History WMG / RedDwarf

Think about it. He's trapped 3,000,000 years away from Earth with his worst enemy on the ship where he hates working ([[AllThereInTheManual according to the novels]]), with no chance of ever achieving his goal of marrying Kochanski and starting a farm/hot dog and donut shop in Fiji. Cat was created by his psyche, as nobody would ever want to spend eternity with someone like him. Kryten may just share Lister's Hell. In Timeslides, he admits to being utterly sick of his life. It's similar to the ''SamAndMax'' personal Hells, where the characters are stuck in their worst nightmares but are (usually) completely unaware.

* Or the Back To Earth specials actually DO make part of series nine, but only towards the end. Kinda like how Back In The Red made three out of the eight total episodes of series eight, but were not the whole series by itself. Let's just say, for hypothetical sake, that series nine would have six episodes. That would be three episodes that help tie up the cliffhanger transition from Red Dwarf 8 to Back To Earth, and then you have the three last episodes being Back To Earth itself. Maybe when the fan in the shop was talking about series nine being the best yet, he was talking about it in a present tense, as in it hadn't finished yet, or was still airing. Mainly because the shop had all the [=DVDs=] from series 1-8, but not nine. Obviously series nine ''doesn't exist'' of course, so there [[CaptainObvious wouldn't be a DVD for it]], but it's just a bit of an explanation to explain the otherwise unexplainable.

Because obviously genders are reversed (unless it's the case of another opposite like Cat/Dog). Holly came back from his interaction with the female Hilly, and adopted her female face as his new Holly identity. Stands to reason Hilly would do the same, and adopt the male Holly's face. If people say it wouldn't work, because Holly is a gender neutral name applicable to both men and female, whereas Hilly is a predominately female only name... these naming norms only apply in our universe. In that one [[CaptainObvious things are opposite]]. Hilly would be seen as a gender neutral name, and Holly is probably predominately masculine.

--> '''Talkie:''' "I can take two at a time, y'know." (imagined line)

* The first retcon may be due to Married!Lister from "Stasis Leak" telling Our!Lister to not see Run For Your Wife on the 1989 Earth. Because of this, the timeline is changed so that Our!Lister doesn't go on and marry Kochanski. [note](In a HilariousInHindsight moment, the newest 2012 film version of Run For Your Wife, starring Danny Dyer, took just £602 at the box office and is considered one of the biggest movie turkeys of all time).[/note]
* The events of ""Timeslides"" cause Pre-Accident!Rimmer to be more receptive to his future self in "Stasis Leak" - after all, '''he's already been visited by his future self as a child'''. This makes him listen to his own warnings instead of thinking he's hallucinating. He manages to get put into stasis with Lister during "The End", and is thus alive at the end of "Timeslides"...for a few seconds.
* In the same episode, Rimmer tells Lister about their future selves and Lister's quest to get Kochanski. Realising he needs to Carpe that Diem, '''Past!Lister asks Kochanski out''', leading to their romance before the Radiation Leak. It is now, ironically, Past!Rimmer's forewarned attempt to ''prevent'' the Radiation Leak that causes the drive plate damage which goes on to wipe out the crew. Realising he can't do anything to prevent the leak, he characteristically runs for the hills, taking responsiblity for the damage to the plate, but only so he can go into stasis, as seen above.

*** Well, considering that this theory is based on AM being behind ''everything'', it means that AM copied himself onto Starbug's computer and is still playing silly buggers with them. Alternatively, he set up the creatures and monsters of Series Six and Seven before getting hijacked by Kryten's nanobots; once he's recovered in the form of the Holly Watch and regains control of Red Dwarf, he commands the nanobots to recreate the crew and kick off the events of Series Eight .

** I've got the cure for that! A few minutues after AM awoke Lister, Lister accidently poured some larger on the bridges control panel, and which caused AM to malfunction; allowing Holly, who was hiding in a data bank that AM had overlooked, to mount a digital assault on AM's core program using the personalities stored in the hologram libary including a version of Rimmer with certain attributes extrapolated to create a being quite like ACE RIMMER!!!!!! And Holly deleated AM, undooing his horrific deeds, all to a truly epic version of the theme music. However the battle did dammage Holly's artificial intelligance causing a condition mistaken for computer senility.

*** Which Arnold stumbled upon, read the story (with some additions detailing his subtle torture of the crew) and franticly deleated AM's hardrive. And if the first counter theroy is true, Holly could have been planning his revenge or working on his holly rock plan.

It explains all of the science going on that the characters admitted was impossible within the context of the show's universe, especially how a cat with at most six kittens could parent and feed an entire race of eventually human-sized (english-speaking, clothing-wearing) beings without ever leaving the storeroom.

* This theory is actually used in the ending of the first novel and for a good portion of the second. The problem with applying it to the tv show is that ''Better Than Life'' did not arrive on board until the titular episode in the second series.
** But is it not also stated in the books that those playing Better Than Life forget they're playing a game? And what better way to forget about something than to not acknowledge that it even exists? If the doctors/programmers are trying to remove him from the game slowly, surely the best way to do it would be to allow him to come to the realisation himself? Thus they "mail" new information to his subconscious, letting him know about the games existence. In later series, they cook up the despair squid and simulation units - to reinforce the idea that reality can be subjective - as well as subtally suggesting he is the lynchpin of the entire universe (which a lot of the time travel episodes suggest) and then finally, in Back To Earth, flatly stating that he is an entirely fictional character.

For some reason, his mind wasn't automatically put to sleep when his body was frozen in time. The stasis generator thing has a side effect of putting a person's mind to sleep when their body is frozen, rather than the mind existing as a result of chemical reactions in the body and the separation only occuring when something like artificial time-control affects the physical brain. The whole thing could have finished in a much shorter time than he was in stasis, if the only things happening were what was on- and just off-screen. Seasons 7 and 8 were just him getting bored (all the more-ridiculous stuff that happened), and losing touch with what reality actually looked like (for example, the dancing Blue Midget).

* Or maybe Brittas is one of his clones from Rimmerworld, who somehow managed to escape and go back in time

Given that that very episode showed that changing the timeline had far larger consequences than previously considered (removing Lister from Red Dwarf erasing the Cat and Kryten, for example), it seems odd that Rimmer's efforts simply result in resetting the timeline, albeit with him alive again. However, up until that point, Rimmer had gone through life without the experience of "Thicky" beating him to the punch to the invention of the Tension Sheet (not to mention it possibly being patented far before it originally had), but meddling the timeline inserted that experience into the flow of Rimmer's life, having knock-on effects altering Rimmer's personality, if only in a small way. This, combined with the sum of his experiences, lead to the "Better dead than smeg!" line, and his eventual acceptance of the Ace Rimmer role.

[[WMG: Dog (the alternate universe version of Cat) was desciended from a pregnant bitch named Dracula.]]

* ^ It must have been a male dog, and being named after HemoErotic Countess Dracula sounds logical. BTW, I've always loved that Listen named his cat Frankenstein. A cool name for a cat.

Or at least started out as one at the begining of the series.

** In "Duct Soup" The second Kochanski makes reference to her having attended Cyber School, surrounded by computer recreated characters of important historical figures, and CG friends, likely experiencing alot of recieved pronounciation. I'm presuming the differences between the two Kochanskis, is that the first one (Grogan) never experienced Cyber School, but instead went to a more rough and tumble Glaswegian state school. These different experiences would make for very different people.

* This makes sense when you consider that the Kochanski in series six was not actually the real Kochanski though, it was only a psiren impersonating her, through reading Lister's memory of her. It makes sense that Lister would remember the series 1-2 Clare Grogan incarnation of her, if that's the memory he has, even if the Inquisitor's erasion had restored her back to the series 7-8 Chloe Annett incarnation instead. Remember that Lister and Kryten were originally set to be erased before they outwitted the Inquisitor, and were then sent to a timeline they had never actually lived. While they were able to restore the timeline itself back, they still had the same memories of all the events that had happened to them, which Rimmer and the Cat lacked (and thus, in Lister's case, he would remember the series one replacement Kochanski when the series six psiren read his mind).

* The X-tended version of ''Tikka To Ride'' states that they've decided against using time travel to go home, in no small part due to the havoc they've already caused on the space/time contiuum.

Because obviously genders are reversed (unless it's the case of another opposite like Cat/Dog). Holly came back from his interaction with the female Hilly, and adopted her female face as his new Holly identity. Stands to reason Hilly would do the same, and adopt the male Holly's face. If people say it wouldn't work, because Holly is a gender neutral name applicable to both men and female, where as Hilly is predominately female only name... these naming norms only apply in our universe. In that one [[CaptainObvious things are opposite]]. Hilly would be seen as a gender neutral name, and Holly is probably predominately masculine.

[[WMG: The timeline from the perspective of the crew in Series 7's Oroboros's alternative dimension, (from Oroboros onwards obviously)]]

** The event itself may have happened, but probably not how Series 8 literally portrayed it. Red Dwarf is still in tall and stocky size in Series 9/10, where as Series 8 has it long and thin.

* As much as I would like to accept this as true, that the nanobots recreated the ship so well that it also recreated the original radiation leak that killed the crew in the first place, it took 3 million years for the radiation levels to die down, after the original accident, which was why it took so long for Holly to release Lister from stasis. So after the events of VIII, what would Lister, Cat, Kryten, Kochanski and Rimmer be doing what for 3 million years? Obviously they'd have to be in stasis, or they'd be dead. So if they were brought out of stasis when the radiation levels died down, Lister is probably 6 million years away from Earth now.
** The evacuation fleet encountered a NegativeSpaceWedgie of the time travel variety. Lister an Co. are now in the year 6 million. Everybody else got to go home.

* It's called the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westermarck_effect Westermark effect]]. Also, they're the only humans within 3 million years, so desperation.
* The gender reversed alter ego thing could be understandable (we've evolved with a natural aversion to having sex with our brothers and sisters because that would cause serious genetic complications for offspring; we haven't actually had any reasons to evolve a natural attitude one way or another to meeting a gender reversed version of ourselves from a parallel universe). Of course, Lister explicitly points out in Ouroboros that Kochanski is technically his mother and that doesn't seem to bother him that much. Also, in Rimmerworld when faced with the dilemma that a female clone would technically be his sister Rimmer's attitude was that he simply wouldn't tell her. So you may be onto something.

** The planet appears to be inhabitable, if a tad deserty, before Rimmer fire up the accelerators. There might have been some native life.

* Droid Rot would naturally follow from being left on for 3 million years. The head's Northern English (Possibly Lancastrian) accent is a deterioration of his original Received Pronunciation English one.

** It would make a lot of sense that he'd have something like that after what he's gone through (might be a side-effect of his self-deprication and abusive family), and would also go hand in hand with his borderline obsessive compulsive behaviour.

* I once imagined an episode with Kryten trying to be helpful by installing a cheap female hologram in Talkie Toaster, the intention being that it would become slightly more human, just as he had done. Unfortunately, as with many of Kryten's attempts to be helpful, it backfired, and Talkie Toaster got no better, using its human appearance to try and emotionally extort the eating of toast out of the crew - sobbing hysterics, suicide threats (which obviously mean nothing coming from a toaster's hologram) and even offering holographic sex to Rimmer in exchange for the eating of toast. Of course Rimmer can't eat toast, so TT would start insulting his sexuality for turning it down.

** FridgeLogic, the Chloe Annett version is actually the original who was replaced by C.P Grogan's version by the Inquisitor. When Lister tricked The Inquisitor and all his work had been undone, she was then restored to Chloe Annett's original version. The C.P Grogan verison the psiren transformed into in Series 6 was just because Lister remembered her like that, and his mind was unaffected by the timeline restoring itself. Mind blown yet?

[[WMG: [[Main/TheBrittasEmpire Gordon Brittas]] is an alternate universe version of Arnold Rimmer.]]

* Taking this thought on a stage, the C.P. Grogan Kochanski of that universe had, for whatever reason, failed an encounter with that universe's Inquisitor, and was wiped for history. The Chloe Annett version was the "sperm-in-law" she was replaced by.

Perhaps a slightly different sperm fertilised the egg that would become her, meaning the combined DNA would be slightly different.

* One entry earlier in the page talked about how the change between Grogan and Annett's Kochanski existed in universe because of the Inquisitor's meddling. So the cosmetic 'differences' between the Lister in one timeline and that of another could somehow be explained as one having one Kochanski's genes, and the other with the other. Assuming Annett's Kochanski was the original one, who then got replaced with Grogan's by the Inquisitor, Lister as he is then was still born from Annett's genes. When the Inquisitor finally got round to judging David Lister, he 'corrected it' by replacing him with that of a Lister born of Grogan's genes... thus the different appearance. Two questions arise though. Why would changing Annett to Grogan in the first place not affect Lister's appearance right away? And secondly, what actually is the extent of the Inquisitor's powers in changing every last person in time and space, when you take into account that by changing one person you effectively screw up the existence of literally all of their descendants. Does he judge one person independently and override the cosmetic appearance of their descendants? But that would be absurd because then genetics would be completely moot. Or does he see into his own future, and know that he's already going to deem certain of those descendants unworthy, and thus doesn't bother to modify their appearance in line with their ancestor as they'll be changed eventually anyway? The extent of his skillbase is never really expanded on. Either way, Red Dwarf timefucks aside, I like to assume that the alternate Lister is the son of Grogan's Kochanski, and the one we know is that of Annett's. It just makes sense, to me.

* One entry earlier in the page talked about how the change between Grogan and Annett's Kochanski existed in universe because of the Inquisitor's meddling. So the cosmetic 'differences' between the Lister in one timeline and that of another could somehow be explained as one having one Kochanski's genes, and the other with the other. Assuming Annett's Kochanski was the original one, who then got replaced with Grogan's by the Inquisitor, Lister as he is then was still born from Annett's genes. When the Inquisitor finally got round to judging David Lister, he 'corrected it' by replacing him with that of a Lister born of Grogan's genes... thus the different appearance. Two questions arise though. Why would changing Annett to Grogan in the first place not affect Lister's appearance right away? And secondly, what actually is the extent of the Inquisitor's powers in changing every last person in time and space, when you take into account that by changing one person you effectively screw up the existence of literally all of their descendants. Does he judge one person independently and override the cosmetic appearance of their descendants? But that would be absurd because then genetics would be completely moot. Or does he see into his own future, and know that he's already going to deem certain of those descendants unworthy, and thus doesn't bother to modify their appearance in line with their ancestor as they'll be change eventually anyway? The extent of his skillbase is never really expanded on.

* One entry earlier in the page talked about how the change between Grogan and Annett's Kochanski existed in universe because of the Inquisitor's meddling. So the cosmetic 'differences' between the Lister in one timeline and that of another could somehow be explained as one having one Kochanski's genes, and the other with the other. Someone could probably say this better than me, but there must be an explanation in there somewhere.

* One one example earlier in the page talked about how the change between Grogan and Annett's Kochanski existed in universe because of the Inquisitor's meddling. So the cosmetic 'differences' between the Lister in one timeline and that of another could somehow be explained as one having one Kochanski's genes, and the other with the other. Someone could probably say this better than me, but there must be an explanation in there somewhere.

* It isn't a perfect explanation, but one example earlier in the page talked about how the change between Grogan and Annett's Kochanski existed in universe because of the Inquisitor's meddling. So the cosmetic 'differences' between the Lister in one timeline and that of another could somehow be explained as one having one Kochanski's genes, and the other with the other. Someone could probably say this better than me, but there must be an explanation in there somewhere.

This way, when the Inquisitor encountered Lister he could have replaced that first Lister (the one who had parents) with an alternative version and this alternative version would have then done the same thing (creating the loop again) therefore resolving the apparent contradiction.

* 9) When Lister encounters Kochanski next she’s from a parallel universe. In that universe, Lister never had access to the time drive and hence Kochanski was never changed. Therefore, this version of Kochanski was always the Annett version.

Which is why the guy in the comics shop refers to it as the best series by miles. It was too good for us to see.

** The original script states that George McIntyre was killed by the original fault in the drive plate.

The Kryten that guest starred in Series 2 was played by David Ross. When Kryten became a regular in Series 3 the role was taken by [[TheOtherDarrin Robert Llewellyn]], which has remained consistent to this day. The old Talkie Toaster of Series 1-2 was voiced by Tony Hawks, but when it appeared briefly in Series 4's 'White Hole' episode it was voiced by the original Kryten [[HeyItsThatGuy David Ross]]. The Series 3 Episode 1 opener explains how Lister was able to rescue the Series 2 Kryten from an astroid, but unable to restore it's former personality, leading to the nature of Series 3's Kryten seeming different. So in Series 4, when Kryten brought back Talkie Toaster, it inherited Series 2 Kryten's abnormal chirbyness or general unawareness of serious matters (hence why Kryten in Series 2 wasn't aware his crew had been dead for years) that made it different from the old Talkie Toaster. The fact that they both have the voice of David Ross could be significantly meaningful. Kryten of Series 4 said he restored the toaster's personality, but who's to say that Kryten didn't accidentally restore to him the personality of his old Series 2 self, that [[FridgeLogic Lister presumably put on file somewhere?]]