What did the text at the beginning say? It scrolled too fast for me to read and the reception I got was less than ideal, making reading it in slo-mo impossible.

The backwards story line doesn't work when you consider Rimmer and Kryten's career. If you put it in reverse, this is what happened:

R&K are working in the pub.
They get in the middle of a big fight.
They get the sack.
They become big stars.
They sign a contract.
They get hired.

Backwards? Sideways is more like it.

Here ya go, Gordon, plus the transcript of what the pub manager said to Kryten and Lister while firing them. It's still backwards, but you should be able to work it out.

The Story So Far...
Three million years in the future, Dave Lister, the last human being alive, discovers he is pregnant after a liaison with his female self in a parallel universe. His pregnancy concludes with the successful delivery of twin boys, Jim and Bexley. However, because the boys were conceived in another universe, with different physical laws, they suffer from highly accelerated growth rates and are both eighteen years old within three days of being born. In order to save their lives, Lister returns them to the universe of their origin, where they are reunited with their father (a woman), and are able to lead comparatively normal lives. Well, as normal as you can be if you've been born in a parallel universe and your father's a woman and your mother's a man and you're eighteen years old three days after your birth. Shortly afterward, Kryten, the service mechanoid, who had left the ship after being rescued from his own crashed vessel, the Nova 5, is found in pieces after his space bike crashed into an asteroid. Lister rebuilds the 'noid, but is unable to recapture his former personality. Meanwhile, Holly, the increasingly erratic computer, performs a head sex change operation on himself. He bases his new face on Hilly, a female computer with whom he'd once fallen madly in love.
The saga continuums...
Red Dwarf III
The Same Generation
-nearly-

MANAGER: Uoy ot Skcollob! You fo tol eht etah I. Ti enod evah dluoc ydobyna, yawyna. Parc s'tca rouy, ylknarf.
KRYTEN: What fight? We didn't start any fight?
MANAGER: Tog s'eh efil das, roop a tahw!! Gniyas M'i taht hsibbur eht tuo krow yllautca dna, dnuor ti nurt, gnidrocer siht fo dloh teg ot derehtob s'ohw yrtnuoc eht ni tarp eno eht gnisserdda M'i. Uoy gnisserdda yllautca ton M'i tub. Uoy ta gnitniop M'i. Uoy ta gnitniop t'nia I. Uoy t'nera, tig dlab, dedaeh-erauqs, diputs a era you?

Urmmm... Could someone translate that before my eyes fall out of my head?

<!-NOTE: Message edited by 'acorcoran'-!>Sure, Anon, just do me the favor of using your real name next time. I like to know who I'm helping.

2nd part: "You are a stupid, square-headed, bald git, aren't you? I ain't pointing at you. I'm pointing at you. but I'm not actually addressing you. I'm addressing the one prat in the country who's bothered to get hold of this recording, turn it round, and actually work out the rubbish that I'm saying. What a poor, sad life he's got!"

1st part: "Frankly, your act's cr@p. Anyway, anybody could have done it. I hate the lot of you. Bollocks to you!"

Message slightly altered. As much as I love this (I've seen it on the "Smeg-ups" tape) I still have to censor, but I think asterisks will do... ;-) Moderator

By the way, in the posting where it was written backwards, isn't one of the words "nrut", not "turn"?

Yeah, but I assumed it was a typo on the website, not from the Backwards Universe.

I understand completely your censoring that bit. I wasn't too sure about accurately transcribing those words.

How come Rimmer's uniform has changed?

He probably just wanted a change - Holly changes him into computer-simulated pajamas at night, so he can wear basically whatever he wants.

Backwards & Polymorph are my favorite episode. (It's a tie.)

I loved the dialogue about Wilma Flinstone.

When Kryten eases Starbug forward we see Kryten and Rimmer jerk backwards, but Rimmer is just a projection, why would he jerk backwards?

So why didn't Holly send a message back to the Dwarf about the time hole?

If Holly is the ship's computer how can she be sent back in time with Rimmer and Kryten? Shouldn't her core programming be back on the Dwarf?

A lot of the backwardness of this story was off. Cat was amazed that Lister came out of the lake dry, but Lister should have been soaking wet before they got to the lake. Also, as Mike pointed out, Kryten & Rimmer's career was off. They should have been fired first, got into a fight, become big stars, become less famous until they sign the contract and are hired. (At which point they would probably owe money to Unemployment.)

Why is Rimmer afraid of the fight? He's a hologram, they can't touch him.

Rimmer's a born coward, that's why.

Well actually, not a born coward. If he'd been kept back one year at school...

I know, pick, pick, pick..

Well he could still be born a coward but being held back that one year at school could have been what turned him around.

Some people are born cowards, some have cowardice thrust upon them...

Personally, I think it's a shame that this Kryten and the Kryten from Kryten are supposed to be the same Kryten. In Kryten, he learned to break his programming and go of to plant his garden, but then we fid out he crashed and was rebuilt and the programming that he had once broken is now back in place. It seems depressing.

Well, was it Lister who put him back together? And if Rimmer had a hand in it in any way,the fact it's depressing doesn't seem so surprising.

Nitpicking a nit :
Ed Jefferson : Rimmer wasn't held back a year, ACE Rimmer was, his alt-dimension incarnation.

That's not a nit- Rimmer isn't a born coward, if he'd been kept back a year, he's be Ace. (Which is what I said.)

Oh fudge....
My mistake, should have read more clearly...
Sorry

In the remastered version, the female version of Holly used in the opening credits is actually from a later season (the episode White Hole, I think).

Here's a thing that bothered me about the episode (still, it was great fun): I think they got two concepts mixed up - the "backwards" one and the "parallel universe" one. Because if someone loses a tooth and then has to get in a fight to get it again, or if a war brings people to live, that's a backwards concept. But on the other hand, LIster said that in this universe "Saint Francis of Assisi probably was a sadist doing cruel things to small animals." Surely, this is not a backwards concept. It would fit into a parallel universe only.

Yes it is. Causing injury is the backwards of healing injury.

Gordon is right. If punching someone heals an injury in a backwards universe, then healing them would cause injury.

One thing I did not accept was the idea behind the episode - HOLLY: "Once the universe has expanded [enough] there will come a point when the universe must stop expanding and will contract with time running backwards too." I can accept the idea that time is so closely linked to space that the reversal of the direction of one results in an equal reverse of the direction of another (just!) but I don't see how Red Dwarf could not be affected. If the entire universe's time is running backwards then Red Dwarf must be too. Even if you believe RD left the universe, they returned to it when they travelled through the timehole.

Peter.

Another nit: Rimmer and Kryten get a job in this universe as has been mentioned. Even if you ignore all that has been said about the order beign wrong, why the hell yould they want the job. If you work for someone in a backwards universe, you undo you job, for example erase reports for them, and in return you pay THEM money. What do Rimmer and Kryten gain from the arrangement, and where do they get the money that they supply to their employer?

Peter

Now you've really got me started Netrat. Why on Earth did the stone say "NODNOL 831 sileM". If time is running backwards that does not reverse the words!!! and even if it did make some sort of mirror imagine of everything that had ever been written, the words themselves would be reversed, not the order of the letters. So the Ns, the D, the L, the 3, the s and the e would all be pointing the wrong way.

Peter

And the end joke doesn't work! "Going to the bathroom" as you Americans call it would indeed be reversed in such a universe, but how could the desires be?

Why would the Cat get a sudden desire to such urine into himself? If the urine wasn't present to start with why did he "do into the bushes"????

Peter.

The Exit signs in the pub & the number plates of cars in the street scenes are mirror imaged.

The Exit signs in the pub & the number plates of cars in the street scenes are mirror imaged.

@ Peter, Gordon: I'm not an expert on Francis of Assisi, but I don't think that he did HEAL animals - I think he talked to them, was just kind to them. There's a famous story about him preaching to birds (I'm not a native English speaker so I can't tell you how it's called exactly). I don't think that the backwards concept of talking, whatever that is, would equal sadistic behaviour.

Smiles, Netrat

Remember Netrat, it was Lister who made the Saint Francis statement. He's never been written as being especially bright. ;-) "We're the smart party."

The reverse words are probably because this is a parallel universe and they read thgir ot tfel.

Also Cat & Lister were affected by the backwards reality. Lister's ribs were cracked & his eye blacked when they landed, but went away after the fight. Not to mention the uneating, undrinking and the unmentionable. It was the Cat & Lister's way of thinking that didn't change.

Speaking of way of thinking the news story Kryten reads, says that the gunmen sucks bullets out of people bringing them back to life & the want ads talks of demotion possibilities. Implying a different way of thinking then simply doing things in reverse as if the Universal Rewind button was hit.

As for who would pay Kryten & Rimmer money? Inland Revenue, store merchants, muggers, charities, and if they had a theatrical agent, he would be giving them 90%. ;-)

The people should think of themselves as doing forwards things, not backwards things. And tipping crumbs onto a table makes no sense whatsoever.

Only because you see things in one direction.

The crumbs will become part of the food that the restaurant has paid the customers for.

But the crumbs should have been unwiped onto the table rather than tipped out of a box.

I just thought of someone who would fit really well into the Backwards universe: Toni Braxton! You know that song of hers? "Un-break my heart, say you love me again, un-do this hurt ... un-cry these tears ..." and so on. What do you think?

Is there anything which says Lister and Cat weren't watching a *live-action* version of The Flintstones?

I don't know if it's been mentioned before but 178 Miles is about the distance between Manchester & London. The street scenes were all shot around Manchester city centre, not far from the BBC's studios.

This whole episode freaked me out, but watching Backwards backwards was fun. It's fun to see them un-uneating things, etc.

By the way, this might not really be a nit, in fact it was probably done on purpose, but in the beginning, when Kryten ejects Rimmer (how does one eject a hologram???) the shot of Rimmer flying out of the Starbug is clearly terribly edited. The tiny Rimmer seems to be attached on strings.

My friend says this was intentional, I'm not sure.

This is grasping at straws, but it is mentioned somewhere in Red Dwarf that Rimmer does have a tiny physical presence due to his light bee.

That's the only thing I can think of.

Backwards looks horribly dated and unfunny and to be honest, I think using backwards footage for laughs was a dated concept even back in 1989.

It still looked good when I first saw it in 1994 & only a few years before 1989 it wouldn't have been easy to achieve.

The novel, Backwards, adapted this episode.

There's a reference to the Cold War (still not quite over when this was made).

Lister initially thinks the backwards world is Bulgaria and seems to think it's still part of the Eastern Bloc as when the are trying to ride the bicycle, he says:

"You probably have to be a government official to get one that goes forwards!"

Lister never struck me as the brightest bulb in the galaxy.

Would he even know what the Cold War was (considering, for him, it was about 300 years before).

This aired in November of 1989, when the Eastern Bloc was collapsing.

There was an episode of Round the Twist (think The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits but for kids) where a kid uses a magic remote control that can speed up or reverse time. A bully steals it and uses it to cheat in a spaghetti-eating contest but he ends vomiting over the crowd. The good kids pick up the remote and... yeah.

I think a backwards puberty would be tough on a woman. And a backwards giving birth and pregnancy.

There's an image I didn't need in my head.

In the foreign language dubbed versions of "Backwards", the scroll is read out by an announcer... who speeds up to unintelligible.

Must sound like Alvin and the Chipmunks.

I think that bit where Rimmer launching out of Starbug is done with a tiny plastic man is a worse effect than really anything in Doctor Who

At this time, RD was a Bonehead Broadcasting Corporation show.

What did you expect??

I agree it's typical of the BBC. In Blackadder II, Lord Flashheart's false mustache and some of his costume are visibly falling to pieces in the finished broadcast.

Still, it wasn't too bad a job with the budget they had.

Peter: "Why would the Cat get a sudden desire to such urine into himself?"

He didn't. He had the experience of his poo shoving itself back up into his bowel, hence his expression.

In the novel, Lister had to live that way for more than thirty years. The Cat got off lucky.

yldab detad sah tub KO ylriaf si sdrawkcaB

yldab detad sah tub KO ylriaf si sdrawkcaB

Backwards is fairly OK, but has dated badly.

"The Cat got off lucky."

I've had difficult and painful times trying to take a poo and i still feel sorry for the Cat.

Yeah, the novelization goes into fine detail about it.