Question: What exactly were the circumstances behind Lister being put into a suspended animation at The Beginning of the episode?
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Utopia (1) - S3-E11
Question: The Doctor says that if a Time Lord were to absorb the energies of the time vortex they would become a vengeful god. Why exactly would they become vengeful?
Chosen answer: Given that their entire race was wiped out by the Daleks in the Time War and the Daleks are still around, I'd say that a Time Lord would have something to be vengeful for. That much power would go to anyone's head.
Question: Towards the end of episode 4, The Master transmits a message to the peoples of the universe, saying that if they do not acknowledge his rule, he will send a signal to close the CVE and restart the collapse of the universe. My questions are: How does The Master expect the peoples of the universe to respond to him in time? And what happens if the peoples of the universe don't comply with The Master's demands? Would he just close the CVE anyway?
Chosen answer: Two possibilities. 1: They can reply on the same frequency he's transmitting from. 2: He intends to close the CVE anyway and this is simply an act of cruelty.
Last of the Time Lords (3) - S3-E13
Question: Why does The Master want to create a new Time Lord empire? I would have thought that as a renegade Time Lord he would have been glad they were all gone, also, how could he create a Time Lord empire when they were all dead?
Chosen answer: He likely means an empire where he, a Time Lord, rules over all creation.
Castrovalva - S19-E1
Question: Why does The Master come up with these ridiculously elaborate plans to kill The Doctor when he could have killed him at the beginning of the first episode, just after his regeneration, when he was very weak?
Chosen answer: Because he wouldn't be satisfied simply killing The Doctor when he's weak and infirm. The Master needs to outsmart him.
Question: What exactly is the machine entity known as 'Deus Ex Machina'? Is it a physical representation of the machines? Or a separate being all together?
Question: It's been stated that Seraph is a former angel programme left over from a previous Matrix. Then why does one of The Merovingian henchmen refer to him as wingless?
Chosen answer: A Seraph is the highest level of God's angels, typically depicted with six wings (three pairs), the joke refers to the fact that Seraph physically has no wings in the matrix and that he now no longer works for the machines and so is also meant as a "fall from grace" jibe.
Question: What exactly did the Architect mean when he said to the Oracle, "You played a very dangerous game"?
Chosen answer: By encouraging Neo to go to the machine city and negotiate a peace contract she has upset the Architect's "perfect" world. The Architect, ruled by brutal logic, has a method that is tried and true; the death and rebirth of Neo and Zion, the Oracle has created a new order of things and has allowed Zion to survive, throwing a rather large spanner in the Architect's plans.
Question: Is there a reason the machines use humans for energy? Why not nuclear power or maybe even animals?
Chosen answer: Nuclear power would eventually run out, the impression is that the Machines occupy almost all of the planet's surface, so a LOT of power is needed. Animals are probably not used as their minds are a lot more instinctual and so it would be a lot harder to create a Matrix that their minds could accept, plus most animal and plant life probably died off when the sun was blocked off.
Question: How does the Oracle get her powers of foresight? How does she know the things she knows?
Chosen answer: The oracle is a program, inside the matrix which is an even bigger program. The oracle is simply able to "read" the Matrix and make predictions based on the balance of probabilities.
Question: My friend swears the lead female actress changes at about 10-15 minutes into the film. He says Yancy Butler of Witchblade fame plays the lead at first, and then someone else (I assume it must be Kate Beckinsale) takes over the role. My research to date tells me my friend is nuts. Is he? Is there any explanation related to this? (I think maybe it's due to my friend's pain medication/s - a side effect of some sort.) Thank you for the help. He paid me to research this for him (only two bucks) and so far I've spent over two hours on it. But I did at least learn about these actresses.
Answer: This could be a confusion over characters. If I remember rightly, the film opens with a scene set somewhere around 1200AD, showing the three vampire elders, Markus, Viktor and Amelia, leading a war party. Possibly your friend has mistaken Amelia, played by Hungarian actress Zita Görög, for Selene, who doesn't appear in the film until after this lengthy flashback sequence has finished.
Question: Throughout various episodes, the augments have shown themselves to be very strong, yet whenever they face each other they easily succumb to whatever physical violence is directed towards them. Why is this?
Chosen answer: They're stronger than humans, but they're not invulnerable.
Answer: Two augments fighting each other would most likely look to an outside observer as a fight between any other two people. The augments would be fairly evenly matched (allowing for an individual's weight etc) and so could take each other down the same as normal people fighting.
Question: If everyone has to throw in "a buck apiece" for the tip, how much would the bill have been?
Chosen answer: Assuming a 15% tip, about $45-50. If 20%, $40.
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?
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.
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?
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.
Question: If Red Dwarf can travel at speeds faster than light, why is this the only time it ever does?
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.
Question: How did the accident originally occur aboard Red Dwarf? I know Rimmer was responsible, but what exactly happened? Also, how come the accident didn't completely destroy Red Dwarf and why was the inside of the ship completely clean and tidy with no signs of destruction?
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.
Question: What does the Architect mean when he says, "There are levels of survival we are prepared to accept"? What other levels does he mean?
Chosen answer: The Machines have been sentient for a while, possibly a century or more, so a machine culture has started to emerge as evidenced by the existence of Sati; a program created with no purpose by two machines "in love". If the machines lost the humans then they would lose a significant amount of energy, meaning that a large number of machines and programs would need to be wiped out to ensure the machines survival, but it would be at a much lesser level, "stone age" by comparison.
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Chosen answer: Starbug took 200 years to catch up with Red Dwarf, so Lister and Cat went into suspended animation while Kryten piloted Starbug after the ship.
Captain Defenestrator