Mundane observation dome

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and wouldn’t work if Chris Barrie used his real name

TIL that Chris Barrie isn’t his name – Christopher John Brown. How had I never known this?

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The series’ lax attitude to continuity extends to the setting. Outside of Holly’s distress calls, I don’t think three million years is mentioned all that much after series I and before VI

3 million years is certainly mentioned in the Dave Era and is specifically mentioned in the captions at the start of TPL

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Ace Rimmer and Duane Dibbley were so seemingly ubiquitous in canon and tie-in merchandise through the 90s (Smegazine strips, T-shirts) that they still feel overused today, even though it’s been over 20 years since they appeared. Maybe they’re allowed back after all.

I certainly think Duane is overused for being an hallucination. I can just about forgive it in Emohawk but by the time the idea is reused in viii, it should have been put to bed. Doesn’t help the joke is shit and also how the hell does Kochanski know who the Dibley Family would be???

Ace I’m more forgiving of as his character has only returned one, and really what fitting way to write out Rimmer. His inclusion again in Emohawk I can sort of forgive just for that’s how that Polymorph seems to work and having Ace and Duane have scenes together is brilliant in my view.

So in short, yes you’re right. They felt overused over 20 years ago but a return of Ace wouldn’t really be an issue. We’ve had more Talkie Toaster than Ace in Red Dwarf probably.

And isn’t being three million years into space also mentioned in the setup for the traffic cone gag in The Last Day?

Hooray! I’ve been contemplating this sort of thread for a while for random Red Dwarf thoughts but you’ve made a far better job of it than I ever could have! And of course I can’t remember any of said thoughts right now anyway.

TIL that Chris Barrie isn’t his name – Christopher John Brown. How had I never known this?

Christopher *Jonathan Brown :p

I noticed it when he showed up on the Quarantine Zoom commentaries as Chris Brown (no not that one).

Yeah I noticed that too; he’d obviously signed up with his real name and not thought to change it – or perhaps not known he could, at that point – despite on that occasion using it for a Red Dwarf thing.

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Re: Backwards, when I watched it before the Quarantine Commentary there were several places where the transitions were so seamless I had to rewatch a few times to work out how it had been put together. One part in particular springs to mind: when Rimmer and Kryten are talking to a man (I forget, it could have ben Arthur Smith’s character) in the pub; Rimmer’s standing on one side and Kryten the other, and Kryten’s translating for Rimmer. The cuts there are obviously where they change the direction of the tape BUT it’s so natural that it took a few watches to click, for me, even when I was looking for the changes! I’m not a huge fan of the episode overall for some reason, but the technical side of it never ceases to amaze me.

Considering they were the lowest ranked staff on the ship, I thought Rimmer and Lister were quite lucky to get a bunkroom with an external window.

Interestingly I don’t think the Officer’s Quarters had a window?

We never see it, but I’d suggest the implication from the BTE bunk set is that the window is literally the fourth wall.

That seems loosely based on the book description of the bunk room, too, which described a little seating area down some steps and a big observation window where the fourth wall would be.

Ah yes, well done. If only I’d read the book recently and listen to three blokes prattle on about it for several hours, I’d have remembered that.

Them having a small window in I-II is more reasonable when there were just 169 crew in a five-mile-long ship, nearly all cohabiting.

I like a theory Danny mentioned to me a while ago that that little window is actually supposed to be fake and is just a cloth with holes cut in it in universe too.

Them having a small window in I-II is more reasonable when there were just 169 crew in a five-mile-long ship, nearly all cohabiting.

I like a theory Danny mentioned to me a while ago that that little window is actually supposed to be fake and is just a cloth with holes cut in it in universe too.

But the very first time we see that window, Lister is looking out of it saying goodbye to George.

I really do love the idea of it being fake but that kinda scuppers it. Unless Lister is just being a moron, which is possible.

They were even more gutted when they were asked to change them from ocean blue to military blue.

I really do love the idea of it being fake but that kinda scuppers it. Unless Lister is just being a moron, which is possible.

That line was written more for the burnt out middle aged version of Lister, so we can write it off as him being genuinely fooled by the fake window.

On the subject of colourless Series 1, it does kind of make sense, in-universe, for the set and no-frills ship issue items to be like that, but it always amuses me how utterly bland Lister’s guitars are. There’s the white one in The End that reappears in Confidence and Paranoia, and the dark grey one in Balance of Power. You’d think they’d at least have put some stickers or something on those.

Ah, well it looks less like a boring prop there than in the show, but still not right just because I think Lister would’ve customised it somehow.

Even if he did, Clem is right, it ought to have stickers and stuff all over it.

Maybe Doug can reveal in the final episode that they’re not even in space and the entire premise of the show was down to them being fooled by a cloth outside a window.

Maybe Doug can reveal in the final episode that they’re not even in space and the entire premise of the show was down to them being fooled by a cloth outside a window.

Doubly ironic when it turns out the screen in the Officer’s Quarters is actually a window and there really is a giant fish tank next door.

Come to think of it, wasn’t there once talk of an episode where Holly comes to life somehow, and the crew discover her (I think it was from the Hattie days) sitting in a room in front of a camera wearing a black polo-neck jumper.

Does Red Dwarf only have four Skutters all along, or did they expand with the crew complement?

It’s another obvious thing I’ve never dwelled on, maybe in another case of taking the novel’s word over what’s explicitly said on screen, but I’ve always felt they were virtually limitless, rather than us always seeing the same set of characters having a silent parallel side-sitcom (the Holly one having gone mad – the one from Bodyswap?)
Probably depends on whether they had reserves and whether Holly’s capable of making more.

Assigned per corridor? Or per shift, so Rimmer and Lister know Pinky and smegging Perky/ Bob and Madge because those are their skutters.

One of them has 4457 on it so you have to assume there’s at least that many too.

I’d imagine that since it’s no big deal when loads get destroyed, like in IWCD, or just don’t work right, there are plenty of spares and they’re easily manufactured.

I’d always assumed there were more than the few we see on screen. They’re probably dotted all over the place so if say Hollister asks Holly for something physical, a Skutter brings it along (like with Lister and the pop-corn).

So they sort of exist just to ferry things around and hold things for people whilst they have their hands full. Which would explain why they’re not very good at cooking or hanging pictures and such as they’re not meant to actually be able to do any work.

Well we know from Parallel Universe that the Skutters can procreate so I’m sure with 3 million years and very little else to occupy themselves they could have created quite a few new baby skutters!

The skutters in the prime universe are male, so I guess Madge came over from the Parallel Universe. It does sound like they’re monogamous so any procreating will have been limited to when the children are old enough and by the gestational period of whichever skutter carries them (presumably the female if they’re conceived in this universe).

It makes sense to me that there probably would have been lots of skutters to start with but over time became fewer, perhaps not a high enough priority to use finite resources to replace them unless needed. So limited replacement, a small amount of procreation – presumably there are ‘enough’ skutters but with more hands and sentient machines not as many skutters are needed as before.

It has only just occurred to me that in terms of the period between the first and last RD episodes being aired for the first time, the BBC era and the Dave era are almost exactly the same length.

Didn’t even realise Attenborough had an account.

I remember at a thing in Manchester, the guy introducing the two stars of Red Dwarf called them “Chris Charles and Craig Barrie.” Not really an observation, more a recollection please don’t ban me.