Tailkinker

Chosen answer: In the fictional version of the real world that the crew visit in "Back To Earth", apparently a season nine did happen.

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Chosen 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.

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Chosen answer: It was never stated directly in the series, although Lister does mention at one point that it was Kryten's fault. The first book based on the series states that the ship crashed after Kryten carefully washed the navigation console using soapy water, but it's unclear whether this is intended as a canonical explanation.

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Chosen answer: They reconstructed Red Dwarf as it was supposed to be, hence going back to the original plans, rather than the cut-down versions that were actually used to build it. A ship without a crew isn't much use, so they brought the crew back as well, possibly using the physical and personality information stored by the ship's holographic recreation unit as a template. How they might have restored the prisoners is another matter, probably best explained by the venerable science-fiction standby of "don't ask, they just did".

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Chosen answer: In-universe, after leaving Red Dwarf after his first appearance, Kryten managed to crash Lister's space-bike into an asteroid. Lister found his remains and decided to rebuild him, however, due to the high level of damage and Lister's questionable repair skills, he was unable to recreate Kryten exactly, leading to changes in appearance, personality and accent. In reality, the original actor wasn't available, coupled with presumably practical concerns about one-off makeup as opposed to makeup for a regular cast member, so some visual changes were made.

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Chosen answer: Their bodies have simply decayed to dust over the intervening three million years.

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Chosen answer: The details are never made particularly clear, except that the ship was, at some unspecified point, stolen by Kryten's rogue nanobots while the crew were away from the ship on Starbug. A short online comic produced by the BBC suggests that this happened directly after the events of the fifth series' final episode "Back To Reality", that the crew returned from their encounter with the despair squid to find Red Dwarf missing, although events in the recent revival, "Back to Earth" appear to contradict that.

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Chosen 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.

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Chosen 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.

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Chosen 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.

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Chosen answer: The crew were wiped out in a radiation leak, something that killed the crewmembers, but had little effect on the structure of the ship other than rendering it radioactive for the next three million years. Any minor damage was presumably fixed by the scutters in the intervening time. The leak supposedly occured after a faulty part of the drive system wasn't repaired properly, something that Rimmer blames himself for. However, as Kryten argued successfully in the episode "Justice", somebody as incompetent as Rimmer would never have been given responsibility for any task that could potentially have such devastating consequences, suggesting that the true cause of the accident may be considerably more complex than one minor drive plate fault.

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Answer: The original idea was that they would do a feature film which would cover subsequent events, but, despite numerous attempts, they were never able to get it off the ground. By the time Back to Earth aired, years later, it was presumably decided that enough time had passed that it was no longer necessary to address the issue and instead focus on telling an entirely new story.

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Chosen answer: After the radiation leak, Red Dwarf became an extremely dangerous place, with the majority of the ship irradiated and thus a danger to anyone who ventured near it. As such, Holly boosted the engines to maximum, sending Red Dwarf hurtling out into deep space where it couldn't pose a threat. It would seem likely that the Jupiter Mining Corporation would have been informed, either directly by Holly or by some sort of automated system, but, given the irradiated nature of the ship, they probably would have decided that any salvage mission would be pointless and would simply risk more personnel. Once the radiation finally reached a safe level for Lister to be brought out of stasis, after three million years of thrust, Red Dwarf was well and truly lost.

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Answer: No, the intent was not that it would be the final episode. At the time, the aim was to follow the eighth series with a full-length movie, before returning to television. Unfortunately, despite many attempts, there have always been problems with obtaining the necessary financing, so the series has never been continued. While the possibility of a ninth series has been discussed on many occasions, no progress has ever been made.

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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.

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