And doesn`t the Admiral who tells Ace about the Dimension-Jumping ship look a lot like the DivaDroid manager? (They`re both played by Robert Llewyllen, who also plays Kryten.)
That's the thing about alternate universes... they can be quite similar or wildly different.
It's difficult to get your head around the concept of alternate universes. If you assume there are an infinite number of them, then that means there's a universe to match any story. This goes a long way to fixing nits; if two stories contradict each other, then one must be from an alternate universe.
There's a scene cut out of one of the versions of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that explains it. Ford is telling Arthur about parallel universes, and he says there's a universe just like this one, the only difference being that there's a tree in the Amazon rain forest that has one extra leaf. You could live there, but you'd realize there was something wrong, and the something wrong would drive you insane.
Kind of like trying to explain parallel universes...
This is my favourite episode of all eight series (so far) - and I never dreamed that I could ever think that Rimmer was gorgeous!! But I'm still puzzled about the point of the dimension jumping ship. Bongo says that it's a one-way trip and there's no coming back. So how will Space Corps ever know that it worked? All they'll know is that the ship disappeared - but it could have been blown into smithereens as soon as it jumped! Why spend all that money on a ship that can't ever report back?!
Chris - no - Lister had already told Ace that Rimmer was a hologram and added, "He can't touch anything."
Oh well, it's been a while since I saw this one.
Though I kind of like Lister's accent, it can sometimes be a bit hard to understand. What did he say Rimmer was as popular as?
Also, during the opening sequence, one of the shots has what looks like one of the Borg. Which episode is that from?
Gordon, assuming you mean the scene where Lister and the Cat are talking in Starbug before the crash, he says 'Oh yeah. Brilliant. What am I supposed to do? Go up to him and say "Excuse me Rimmer, do you realize you're about as popular as a horny dog at a Miss Lovely Legs competition?"'
The borg creature is the Simulant in Justice, which also reminds me of the Terminator. The music in this episode sounds a lot like Take my Breath Away by Berlin, which was used in Top Gun.
I think that was the idea, actually.
The flirting Ace does with the woman reminded me of Bond & Miss Moneypenny.
The ship can "break the speed of reality". What is the speed of reality in case we nitpickers are ever allowed to deal with it?
If Ace is so well liked, then why are there only four people there to see him off?
The Cat is wearing the fishbone earring that he doesn't like and had already given Kryten as a present in The Last Day.
The biggest nit with the dimension jump is simply one of time and space. Ace starts off 20 years after 'the decision' and on Mimas a moon of Saturn, but he ends up 3 million years in the future quite a ways away from our solar system. One possible explanation is that the Dimension Jumper homes in on another reality's version of Ace and takes him there. This is backed up by the comment that no matter which way Kryten flies Starbug the distortion follows. However, why 3 million years in the future? Why not just 'go next door' in the present? (Although, Rimmer might just be a pile of radioactive ash at that point.)
Ace recognises Kryten as a series 4000 Mechanoid, except that I beleive the 4000 series were built quite some time after the Red Dwarf crew snuffed it.
How can an android be punched unconscious?
Keith - re your last question - I guess that a hard enough impact could shake some of his wiring loose, thus causing him to malfunction.
But again, why does Ace then tell Rimmer to sort Kryten out - he's already been told that Rimmer can't touch anything!
Well, if you think about it, Ace isn't really any smarter than Rimmer.
Ace just seems smarter because he buckled down and worked harder to learn how things work, while Rimmer was lazy and looked for the easy way out.
Clearly Ace needed to be told some things a couple of times before he really learned it.
'Ace' - for the record, the fact that I said that I thought this version of Rimmer was gorgeous does not mean I'm breaking out the maple syrup just because you're using his name, 'k?!
Ace Rimmer: What a guy!
Rimmer is pretty homophobic in this. Probably because he feels that his sense of manhood is threatened by Ace.
In Ace, Rimmer saw all the things he couldn't be himself. His homophobic attitude was just his way of lashing out.
However, as the series went on, our Rimmer did grow a bit. So the possibility was there all along.
the subtext in the script about Ace's long hair - when it was made (1991), and even now in 2020, long hair is identified with girls and women unless a man is making a statement about his sexuality.
Ace didn't end up on the RD of his universe. Of course, why would he have.
RD was the best job in the Space Corps our Rimmer could get.
"Our" Rimmer's job was servicing chicken soup machines (as demonstrated in the first episode). Lister's previous job was corralling abandoned shopping trolleys at a supermarket.
The reason our Rimmer ended up that way is because, unlike Ace, he wasn't held back a year in school. Thus he never got the motivation to succeed that Ace did, and just muddled through.
Still, our Rimmer did eventually become Ace himself later on.
Still, our Rimmer did eventually become Ace himself later on."
albeit, "67 percent more weaselly" as Kryten put it.
Still, he did grow as a character. Being around Lister, Cat, and Kryten had more of an effect than he realized.
Rimmer became "moderately tolerable rather than a total smeghead" as the RD Programme Guide put it in the nineties.
The flashback to Rimmer's boyhood... It's always annoyed me a little that something as nerdy as Red Dwarf will have the birthplace and childhood home of Rimmer as Io. One of the most volatile, violent bodies in the solar system is shown to be somewhere like Devon.
Two words:
Terra Forming.
Yeah but my nit in the same category as all those stories and movies where drop dead gorgeous women come from Venus.
The establishing shot indicates that they're inside a dome. It's still a stretch that it looks so bright and sunny inside, but eh, it's sci-fi.
It's not that much of a stretch. Artificial sun spectrum lights are a thing.
And this is happening hundreds of years from now. Technology has clearly advanced.
All the following posts have been moved to the Chris Barrie/Arnold Rimmer thread.