Red Dwarf is thirty years old. Twelve series, seventy-three episodes, four novels and one Can't Cook, Won't Cook special. I've a proper article coming up on Television Heaven in the near future, but for now I'll be popping a couple of silly pieces on here.
One thing that Red Dwarf has become notorious for is the complete lack of internal consistency. They can't even decide if Lister and Rimmer are from the 21st, 22nd or 23rd century. The internal history of the series has been rewritten both deliberately and accidentally, then changed back again, plus there have been multiple alternative universes and more time travel than you can shake a stick at. So here, after discussions with fellow Dwarfers Suz and Ruth, are my attempts to tackle some peculiar questions and inconsistencies, with various unsubstantiated theories and headcanon.
When is Red Dwarf set?
I once tried to piece together a consistent timeline for the series, before giving up because it's completely impossible. One thing we can do, oddly enough, is fairly reliably date the most recent series: AD 2,978,341. The only genuinely consistent date we have in the whole series is 2340 for Kryten's creation, and that this is definitely after the death of the Red Dwarf crew. In 11.4, "Krysis," we learn it's Kryten's 2,976,000th birthday. Series XII is set one year later. This presumably includes the two centuries Kryten spent running Starbug in between Series V and VI, while the others were in deep sleep. There are other elements that might put this out of whack - time dilation etc. - but this is still the most accurate date we have. It also means that Holly was rounding up when he said he kept Lister in stasis for three million years, although even then we have to ignore relativistic effects when the ship accelerated towards the speed of light.
The Kochanski conundrum
One big anomaly is raised in Series IV. Grant and Naylor decided that Lister's unrequited pining over Kochanski, a woman he barely knew, was a bit puerile, so rewrote the backstory to say that they'd had a brief, intense relationship - something that followed their reworked backstory from the novels. This is a better storyline but it causes a big contradiction that has no explanation.
I have a theory, though, that ties in with another oddity, something that once upon a time I planned to write up into a bit of fanfic. In 3.5, "Timeslides," time is rewritten so that Rimmer is alive, until he very quickly blows himself up. Next episode, he's a hologram again. It's a quick gag, but again, it's a huge rewrite of the series' past.
In my head, Rimmer's conversation with his younger self - trying to persuade him to get up early and go patent the Tension Sheet - isn't completely wasted. Seeing "Thicky" Holden get there first inspires him to be a little more daring, take a few more risks. It doesn't make a huge difference to his life, although it might explain some of the inconsistencies with which exams he takes and how often. However, it eventually leads him to do something a little stupid, something illegal or against Space Corps rules. Maybe he helps Lister hide Frankenstein. I don't know, but the important thing is that he ends up in stasis and therefore survives the accident.
Being roommates with the slightly-more-daring Rimmer makes Lister bolder too. He has the guts to go ask Kochanski out. It doesn't last long, he still ends up alone and gets Frankenstein to keep himself company and gets put into stasis, but it's enough to rearrange his entire romantic backstory.
What's Red Dwarf's crew compliment?
Another change to the backstory in Series IV saw the crew of the ship increase tenfold. In the early dasy, Lister was crewman no. 169, bottom of the entire crew, but in 4.3, "Justice," Rimmer is found guilty of the deaths of 1167 people - with him and Lister added on, this puts it at 1169. It's not as big an increase as in the novels (which had the crew at 11,169) but makes more sense considering the sheer size of the vessel. So, a weird mystery? Not too hard to resolve. While Rimmer and Lister work for the Space Corps, Red Dwarf itself is owned and operated by the Jupiter Mining Corporation. Presumably, the JMC engages the Space Corps to run their ships, but also employs numerous civilian crewmen as well. So the extra thousand people is comprised of miners, shop assistants, the barman at Parrot's... although not the chefs, because seemingly you have to take a Space Corps exam to be a chef. The count also doesn't include the prisoners and wardens on Floor 13, because Rimmer wasn't aware of them.
Check the Appendix
In 2.3, "Thanks for the Memory," a big joke is made of Rimmer having his appendix out twice. This is due to him remembering Lister having his appendix out as well. However, in 6.2, "Legion," Lister has his appendix removed again. How is this possible? Well, one fan theory is that in 4.2, "DNA," when Lister is returned to his original human form after becoming "Man Plus," he's rebuilt with his appendix intact. A funnier explanation was put forward by Doug Naylor in the novel Last Human, after he was questioned on it at a convention: Lister had a mutation and was born with two of the world's most useless organ. This raises the intriguing notion that when Lister is rebuilt again by the nanbots in Series VII, he gets both his appendixes (appendices?) back, meaning he might have a total of four appendectomies.
On a side note, it was revealed in the 1996 Logbook tie-in release that the purpose of the appendix was discovered to be medium-wave reception.
Ageing mechanicals
It's a bit illogical that both Kryten and Rimmer change physically over the course of the series. Mostly, we should overlook this: it's a consequence of the fact that we're seeing human actors and not actual robots and holograms. Still, Rimmer has clearly aged across the series, but that's not really inconsistent with what we've seen. He does need to exercise in the early series after all, so clearly his holographic form needs maintenance. Behind the scenes info states that Rimmer hasn't undergone the necessary work to maintain his holography, explaining his ageing in the current series. The same would be true of his fat older self in 6.6, "Out of Time." On the other hand, 6.5, "Rimmerworld," has him sitting in a dungeon for 557 years and and not looking a day older. Possibly his light bee was able to conserve energy and maintain his form during this time.
As for Kryten, my theory for why he's so much larger in the later series is that he's neglected to change his hoover bag for several years.
The other Kochanski conundrum
In 7.3, "Oroboros," a new Kochanski arrives from a reality in which she went into stasis for hiding Franekenstein. Lister is a hologram , Kryten is still there and the Cat still evolved. Kochanski never wanted to go into stasis but presumably she couldn't bring herself to let the pet cat be disintegrated and allowed herself to be put into stasis as punishment (something which would probably have severely curtailed her career as well, had the accident not happened). What, though, did this version of Felis sapiens use as the basis of their culture? What did they fight religious wars over before abandoning the ship, if not Lister's shopping list and general slobbiness of outlook? With Kochanski as a role model, I can imagine the great war of the cottage cheese - Pineapple Chunks vs. Plain.
Which Rimmer is Rimmer?
There's a big mystery as to which version of Rimmer appears in the series from Back to Earth onwards. He's a hologram again, but seems to have memories of both the original Rimmer from Series I to VII, and the resurrected version from Series VIII. This ties in to the confusion around the end of Series VIII. There were various endings considered for this, including one where they got back to Earth for good, and another where Ace Rimmer returned and saved the day. One ending was actually filmed, which saw the Kryten develop the antivirus to stop Red Dwarf's corrosion, while the rest of the crew were abandoned in their fleet of Blue Midgets and Starbugs.
In 10.6, "The Beginning," Rimmer almost gets round to explaining what happened at the end of "Only the Good..." but is continually interrupted, leaving it all a mystery. He does claim to have been the one who saved the ship, but the others say it was a fluke. There's a few possible explanations, including Ace coming back and saving them before trading places with live Rimmer, but I don't like that idea because it undoes all the original Rimmer's character development.
The best solution is that Rimmer dies in whatever happens to save Red Dwarf (although he could have died at anytime in the nine years between "Only the Good" and Back to Earth, which might also account for Rimmer's ageing) and the hologram was created with both Rimmers' memory discs incorporated. He does say he always keeps his hologram discs up-to-date, after all. So from Back to Earth onwards, we're watching a composite version of Rimmer. A super Rimmer.
How does Lister get his memories back?
In 12.5, "M-Corp," there's a pretty daft ending where Lister is reset to his original self back at the very beginning of the series, but Kryten plans to recreate his memories from CCTV footage. This sort of nonsense might fly on Star Trek, but you can't restore years of memories and personality development in a few weeks. The next episode, and the last one so far, "Skipper," makes no rerefence to his memories at all, and also has some other strange inconsistencies. The episode revolves around skipping between realities, but the characters make no reference to the various other dimension jumps they've made in the past, and act as if the idea is completely new to them. Still, this potentially provides the solution to the problem as well: "Skipper" is set in an alternative reality to the preceding 72 episodes. In fact, if we don't assume that each episode takes place in the same reality, it would solve a lot of continuity problems...
One thing that Red Dwarf has become notorious for is the complete lack of internal consistency. They can't even decide if Lister and Rimmer are from the 21st, 22nd or 23rd century. The internal history of the series has been rewritten both deliberately and accidentally, then changed back again, plus there have been multiple alternative universes and more time travel than you can shake a stick at. So here, after discussions with fellow Dwarfers Suz and Ruth, are my attempts to tackle some peculiar questions and inconsistencies, with various unsubstantiated theories and headcanon.
When is Red Dwarf set?
I once tried to piece together a consistent timeline for the series, before giving up because it's completely impossible. One thing we can do, oddly enough, is fairly reliably date the most recent series: AD 2,978,341. The only genuinely consistent date we have in the whole series is 2340 for Kryten's creation, and that this is definitely after the death of the Red Dwarf crew. In 11.4, "Krysis," we learn it's Kryten's 2,976,000th birthday. Series XII is set one year later. This presumably includes the two centuries Kryten spent running Starbug in between Series V and VI, while the others were in deep sleep. There are other elements that might put this out of whack - time dilation etc. - but this is still the most accurate date we have. It also means that Holly was rounding up when he said he kept Lister in stasis for three million years, although even then we have to ignore relativistic effects when the ship accelerated towards the speed of light.
The Kochanski conundrum
One big anomaly is raised in Series IV. Grant and Naylor decided that Lister's unrequited pining over Kochanski, a woman he barely knew, was a bit puerile, so rewrote the backstory to say that they'd had a brief, intense relationship - something that followed their reworked backstory from the novels. This is a better storyline but it causes a big contradiction that has no explanation.
I have a theory, though, that ties in with another oddity, something that once upon a time I planned to write up into a bit of fanfic. In 3.5, "Timeslides," time is rewritten so that Rimmer is alive, until he very quickly blows himself up. Next episode, he's a hologram again. It's a quick gag, but again, it's a huge rewrite of the series' past.
In my head, Rimmer's conversation with his younger self - trying to persuade him to get up early and go patent the Tension Sheet - isn't completely wasted. Seeing "Thicky" Holden get there first inspires him to be a little more daring, take a few more risks. It doesn't make a huge difference to his life, although it might explain some of the inconsistencies with which exams he takes and how often. However, it eventually leads him to do something a little stupid, something illegal or against Space Corps rules. Maybe he helps Lister hide Frankenstein. I don't know, but the important thing is that he ends up in stasis and therefore survives the accident.
Being roommates with the slightly-more-daring Rimmer makes Lister bolder too. He has the guts to go ask Kochanski out. It doesn't last long, he still ends up alone and gets Frankenstein to keep himself company and gets put into stasis, but it's enough to rearrange his entire romantic backstory.
What's Red Dwarf's crew compliment?
Another change to the backstory in Series IV saw the crew of the ship increase tenfold. In the early dasy, Lister was crewman no. 169, bottom of the entire crew, but in 4.3, "Justice," Rimmer is found guilty of the deaths of 1167 people - with him and Lister added on, this puts it at 1169. It's not as big an increase as in the novels (which had the crew at 11,169) but makes more sense considering the sheer size of the vessel. So, a weird mystery? Not too hard to resolve. While Rimmer and Lister work for the Space Corps, Red Dwarf itself is owned and operated by the Jupiter Mining Corporation. Presumably, the JMC engages the Space Corps to run their ships, but also employs numerous civilian crewmen as well. So the extra thousand people is comprised of miners, shop assistants, the barman at Parrot's... although not the chefs, because seemingly you have to take a Space Corps exam to be a chef. The count also doesn't include the prisoners and wardens on Floor 13, because Rimmer wasn't aware of them.
Check the Appendix
In 2.3, "Thanks for the Memory," a big joke is made of Rimmer having his appendix out twice. This is due to him remembering Lister having his appendix out as well. However, in 6.2, "Legion," Lister has his appendix removed again. How is this possible? Well, one fan theory is that in 4.2, "DNA," when Lister is returned to his original human form after becoming "Man Plus," he's rebuilt with his appendix intact. A funnier explanation was put forward by Doug Naylor in the novel Last Human, after he was questioned on it at a convention: Lister had a mutation and was born with two of the world's most useless organ. This raises the intriguing notion that when Lister is rebuilt again by the nanbots in Series VII, he gets both his appendixes (appendices?) back, meaning he might have a total of four appendectomies.
On a side note, it was revealed in the 1996 Logbook tie-in release that the purpose of the appendix was discovered to be medium-wave reception.
Ageing mechanicals
It's a bit illogical that both Kryten and Rimmer change physically over the course of the series. Mostly, we should overlook this: it's a consequence of the fact that we're seeing human actors and not actual robots and holograms. Still, Rimmer has clearly aged across the series, but that's not really inconsistent with what we've seen. He does need to exercise in the early series after all, so clearly his holographic form needs maintenance. Behind the scenes info states that Rimmer hasn't undergone the necessary work to maintain his holography, explaining his ageing in the current series. The same would be true of his fat older self in 6.6, "Out of Time." On the other hand, 6.5, "Rimmerworld," has him sitting in a dungeon for 557 years and and not looking a day older. Possibly his light bee was able to conserve energy and maintain his form during this time.
As for Kryten, my theory for why he's so much larger in the later series is that he's neglected to change his hoover bag for several years.
The other Kochanski conundrum
In 7.3, "Oroboros," a new Kochanski arrives from a reality in which she went into stasis for hiding Franekenstein. Lister is a hologram , Kryten is still there and the Cat still evolved. Kochanski never wanted to go into stasis but presumably she couldn't bring herself to let the pet cat be disintegrated and allowed herself to be put into stasis as punishment (something which would probably have severely curtailed her career as well, had the accident not happened). What, though, did this version of Felis sapiens use as the basis of their culture? What did they fight religious wars over before abandoning the ship, if not Lister's shopping list and general slobbiness of outlook? With Kochanski as a role model, I can imagine the great war of the cottage cheese - Pineapple Chunks vs. Plain.
Which Rimmer is Rimmer?
There's a big mystery as to which version of Rimmer appears in the series from Back to Earth onwards. He's a hologram again, but seems to have memories of both the original Rimmer from Series I to VII, and the resurrected version from Series VIII. This ties in to the confusion around the end of Series VIII. There were various endings considered for this, including one where they got back to Earth for good, and another where Ace Rimmer returned and saved the day. One ending was actually filmed, which saw the Kryten develop the antivirus to stop Red Dwarf's corrosion, while the rest of the crew were abandoned in their fleet of Blue Midgets and Starbugs.
In 10.6, "The Beginning," Rimmer almost gets round to explaining what happened at the end of "Only the Good..." but is continually interrupted, leaving it all a mystery. He does claim to have been the one who saved the ship, but the others say it was a fluke. There's a few possible explanations, including Ace coming back and saving them before trading places with live Rimmer, but I don't like that idea because it undoes all the original Rimmer's character development.
The best solution is that Rimmer dies in whatever happens to save Red Dwarf (although he could have died at anytime in the nine years between "Only the Good" and Back to Earth, which might also account for Rimmer's ageing) and the hologram was created with both Rimmers' memory discs incorporated. He does say he always keeps his hologram discs up-to-date, after all. So from Back to Earth onwards, we're watching a composite version of Rimmer. A super Rimmer.
How does Lister get his memories back?
In 12.5, "M-Corp," there's a pretty daft ending where Lister is reset to his original self back at the very beginning of the series, but Kryten plans to recreate his memories from CCTV footage. This sort of nonsense might fly on Star Trek, but you can't restore years of memories and personality development in a few weeks. The next episode, and the last one so far, "Skipper," makes no rerefence to his memories at all, and also has some other strange inconsistencies. The episode revolves around skipping between realities, but the characters make no reference to the various other dimension jumps they've made in the past, and act as if the idea is completely new to them. Still, this potentially provides the solution to the problem as well: "Skipper" is set in an alternative reality to the preceding 72 episodes. In fact, if we don't assume that each episode takes place in the same reality, it would solve a lot of continuity problems...
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