YMMV / Red Dwarf Season III "Backwards"

• Common Knowledge: Between the Britain Is Only London trope and the "Nodnol 871 selim" sign seen in the episode, many viewers, especially non-UK ones, tend to assume that all the city scenes on the backwards Earth are in Nodnol/London. This is made extremely unlikely by two things — firstly, the truck driver that picks up Rimmer and Kryten says (in reverse) "I'm going into town if you need a lift," something that indicates a relatively short journey and not one roughly equivalent to a third the length of England. Secondly, it's extremely rare for drivers in the UK to pick up hitch-hikers for journeys of more than roughly a few dozen miles. While Word of God has always been ambiguous as to where the city is meant to be, it's been strongly implied to be Retsehcnam/Manchester, which actually is about 170 miles from London in real-life. It's also just barely possible to make out that the taxi that drops off the Dwarfers at the end is licenced to operate out of Retsehcnam, meaning that at the very least, Starbug's landing site is near that city.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In 2016, scientists in Antarctica discovered evidence that there may be a parallel universe where time runs backward: .
• Special Effect Failure: When Kryten accidentally fires Rimmer out of Starbug via the ejector seat, the wire pulling Chris Barrie up is clearly visible. Then, Rimmer suddenly transforms into an obvious Action Man doll. The Remastered version of the episode replaces it with a new puppet that flails, however blue-screen artefacts cause the dark-green outfit to appear blue in the finished shot.
• Squick: Do not watch this episode while eating.
• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The piloting test that Kryten undertakes is clearly a take-off in the British driving test circa the 1980s, as evidenced by Rimmer asking him questions about signs and space phenomena. While at the time of filming the driving test included questions on road signs, this was split off into a separate theory test in the mid-1990s, due to the licencing authorities realising it was perhaps not the best idea to be distracting nervous, inexperienced drivers by asking them such questions in the middle of the test.
  • Lister talks about Bulgaria as though it were still a communist society. Even if we assume he's referring to Bulgaria at that time on the backwards Earth (which takes place in the equivalent of the year 1993), communism was overthrown in the country in 1989, later in the year after this episode aired.

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