. 

[Loathsome American]

There are definitely ways to make the class-based “opposites attract” trope believable, because you see it all the time:

a.) They have an immediate chemistry or spark or sexual tension 

b.) There is a conquest/slumming element for one or both parties but they eventually become emotionally attached

c.) One or both parties is putting up a facade to act a certain way according to class, and the other party draws out the “real” person inside 

But we don’t really get any of a.) between the characters (or actors), b.) would maybe make us think poorly of either Lister or Kochanski, and c.) doesn’t seem to be the case because Lister and Kochanski seem genuinely comfortable with who they are. 

[Loathsome American]

[Loathsome American]

Finally catching up after my Halloween viewing threw my rewatch off track. 

Series VII was really exciting for me when my local PBS station picked it up, because they’d been playing I-VI on a two-episodes-a-week loop for some time. I’d learned about VII with my very new and exciting internet access, so I had a real sense of anticipation (and forewarning of Chris Barrie leaving). Bought a new blank VHS tape to record a permanent copy for myself.

So I liked it well enough at the time (and watched the tape over and over and over) just because it was New Red Dwarf. I did not spring for the DVD, though, because by that time I had come around to the conclusion that it had been a step down by then. I actually have not watched VII the whole way through in 20 years, maybe.

Tikka is ambitious and resembles, in its way, a classic-format Dwarf episode. It’s definitely the one I rewatched most often. But the resemblance to the show at its prime highlights all the small wrong steps and things that just feel off. The complete reverence for JFK also feels very much of a different time to me now.

Stoke has funnier lines than I remember, but even at the height of my excitement for these episodes, making Ace into a lineage of heroes felt like ruining the original joke of Dimension Jump by going too big with it. I will also confirm that the CG always looked bad.

Ouroboros (certainly the most mysterious title seeing it out of context on an episode guide on a web page!) is actually pretty bad, I think. The “It’s a comedy drama now!” thing is overstated, but this episode starts to look like an attempt to do a “legitimate” sci fi show and can’t pull it off. Making this revamp of the premise into the third episode instead of the first only accentuates it instead of cushioning the blow.

That said, Duct Soup is not bad, actually! Chloe Annett turns in a decent performance and maybe could’ve worked as an addition to the cast, but even as a callow youth I thought all the “I’m a girl trapped on a ship with yucky boys!” stuff was pretty trite material. And I had forgotten how much Jealous Kryten really is nails on a chalkboard.

[Loathsome American]

Now their just 4 people and a computer 3 million years into deep space so perhaps not the best subjects to identify changes to causality but you’d expect SOME ripple of changes to occur surely?

If there was a version of the Inquisitor story where they make the Inquisitor justify his own existence, this could be the key argument: the Inquisitor’s nature-not-nurture solution is shown to be ultimately ineffectual because even with half of the crew being replaced, they still wind up in a functionally identical situation anyway. 

[Loathsome American]

I think on this rewatch maybe I do overrate The Inquisitor a bit. I think it’s plenty funny enough, the Inquisitor himself is a terrific design (and voice!), and the inquisition itself is one of the all-time Red Dwarf moments for me. But especially after having rewatched Justice so recently, the back part of this episode is the weaker of the two “get chased around an industrial area by a killer simulant” action scenes. I also sort of wish they beat the Inquisitor in a cleverer way? Especially when they set it up that Lister might have this lateral-thinking scheme, but then ultimately it’s just a “reverse the polarity” solution. Wouldn’t you like to see them force the Inquisitor to justify HIMSELF and fail to do so, or something like that?

Also something odd in the writing: Kryten makes the argument that in order to live a good life a mechanoid would have to break their programming (with the implication that Kryten has not, as he fails his test), and then in another two scenes Lister laments that he’s broken Kryten’s programming. The degree to which Kryten has or hasn’t broken his programming is sometimes fuzzy between episodes (and I guess “broken” vs “unbroken” isn’t a purely binary state), but this is contradictory within a couple minutes when it doesn’t really need to be. 

[Loathsome American]

Holoship is the second-best episode of Red Dwarf—just making a note of it now for when ranking time comes—and the hardest I have laughed so far on this rewatch is delivery of “…Geronimo.”

[Loathsome American]

I’d always been a bit distracted as well by Ace asking Rimmer to do things that he physically couldn’t no matter how competent he was. Just part of the show at this point increasingly feeling like it’s “outgrown” the premise of Rimmer being a hologram in the same way it’s outgrown the “last human” and “no aliens” premises and increasingly has to find workarounds.

Dimension Jump […] However, the episode does really feel like it’s lacking something. It sets up lots of potential ingredients for a good climax that ties the character arcs to the story, but then nothing happens basically.

The entire episode is a lot of setup to get Ace in our dimension and then attending to the emergency he’s caused, and then he leaves almost immediately, so it does feel like there’s a missed opportunity for at least one more scene of Ace and Rimmer interacting to really sell the repulsion.

But I do ultimately think the episode actually has a really strong character/theme payoff with the “twist” that Ace was the one held back. That’s the actual brilliance of the episode, to me, beyond just the fun of seeing Chris get to play against type. Because with the opening scene you are set up to assume Ace got the lucky break…and then you learn that he didn’t…and then even Ace concedes that maybe it WAS ultimately the lucky break. That’s the kind of real chewy complex character bit that’s a big part of the reason Red Dwarf occupies so much space in my brain beyond being a funny comedy about spaceships and robots.

[Loathsome American]

In “Justice,” Lister finds the idea of shooting an unarmed rogue simulant in the back to be morally repugnant. In “The Last Day,” Lister essentially tried just that with Hudzen. It’s possible between III and IV, Lister tries to develop a keener sense of ethics? Perhaps the implications of what he was willing to do in “Timeslides” shocked him, and he is actively trying to become a better person? 

A headcanon is developing.

[Loathsome American]

Lister’s quicker on the deductions than in Backwards and less selfish than in Timeslides.

Doing the full-series rewatch like this, it does seem like IV is where Lister suddenly becomes the sort of Chaotic Good man of principle. Trying to teach David Ross Kryten to rebel is mostly a reflection of Lister’s own rebelliousness, but in “Camille” it feels more like a deliberate moral obligation Lister sets for himself. By “Justice” he takes it upon himself to moralize. He’s started reading philosophy books, maybe?

[Loathsome American]

I guess I better mark today in the calendar as “The Day I Finally Understood What Is Happening in ‘Justice’.”

For about 25 years at this point I’d been interpreting Kryten’s argument as being that Rimmer COULDN’T have caused the accident because he is so incompetent that no one WOULD have given him such a vital duty. Which doesn’t actually make a whole lot of sense except as a bluff. But if the argument is that Rimmer DID cause the accident but is so incompetent that no one SHOULD have given him such a vital duty, that makes sense as an actual defense. 

This entire rewatch exercise has been worth it for me for this if nothing else. 

[Loathsome American]

Very much agreed that Series IV has the best opening credits. No question in my mind: the most dramatic-looking, action-packed set of clips. 

CAMILLE: The Cat meeting his ideal mate alone would justify the premise. One of the all-time great conceptual jokes the show ever did, and even though the surprise is long gone, the timing of the reveal is so good I laugh every time. 

DNA: I’ve never been crazy about this one and would go so far as to suggest it’s the worst episode so far. I find Robert’s performance as “human Kryten” genuinely off-putting, and “tiny pseudo-Robocop Lister” is no better. 

JUSTICE: This is an all-timer, and the Simulant showdown at the end works better than any action sequence the show’s done so far. 

It’s a bit embarrassing but I have to admit: even after all these years, I have no idea at this point whether Rimmer is actually supposed to be responsible for the accident. Is Kryten’s defense just bluffing or did Rimmer genuinely not cause the accident? And if so, is that a component of the “new” continuity in the same way Lister has now actually been in a relationship with Kochanski, or are we to interpret that even in Series 1 Rimmer was taking responsibility for an accident he had nothing to do with?

[Loathsome American]

If Cat really hates that earring that he gives to Kryten, why was he wearing it as recently as Bodyswap? 

Because he’s worn it already! Now it’s passé. 

Don’t know if it’s the intent, but in my head “Uncle Frank” is a friend of the family given the honorary title of “Uncle” and not literally a sibling of a parent, and so his daughters would not be Rimmer’s cousins. 

[Loathsome American]

BODYSWAP: Much better than I tend to remember, as everyone else is saying. And I remembered it reasonably fondly in the first place  

TIMESLIDES: Of all the handwavy sci-fi Red Dwarf uses to set up a premise, the idea that developing fluid can mutate into some sort of time-portal-generating substance is REALLY thin. Still, it’s really just because the episode isn’t so hot that I even care to quibble.

THE LAST DAY: I think Timeslides is worse in some ways (or “less good,” whatever), but I feel like this is at the bottom of Series III. It’s a decent premise, maybe even Series II-ish in a way, but I think the Hudzen stuff is a forced and lazy action-adventure ending and drags the whole episode down. 

[Loathsome American]

Regarding Lister asking Rimmer about losing his virginity and accepting a different story, it’s really only occurred to me this time that the original story is told in an episode where memories are being altered and erased. One assumes Rimmer’s just lying, but Lister might legitimately not remember that he knows the actual answer to this question, either because of a further deliberate memory erasure or even that the original erasure “rotted away” some surrounding memories over time. 

But doing a gag about Rimmer about his virginity is an odd choice from the writing/production perspective in the first place. Things like the “Lister’s appendix” situation are either Rob and Doug forgetting a throwaway line or assuming the audience won’t remember or care about that throwaway line, but this was essentially the basis of an entire episode just the previous series, so it’s never really made a lot of sense to me that they went back to that well. 

[Loathsome American]

Maybe it’s just the nature of doing a dedicated rewatch that you go into it sort of wanting to have your preconceptions challenged, but I found I actually found “Backwards” a lot better than its reputation as a gimmick-driven episode owing to a lot of good lines (the Flintstones bit, “You already are one glorious hole,” “Santa Claus–what a bastard!”) and “Marooned” not quite as worldbeating as I usually think of it. The “mayday/m’aidez” exchange is funny but maybe a bit off for the characters (Lister is scornful that Rimmer doesn’t know this, and Rimmer acts like he doesn’t realize he’s being insulted)? Probably still put “Marooned” in the top 10, though.

The voice Chris Barrie does in the Reverse Brothers act has always cracked me up for some reason. Is this a specific imitation of someone he’s doing or just sort of a general type?

[Loathsome American]

Stasis Leak as an episode had a certain mystique for me growing up because I seemed to keep missing it when my local PBS station would cycle through the series. Add to that the novelty of getting to see pre-accident Red Dwarf, and I think I always remember this episode being better than it actually is. But watching it this time, it does seem like a lot of time travel stuff that doesn’t make a lot of sense, which might be okay if it was in service to a good story, but it doesn’t really go anywhere, and the future it promised didn’t happen anyway. This is probably my bottom of series two. 

[Loathsome American]

The bedding is hologram-projected but visually responds to what would be physical interaction. So Lister is in an empty bunk that is simulating blankets and pillows getting rumpled. (I think there’s a scene in Series I where Cat is lying on Rimmer’s bed too, isn’t there?)

Alternately it’s a cozier application of the holo-whip technology: some very rudimentary hard light?

[Loathsome American]

It would be difficult to overstate what a big impression the Observation Dome scenes made on me when I was first getting into the show. I was pretty young and hadn’t really seen a sitcom that could pull off quiet and introspective moments to this extent. Also as a set or location it’s pretty wonderful; there’s nothing either scene does that couldn’t have been set in the bunk room or a corridor and still sort of work, but removing the characters from the everyday sets and using that music cue really made them stand out as something special. 

[Loathsome American]

New question that only occurred to me on this rewatch: Is Rimmer learning to cook as a hedge just in case Lister ever decides to take the chef’s exam again?

[Loathsome American]

On the topic of Gazpacho Soup Day, I think that maybe it did hurt his standing, but not in the way he thinks. Knowing Rimmer, he probably didn’t discreetly inform the server that his dish was cold and request it be sent back hot; he probably made a loud display of calling the server out on the carpet for their supposed incompetence to seem like a big shot in front of the officers. Rimmer assumes they’re mocking him purely for his ignorance of the dish, when they might have been more focused on his behavior. 

[Loathsome American]

The problem of why Rimmer-2 is noticeably more hostile and aggressive than Rimmer-1 is something I’ve given some thought to. The possibilities as I see them are:

1.) RIMMER-1 AND RIMMER-2 ARE NOT IDENTICAL

This is the (arguably authorial intent) idea that Rimmer-1 has softened over Series I, whereas Rimmer-2 is a “fresh” version. This is the most dramatically satisfying option, I think, because it implies character growth. The downside is that…I’m not sure end-of-Series-I Rimmer has actually undergone enough growth on screen to really sell the idea as well as it should be. Also the fact in-text that Rimmer-2 already seems to be up to speed and able to join in the conversation in real time when he’s booted up.

2.) RIMMER-1 AND RIMMER-2 ARE IDENTICAL

Philosophically there’s an argument that they would both equally be the “real” Rimmer, but neither Rimmer is much of a philosopher. Rimmer-1 makes the argument in the theater that he’s the “real” one just because he was there first; if they really are identical, Rimmer-2 would probably agree with the logic of that despite himself. So either Rimmer-2 is projecting due to an inferiority complex or, with the “survival of the fittest” mindset Rimmer has (or at least “survival of the most weasely”), Rimmer-2 is purposefully trying to drive Rimmer-1 to despair so that Rimmer-1 will volunteer to switch himself off. I think this is the most psychologically interesting option, but there’s even less evidence for this on screen than Rimmer-1’s personal growth. It does solve some of the problems of option #1 though.

3.) RIMMER-2 SHOULD BE IDENTICAL BUT ISN’T FOR SOME OTHER REASON

This could be a corruption of the physical disk (my earlier musing that the skutters might have messed something up bringing the disks outside) or some processing issue Holly is having maintaining two holograms. We see in “Psirens” that the personality aspects are loaded piecemeal, so maybe Rimmer-2 was booted up with his “negative” aspects all dialed up or unbalanced (which long-term might have led to the sort of overload/crash we see even later in “Trojan”). This is the most pleasingly (alternately: the most torturously) fanwanky and can be leveraged for all sorts of theories about why they never tried running a second hologram again, but it does kind of reduce all the character comedy and insight into Rimmer’s personality in “Me2” as some external technology issue.

[Loathsome American]

Something to consider: if Rimmer moved the hologram projection discs, that means it was the skutters who would have physically moved them. The skutters are bad at everything. Might they have damaged or even lost some of the disks? Kochanski’s in particular?

[Loathsome American]

Just want to say I always enjoy playing the Sherlockian Game with Red Dwarf and am glad to see it here.

[Loathsome American]

On some level, Rimmer just enjoys the act of saluting. He does it to Todhunter and Lister doesn’t, but Todhunter doesn’t reprimand Lister; this suggests saluting and formal address is not strictly adhered to on ship, Rimmer just insists on it in his own conduct. 

As for Rimmer blowing up at Lister during “Waiting for God,” part of it would be resentment. Being “God” makes Lister “important,” which is all that Rimmer wants out of life, but all Lister does is complain about it. It’s like bussing tables waiting for your band to be discovered and having to listen to a rock star whine about being famous, from Rimmer’s perspective. 

[Loathsome American]

I get that “Waiting for God” is a bit smug in parts, but all the “So what else is new?” stuff is more than balanced for me by Lister putting aside his horror at what’s been done in his name and instead deciding to use his “power” to comfort the cat priest and the priest’s reaction to the return of his hat. I actually find the scene pretty moving, and the organ-and-arpeggiated-guitar version of the theme playing behind it works really well, I think. 

“Confidence and Paranoia” I think is probably the weakest of the first series, even if I think “Series I weak” is still pretty strong. Craig Ferguson is obviously going big on purpose but I still find the performance kind of grating. And while the show is built on wild handwavy sci-fi extrapolations to facilitate the ideas and jokes, “mutated pneumonia generates solid and sentient hallucinations” is maybe a bit too far. Psi-moon, fine by me, but for whatever reason, this and mutated developing fluid making time holes are where my brain apparently draws a line. 

[Loathsome American]

I feel like some people credit its popularity to being the first ever episode rather than the fact that it’s good even on its own merits.

Agreed. I do think it’s abnormally strong for a pilot, so it’s tempting to think it’s just “important episode” bias. Personally I like any chance to see pre-accident life on the ship as well. 

[Loathsome American]

“Balance of Power” was the first episode I ever saw, so I guess it’s hard to be objective. I do understand why it usually places so low; it lacks the strong hook most other episodes have because it was built to really set the tone and establish the status quo after all the high concept table-setting “The End” has to do. And then the fact that they moved up “Future Echoes” to replace it in the second slot shows that the show makes sense anyway even if you jump right into the more elaborate scenarios, so maybe this episode is not even strictly “necessary” as designed.  

But I found this instantly captivating when I first saw it at a young age (I would guess I was maybe 11 or 12), and it’s why I kept watching. Part of what I thought was so interesting was that it WASN’T very sci-fi, that being on a spaceship was just sort of the background to taking a chef’s exam purely for spite. And I still think this is really sharply written and performed, with a lot of all-time bits that it’s easy to forget are in this episode because they’re largely “day in the life” material. 

Consider this my official campaign to bump “Balance” up a couple of spots in this round of surveys. My own bias aside, on a purely scene-by-scene basis I think it’s much stronger than it’s usually given credit for. 

[Loathsome American]

[Loathsome American]

On the subject of both holograms and the latest Wafflemen discussion on Red Dwarf’s cultural impact (or lack thereof):

There’s an issue of the JLA comic from 1997 where villains are controlling solid virtual avatars of the Justice League to cause mayhem, and Batman specifically refers to them as “hard-light holograms.” I wonder if that specific wording was directly inspired by/taken from Red Dwarf or if it was just arrived at the same way Rob and Doug hit on it. 

[Loathsome American]

I also think VIII pulls a bit of a bait and switch. I’d always found the pre-accident flashbacks in I and II interesting, so I thought the crew being resurrected had a lot of story potential. In Queeg we see that for all the angst of being stuck in deep space, Lister enjoys his personal freedom and would have a tough time returning to duty rosters and regulations. You could have a Rimmer who wasn’t the same one Lister came to know better and missed, Kryten adjusting to more people to look after, Cat interacting with people at all, Kochanski maybe falling into routine a little easier. But instead we get, “There is a space prison, I guess?”

I am aware this critique of VIII boils down to Doug not making the fan fiction version of the series that appears to live only in my head, you don’t need to point it out.

[Loathsome American]

VIII being more of an aesthetic return to form actually kind of worked against it for me. When we got VII over here, it looked different and felt different and Kochanski’s there and Rimmer isn’t, so the whole thing felt like it was evolving and that was just something I’d have to get used to. Then VIII comes along and it looks like it’s back to normal in a lot of superficial ways, but it’s also different enough that for me it was in an uncanny valley of being “close but not quite.”

When VII wasn’t funny in the same way as I-VI, it felt like a choice to do something different, whereas when VIII wasn’t funny in the same way, I wasn’t sure if it was a choice or if it just wasn’t working.

[Loathsome American]

There are many potential layers to the “moving around the ship” theory.

I would posit that the wildly different interior design schemes are a result of this being a huge, kludged-together ship. Maybe it gets periodic refits but only in sections. The Series I/II area is maybe one of the older and, let us say, less glamorous sections (which is where you might expect to find the bunkroom occupied by the lowest-ranking crewmembers). Maybe JMC abandoned the attempt at Esperanto-bilingual signage at some point and that’s why the newer sections don’t have it.

Why wouldn’t the captain’s office be in the newer/nicer part of the ship? Maybe there are multiple offices he works from on different days, and so there’s one in the Series III/IV/V zone and the Dave-era zone. Maybe he is able to move to a nicer office but is too damn lazy to have done so. If he is Dennis the Donut Boy and blackmailed his way to the top, maybe he stays there to avoid the officers he blackmailed.

It is a rich tapestry.

[Loathsome American]

I like the idea that the changes in sets over the years are motivated by them actually changing which area in the ship they’re living in, whether it’s because they’re still gradually decontaminating new areas, because they’ve trashed the last area, or just because they get bored and want a change of scenery from time to time.

This requires that Red Dwarf contains multiple independently functioning drive rooms, but let’s chalk that up to a redundancy measure for such an important function.

[Loathsome American]

I’ve struggled with the “over one man” line for about 25 years now, assuming that it did mean “Rimmer takes up the resources or bandwidth of more than one person,” so I am floored to hear this sensible explanation. Just like when I learned Shake n Vac was a real product.

I somehow used to mishear the line “ship-issue condoms” as “shipper-shape condoms” and assumed that was some kind of adult thing I didn’t know about. The Spanx of contraceptives, or something.

[Loathsome American]

Just learned literally minutes ago that Shake n Vac is a real product—a carpet freshener? I’d always assumed it was a reference to Shake n Bake—the seasoned breadcrumbs—but…science-fictiony? Like, in the future, on a spaceship, you will not bake your chicken and pork, you will have some sort of…vacuum cooking appliance.

This has been a surprise, but a pleasant one, because I’d always thought that was a not-very-clever joke, and it’s much better knowing the Shake n Vac is actually a thing.

[Loathsome American]

I also assume Holly exercised some veto power over who could be brought back as a hologram, within the parameters of trying to find a suitable companion for Lister. Not Kochanski, because he would just obsess over her; not Petersen or any of his actual friends, because they’d be a bad influence; not Hollister or anyone really important, because Lister would bristle too much under someone who had any claim to actual authority over him.

[Loathsome American]

One of my “What would you do in a deliberate final episode of Red Dwarf?” ideas was always that the McIntyre hologram has been running continuously since the accident (the implication being Holly meant to turn him off but forgot to) and he’s gone insane and is the secret author of various misfortunes in the show; McIntyre was behind the nanobot shenanigans and various seeming accidents and malfunctions over the years. Maybe he is even the one who stoked religious conflict amongst the cats. And the last episode is Lister et al have to stop their ultimate secret enemy.

This is as worked out as the idea gets because obviously it’s an extremely fan fictiony kind of idea and would probably not actually make a good or funny episode.

[Loathsome American]

I don’t know if this is a vain grasp at trying to find an objective distinction, but it sometimes feels like they tend to at least meet more people AT ONE TIME in Dave-era episodes? BBC-era, they generally meet individuals whereas now they tend to meet other crews or groups?

Holoship a notable exception, but also Holoship is really really really really good.

[Loathsome American]

In the spirit of non-groundbreaking insights, I have just been idly thinking lately about how much Red Dwarf has sort of “grown out of” so many of its original premises. The “last human”/“no aliens” concept is of diminished importance and more of a technicality in the populated space they seem to exist in now, and even before he switched to hard light and could touch things, you could sometimes go a few episodes without Rimmer being dead and a hologram being particularly relevant.

I wonder, if Doug had it to do over again or had known what the show was going to become, if he would have made some of those premises looser given how much he has to write around them now. Would he find it easier if he could just say there’s people and aliens, or does he on some level enjoy having to justify everything as a GELF or a mechanoid variant or technical nonhumans?

[Loathsome American]

Why does Rimmer go crazy for food in Bodyswap when he has access to holo-food like the chutney sandwich (which must taste enough like the real thing that he can describe the taste in detail and Lister gets it)? He couldn’t have just pigged out on holo-mashed potatoes?

I assume as with most things related to Rimmer, it’s psychological and he can’t allow himself to enjoy anything. He could have Holly make holo-mashed potatoes that might be as objectively good as actual mashed potatoes, but he’s probably telling himself, “It’s not really mashed potatoes, it’s just a simulation of mashed potatoes and I’m not really eating them, my senses are just being told I am eating them.”

[Loathsome American]

I will say that I’ve stated my intent in life as to “slob around, have a few laughs” more than once.

[Author]

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