It's going to be interesting how they do the Rimmer thing. There are a few ways it might happen:

1.The recreated Rimmer has all the memories of the Rimmer hologram- most probable, going on the series 7 stupidity.

2. The recreated Rimmer has Rimmer's memories upto the accident (possibly upto series V if they use memories from his hologram disc).

3. Some dodgy plot where hologram Rimmer somehow returns from being 'Ace'.

Also, it's likely that by the end of the 3 parter, the recreated crew get killed (and probably Rimmer).

THIS IS ALL MY WILD SPECULATION! BELIVE NOTHING!

Isn't there a bit in the full advert for Red Dwarf VIII where this strange woman says along the lines of "The Entire Crew of Red Dwarf shall be terminated apart from one"?

I would guess the obvious, but going on what the creators have thrown at us, anything could be possible!

This must be a pleasant change for you Brits. I mean, usually we're all talking about the latest Star Trek episode and you're 2-3 seasons back. Now we're the ones that have to wait for the goods.

Have you checked www.gallifreyone.com for news on Red Dwarf?

Hehe - tell me about it - I'm loving every minute of moderating this board just before the season starts! :-)

And just as a passing reference, the earliest anyone in Britain can start watching the lastest seasons of Star Trek is the middle of March, when they are released on video. They get on Digital Terrestrial sometime in late spring/early summer!

But the BBC are making a big thing about this Red Dwarf series - it's the first time in a while I've seen them put together a 5 minute trailer without the BBC logo at the bottom for a six-part comedy series.

Don't you mean 8 part? I know-pick,pick,pick. I don't remember that bit from the trailer. I have seen the short and long versions, but I think I missed a few seconds of the longer one.

What a great start to the series. Red Dwarf is back on form. The continuity references were good, especially the uniforms and quarters. Rimmer was done well- no memories from after the accident, although he was holding a disc at the end, possibly his hologram disc.

Norman Lovett was great too. My favorite moment was the rat-arsed joke.

Question. Were Chelby and Sen the original actors?

Just thought of a nit. When Kryten and Kochanski discuss what good things have come from the nanobots, the events they mention are in the wrong order.

Also, why weren't there two Kochanskis?

I know Chen(?) (the one played by Paul Bradley) was, I can't remember Selby.

I agree, this episode was excellent. I even forgive Doug Naylor for season 7 :).. I especially enjoyed the Kryten/psychologist scenes and Norman Lovett was brilliant; it makes us remember what a loss it was when he left (no disrespect to Hattie Hayridge intended). The only downside was shrinking Red Dwarf as an excuse to sum up the cliffhanger, although I loved the trip through the Dwarf drainpipes...

BTW I though the disk Rimmer took was the disk
with the crew medical records.

It could be counted as a nit, but the uniforms were different to seasons I and II, but this could be blamed on the Nanobots..

There aren't 2 Kochanskis since the Nanobots knew she was on Starbug, much for the same reason there aren't 2 Listers (I assume)

I thought of that after posting my message (Kochanksi stuff).

I didn't think of the medical records- personally I hope it's his hologram disc so we get the 'real' Rimmer back.

So do I; although Rimmer is fun, he won't be half as good without the memories of the past 7-ish seasons...

Just a side note; we now know that the accident on Red Dwarf happened before 2340; does anyone know if this contradicts any of the novels?

No- I believe they stay with the post 2300s timeline.

Is it just me, or did Ms. Kochanski seem rather more attractive than last season?

Its not fair, less than a minute into the episode, the firm alarm went of in my flat so I missed the entire episode. I hope I can watch the repeat or that my brother recorded it.

I loved the scene with her and Kryten- Krytie expresses the views of many RD fans!

When Starbug enters Red Dwarf it`s supposed to be immediately after "Nanarchy", but Kochanski`s outfit is different.

Going back to the question, "Why isn't Kochanski recreated by the nanobots?". Firstly it can't be because of the same reason as lister because Lister didn't die in 'The End' so there would be nothing to recreate. The nanos', in the previous episodes, seemed to posses quite high levels of Artificial intelligance and so maybe they recreated the crew on purpose, for a reason we hopefully will find out in the future, and had enough sense not to recreate 2 of 1 person. If they can turn a ship like Red Dwarf into a planet then i would hope that they do anyway

I don't know if this nit goes in these episodes or 1st season episodes but since someone noticed the uniforms were different here than in season 1, has anyone also noticed in the first season, Rimmer's necktie keeps changing length?

One more nit: why didn't the nanobots recreate Frankenstein - Lister's cat from whom The Cat evolved?

It must mean that the recreated Red Dwarf is from the time before Lister bought Frankestein. That would be at least a month before the accident.

Does this mean the accident is going to happen all over again, or will Rimmer's suggested security improvements take care of that?

Just saw all 8 episodes yesterday. Hilarious. I do have a couple of nits though.
1. In the above plot summary it is said that Lister is talking to the 'real Rimmer'. The real Rimmer died about 3,000,206 years ago. This is the recreated Rimmer.
2. The nanobots didn't really do all that good a job of recreating Rimmer since he looks about 11 to 12 years older than he did at the start of the series ;-)
3. Increasing the number of recurring characters has had a negative effect on some of the characters, reducing their appearances to BIMOLs and EGALs. I love the Cat, but he hasn't had much to do since series VI.
4. The reference to restoring Red Dwarf to its original design specs was a good way to explain that nit, but what about the revamped episodes where this design replaced the original? Are those to be considered nanobot recreations?

It would seem that the recreation of Red Dwarf is
from after the time Lister bought Frankenstein.
There's a photo of a black cat (presumably one of
the photos that got Lister in trouble in the first
place) on Lister's bunk...

About the Cat's funky heartbeat and pulse. Isn't the pulse supposed to sound the same as a heartbeat since the pulse is created by the heartbeat?
There are two possible explanations:
1. The magician Blackstone used trickery to make it seem that he had two different pulses.
2. It's just a comedy.
(But if we accept the second does that mean we have to apply different standards to nitpicking comedy than nitpicking drama?)

The Red Dwarf crew were resurrected by the nanobots which would have had to use something to recreate - i.e. their ashes that we saw lying about in The End or Future Echoes.
Hence, their should be two Kochanskis - the one from Starbug is from a parallel universe, but this Red Dwarf should have had her ashes and the Kochanski of this universe should have been recreated with the rest of the crew.
Lister never died on thie Red Dwarf so there were no ashes to rebuild him. Frankenstein was pregnant - which is what led to the Cat race - and never died, sealed off in the deep bowels of Red Dwarf, so there were none of her ashes to resurrect her, either.
The only thing I can think of to explain the Kochanski nit is that sometime before Red Dwarf was lost at the start of season six, Lister had his own private ceremony, either scattering or burying Kochanski's ashes - this would mean there would be nothing to resurrect the Kochanski of this universe from when the nanobots rebuilt Red Dwarf.

Or they accidentally used Kochanski's ashes as salt on their sausage and chips one evening. ;-)

Good explanation, though. Best one I've heard!

Ok- I have a nit.

How come Kochanski is the only female prisoner we ever see, apart from the shower scene in Krytie-TV?

Does anyone out there know where I can find the Series VIII scripts?

www.mushroom.demon.co.uk

1. Where did the nanobots get all the extra material to rebuild Red Dwarf according to it's original design? Did they cannabalize a couple of nearby moons and asteroids?
2. Why did they remake Red Dwarf so big then shrink it? Where did the extra material go?

Kochanski's hair seems longer, flatter and a little lighter in color. (Maybe the nanobots are also hairstylists???)

Kryten says they should go from Blue Alert to Red Alert. Well, I geuss they found another light bulb, since Series VI. ;-)

Am I correct in guessing that "rat-arsed" means drunk in England?

Lister is arrested for stealing a Starbug, taking Kochanski and smuggling the Cat & Kryten on board.
1. How much time has passed for the crew to realize that a Starbug, Lister & Kochanski are missing?
2. Why do they assume that Lister alone is guilty? For all they know Kochanski and Lister could have been in on it together, or that Kochanski was the one responsible.
3. How does the security officer know that Kryten & the Cat are outsiders and not just crew members in funny costumes?

The Doctor says that they are out 3 million light years in space. Wrong! 3 million light years is intergalactic space. Few if any stars and planets to have adventures on. Also Future Echoes indicated that Holly did not like flying at light speed, so I can't see him doing it for 3 million years. However, the Doctor's information came from a gossipy coffee machine, so obviously it didn't know what it was talking about. ;-)

Lister says something about pleading the Fifth. I didn't know the English had a Fifth Amendment. I would assume the English would have a different slang term for protection against possible self-incrimination. (Or is England one of the United States by the 21st or 23rd century?)

What was the green liquid Lister had drunk? Both the name and what it is, please.

If Kryten's theory is correct, does this mean that the nanobots made Kryten crash the space bike after the episode Kryten and before Backwards?

We see several big explosions from the Starbug cockpit and yet, when Rimmer examines the wreckage he looks at a big, relatively intact section of console and is able to recover a working computer disc and 2 intact vials. I would have expected most of the cockpit to be in itty bitty pieces and no glass vials to have survived.

About pleading the fifth: Since the program was made primarily for a British audience, enough of them must know what the U.S. Fifth Amendment is in order to get the refrence. I know that in the U.S. "Pleading the fifth" has practically become slang, and it's conceivable that it may have become so in England, as well. (Can anyone in England back me up here?)

Is it at all unlikely that it may have still been slang at the time Red Dwarf left Earth?

Another possibility is that the U.S. Bill of Rights was used as source material in some planetary law system that came into being before the time when Red Dwarf left Earth, and perhaps Lister isn't using slang at all and he really is talking about a fifth amendment!

I assumed the term came from American TV & movies. It just didn't make it into my post. (The problems of revising.)

We could say that Lister uses the term because he watches a lot of American movies and TV shows. (He used Casablanca to teach Kryten about lying in Camille, he & the Cat watched The Flinstones in another episode, and his famous quote from The End about Star Trek, to name a few.)

As for your last possibility, well....
The Bill Of Rights was basically an afterthought. The people who wrote the Constitution thought they got it right and it was added as a concession to those who didn't think the Constitution by itself would protect the people. That's why they are called Amendments, because they were amending the Constitution. If a plantary law system were created the safety against possible self-incrimination would probably be included in the original document. For instance in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Drumhead they refer to the Seventh Guarantee, not Amendment, implying that it was included into the original document. Still it could refer to a Fifth Guarantee or Paragraph or other such designation.

Yes, KAM rat-arsed means being drunk, or completely off your face.

Keith, on 3, possibly Red Dwarf didn't have any Mechanoids as part of the crew and the Cat kind of sticks out.

Though this was just part of a Red Dwarf promo on our PBS station, at one point, Cat says (concerning America), "You mean they haven't bought Europe yet?"

I did say "in funny costumes".
The security officer could have tried to pull off Kryten's head thinking it was a mask.

Posting this after watching a tape of the episode.

I've really changed my opinions of this 6 months on, and I think I know why. Yes there were vaguely funny moments, and occasionally better moments than RD 7, but the only thing it ha going for it was that it was Red Dwarf.

The opening scene really doesn't work. Craig Charles' performance is dreadful, although he has a poor script to work with. Lister characterisation has gone to pot- it worked really well through the series, making him 'grow up'. Now suddenly, he's regressed to a grinning idiot, making second rate stand-up jokes about how old men are similar to babies.

The computer graphics look seriously tacky and cheap, especially compared to the stuff done by B5 and other shows using CGI.

The resurrected crew are for the most part are mistake. The guy playing Hollister proves that the character works best in very short flashbacks.

Argh...

I may post more later, but it annoys me thinking about it.

I'll post this here because Deck 13 is first mentioned in this episode, and I can't remember the first episode that we see it in.

Deck 13 seems to be a seperate structure running down the middle of Red Dwarf. First, it appears to have several decks of its own, although it may be called Deck 13 because that is the access point. Second, why hasn't any crewmember wondered why the decks of the ship go around something instead of straight across?

In this episode Kryten tells Lister that there are 400 prisoners. In The End, Todhunter says there are 169 crewmembers. Even assuming that he wasn't counting the guards it seems like the prisoners still outnumber the crew. Makes one wonder what would happen if the prisoners had tried to make a break for it and overpower the crew.

Brain cramp! Aaaaah! It wasn't Kryten, it was Holly. Duh!

Gee, I'm surprised no one mentioned this one...

When Starbug makes it's enterence into Red Dwarf, the landing bay looks completely different than it did in Nanarchy.

Also, concerning the prisoners outnumbering the crew... they don't. Yes, The End gave the crew complement as 169. In later episodes however (Justice comes to mind) the number of the crew was given to be somewhere around 1169... True, this would be a nit (either a change in the continuity in Justice or Toddhunter misspoke in The End), but it is a nit for another episode, not this one.

Have a nice day.

Or the male and female members of the crew did a lot of fraternizing between that statement and the drive plate malfunction. ;-)

That's certianly possible, KAM... but I always had the impression that the Drive Plate ruptured not long after Lister was placed in stasis. If memory serves, the way Holly worded his explination of the Cat's origins would seem to indicate that Frankenstien gave birth after the accident. I'm not an expert on cat biology, but I think that would mean no more then a month could have passed. (After all, Frankie was already very pregnant in The End, Lister commented on how big she was getting.)

Therefore, this fraternization would have to have been at least eight months prior to the accident... and assuming that the crew was evenly devided between male and female members, that would mean that about 85 female crewmembers would have all been pregnant with 11 or 12 kids each! Maybe that could be normal for the Cat's race, but that would be an astronomical feat for the human race!

And even then, would the 1000 ill fated newly born babies really count as crew? Shouldn't the Justice Computer have charged Rimmer with the death of 167 crewmembers (Lister lived, and I doubt it'd charge him for his own death) and 1000 infant passangers?

Of course, if your fraternization theory is correct... then I should sign up for a tour aboard Red Dwarf! Woohoo! Of course, I'd get killed in the accident, but fortunatly those cute little nanobots would come to the rescue!

Lister is desperately trying to get Rimmer to say something and does his best to get on his nerves at the start.
Why doesn't he mention gazpacho soup? This resurrected Rimmer doesn't know that Lister knows about this terrible personal incident, thanks to the other Rimmer.

Just wondering: I thought stasis booths were used for anything penal, so why the prison?

I think the booths are used for the crew and the prison is for major offenders. The crew doesn't know about deck 13, so it wouldn't make sense to send them there. Disappearing crewmates will lead to people asking questions. I also thought that Red Dwarf was just transporting the prisoners, but I can't be sure.

If the crew doesn't know about deck 13, why send Lister and co. there? They'll be out in two years. And by the time of Only The Good... Rimmer is walking about on the ship on probation. Surely the crew would find out about the prison then? Or wouldn't they be monitoring the canaries' ship every time it flies off for a mission?

Re Deck 13:
I kinda figured that floor 13 was either a nickname, or maybe that part of the ship was simply where one accessed the prison from the 'outside world'.
The other crew not knowing about it simply doesn't work. Even Petersen knows about it later in the season. In fact, Rimmer seemed to have a pretty good idea of it in this episode.

Re female prisoners (*teensy* spoilers for later episodes this season)

Oh, there are others besides Kochanski and the shower-girls. There are a few female Canaries, for instance. We tend to see the males more often because the show centers around Lister and Rimmer, who are of course in the men's wing.

Come to that, anyone notice that while the male prison seems to be the well-hard-tough-don't-drop-the-soap model, the female one seems to be more the 1920s-public-school model?

And, for that matter, why have gender division when, as we see several times this season, males and females can interact all over the place anyway?

Speaking of such things

Re Deck 13:
I kinda figured that floor 13 was either a nickname, or maybe that part of the ship was simply where one accessed the prison from the 'outside world'.
The other crew not knowing about it simply doesn't work. Even Petersen knows about it later in the season. In fact, Rimmer seemed to have a pretty good idea of it in this episode.

Re female prisoners (*teensy* spoilers for later episodes this season)

Oh, there are others besides Kochanski and the shower-girls. There are a few female Canaries, for instance. We tend to see the males more often because the show centers around Lister and Rimmer, who are of course in the men's wing.

Come to that, anyone notice that while the male prison seems to be the well-hard-tough-don't-drop-the-soap model, the female one seems to be more the 1920s-public-school model?

And, for that matter, why have gender division when, as we see several times this season, males and females can interact all over the place anyway?

If it was a nickname in general use, why don't Lister and Rimmer and, at the very least, Holly, know about it in earlier seasons?

What a major improvement season 8 was over season 7! In fact, I think it was just as good as any of the other seasons of the show. The only criticism I would offer is that I think it was a bit of a mistake to start out the first episode with Lister and Rimmer in their cell and then have the whole episode be a flashback. It kind of took some of the suspense away. I think they should have just picked up where they left off in "Nanarchy." In addition to the suspense factor, it would have also made Rimmer's first appearance in the crew quarters a little more special.

Why would Red Dwarf have a prison section? This is not the Enterprise, which was often light years away from the nearest Starbase.

Red Dwarf was never meant to leave the Solar System. Any troublemakers could have been easily shuttled off the ship.