Red Dwarf (1988) - 29 questions

Question: Does the Cat actually have a name?

Answer: Presumably he does, but it's never been used in any material related to the show. He is the only Cat left (as shown in Series 1), so even if he had once had a name, nobody would know it.

Question: If Red Dwarf can travel at speeds faster than light, why is this the only time it ever does?

Answer: It can, but that doesn't mean that it's supposed to. At the time of the episode, Red Dwarf's thrusters have been firing continuously for millions of years, accelerating the ship until, in this episode, it finally achieves light speed. This is not a speed that the Dwarf was ever intended to attain, hence the need to slow it down again before the stresses tear it apart. If they wanted to hit light speed again, it would take the same sort of length of time to accelerate back up to that speed. Technically possible, but not exactly practical.

Question: Was there a specific reason Holly chose to bring back Rimmer as a hologram, someone whom Lister didn't at all get on with? Why not one of his friends?

Answer: He brought Rimmer back because he's the person that Lister had the most interaction with during his time on Red Dwarf and also because all Lister ever did with his friends was get very drunk. Lister may not like Rimmer, but bringing him back probably has the best chance of keeping him relatively sane.

Question: During the first season, Lister is adamant and quite determined about getting back to Earth, so why after a few episodes does he give up?

Answer: He never strictly gives up, he just realises the practicalities of the situation, that it took Red Dwarf three million years to get to where it is, so it would take the same length of time to return. While he originally plans to go back into stasis for the long journey, the "future echoes" that he sees while travelling at light speed convince him that he should stay active on board the ship instead and look for alternative ways to get back, something that influences the plot of several subsequent episodes.

Question: At the end of this episode Lister, Rimmer and the Cat are finding out whether Lister is pregnant or not. When Rimmer reads the pregnancy test he says "Oh excellent news, I'm going to be an uncle." Why does he say this if he is to of no relation with Lister? (as far as I know).

Answer: It's quite common for male friends of the family to be referred to as "uncle" by the children, even if they're not actually related in any way - I have at least three old friends of my parents who I refer to in these terms. Rimmer may be stretching the point with the 'friend' thing, but that's what he's referring to.

Question: When Holly is saying about how he has changed music he says that because of the 2 new notes he's made instruments would be bigger. "Triangles will have four sides. Piano keyboards the length of zebra crossings. Course, women will have to be banned from playing the cello." I don't understand the joke about the cello part. Could someone please tell me what he means?

Answer: The cello is a large four-stringed instrument, which, when it is played, stands vertically on the floor between the player's legs (assuming they are seated). If it is to grow as large as the other instuments mentioned will, it would require a rather unseemly lack of femininity to be able to encompass it with the legs.

Question: At the end of 'Timeslides', even though all has returned to normal, Rimmer has altered history sufficiently so that he is now alive rather than a hologram. As the Dwarfers walk through the cargo decks Rimmer excitedly yells "I am alive.", the end of which is punctuated by an explosion that presumably kills him. The question is: What in Gods name causes this explosion? And why do Lister and the Cat appear completely uninterested that one of their crewmates has just been killed?

Answer: Rimmer pounds his fists on two large crates labelled "Explosives", which causes the explosion. The others had wandered off by the time Holly and Rimmer realised he was alive, so they heard Rimmer yelling followed by the explosion but didn't know Rimmer had been harmed as they didn't know he was alive to start with.

Question: Why was there dog food on board in the first place? I thought that Red Dwarf wasn't meant to have any animals on board- so why was it needed?

Answer: It's entirely possible there were animals on board. Lister mentions lab mice, there could have been other lab animals too, or pets. Lister got in trouble with the cat because it hadn't been quarentined or vacinated.

Question: What exactly happened to Cat at the end of this episode?

Answer: He had to use the toilet, but since they were in the Backward World, whatever he excreted would already be there, and go back INSIDE his body, which would be very disturbing.

Question: In this episode, Rimmer says how the Eskimos had the right idea by taking the sick and old out into the snow, and then leaving them to it. Then he says 'that's why there is no Eskimo word for Eastbourne'. I don't get the joke. What does he mean?

Answer: Eastborne is a coastal resort town in Sussex in southern England. A lot of people go to live there after they retire, hence the joke.

Question: In various episodes in the first series it is mentioned several times that the crew numbered 169 crewmembers aboard the ship. However, when the mindprobe convicts Rimmer of second degree murder it states that he is guilty of 1,167 counts. Where did the other 1,000 casualties come from?

Answer: This is an example of the rather lax attitude to continuity that Red Dwarf subscribed to. Early on, the crew was stated as numbering 169; in later series of the show, this was deemed to be more than a little low, given the huge size of the ship, and the count was upped to 1169. Various arguments have been put forward to try to explain this, most commonly that the ship had 169 registered crew, but families, passengers and so forth boosted the actual number of people on board to the higher level, but, in the end, it's simply an intentional change in continuity by the show's writers.