Nick R

[Nick R]

I don’t get his point about it being hard to explain to a child why ‘smeg’ is funny. It’s just a funny-sounding and distinctive insult that the characters use when exasperated, I don’t think it needs the smegma coating, so to speak, unless a parent really wants to go there. Did Jon Petrie know what it meant when he was 10?

I think he was probably making a joke, rather than genuinely feeling that it was awkward and necessary to explain its meaning.

But I agree with your point – you can enjoy Red Dwarf without knowing that “smeg” is short for a longer word with a rude meaning. You don’t need to know its origins any more than you need to know that the word “berk” has a rhyming slang link to a much stronger swear word.

[Nick R]

The BBC’s head of comedy is no longer interested in the sort of awkward children’s questions that Red Dwarf used to attract.

[Nick R]

Giv & Tāk

[Nick R]

OK, that’s enough of that. Let’s move on to shortened episode titles now: 

Apocalypse’s Gunmen

Cassie

[Nick R]

Universe Challenge, a Special Red Dwarf-Themed Episode of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s University Challenge, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s Version of the American Quiz Show College Bowl

[Nick R]

Thanks for the Memory. Themory.

[Nick R]

That’s not very nice to say about Tracey Eddon.

She has an interesting list of credits! Star Wars, Bond, Mission: Impossible, Superman, Batman, MCU… and Red Dwarf and Doctor Who and The Brittas Empire and Waiting for God (the sitcom not the episode):
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0248866/

She was a stunt double for Carrie Fisher on Return of the Jedi. Now there’s a nepo baby!

[Nick R]

I can’t do this as a screenshot because it’s not from an episode. You know that bit in the Red Dwarf Night version of Smeg Ups, where Lister says the outtakes need to be hidden somewhere no one will ever see them, and Kryten suggests putting them on Channel 5 at the end of the 20th century?

Well, an updated version of that would be: “Suggest we place them on My5, sir, early in the 21st century.”

At least, that would have been an updated version a few years ago. Since then, Channel 5 have done a Channel 4 and given their streaming service the same name as the channel. So the latest updated version would be:

“Suggest we place them on 5, sir, early in the 21st century.”

… And that just sounds silly.

[Nick R]

Red Dwarf: Titan (Presumably Referring to the Largest Moon of Saturn, Not to the Figures from Greek Mythology)

[Nick R]

Me Raised to the Power of Two

[Nick R]

Peter: Part 2

Dear David

Kryten TV

[Nick R]

Sontaran Kryten?

[Nick R]

It’s already on there: https://smegadrive.ganymede.tv/episodes/61 

So it is!

[Nick R]

Lemons has all the silliness of a series VIII episode. Like the travelling to India joke, which you could contrast with the trips to Earth in Backwards and Back to Earth: both of those made jokes about the crew’s method of travel, but neither of them got quite as ridiculous as a time skip that glosses over walking thousands of miles.

The difference is that Lemons is like a series VIII episode done well. It has a similar kind of silliness, but IMO it’s funny enough to get away with it.

And even if it’s not necessarily much better than the average series VIII episode, it gets extra goodwill because it comes in a series that has the whole premise of going back to basics of “traditional” Red Dwarf, instead of one that made radical changes to the cast and setting like VIII did. So I give Lemons some benefit of the doubt that I don’t give to, say, Only the Good.

[Nick R]

IV was the most shuffled series and would make more sense in production order generally, especially with Kryten’s Meltdown subservience coming first.

There’s an idea for a full series rewatch: watch the episodes in the order in which they were originally recorded. Via John Hoare’s old episode orders article (https://www.ganymede.tv/2005/12/episode-orders-2/), and the unofficial archive for the Dave episodes:

The End
Balance of Power
Waiting for God
Future Echoes
Confidence and Paranoia
Me2

BTL
Thanks for the Memory
Stasis Leak
Kryten
Parallel Universe
Queeg

Marooned
Timeslides
Backwards
Bodyswap
Polymorph
The Last Day

Justice
Dimension Jump
Meltdown
Camille
White Hole
DNA

Here’s a mundane observation: if you go by recording dates, DNA is directly followed by D&A:

Demons & Angels
The Inquisitor
Holoship
Terrorform
Quarantine
Back to Reality

Psirens
Legion
Rimmerworld
Gunmen
Emohawk
Out of Time

And then for series VII, we could use recent revelations in the audience screening thread to try watching them in the order in which all the episodes were first presented for laughter recording. We know that the first three were:

Stoke
Ouroboros
Blue

… but beyond that, we’re not yet sure about all the others!

Then an appropriately chaotic order for VIII:

BITR 1
BITR 2
Cassandra
Pete 1
Only the Good
Krytie TV
Pete 2
BITR 3

Series X: as broadcast

Give & Take
Can of Worms
Krysis
Officer Rimmer
Samsara
Twentica

Siliconia
Timewave
Cured
Mechocracy
M-Corp
Skipper

[Nick R]

[Nick R]

https://langui.sh/2026/05/04/ten-years-of-frinkiac/

Frinkiac and Morbotron have been updated with the help of AI (uh-oh) to add some useful things that all the cool TV series gif makers already had as basic features, like an episode browser by season, and fewer limitations on gif lengths.

However they’ve also increased the screenshot resolution and changed the behaviour of text sizes so that new Frinkiac captions don’t look the same as old ones. I haven’t tried it on PC yet, but on mobile, the new UI seems cluttered and maybe slightly overcomplicated.

But the result is that you can now use the sites to create horrifying monstrosities like these:

Imagine the sheer power that we would command if similar features were added to the Smega-Drive! It is probably fortunate for everyone that such a thing will surely never happen.

[Nick R]

[Nick R]

If only you could talk to these walls, then perhaps you could try and make friends with them, form alliances… now, that would be interesting.

[Nick R]

[Nick R]

Whenever Holly’s not on screen he’s with one of the several other groups of survivors around the ship.

Perhaps including a group of… tail section survivors?

[Nick R]

I wonder who could claim to be Red Dwarf’s best known guest star at the time of their appearance?

If we consider actors’ fame outside the UK:

I don’t know if Back to Earth (or Red Dwarf in general) was ever broadcast/released in Hong Kong. But if it was shown there, a lot of people would probably recognise Richard Ng (Swallow) from his dozens and dozens of movie roles – especially the Lucky Stars movies, two of which are were among Hong Kong’s 10 highest-grossing movies of the ’80s.

2009 was probably long past the peak of his fame there, but presumably he’d still be very recognisable.

[Nick R]

But was there really anyway you could make that cliffhanger really carry any weight going forward?

Here’s an idea to give some weight to that cliffhanger, which would never happen for many good reasons, but was fun to come up with:

Tikka to Ride picks up immediately after the future crew have killed our present day (“Starbug Prime” as Flap Jack put it) crew, and follows what happens to those Future Selves afterwards. For reasons unrelated to curry, they time travel back to 1963 Dallas, and do things as they happen in the existing episode: they disrupt the JFK assassination, get stuck in Dallas, and escape by persuading JFK to assassinate himself. After that, something something handwave handwave, they realise how irredeemable they are, and that they should not have attacked their younger selves. So they use the time drive to go back in time to the end of Out of Time. The Future-Future Selves’ Starbug crew shoots the Future Selves’ Starbug, preventing the explosions on Starbug Prime from killing Lister, Cat and Kryten. The Future-Future Selves and the Future Selves have a battle and kill each other, letting “our” crew escape and survive.

Advantages of this are that it makes Out of Time and Tikka into a true two-parter, and adds some dramatic weight by turning the Future Selves from cartoons and into characters with their own arc. (That arc being: “Being evil is wrong.”)

Of course that still leaves you with the inconsistency that an erased-timeline-person-killing-their-past-self sometimes immediately sticks as a permanent change to the timeline (JFK killing himself) but sometimes does not stick (after killing our present-day Starbug crew, the Future Selves survive long enough to have their adventure in Dallas).

But the big reason to avoid doing the episode like that is that it would mean spending an episode following the horrible Future Selves crew (complete with the quite hideous thing that’s happened to Lister).

[Nick R]

[Nick R]

Alternatively:

[Nick R]

Kryten says that he made The Rimmer Experience himself. So does that mean he’s the composer of the Rimmer Munchkin song?

If so, does that make him the most musically talented member of the crew?

[Nick R]

We need Dwarfcast commentaries on old Dwarfcasts.

The problem with that is that talking over other people talking doesn’t work very well. 
I can think of two ways to solve this:

1. Play the original Dwarfcast audio, and pause it every time one of the present-day commentators has something to say.

2. Do it as a video in which the original Dwarfcast audio plays uninterrupted, and the present-day commentators add their commentary through silent methods like charades, hand gestures, facial expressions, and holding up Wile E. Coyote-style signs.

[Nick R]

Trailers for something else that seem very reminiscent of one particular episode of Red Dwarf:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeetI2DfbaE

[Nick R]

As I scrolled down Warbodog’s counting image, I thought it was going to end with something like: 

I guessed the scene correctly!

[Nick R]

When I first read the Rimmer-in-disguise sequence at the start of Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, I’d never heard the word “brothel”. So I read that whole section assuming the word was pronounced to rhyme with “brother”, with the first vowel more of a “u” sound. 

[Nick R]

[Nick R]

At this rate, “Beryl” should overtake “Frank” some time in the next few hundred years.

[Nick R]

If they couldn’t get the original actress they should have made her into a new independent character, which would have been fine.e.g. a better story line would have been that she was the woman rescued by Ace Rimmer in Stoke me a Clipper, before he jumped to their dimension, and he had to leave her with them so she was forever searching for a way back to her own dimension. Or something.

If she had become a recurring character, I’d hope that she would have been given a better name than the “Princess Beryl Bonjella” joke. (Hmm, that gives me an idea for turning over two pages at once…)

Mind you, Kochanski’s name is arguably also kind of a joke, with that mysterious “Z” middle initial. (Zoë? Zelda? Ziggy?)

And for that matter, “Rimmer” is also a double entendre of a name.

[Nick R]

[Nick R]

This idea has made me laugh out loud. Particularly the image of them during the sound mix desperately trying to identify any audience reaction whatsoever and coming up with absolutely nothing.

THEY WERE GONNA SORT THAT OUT IN THE DUB

[Nick R]

Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together on a JMC Mining Ship Grooving in Groove Town:

Hamsters are to animals in Red Dwarf what “Frank” is to names in Red Dwarf:







Lemmings are not far behind:

Plus a few gerbils:

Also some mice (“albino mouse droppings” – “Mickey Mouse? We ain’t even Betty Boop!” – “Wait, I know this game, it’s called ‘cat and mouse’.” – “It’s not a mouse, ma’am. It’s Archie.”) and of course: 

[Nick R]

Based on one I posted earlier in the memes thread:

[Nick R]

[Nick R]

Hitler peaked in Series IV IMO. Since then he’s never quite looked like Hitler.

Hitlers don’t look like Hitlers on film. You gotta use Mussolinis.

[Nick R]

[Nick R]

[Nick R]

I wonder why Birdman was in the Hole. What great crimes did he commit to warrant this treatment?

It seems to be where Hollister exiles people who annoy him, or exiles himself when admitting defeat.
It’s also kind of weird how VIII has the extended metaphor of the Canaries, then introduces a prisoner unrelatedly called “Birdman” and a literal caged bird that’s just a sparrow. It’s like… just random stuff.

Now I Know Why the Caged Birdman Sings

[Nick R]

Also, The Simpsons Spin-Off Showcase is a great episode, especially the segment with Grampa’s ghost haunting the love meter.  

While thinking of some soup
Rimmer passed away
He floated ‘cross the multiverse
But got lost along the way

Now he’s the Love Rat-ic Rimmer
He isn’t called Yul Brynner
He’ll fill our hearts with… smeg

[Nick R]

[Nick R]

THE LEXX FILES

Crossover episode in which Lister and Holly meet the characters Craig Charles and Hattie Hayridge played in that one episode of Lexx.

[Nick R]

THE BEX FILES

Lister and Rimmer watch an interview with Jim Bexley Speed, in which he explains his conspiracy theories about aliens. Rimmer agrees with everything he says about aliens, but refuses to admit that he’s in agreement with someone that Lister idolises.

[Nick R]

Let’s update it further: 

[Nick R]

I saw the alt text of the new XKCD…

We’re working to make sure the images are as up-to-date and accurate as possible, with a minimum number of sponsored galaxies.

… and I thought: “COKE ADDS LIFE!”

[Nick R]

[Nick R]

[Author]

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