In Out Of Time, the time device only lets the present-day Starbug crew travel through time, evidenced when they go back to the 11th century and are still in deep space.
But here when they get it, they can travel through space as well. How?
Of course there's the whole paradox of how the 1966 JFK can come back and shoot himself if he dies in 1963 and won't exist in the future?
And all that messing about with Lee Harvey Oswald - surely that would have corrupted the timeline somewhat because Jack Ruby had to assasinate him later at the right point in time?
And how does the extra space in Starbug work? It doesn't look any bigger on the outside.

Me thinks Rob Grant may have been the brains behind Red Dwarf.

Starbug has several modifications for series 7. In fact, many modifications are made for each series. How would Andrew Corrocan feel if I sent my changes for each season?

Maybe each season happens in a parallel universe?

Andrew Corcoran's Reply: Yeah, just stick them in the Starbug Lounge, I don't mind!

In 'The Inquisitor', we find a situation similar to the beginning of this episode :

(in 'Out of Time' our Starbug is destroyed, hence the timedrive is destroyed and so the future selves won't exist to kill them, whereas in 'The Inquisitor' Lister saves the Inquisitor's life so he can't erase Lister from history, but if the Inquisitor erases Lister, then he won't be able to threaten his life in the first place)

In this episode, Lister tries to explain the paradox to the recorder, and subsequently overloads it. However, in 'The Inquisitor', Lister and the Inquisitor manage to explain it without confusing anybody.
What difference was there between Lister explaining it in 'The Inquisitor' and in this episode?

Probably because three years had elapsed between seasons six and seven and they thought people may not remember or maybe they just didn't want to dwell on what happened before, so they could get on with new stuff. Just look at some of the arguments about temporal mechanics in all the different boards - maybe they didn't want to alienate casual viewers with complicated explanations.
But your point it totally valid and I did feel it was a bit of a cop out. However Lister and the Inquisitor can explain it to each other but maybe the recorded only has a limited intelligence chip like the Talkie Toaster or something.

In the original interruption of the timeline, Oswald gets off two shots before our heroes appear. For this purpose I'll assume that the Warren Report was accurate in its assessment of Oswald firing three bullets - that's all the time established by the Zapruder Film allows. The first one is a miss - it hits the ground near the triple-underpass and wounds a bystander named James Tague. But the second hits Kennedy in the throat, and catches Governor Connelly as well (this is the 'Magic Bullet'). This must have been Oswald's second shot in this episode. Additionally, recent ballistic evidence suggests that, were it not for the "third" shot, the head shot that in terms of this episode was presumably made by the alternative Kennedy, the throat wound would have still proven fatal.

So why is there no mention of the throat wound in this episode, which implies that Kennedy in the interrupted timeline was completely uninjured (this is also assuming that the only Conspiracy that existed that day in Dallas was between the alt-Kennedy and the Dwarfers).

Well, if this episode is any indication of what Series VII is like, I can see why there have been complaints about it.

Lister, when removing Kryten's guilt chip, must have also taken his discretion chip.

Just after the title sequence, Lister is holding his guitar, but I thought his guitar was smashed in Emohawk. You know, 'lost in the crash', wink, wink.

Why is Kryten more silvery, than black?

In Out Of Time, the time drive was a big old thing attached to Red Dwarf's engine, but here it is a small hand held device.

Why couldn't any of the Dwarfers see Oswald after he climbed in the window? Do they have really bad peripheral vision?

Murray: There had to have been another conspiracy, since the plainclothes (Policeman? FBI agent? Secret Serviceman?) mentioned Oswald by name and seemed to be in on the plot to kill JFK. Also Lister later mentions driving the conspiracy theorists crazy.

How does Hoover become President? Johnson was the vice-president. If Kennedy is removed from office Johnson would become President. Head of the FBI is not in the chain of command.

Kryten mentions missiles in Cuba and says that with missiles only 30 miles away from the US... Cuba is 90 miles away from Florida.

For a guy who failed his engineering exam so many times Rimmer certainly spouts off the technobabble pretty easily.

How long was the dead guy dead? Cat doesn't smell any signs of rot and Kryten cooks the guy up, implying that he had been killed fairly recently and yet the implication is that Dallas is a ghost town.

Why are the Dwafers having an outdoor fire instead of going to an abandoned restaurant? They could check the fridge for frozen food and cook up what they find in the kitchen.

In Emohawk, Kryten say, "We're as guilty as the man behind the grassy knoll." What do you know, he was right! Still when the idea of a second gunmen behind the grassy knoll comes up in this episode, no one seems to comment on that.

Kennedy is being taken to Hoover prison. Rather coincidental that the ex-President is staying at a prison with the same name as the current President. Do any New York nitpickers even know if there is a Hoover prison in that area?

At the beginning, Lister explains that when their future selves killed them they destroyed themselves, therefore they couldn't have killed themselves, so the Dwarfers came back to life. At the end the future version of Kennedy kills himself, fades away, but his old self stays dead.

Obviously the guitar is another polymorph that has snuck on board they haven't discovered yet.
Kryten more silvery - don't you know he's finally try to catch up with those mechanoid fashions at long last?
How does Hoover become president? You know some people in the 50s might have asked the very same question of actor Ronald Reagan...

First off, Reagan was a nice guy who could appeal to the voters and had been Governor of California before running for President, whereas I don't think Hoover was considered that nice a person or had been elected to public office before.
Secondly, surviving an assassination attempt would have generated a lot of sympathy for Kennedy and the next year would have been an election year. If the fact that Kenenedy was sharing a mistress with a mobster, it might have kept the Democrats from choosing him to run for President, but would it have stopped vice-president Johnson from being chosen? If it had been revealed after the Democrats nominated him to run again, then the Republican canidate might have won. If it had been revealed after the re-election of Kennedy, then Johnson would become President. The only way Hoover could have become President is if he ran in the election.
But the author is British, what does he know, or care, about American politics?

What does the title mean to this story? I think there was a Beatles song called Ticket To Ride, but what does Tikka To Ride mean?

KAM- Given that Doug Naylor doens't care about 'small things' like the appearance of Kochanski, the season 1/2 uniforms, or Red Dwarf, as well as the size of Starbug and the capabilities of the time drive in this episode, I really doubt Naylor bothered top do any research about Reagan. Presumably Tikka to Ride is supposed to be some kind of joke about the fact that they are going to get some curry.

Guess I should have added a smiley emotecon after my Reagan comment. I was actually thinking about that line from Back To The Future.

Tikka is a kind of curry popular in Britain. That's what it means.

And yes, J. Edgar Hoover was a unpleasant person in the extreme.

The Hoover Prison could be after Herbert Hoover a president in the 1920s - 30s. J.Edgar Hoover could have taken power in a coup.

Scientists have just found out that Curry IS addictive.

(This seemed like the most appropriate board for that tidbit of news.)

I thought I heard that years ago - the more you eat, the more resistant your tastebuds get to the chilli oils, so you have to have stronger curries for them to have the same impact.

Um... hate to butt in guys band sound all smarmy but it's balti! You have a "Chicken Tikka Masala balti"! Look in any takeaway balti leaflet and a curry is in a totally different section. Sorry to kick up a ruckus about this but as a brummie I'm sensitive about such matters.

So what is Balti? I know very little about this kind of food.

I guess Lister likes chicken tikka masala with balti sauce mixed in.

If the Dwarfers can now travel in time at will, why don't they use this time thingy to go back to their own time.

They can arrive just after Red Dwarf left the Solar System, so they don't mess up history.

I liked the RD take on Jeff Kay - that he's only a progressive icon because he was killed. a JFK that lived out his two terms would have been a lot more damaged after a natural death in reputation by the revelations of his womanizing and his treatments from "Doctor Feelgood".

While I knew that the title of this episode was a parody of the Beatle's song (Ticket To Ride) I wasn't sure why it was here.

Until I looked up what a "tikka" was. It's Indian food. We all know how much Lister likes Indian food

(KAM: "How does Hoover become President?")

Hoover had dirt files on pretty much everyone. If he wanted to dispose of someone in politics, he (probably) could.

And in Timeslides, Kryten did mention coming back to this point in time.

If he only knew that they would be doing that, a few years hence.

Red Dwarf uses the common allegation that Hoover was a transvestite (a mocked up photo of Hoover in ladieswear and makeup appears on Kryten's chest monitor). Hoover was a lot of very bad things, and held some very horrible views, but hasn't the transvestite thing been debunked?

Well, RD is hardly a documentary here.

Still, with that time drive, why are they still dippy-bopping around deep space instead using to get back to their own time.

Of course, that would have meant the end of the show. However, we don't deal in reality.

---

quote:

Being a crossdresser is not a bad thing, it’s a very unfortunate “of its time” joke, much like calling Göring a “drug-crazed transvestite”, as if that was the worst of his crimes. I wouldn’t cancel anybody over thinking crossdressing was funny 30 years ago, but I’d confront them about it today.

---

Natalie, I'm going to ask once again, when you quote something, please cite the source of said quote.

The writer of that comment missed the points of the jokes. Transvestitism was a frivolous thing, it's an old comedy trope to put men in dresses to get a laugh and that was the point with the Hoover and Goring examples. The writers were mocking the men whereas listing their real crimes probably would not be seen as funny.

Keith, you posted this way back in 1999:


How does Hoover become President? Johnson was the vice-president. If Kennedy is removed from office Johnson would become President. Head of the FBI is not in the chain of command.


Which is correct. When Nixon was forced out, his V.P., Gerald Ford, became President. Did the writers of this episode not understand how the U.S. laws of Presidential Succession worked.

Or do we just write it up to Rule Of Funny.

Loved how they all beat the you-know-what out of Lister at the end. This whole misadventure was his fault.

Yeah, as if the writers were foreigners, or something. ;-)

You know, I think they were

Perhaps Hoover won the 1964 election as Pres or VP.

presumably Johnson served the remainder of Kennedy’s term, but then lost the subsequent 1964 election to Hoover, who by this point had left the FBI in favour of running for the presidency. Remember, Hoover's election is engineered by the Mafia according to Kryten.

Could be. If Orange Hitler could get in, I suppose Hoover could do.

I wonder what the Dwarfers think of him!

Lister: "That Hoover's a right berk!" ;)

Surprised Rimmer never used that time drive to go visit his hero, Napoleon Bonaparte.

Wouldn't that have been a fun episode

Napoleon is an (unseen) member of the evil waxdroids in "Meltdown".
Media using Napoleon could never be taken seriously after the way Bill and Ted used him in "Excellent Adventure".

Napoleon did appear, onscreen, in Better Than Life. Granted he had no lines, but he was there.

Compared to Pol Pot, Mao etc., Napoleon comes off pretty well. He released the Jews from the Rome Ghetto, but when the Papal States were restored after his defeat, they were forced back. His legal code remained the basis of much modern law in Western countries for a long time. I think the writers of RD didn't go beyond the history the British wrote.

Napoleon has many admirers. Rimmer is one of them.

Richard Nixon has been referred to in RD ("Don't Nixon me, man!") i.e. Lister accuses someone of covering up something, but I think Nixon will be forgotten by Lister's time.

We remember famous people who lived centuries ago (and there is no films or pictures of them).

So the same could apply here.

We obviously don’t see Kryten’s full history lesson on screen because early in the episode Lister knows little of Jeff Kay because it wasn't covered at his high school but later when confronting Kennedy, Lister knows that death will make Kennedy a progressive icon.

Don't forget that JFK is three hundred years in the past, from Lister's perspective. He clearly knows some details about JFK's life, but not all of them.

considering how much time passes for them in Tikka, it is not unreasonable to assume that discussing Kennedy’s impact was a subject of conversation.

Perhaps after Rimmer, Kryten, and the Cat finished beating Lister to a pulp at the end of the episode