UNLOCKED! Bonus Ep#6 Red Dwarf - Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
We here at IDSG have lots of great stuff in the pipeline... but the pipeline is taking a little longer to construct than we'd like. So here is a bonus episode - originally published in June last year and previously available only to Patreon backers - featuring us in conversation with our old friend, podcasting legend James Murphy, about Grant Naylor's novel Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, based on the TV series. Plus access to all other bonus episodes. Daniel's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/danielharper/posts Jack's Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4196618&fan_landing=true Content Warnings. Please consider donating to help us make the show and stay independent. Patrons get exclusive access to one full extra episode a month plus the entire back catalogue. (There are still, as of writing, 14 bonus IDSG episodes so-far unreleased outside Patreon.) IDSG Twitter: https://twitter.com/idsgpod Daniel's Twitter: @danieleharper Jack's Twitter: @_Jack_Graham_ IDSG on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-speak-german/id1449848509?ls=1 James' Twitter: @JimCrop1916 https://twitter.com/JimCrop1916 James' Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/jimslater/posts James podcast (with Kevin Burns), Pex Lives: https://pexlives.libsyn.com/webpage Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers https://www.amazon.com/Red-Dwarf-Infinity-Welcomes-Careful/dp/0451452011 Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers https://ebooks.darknetproxy.com/index.php?page=13&id=49448&db=0 Red Dwarf Season One Episode One https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6hjsak Many other episodes also available. Red Dwarf Season One https://www.amazon.com/Red-Dwarf-Season-1/dp/B00412BX5E Red Dwarf fansite https://www.ganymede.tv/
I'm Jack Graham, he/him, and in this podcast I talk to my friend Daniel Harper, also he/him, who spent years tracking the far right in their safe spaces.
In this show we talk about them, and about the wider reactionary forces feeding them and feeding off them.
Be warned, this is difficult subject matter.
content warnings always apply.
Okay, right. right.
Well, it is bonus episode six of I Don't Speak German.
And this is a very odd episode, because we're not talking about a movie or anything even obviously related to fascism, you know, which is sort of our topic, you know, we're talking about a book based on a British 80s, most well, started in the 80s, science fiction television series called Red Dwarf, which probably most of you
Children out there, all you Zoomers, you probably don't know anything about it, but it's a big deal to old codgers like us, Daniel and I, and we're joined Very happy to be joined for this episode by our old pal and co-conspirator James Murphy.
Am I getting your name right now?
Because I've kind of lost track of what your name is these days.
Hey man, that's all cool.
Yeah, I'm doing great, guys.
It's really good to be here.
James Murphy works for me, absolutely.
And yeah, this is the podcast I've spent a lifetime Preparing for so it's gonna be really nice to spend the time with you and also to fail at it I'm excited by the fact that I've spent my life preparing for it.
I'm still probably very good.
So that's exciting times Well, that's kind of appropriate isn't it?
Bringing bringing the real Dave Lister energy to this podcast Well, the real all of them energy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because this is in.
When did when did the show start?
Was it 87 or 88?
88.
88.
Right.
So the first series of Red Dwarf airs on BBC Two in 1988 contemporaneously, roughly speaking the same year anyway, with the penultimate season of classic Doctor Who.
And then the second series of Red Dwarf, because the, I don't know, anybody who knows Red Dwarf knows that the first two seasons are kind of their own thing, very different from the rest of it.
And I don't know, I think I'm speaking for all of us when I say that they're the best two seasons.
No, 100%.
They are the most watchable seasons.
I think throughout the rest of the run, the sci-fi concepts remained fairly intelligent, the storytelling grew less coherent, and the jokes just continued to start growing flat.
So you'd lose the characters, I think, after series 2.
And there is a downgrade in quality between 1 and 2 as well, I would say.
But as much as I like it, up to series 6, I think it's fair to say that 1 is a golden character piece, and series 2 is actually very good.
But if you actually want sci-fi comedy, then that's where you're going to be is series 1 and 2 in my opinion.
I think there are certainly episodes that I really love that are past Series 1 and 2, but I think really the core of the show is in those first two years.
And I would argue that the show effectively ends after Series 6.
There's really nothing after that that interests me much at all, frankly.
And I think the series finale of Series 6 is the true ending of the show.
I think it's the A narrative high point in a weird way.
But yeah, we're not really going to talk much about the show.
I mean, I guess we should probably give the premise.
Well, this is this thing, you know, we kind of need to describe the show a little bit.
So people, I mean, ironically, ironically, I think people are more aware of it now than they were 10 years ago, because it's come back in the last few years.
So at least there's a little bit of knowledge of it.
But, you know, I used to mention this to people in like 2005.
And it was just, you know, just like big blank eyes completely, you know, like nobody had heard of it at all.
And maybe that's a that's a difference between the the US and and over the pond there.
But I know I know that there have been some new seasons in recent years.
I don't know how many of those there were.
It started back up again on on Dave, didn't it?
And I watched some of those and they were all right, but it didn't feel right, you know.
So I don't know if they might still be making it for all I know, but I dropped out quite some time ago.
Well, apparently there was like a movie, like kind of a movie that was made for the Promised Land, which aired on the 9th of April of last year.
That's kind of the most recent thing.
I have not seen anything past the Back to Earth movie, which is awful and unwatchable is a Back to Earth movie, in my opinion.
I picked up The Promised Land because it was a premise that had intrigued me since Series 1, which was those two cat arcs that went out into space and what happened if they were to run into the crew again.
So I picked up there but um yeah no it's probably coincidental frankly they probably would have run out of steam regardless but um like Daniel end of series six and the departure of half of the creative team Rob Grant going that's as much as my absolute adoration and a show disappears there.
Yeah, so we're a bunch of embittered old gits, basically.
But yeah, to attempt to continue setting the scene in 88, it starts up.
It's a television science fiction comedy series, basically a sitcom in space, which runs for two years on a very low budget and then has kind of a revamp in its third year and continues to run for, I think it's four more years through the 90s.
and then disappears for a bit and comes back a bit and disappears for a bit and comes back a bit.
It's one of those things, it's one of those cash cows that people just can't leave alone you know and it's turned the original cast into like these guys that just keep on coming back because you know it's an easy paycheck etc but those first couple of years which as I say it's a science fiction comedy series starting in the late 80s they are gold and
They spawned a series of novels that the two writers of the series, Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, turned their success.
And I think that the first novel is published in 89, isn't it?
The first novel.
I looked this up just in preparation for this podcast, that the first novel seems to have been kind of simultaneously released along with the first episode of series three, at least if Wikipedia dates can be believed.
Yeah, so that's 89.
So yeah, and the first novel is a massive success.
Rob Grant and Doug Naylor write it under the pseudonym Grant Naylor, and there's a follow-up novel, Better Than Life, which is in many respects I think like part two of the same book.
I think you could and probably should read those two books as like one big book.
And then things kind of go a bit squiggly as they tend to do with Red Dwarf, because you have a few years go by and Rob Grant and Doug Naylor kind of stop making, they kind of stop being employed by the BBC and set up their own production company, I think.
And then they have a big falling out and they go their separate ways.
And they both write the third installment in the trilogy separately.
So we end up with two competing part threes, so to speak.
But that's the scene set, I think.
And what we're going to talk about this episode is, I think, mostly the first book, isn't it?
Yeah, definitely.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So this was your idea, Daniel.
Why did you want to talk about this?
Well, I think, I mean, the premise of the novel, I mean, the premise of the series is that, you know, we're in this a couple of centuries in the future, I believe the book starts in the year 2180.
One of the things that as you as you kind of dive into Red Dwarf lore, is that it's wildly inconsistent, even internally inconsistent, all over the place.
And so any like factual piece of data is contradicted by some other factual piece of data.
One of its great beauties is that it's never even tried to have any sort of coherent canon or continuity.
Even in the book, as I was rereading the book over the weekend, there are parts that contradict other parts of the book.
So it's just a lovely experience once you go through and start rereading it and going like, hey, wait a minute, that doesn't match up with the thing I read 100 pages ago.
Um, it does feel like the book was kind of written piecemeal and then kind of constructed.
I don't know, we can talk about that maybe.
Um, but, uh, I discovered, so the premise is we start in the year 2180 and this, uh, kind of like With this guy, Dave Lister, who is our protagonist in the series and in the book, who is a working class schlub.
He is on the mining moon of Ganymede.
Is it Ganymede?
It's Mimas.
It's Mimas.
All right.
Excuse me.
I forgot.
I forgot exactly which moon of Jupiter he was standing on.
But no, it's Saturn.
Sorry, I'm I'm shocked and horrified that you forgot that it's Mimas.
It's funny that when I was a kid, I knew all this by heart, you know, so, you know, but he's he's kind of a working class schlub.
He's you know, he is a drunk and he is trying to desperately to get off the moon Mimas and go back to Earth.
And in the process, he signs up for a four-year jag on a mining ship, which he thinks will just kind of deposit him back on Earth and he can just, you know, go AWOL and be fine.
And then discovers, oh no, I'm going to spend five years here, at least.
And he has a bunkmate, his kind of superior technician, because he is the lowest of the low on the ship.
And his bunkmate, Arnold Rimmer, who has really fashy tendencies.
I think that's even better indicated in the series than it is in the books, which I think was an interesting thing that I kind of rediscovered rereading Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers.
But these two do not get along in the slightest.
And through some mishaps, Lister gets a cat on one of the moons on planet leave, inoculates it, and then kind of lets it loose, takes a photo of himself with the cat.
inoculates it and then kind of lets it loose, takes a photo of himself with the cat, and then refuses to give over the cat to the captain for testing so that they can quarantine the cat and make sure that there are no and then refuses to give over the cat to the captain for testing so that As punishment for this, he goes into what's called stasis.
Stasis is essentially a time lock that you no longer age at all, it's not like cryogenic freezing, it's just like this kind of quantum technology that just freezes time.
During the time that he's in stasis, a giant nuclear explosion, a cadmium leak occurs in the ship, kills everyone on board, and the ship's computer sends them out into deep, deep space and then awakens Dave Lister three million years later deep space and then awakens Dave Lister three million years later and he's And then brings back... Supposedly, anyway.
We never get any actual verification that it is three million years later.
Oh yeah, that's true.
That is kind of an open question.
Apart, I suppose, from the existence of the evolved cat, that would take a decent amount of time.
Yeah, yeah.
And then they find not only Holly, the ship's computer, brings Rimmer back to life through this hologrammatic technology.
So he's a dead man brought back to life through technology.
And the cat, this evolved being that came from the society of cats that evolved from Frankenstein, which was Lister's original cat.
And God, that's a hugely convoluted premise for a 30-minute TV show, right?
It's funny, isn't it, that the first episode of the TV show basically crams all that into 30 minutes.
Complete with quite a lot of pre-accident stuff on board the ship, and loads of jokes, and basically turns it into a storyline.
The novel kind of gets past Setting up the premise of the television show, I suppose, two thirds of the way in, or maybe half the way in, whereas the TV show just tells you in half an hour.
Right.
So all that, like, there's this huge backstory.
And this is what kind of fascinates me about this book, is that there's this giant backstory, like a third or half of the book.
Is just getting us to the point at which Lister goes into stasis.
And then we spend the middle third, I guess, is bits from the first two seasons of this TV show.
And then the final third is just like completely rewritten thing that never happens in the TV show at all.
And this kind of coming back to a fake version of Earth as we will possibly get to.
So the book really kind of takes a lot of like the core of the book is this kind of middle third, which is literally just kind of rearranging bits from comedy bits from the TV series.
But it doesn't even really match closely with the actual kind of sequence of events in the show.
But that first third is almost all by implication.
Like you'd ever get any of that in the actual TV show, except bits of dialogue here and there.
But like, it does feel like this book was written in some way to kind of demonstrate the depth of the world or the depth of the backstory that these guys had actually created for the TV show.
And I discovered the book long before I ever discovered any of the other ancillary stuff.
Like, I found the book, I think I found it on a, you know, on like a paperback rack in a grocery store when I was, you know, 10 or 11 years old, somewhere in that range.
And so we're talking 1991.
And I didn't discover the TV show until a couple of years later.
Like, there's a reference to there being a thing, a Red Dwarf TV show.
And I had, you know, pre-Google, pre-itty, like, internet search.
There's just no way to find these things.
Um, and only because I had a friend who was like, who saw me carrying the book around.
It's like, Oh yeah, that's a good TV show.
And I'm like, Oh, there's TV show.
And it's like, yeah, it actually airs on public television at like 1030 on Saturday nights.
And so, um, and that's how I discovered the TV show.
So the book was really my like primary access to this stuff, um, from, from the beginning.
Um, which I don't think it's how most people discover the show quite frankly.
No, but it might be a superior journey through it, to be honest with you, because in many ways the book improves upon the sequence of events of the amount of thinking that goes into it.
You know, you mentioned there are internal continuity errors, much like the Bible, but there's also a lot of stuff that's been more carefully thought out.
I've certainly thought to myself that this is the definitive way to experience Red Dwarf so in some ways I almost envy it coming to this first and then getting to the TV series as a kind of reverse adaptation.
It's a little bit like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in all the permutations that exists there and with the television series being the least in both cases.
Yeah very much so.
I was put on to the television show by a mate of mine at school.
I was sort of in the second year at secondary school so I was about 12 and my mate was into it.
My mate Simon and he said oh watch Red Dwarf so I watched it and I just instantly loved it because of course I did you know I was a 12 year old boy in the late 80s of a you know already of a sci-fi sort of bent of mind you know I was already a Doctor Who fan Hitchhiker's Guide fan so of course I loved it it was just love at first sight.
But I kind of really, the weird thing is I kind of really only got into it sort of halfway through the second series.
So I have very vivid memories of watching like Stasis League and Queeg, you know, and that would have been first broadcast as well.
Right, yeah.
And then thinking, oh, I need to start recording this, you know.
And the first one I recorded was the last episode of series two, Parallel Universe, which has a claim to be one of the greatest episodes, I would say.
But I remember this very clearly.
I was in a train station.
I was getting on a train to go and visit relatives.
And I just saw this book.
I had no idea this book existed.
No idea.
Just on the rack in the train station shop.
And it was just instantly, I must have that.
You know?
So I find 3.99 or something.
Ridiculous, because it's 1989.
And, you know, I buy it.
And I read it pretty much in its entirety on the train journey.
And the weird thing is I had a grounding in the television show because I'd been watching it.
Nevertheless, loads of the stuff in the book that's based on stuff from the TV show was new to me because I hadn't really seen the first series at all.
I'd seen the second half of series two.
Of those three episodes, only bits of Parallel Universe end up in the book at all.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't think, yeah, Stasis, Leak and Queeg don't appear in the book.
Yeah, they're completely excised from at least the first two books.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not even much of Parallel Universe.
So, to me, it was just like reading the backstory that I didn't know to a setup that I did know, you know?
So in many ways, I'm in the same sort of situation as you, Daniel.
I had seen the television show first, but when I read the book, loads of the material in the book was, even the stuff that's based on the television show, was completely new to me.
And I do think of the books particularly, I mean, I've read the other ones, but particularly the first one and the second one, They're really Red Dwarf to me more than anything else.
I like the TV show.
I love the first two seasons particularly but Red Dwarf to me is primarily The books, the first two books, in exactly the same way, James, you put your finger on it, in exactly the same way that to me, Hitchhiker's Guide is the novels.
Because I encountered them first as audiobooks.
So before I'd heard the radio show or even seen the TV show or seen it, you know, as somebody old enough to understand what was going on, I heard the novels.
Now, in my experience, it was always kind of background radiation for me.
I might have said on an ancient podcast I did with Daniel that one of my earliest television memories at all came from Red Dwarf of a rerun of Crichton from about 1992.
And I remember being terrified, terrified of the skeleton falling forward and landing in the soup.
Horror moments down the ages there.
This is our other main cast member who shows up in series two.
Yes, and that's also that episode is mostly adapted in here, but then I'd say certainly improved upon in the the way it runs through And yeah, there was always two sets round there were red dwarf videos that my father borrowed off a cousin of his which then just sat in my collection until VHS is but no longer a thing and So yeah, just constantly there.
The book itself must have come to me very early because I've got a very strong memory of being in about year five in primary school and showing a particular end of a chapter.
It was in fact where Holly says, I only know what it isn't.
It isn't human.
And I remember saying to Adele, isn't that a great end to a chapter?
And I remember the building I was in, so I would have been year five, so about nine years old.
And I've read the book.
On average, probably twice a year since then.
It's been about three years since I've read it, maybe a bit longer.
But yeah, this novel and its sequel, Better Than Life, is very deep in my bones, I'd say.
Yeah, same here.
I've read both of them several times.
Again, like Hitchhiker's Guide and the Dirk Gently books, I wouldn't want to speculate how many times I've read these books.
Yeah, it's funny because I didn't kind of indicate that I hadn't reread this in a long time, but I did like as a kid, I think between the ages of like 11 and 18, I probably read it 30 times maybe.
I mean, you know, it was one of those books I just read and reread and reread.
It was always, you know, just a part of my life and this one and Better Than Life as well.
So I've read both of them many times.
It's interesting.
Why do you think these books have this kind of appeal for a certain kind of young man?
I mean, they are very blokey for a start.
There's no female main character.
Um, apart from, well, I mean, she's not a main character, but Kachansky, the character of Kachansky, which is kind of Dave Lister's love interest, is where she's just very much a background character who's in it briefly in the television show.
She's fleshed out enormously in the book, but even so, she's still, she's still very much a background character.
More of an ideal than anything else, isn't she?
Yeah, yeah.
And I mean, one of the things that struck me re-reading these books for this is how intensely they're about immaturity.
It's in both cases, isn't it?
Because Rimmer is obviously the more immature of the two.
Certainly their fantasies, when they go into the computer role-playing game Better Than Life, which gives everyone exactly what they desire, the novel is very much on Lister's side of him needing less than Rimmer, him being less needy.
But Lister is still an extremely immature character as well, He's a very young man.
I think he's supposed to be 25 at the start of the series.
And I think they've de-aged him slightly here as well.
I think he's 24 at this stage.
Rimmer is 31, a couple of years senior on there.
And he's definitely, as Daniel said, ground zero for an incel.
And yeah, I think that being a young man, you'd be drawn to this sort of story.
First of all, because it is funny.
Also, I think there's a certain lesson to be learned from there, and it's not going to beat you round the head from it, but the book itself is also aware of Lister's immaturity.
For example, in the Chichester case, in the TV series, they didn't even date, and Lister built his entire Fiji-going dream around this woman who he had a crush on that he barely saw.
In a novel at least they dated, but then he's still, three million years later, thinking very hard about her.
So I think that it strikes someone at that stage of life to come to this novel.
I think it just keeps drawing you back into this universe.
And it's also, despite the brotherly-esque bittering, it's an emotionally safe universe, which I think has definitely appealed to me as a young man.
The fact that these guys were trapped together meant that they always had someone to rely on, even if they hated each other.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I mean, I think for me, the thing that drew me into it originally, and I think the thing that kept me coming back to it, I mean, strangely enough, is that it was the world that the series is set in, was these, you know, these ideas of like, you know, hologrammatic
Simulations of dead people and this this kind of solar system only spacefaring civilization and sort of the various moons that are like colonized by, you know, various different, you know, the Spanish moon Mimas or whatever, you know, and we have, you know, all the all these kinds of, you know, you know, it's just it's very it's like it's very strangely fleshed out for something that is ultimately like background material for
A sitcom, you know, there's a ton of stuff just kind of tucked into the corners of this book.
I mean, one of my favorites I kind of found was, you know, obviously when I was reading it at like 11 years old, I was less aware of the niceties of alcohol than I am today.
But, you know, I always kind of assumed that the drunken character of Peterson was drinking Some kind of some kind of logger, some kind of, you know, Budweiser or something.
And if you if you read the text, he's actually reading a Japanese reading.
He's drinking Japanese whiskey, which is named.
Hold on, let me pull it up.
I've got it.
I've got the book open here.
I think the whiskey's in cans as well, that he's drinking from, which is a nice touch.
Glenn Fujiyama.
Glenn Fujiyama.
And Peterson at one point, I mean, it is described as in cans.
I mean, it is like these very kind of like, you know, it's this very like crack it and chug it kind of kind of phenomenon, where at one point Peterson is shown to be carrying a 12 pack of this, which he then can't bring on ship with him.
So he drinks all 12 in quick succession, giving Lister a sip of can.
It's not really indicated how big these cans are supposed to be, but if you're drinking pure whiskey, that is beyond a prodigious amount of alcohol consumption.
Let's just put it that way.
Certainly, I thought that they were probably the size of your standard larder can.
I don't think they were your soft drinks cans.
That's the feeling I took away from the writing there.
Right.
It's weird, isn't it?
Because reading this as a kid with no... because as I say, I joined the series halfway through season two, so I hadn't seen any of the episodes with Peterson in.
So my mental image of Peterson is sort of as this gigantic orange bearded Viking sort of character in a singlet or something.
A bit like that guy from Game of Thrones, you know.
And then when you finally get to see the TV version, it's just, what's his name?
It's Mark Williams.
It's Mark Williams.
It's the Weasley's dad.
Yeah, this is one of the great generational divides.
When you see Mark Williams, do you think, oh, it's Mr. Weasley?
Or do you think, oh, it's Olaf Peterson?
Or do you think, oh, it's the Fast Show guy?
Only the really old people think of him primarily as Peterson.
Happy to be numbered amongst them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I did rewatch the first couple of episodes with my wife and Peterson shows up and she's just like, oh, it's because like, he looks so young in comparison to... God, they all do though, don't they?
Craig Charles is such a baby in that.
First season, God.
It's funny.
Can you imagine being like a poet, which is what Craig Charles was in 1988, who like went out for this role and then to still be doing this 30 years later, like more than 30 years later, he's still playing the same character.
And it must be even more strange for Chris Berry, who plays Remmer, because, you know, like, He was a known actor at the time.
He was an accomplished person on stage and television.
Now this is his legacy.
This is what he's known for.
I don't know, maybe it's different over there, but I literally don't know of another, I couldn't name another role that he's been in.
Sadly I can.
I think Jack and I are on the same track here.
There was a TV series, a sitcom on the BBC about a leisure centre and it was called The British Empire.
And unfortunately, Tris Barry, who is a fantastic performer, I was watching him in the first series and I'd always taken for granted his poise and the way he holds himself.
And just how good he is, because Craig Charles is Lister.
He's perfect at it, but he's still a young, sort of untested actor in his moments, particularly in his reacting, where on this occasion I didn't quite believe in him.
But Barry is amazing, and he's a true performer.
I mean, it says something that he beat out Alfred Molina for the role when they were auditioning.
Can you imagine that rimo played by Alfred Molina?
Does that mean Chris Barry gets to play Doc Ock down the line?
That would be a nice scene in Tussle with Tobey Maguire, definitely.
I was actually imagining a version of Prick Up Your Ears where Chris Barry plays Kenneth Halliwell.
manage it but yeah but by the way daniel he's terrible in the british empire he just plays him as a complete caricature um he's kind of like norman wisdom meets frank spencer is the way he portrays it in fact no those those are two bad um references to give to an american yeah no i have no idea what you're talking about but i was just gonna smile and nod so you know no i i could kind of always see what he was going for with the british empire but no it was it was just bad and
And the British Empire was inexplicably popular as well, wasn't it?
People really liked it and it was just appalling.
It was atrocious.
Yeah, there is, as you were saying Daniel, there's a lot of attention paid to what is really just, you get to the point halfway through a, I think it's about 250 page novel, where they've finally gotten around to setting up the premise of the show, which is these four guys stuck together on a spaceship.
Because that's, As with all sitcoms, the premise is always people that don't like each other who are nevertheless trapped together.
That's always the premise of a sitcom.
And, you know, Red Dwarf just basically just moves that into space.
It moves the odd couple and Steptoe and Son, etc.
into outer space.
As I say, the television show gets you there in under half an hour.
The book takes half of a 250-page novel.
And yet, there's so much attention paid to the world-building, which is a dirty word these days in lots of quarters because so much of it is so badly done.
But it's so well done in the book.
It feels so organic, doesn't it?
Even though some of it is very dated.
Oh yeah, it's a very, it's very 1989.
It's just, just the fact that like Japanese whiskey is the, is the drink of choice, you know, that feels very kind of yellow pearly in that very 1989 kind of way.
Yeah, and people are always sort of inserting cartridges into their, their, their basically tape recorders, but with some sort of space name put on the front, you know.
It's also kind of like strangely 60s vibe for me.
Like, you know, there's this kind of strong kind of hippie vibe to some of the some of the some of the kind of side characters, particularly the the drug addicts that Lister runs into on Mimas, you know.
Lister is kind of almost a beatnik, isn't he?
Yeah.
He's basically a bum.
But he's almost kind of a hippie or a beatnik or something like that, you know, in a way.
Yeah, I always get the sense kind of, I mean, well, I get the sense kind of rewatching it and then kind of rereading it that Grant and Naylor were both kind of children in the 60s and that that kind of general idea of what the world is like just kind of carried on into their into their kind of creative period.
And that a lot of the stuff in Red Dwarf is just kind of like, it's more than that same kind of thing.
The Simpsons has a similar kind of phenomenon in which, you know, it premieres around the same time.
And Matt Groening was absolutely influenced by his sort of like hippie parents and, you know, his growing up in Portland, Oregon.
For listeners of this podcast, Matt Groening also attended, literally attended the Evergreen State College.
Oh, wow.
Worlds colliding, right?
But, but, you know, we're not here to talk about The Simpsons, but that too has a has a strongly, there's a lot of like 60sness, especially that first, you know, few years.
And then that because the show carries on for so long, you're just kind of trapped in this kind of eternal, like, it's just kind of built into the premises of the world.
And I think that Red Dwarf kind of has that same kind of phenomenon that there, you know, the tunes that are on the radio are like doo-wop tunes.
You know, it feels very kind of like 60s and 70s, you know, like the kinds of music that people are listening to, and like, they're going to discotheques and, you know, this sort of thing.
It doesn't feel like something that's like of the 80s.
But of course, this is like a, you know, 200 years in the future kind of time period.
And so, You know, it's, it feels very, it's just out of time.
It's just kind of fundamentally, you know, asking us to accept a lot of different premises at once.
And I think that that always kind of got to me as a kid, you know, as something that, you know, I think as a kid, certainly I was just very accepting of, well, this is the world we're given, this is what science fiction does, just kind of go with the premise.
And only now do I kind of look at that and go like, yeah, that is really, there's some really weird stuff just kind of built into just the fundamental building blocks of the series and the novels.
No, definitely.
I think the thing as well is that the 60s was at its brightest culturally in the 80s.
Everyone turned up in the 70s and the 80s and they were expecting to get off with guys who looked like Peter Fonda and girls who looked like Julie Christie and they were let down with their bottle of cider in their hands.
I think that Naylor and Grant and Graydon were all of that same generation.
And it started, you know, 1970.
You missed out on the 60s, it's a real shame.
And that generation has sold that myth to about five successive generations by this stage.
But that's all throughout the book and there is that underlying, but it also does have a very appealing, scuzzy 80s-ness.
That you don't get in something like a period piece like Stranger Things.
Certainly the discotheque feels like a bad 80s discotheque that you might have attended with a Wurtz do.
It feels like something that people would have played bingo at in a working class town that had just been abandoned by the government.
And all this is happening within a six mile long spaceship slowly drifting from mining job to mining job.
So I think there is that contemporaneous to it as well.
I think makes it a period piece of its own time, while, of course, being in the future.
Yeah, it is.
I absolutely agree with that.
It is very much of its moment.
And I think that's very heightened in the novel, which kind of it.
It makes it clear that the entire solar system is now sort of corporate owned and corporate dominated, doesn't it?
It's a very 80s dystopia.
It's very Robocop, Total Recall, sort of what if Reaganism and Thatcherism, but you know, out 200 years into the future sort of thing.
I mean, another thing is that it's very It's very working class.
And it's about sort of it's about class conflict because Rimmer's very middle class and Lister's very working class.
But I mean, in terms of his actual economic position, Rimmer's working class because he can't he can't achieve anything better than technician third grade or whatever it is.
And they're the lowest of the low on the ship, et cetera, et cetera.
So, yeah, it is kind of set up for young Particularly men who are immature, so they can kind of identify with the immaturity of the main characters.
It does kind of reflect being a kid or a teenager, doesn't it?
You know, certainly before the accident, the ship is is regimented you're in a bunk bed even and you have to get up and you know at a certain time and do as you're told and you have the weekend off or the evenings off or whatever it's like being it reflects that feeling of being a young working class man in this very regimented 80s world that's kind of post hippie and post hope and everything so it's probably why
A lot of young men and sort of teenage boys and so on found it so resonant, both as TV and a book.
And then I think what happens then after the accident is it kind of becomes one of those post post-apocalyptic fantasies of autonomy.
I've always thought one of the things that's appealing about apocalypses in fiction is that they, of course, notionally, they're terrible.
Um, because everybody else is gone.
But the other thing about it is that, oh great, everybody else is gone.
I don't have to, I don't have to go to work or stroke school.
So Lister's situation is on the surface level, it's, it's terrible.
He's the last human being alive.
He's, he's alone.
He's lonely.
He's lost all his friends, et cetera, et cetera.
But to a teenage boy, it's kind of great.
I don't have to go do anything.
I'm not accountable to anybody.
I can just hang around and do what I like all day.
I can just sit and watch TV and eat junk food and nobody can tell me no, except for Rimmer.
And of course, Rimmer, his response is to try to exert his will and sort of the rules and the regulations of the Jupiter Mining Corporation.
And we're going to sit and take inventory every Tuesday night or whatever.
And Lister does not respond well to that kind of pressure.
Yeah.
Rimmer is in his own way.
I've always thought this about Rimmer, which is that if he but knew it, Rimmer is just as much... He is of that group, you know, Peterson, Chen, Selby, Lester.
He is one of them.
He just doesn't know it.
He's a fart around and a scuzzball.
He's one of those immature guys that's destined to never get anywhere in life.
He's one of them.
And, you know, I feel this.
Like, he's one of us.
I feel like one of those kind of still today at 40, nearly 45.
I still feel like that 13 year old that related to that very deeply.
And I always, to be honest, as awful as he is in many ways, my heart just goes out to Rimmer over and over again throughout the book, because I just want to sort of reach in and slap him and say, just, just fucking relax, Rimmer.
Well, and this is this.
This is one of the.
Except who you are.
One of the sequences in the book and one of the things that you learn is, you know, that he couldn't let his he has three brothers who are all like top of their field in astronavigation.
And, you know, they're they're in the military or whatever testing.
You know, fighter planes, a fighter spaceship or whatever.
And Rimmer was not able to to get into the Academy.
And so he decides to join as a technician so that he can then work his way up the ranks.
So he has to pass this astronaut exam.
He's inspired by the life story of Lord Nelson.
Right.
So he has to work his way up the ranks.
And the only thing that he has to show for it, like he's 31 in the book and he has 12 years of service.
So he's literally been, from the time he was 18 years old, he's been cleaning the nozzles in chicken soup vending machines.
And, you know, he's taken the exam, I think 12 times.
So he's taken it, you know, once per year for the entire time that he's been, and he's never gotten anything above, you know, what is it?
Nine for fail, two for X and one.
something else or, you know, I forget.
Unclassified.
Yeah.
Unclassified.
Right.
Yeah.
Where he got his hands on real methamphetamines and I wrote, I am a fish on every page.
I think it's the, is the line.
Yeah.
Um, the, the book does this almost unbearably cruel and at the same time, empathic and poignant thing where it tells you all about how beautiful his revision timetables are and how, when he was at school, it's one of my favorite things.
Yeah, it's fantastic.
When he was at school, before it became necessary to actually know anything about the subject, he was always top of his class in geography because his maps were so beautiful.
He would draw the maps beautifully.
So obviously this guy is supposed to be an illustrator or a graphic designer or something like that.
Yeah, but he's never been able to accept who he really is.
And it's just, I love this about the books, whereas Rimmer in the television series is Especially from series three onwards he's just kind of the butt of cruel jokes endlessly and he's never given room to breathe because it's just in the nature of television that everybody has to show up each week and be the same, particularly in a sitcom.
There's no real room for character growth.
They can kind of pretend and gesture towards it here and there but they can't really do it because by the next episode they need to all be there and have the same personalities so that the jokes will work.
And the TV show gets into this rut where it just basically tells the same jokes about the same characters over and over and over again.
The great thing about the books is that they do allow the characters to develop and change and mature somewhat.
I think as well, the difference between the continually diminished Rimmer character on TV, where exactly as you say Jack, it's going to be the cats going to say something about the fact that he's got a H on his head, Lister's going to say something about him being a physical coward, and he's going to prove them all right.
In the book, you've got a three-dimensional, completely understandable human being, and there's elements of bravery to him.
You know, he tackles a large Astro on the Z-shift that he's in charge of, probably out of hubris, but the idea that he thinks that he can handle that.
But that's something that Series 5 Rimmer from the TV show would certainly never do.
Yeah.
One of my favorite lines out of the book as well, it made me laugh out loud, is when he's messed up his revision timetable.
He was finally doing it sensibly.
You get the sense that he's got enough brains.
If he did just get out of the way of himself, he should probably pass this exam.
The exam does not strike me as like incredibly difficult, honestly.
Well, I mean, look, I refuse to believe that all these people on the ship are experts on quantum theory and stuff like that.
They've just learned how to regurgitate the proper answers, haven't they?
Well, you only need a 40% on the exam to pass.
You know, it's one of those things that's kind of buried in there that, again, you don't necessarily think about too hard until you start to think about it.
And then like, oh, this is not supposed to be a difficult exam.
You know.
In this case, he's undone by what they call in the book, the new Romarian character, where he puts September in twice.
And it's a fantastic part because he's done everything else right so far.
It's just this one thing where he's got the month of the exam wrong.
He decides to cheat.
And then he more or less writes all over himself.
He's this close to the scene.
The novel again and again will get rid of this close to success.
And as you say, Jack, then you'll just cruelly strip it away from him.
Like he almost physically survives the radiation leak in the novel.
Yes.
just through his own superstition and his own cheating, and decided to comb his hair.
Because there's a great thing in the book, completely absent from the series, where Rimmer has been saving up little parts of his life, and that helps explain his lack of a social life on the depths.
It helps explain-- - That's fantastic. - And it's also, it's clearly put in there to just make it that much crawler when he is killed.
His human body is killed there.
And that's just happening again and again throughout the novel, is these touches that enrich it, enrich the story.
I love, one of the things I love about the book also is that it changes it so that the accident that wipes out the crew isn't his fault.
In the TV show, it's actually Rimmer fucking up work on the drive plate that causes the accident that kills everybody, which is it's good for it's good for a joke on TV.
But if you put it in the book, it would just make the character unsustainable because he'd either have to be just paralyzed with guilt, in which case you can't do anything with him except that, or not paralyzed with guilt, in which case this guy is just an irredeemable monster.
So they take it out completely and it gives it.
It doesn't really matter so much in the TV show because he's so obviously a comedy character.
You know, there's a laughter track apart from anything else.
But in the book, it really allows the character to breathe.
It stops him being just this cosmic... and I know they kind of retcon that in the TV show.
But in the book, he's a human.
And the books are cruel to him, no doubt, for comedic purposes.
And as I keep saying, the guy is a dick.
I mean, he's an absolute asshole.
There's no question about that.
But you're allowed nonetheless to feel some pity, some empathy for him.
There is, as you say, there's a human being in there.
There's just things about the books that it just feels a bit more kind, a bit more empathic, a bit more human in many ways, like the cat in the books.
He never turns into like this walking insult dispenser that he turns into in the TV series.
And even when he's angry or irritated with Rimmer, he calls him buddy, things like that.
And there's the wonderful version of the of the gazpacho stoop confession scene, which is in the television series in the book.
And you get this, just little touches here and there, like when Rimmer does, which on TV is a gag played for laughs with a laughter track, he sort of, Rimmer, Lister asks him what are those medals for and he points and he says three years long service, six years long service, you know, and the book specifically says Lister didn't smile, you know, and it allows you to feel an actual human connection developing between these guys.
Yeah, in the same scene in the book as well, there's a moment where Remus says something, it's before it gets to the revelation that he sends the Dispatch Show suit back for heating, and Remus says something about him embarrassing himself slightly, and Lister says something along the lines of, oh well that shouldn't happen to anyone, shouldn't be worried about that mate, as he's getting towards the big punchline of it.
And the punchline is still there, but underlying that, there is the fact that Lister has deleted the other Rimmer, the second Rimmer.
And there's a there's a fantastic, I mean, that's one of my favorite things in the book, the rendering of the of the two Rimmers stuff, which again is adapted from the TV show Rimmer.
brings back another hologram of himself in his absolute narcissism.
He thinks, oh, the perfect companion, and they move in together.
And of course, because narcissism is a coping mechanism for intense feelings of self-loathing and inadequacy, they fucking hate each other.
And there's this wonderful bit, which isn't on telly, where the second rimmer says to the first rimmer, you've changed literally.
Lister has changed you.
And yeah, he has.
The first Rimmer isn't as venomous, he isn't as cruel, he isn't as spiteful as the Rimmer that's just been resurrected, because the second Rimmer is Sort of straight from the personality disc that was recorded nine years ago, or whatever it is.
Whereas the second Rimmer, the first Rimmer rather, is the one that's been living with Lister for several years, both as a real person and as a hologram.
So yeah, and Rimmer isn't aware of it, but he has actually changed.
He's softened.
He's become a better person as a result of hanging out with this guy who is kind of his exact opposite.
Well, and in the TV series, you get, you know, that, that sequence, the Me Too sequence gets, or episode, is, I mean, all the stuff you said is there, but you know, a lot of the core of it is just watching the two Remmers yell at each other in amusing ways.
It's just a way of heaping abuse on Remmer both ways.
Exploring Chris Berry's performance, obviously, but in the book you get a real internality.
There's a sense, I mean, you know, at one point the two Rimmers are sitting across from one another in there.
I can't remember if it's in the bunker, if it's in there, like in the in the eating area or whatever.
And they're each observing annoying things that the other Rimmer is doing.
Yeah.
Like the new Rimmer is sitting under like the nice glow light and the nice table and everything.
And both of them are seething at how annoying they find the other one's behavior.
And getting to see, I mean, you know, it's almost like a parody of like, you know, of the writing exercise of, you know, Have your character self-examined by seeing themselves in a mirror or something like that.
And I mean, it doesn't come across that way.
It comes across as like this really like the fact that it's pitched at this comedic level and the fact that it's in this sort of sci-fi concept gives it a certain verisimilitude that I think really works in the moment, you know?
Yeah.
And I think it's genuinely psychologically acute as well in its observations about narcissistic personality disorder.
And That's there in the television episode because the basis of the television episode is, you know, Rimmer loves himself so much that the only person he really wants to be a bunkmate with is another version of himself.
But they don't get on because fundamentally Rimmer doesn't really like himself.
The narcissism is a coping mechanism.
And of course, the Rimmer we know is softened from the original Rimmer because the new Rimmer, the replica, is kind of venomous and nasty in a way that the one we've been watching for the first season isn't, which is why of course Lister tricks Rimmer and deletes the replica instead of his Rimmer so to speak.
That's all there, but the book just brings it out in this lovely way.
That's so much that feels there's just a core of seriousness and naturalism to it in the literary form, as opposed to it being obviously a sitcom is just by its nature.
It's a gag and laugh delivery mechanism.
It has to be.
And it does that really well.
But it's amazing how well it adapts into something that feels more direct and human.
Definitely, and that psychological realism is played across most, not all of the characters here.
The cat and the kraiton we don't get inside the head of in the same way, but I suppose there's a limited amount of point of view characters you can have here.
One character I really relished getting behind the eyes of in this one was Holly.
And the explanation of his decline as well, because he goes from essentially knowing everything to being what the show and the book would call computer senile.
And the explication of how that is for him, you know, he knows that Nabatov wrote Lolita and that page 60 is the filthiest one, but he couldn't remember if Nabatov was from Russia or Greece.
You know, who won that there, and hits that kind of movement inside his own brain, and as he goes through these extraordinary sights in the stars that no living sentient being has ever done before.
First, he's gobsmacked by an enemy.
He's keeping great tracks of information about that, including street signs, as they say in the book.
And further on, he's just enjoying reading cheap novels and thinking about Joe Klump's terrible zero-G football.
It's a funny old game.
Which was Kevin Keegan in my paperback, I don't know.
Yes, same.
Yeah.
They changed that somewhere.
I don't know if Kevin Keegan wrote to them or what.
No, it's Kevin Keegan in my copy as well.
Yeah.
Interestingly, in the audio book, I listened to it half on audio book as read wonderfully by Tris Barry, a brilliant mimic, and half of it I read on the Kindle.
It was Joe Klump there as well.
So there's a mystery to unfurl as to when and where that happened and how.
The other thing I think is interesting about the sort of the Rimmer doubling section is that this is a book written by two men who are credited as one entity who ended up splitting from each other after a close partnership.
Who ended up hating each other after a few years.
Yeah, maybe there's a little bit of self-evaluation going on there.
One of the pleasures of the two competing part threes in the book series is the icily polite acknowledgements at the front of each one.
And I wish him all the best.
Yeah, no.
One other thing, I mean, this this Me Too section is, I think, like the core.
I mean, I think it's one of the emotional cores of the book.
And I think we can, you know, I, you know, I don't know how long we want to talk, but I had really intended to kind of get into to get into Rimmer as this kind of like fascist figure since we're doing this on I Don't Speak German.
One of the things that I'm kind of struck by, one of my favorite bits of the book is that the two Rimmers are competing with each other in terms of, you know, they're each more hard-tasking the other than the last.
So they get into this point where they're only sleeping 45 minutes and eating six times a day and doing astronavigation revision and, you know, exercising, you know, for hours, calisthenics for hours a day for zero purpose.
And in this process, they are, for various plot reasons that are not necessary to explicate here, working to reassemble a spaceship using the mechanical scutters, which are these kinds of robots that do a lot of the basic maintenance tasks and cleaning and such. which are these kinds of robots that do a lot And that the holograms can't touch anything, so they have to have scutters to all the work for them.
So they're ordering the scutters around, forcing them to do this work to the point to where they're literally exploding from overworked.
And in the process of trying to assemble and in their fatigue, the original Rimmer is inadvertently about to essentially put the ship together backwards, which would make it impossible to lift off, et cetera, et cetera.
And the other Rimmer notices it, starts fighting with the first Rimmer, and then they end up destroying all the work they had done over the course of that, you know, three month period.
Yeah.
And there's a line in which the original Rimmer says something like, you know, they could have just stayed in bed the entire time, done nothing and be exactly where they are right now.
And that really speaks to You know, that really kind of speaks to like fascist organizing in these kind of like little internet spaces, you know, in which they're constantly fighting with one another.
I mean, they're constantly kind of splitting over, you know, it is like this bit of like, well, I found someone who thinks exactly like me.
So we're going to go spend all our time online together and we're going to create a podcast together.
And then after three months, we're going to get into an argument about who owes whom money for a computer and whether or not we've shown up to our recording schedules on time and who's really taking this project seriously.
And that's a little example from a little history of the alt-right from 2018.
And I'm just kind of looking at that now and I'm thinking like, yeah, that is kind of like the two rivers.
I think we can start calling them a Rimmer of Nazis, just as a collective noun now, if that's fair.
Oh, come on, James, you make it sound like a lavatory disinfectant.
Let's hit the rim in Rimmer.
There is something fashy in Rimmer, or there's the fashy... I mean, firstly, again, the TV series makes more of this and does it for laughs, like Rimmer reads Fascist Dictator monthly on the television, you know, whereas the novels, as I've said, are less broad than that.
But even so, there is something I mean, Rimmer specifically admires Napoleon and Caesar and these sorts of figures in the books.
He's obsessed with people like that and tries to model himself on them ludicrously.
So there is something of that compensatory macho power worship thing going on, isn't there?
I think one of the mistakes the novel makes, one of the few mistakes, comes from giving Rimmer any actual authority here because in the TV series he's literally only in charge of Lister and feels very foiled by the fact that at least he's got someone to lord it over.
by giving him a shift of people to be in charge of I'm not sure the number perhaps 20 perhaps 10 I think that there's a inflation of his sense of self-worth that doesn't quite fit I feel like it's inconsistent it's one of those parts of the novel that kind of contradicts itself because that character Obviously does fail at the fact that he's got people under him.
There's a really fun part of him being in his own head whilst he thinks about all the self-help books that he's gone through and the silences that he's used in speaking out to the room.
And he's like, that was some great silences.
Just include more silences.
That's the way you make an inspiring speech.
And there's one bit where he's like, no, this is a dumb place to have silence.
It just makes it seem like you don't know what he was going to say.
But yeah, I think it was an error of the book in giving Rimmer an actual command of a sense, because I think he would have been even more insufferable than he comes across at this stage.
He's such an insufferable twat.
He invents his own salute.
I could never picture this salute, no matter how many times I read it in the book, until I saw the TV series and went, oh, that's what that's supposed to look like.
I mean, in the book it's described, I imagine, you know, literally like the arms rotating around the cuff of the shoulder, like, like helicopter blades or something.
Like, it was that ridiculous in my head.
But yeah, no, it's just this kind of like vague, this kind of weird wrist movement where you circle five times, then do a salute.
And apparently the double-rimmer you do with both arms simultaneously.
It is kind of a horizontal Nazi salute, to be honest, with the upper arm outstretched from the front.
Yeah, that struck me re-reading the book this time.
The description of it starts by saying the arm comes out at a right angle from the body with the hand held out straight.
I think that's just a Nazi salute!
I mean, I guess Spaceballs are around this time, but President Stroob, the Spaceball salute, is kind of this similar kind of movement where they do the fascist salute and then they just do something funky with their hand.
Something in the air.
Yeah, definitely.
But yeah, I think one of the things is kind of, again, psychologically and politically acute about the novel is the way it links that authoritarian personality, because Rimmer undoubtedly has an authoritarian personality, with just this deep seated inadequacy.
And I think you used the word earlier, Daniel.
He is basically an incel, isn't he?
Well, he is he is technically not a virgin.
He had sex with Yvonne Magruder for 12 minutes.
That's one of the bits in the book that hasn't aged very well, because it might be in the second book, actually, but he goes into kind of detailed reminiscences.
And apparently Yvonne Magruder slept with him when she was concussed and didn't know who he was with his modern eyes.
Well, A, accurate to the character, B, not something that you want to Not a person you really want to be around or, you know, protagonist in a comedy series.
So yeah, I had forgotten that detail.
I didn't get to reread the second book, but.
Yeah, I mean, you know, and he remembers this Yvonne Magruder, you know, kind of thing, you know, for years.
And I mean, if we can, we can, you know, just kind of... That's all he's got.
That's all he's got.
But I mean, in the book, it's literally described as like 12 minutes.
And that included the time it took to eat the pizza.
Yeah.
And he says, you know, he had spent more time with his head down the down the loo of a laboratory than between the buttocks of the woman he loved.
There's a lot of, there's a lot of like, a lot of like, rumor talking about sex that is, that is just absolutely horrifying.
That again, I think passed mostly over me when I read this, you know, when I was, when I was 12.
But, you know, there's, there's a particular line where, from the TV series in which he says, you know, I've never interfered with a woman sexually.
That even makes the audience go ugh when it's on TV.
But one of the areas I think where the TV series does kind of score over the book is the confrontation of Rimmer's attitudes towards women because it's certainly in the first book he never really gets anywhere in terms of thinking about that whereas the television show has the absolutely incredible episode Parallel Universe which is the end of Series two, you know, not perfect, but a very, very interesting episode that really does challenge loads of loads of male ideas about women and sex and stuff like that.
And Rima, I don't think Rima learns anything in that episode, but it does confront him enormously kind of with his own values.
Whereas that, that does sort of happen in the books, but it has to wait for the second book, doesn't it?
In the sequence where, again, to modern eyes, a bit iffy in many respects, but in the fantasy world of Better Than Life, Rimmer's consciousness gets transferred into a female body and he has to live as a woman for a while.
And he does actually have a section where he starts to think seriously about his own attitudes to women.
Which again is another instance of the books taking these matters of characterisation and even the politics behind them a bit more seriously than the television show has the room to do.
Yeah.
I mean, Rimmer's fantasy, particularly in this book, is that he wants to be Donald Trump.
That's the world.
Exactly.
That's where he wants to be.
Yeah.
Once you, once you, once you, yeah, no, it was very, and also very 1989 that, you know, at that time, Donald Trump was the cartoon vision of what a fascist would believe he would want out of his life.
And in reality, that was also what happened.
In reality, it was the fascist that was the cartoon version of what Donald Trump thought he wanted from Islam.
Yeah.
But I think the Better Than Life sequence is one of my favorites.
I mean, throughout, again and again, my favorite parts here are ones that are unique to the novel.
I love the setting up of the characters.
I love the deeper backstory.
Lister on Mimas is fantastic to see him Like a free-range Lister, sleeping in the luggage locker.
And the lovely detail of when he gets to bed for the first time, he has to get back into the same shape he would have been in the locker.
I think that's great.
And that's also got some of, I think, the best writing.
For example, this has devastated me forever now that I've stumbled across it again.
Humankind had emptied its home planet like an enema, then turned its rapacious appetite to the rest of the solar system.
Fantastic stuff.
And the Better Than Life stuff is, I think, one of the, some of the just absolute tip-top science fiction fantasy writing I've seen to go through and explore these men's psyches.
Grimmer himself says that he feels that he's laid bare, he's embarrassed as Lister walks around his wants and dreams.
It's a great way to get to the characters.
And then you get to the cats fantasy, which is wonderful.
It's just an id writ large and it is.
This is a creature who's evolved from a cat and one of the great lines again from the book is you just shut all the smelting dogs.
I love there's a line in which you know.
Remmer is calling out the cat who has literally a moat of milk surrounding a giant golden castle where he's got busty Valkyries waiting on his hand and foot.
And Remmer is saying something like, does any of this seem at all realistic to you?
And then there's a line where it says, Lister thought of the Remmer buildings, New York, Paris, Tokyo, and decided to say nothing, or words to that effect.
Yeah.
But then you get the wonderful comic payoff where the cat just kind of says, yeah.
And Remus says, wait, where did all this stuff come from?
And the cat says, well, I thought people just gave it to me because I have such a great ass.
Yeah.
There's also this bit where after Lister has picked up Rimmer and they're on the flight to Denmark where they're going to meet up with the cat, and they each have this internal reverie in which they consider the other's fantasy to be the more mature one, because Rimmer is saying he didn't need all this great wealth and the 19-year-old Brazilian actress who's cheating on him.
You know, wife.
He didn't need all those things.
He just needed his old flame and, you know, $14.50 in the till because Lister has lived in the world of Bedford Falls for Bits of Wonderful Life, which is Lister's favorite movie in the book.
I think that's actually that is part of the series as well, but it's much less overt.
I mean, it's very much stated in the novel and it becomes kind of a plot point at several points that It's a Wonderful Life is his favorite movie.
I think it ends up in the TV show, but I think it ends up in the TV show via the books later on, doesn't it?
Yeah, yeah.
I think he's watching it at one point and like, I don't know.
I can't remember.
Well, there is there is a bit, I think, in series one where he's watching kind of what's meant to be a sentimental slushy movie or something like that.
It is it is part of his character that he watches romantic, sentimental rubbish on telly.
Right.
But then Lister sees Remer and he's like, man, if I'd known I was in the fucking video game, I would have played with the Beatles.
I would have dated Ida Lupino.
And then suddenly you get this, you know, a stewardess comes by and she looks just like Ida Lupino.
And it's like, hi, mind if I come along?
He's like, no, I can't get another relationship with someone who might not exist.
Life would just get too complicated.
Oh, my God.
And then the bit again, I keep on going to the second book, but I do kind of consider them two parts of one long story.
The bit in the second book where Rimmer realizes firstly that his his fantasy wife in the in the alternate in the in the video game world is actually his brother's wife.
And then he realizes that his new wife, the woman he's about to marry, it's actually his mother.
It's absolutely savage!
I mean, yeah, rumours, sexual politics and psychology, a lot to be said there.
And yeah, I mean, I think the far right would call him a cunt, wouldn't he?
If that's his fantasy, if that's what he wants there.
Is it that he, on some level, enjoys that sexually?
Someone else touched his wife or is it as the book suggests that he is just so incapable of enjoying his own happiness he feels like he should be punished even in this paradise.
Well, I think it's again, it's the insight that and you know, this is this is an insight that's fueled quite a lot of great works of literature, I think, you know, not least Richard III, which, as everybody knows, is a text I'm obsessed with.
You know, narcissism is fundamentally based on on self-hating, self-loathing, deep seated feelings of inadequacy.
And Rimmer fantasized this just gigantic narcissistic fantasy of Rimmer's that he owns this massive international conglomerate and he's a billionaire and he's got Rimmer buildings everywhere and the Space Corps do the Rimmer salute and etc etc etc and he's got like these teenage girls that follow him everywhere throwing their knickers at him.
It's this massive narcissistic fantasy but it's a coping mechanism for the fact that fundamentally this guy fucking hates himself.
He hates who he is.
He thinks he's a worthless failure.
One of my favorite details is that even in this fantasy world, he is the world's third richest man.
Specifically, not the first or second.
And when Lister asks him, you know, what, you're the richest man in the world now?
And, you know, he says, I'm third and a way to go before I get to second.
You know, again, one of those one of those little antsy little ancillary details.
It just seems to fill in so much of, you know, so much of the kind of psychology there.
Yeah.
But that scene on the plane where they're each sort of evaluating each other's fantasies and thinking the other one is more mature.
That's interesting because Lister's is obviously the far more likable fantasy, but it is still incredibly immature, isn't it?
He fantasizes about going to live in a small town that's basically out of this old movie and live this incredibly folksy.
Because It's a Wonderful Life is lovely, but it's an incredibly conservative, sentimentalized vision.
Yeah.
Well, it's not even I want to be the hero who's, you know, like saving the banks and, you know, fighting Mr. Potter.
It's I want to go live in the small town where it's always Christmas Eve and live with, you know, this girl that I dated for a month that one time three million years ago.
Yeah.
Like it's it's it's much, you know, it is it is the you know, it's It's the, it's the aesthetic of the film without any of the content of the film.
Interesting.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Sort of the Ted Turner-ization of, you know, what It's a Wonderful Life was.
Again, something that would have been pretty salient in 1989 when it was, at that point, starting to air.
At least in the US, it was airing as kind of a free version all over, all over basic cable.
Yeah, that's interesting, because when you... It's a Wonderful Life actually has quite a lot in it about ordinary people up against, you know, it's quite a populist vision.
It is conservative in many ways, but it's also quite... I mean, you know, if you made It's a Wonderful Life now, Fox News would declare the director and writer to be communists, wouldn't they?
Which is of course a laugh when it's Frank Capra.
It's strange actually how little the book makes it feel like the movie.
The way they phrase it, it's as if everyone got together to try and recreate, it's like a theme park ride of it.
So it doesn't feel like Frank Capra's film at all.
It's just walking through the memories of it.
A little bit like Doctor Sleep walking through the memories of The Shining.
It's that kind of feeling you have there.
Lister isn't enjoying the fact that he's in this movie that means so much to him.
He's enjoying the paraphernalia of it around him and having Christine Conchanski and two unrealistically mature 15 month old babies.
Yeah.
Who change their own nappies.
And drive to the store to pick up milk.
Yeah.
But that again is quite psychologically acute because Lister just accepts it because it suits him, you know.
And then when he stops to think about it, he thinks, Yeah, this doesn't actually make any sense, but that is how self-delusion works.
The whole sequence is kind of this quite sophisticated riff on how self-delusion works, because there's always a rationalization.
Like you say, Lister There's a little account of how he ends up in Bedford Falls, so to speak, and he thinks it's like loads of fans of the movie grouped together to recreate it.
And then, yeah, if you just think about it in passing, then you can say, yeah, that explains it.
But of course, when you subject it to any thought at all, it's obviously it's obviously not plausible.
But that is how self-delusion works.
You raise the question and bat it away with something that just sticks a bandaid on it.
The one character who I enjoy more than normal, but yes, basically nothing, is Crichton, and I liked that it's clearly original Crichton, so Robert Llewellyn would not play this Crichton, should this ever be adapted.
Throughout it, he remains the I think David Ross is the name of the character?
Yes, David Ross.
Thank you.
And yeah, he remains in that mould and the use of it.
I absolutely love the revulsion and horror that Lister feels at having this happy slave.
I think that's one of the... It's in the series and Lister builds up a relationship with Triton and helps him break programming to be an individual and be able to think for himself without collapsing into guilt, without having something to do.
But yeah, it's something in the book there where it shows Lister in such a great light and then the Rimmers come along and immediately take advantage of finally having someone new to boss around with.
Yeah, but again, it's downplayed a little from the television series.
Rimmer isn't quite as nasty to Crichton in the book, because the book is, again, the TV show has the mission of giving you a gag every three lines, you know, and eliciting a chuckle, whereas the book has this room to breathe with characterization.
But yeah, I mean, Original Crichton is my favorite by far.
I mean, nothing against Robert Llewellyn, but he sort of comes in and he kind of warps the character with this Herman Munster impression that he decides to do for some reason and stuff like that.
And yeah, I much prefer Original Crichton, who just seems so much more vulnerable.
And yeah, reading the books, you visualize Original Crichton, you hear Original Crichton when he speaks.
Was there any other notes anybody wanted to hit?
Yeah, no, I feel the only thing I was just kind of thinking idly about is this, you know, this is kind of like fetishization of the atmosphere of Bedford Falls, as opposed to the kind of the content of its wonderful life.
I was just kind of, I was just struck by that in the moment of, you know, like how much of, you know, sort of internet nerd culture tends to kind of exist in that same, you know, in that same phenomenon.
And I'm sure, you know, much more so in your country than mine, there are, you know, Red Dwarf fans who seem to not understand the context of the, of some of the stuff that's kind of being done politically within the books and within the TV series, who kind of embrace it for its, for its surface level reading.
But we see this all over the place with, you know, Star Wars and Doctor Who and Star Trek and, you know, The fact that you have fascists who are fans of Star Trek is kind of bizarre, but it's because they're like, no, actually the Klingons were right.
Maybe we can talk about that in another episode at some point.
But yeah, there's something there.
There's so much that's packed into this book that is much more sophisticated than a novelization of a sci-fi sitcom should ever be.
And I remember there was this kind of time period around this time, partly because of the influence of the Hitchhiker's Guidebooks.
I remember there were a lot of kind of fly-by-night, kind of young adult sci-fi novels that really were just kind of wacky and zany, like kind of police academy level comedy.
And I think one of the things that this book does that really seeds above all the other kind of books like that is the way that it does have this kind of deeper meaning always.
Um, There's something always beneath the surface.
There's something interesting going on.
Character-wise, theme-wise, connection-wise, it's much, much more sophisticated than other works of its time period.
And if this episode has been interesting at all to people who have not read it, there is much more that we have not even touched upon.
We could go through every five pages and do an hour's worth of content talking about those five pages.
This is a rich, rich text.
It really is.
It's an excellent science fiction novel.
It's, you know, it's much better than it has any reason to be or any right to be or any need to be, to be honest, because people would have people would have bought a Red Dwarf book, whatever the quality.
But I think this this did incredibly well.
And because it just it really is just a good piece of work in its own right.
It does it does it does owe to Hitchhiker's Guide like it has this thing where it will just it will occasionally just sort of stop and do an info dump.
You know, like, these guys are not the slightest bit worried about info dubs.
They, yeah, it's time for an info dubs.
The authorial voice is going to tell you some stuff.
And they don't try to work it in or they just stop the story and give it.
And it's fine because they, and it does, it does feel a bit like those sections of the Hitchhiker's Novels that are adapted from the bits in the radio show where suddenly the guide would be talking to you.
But it's really well done, and the authorial voice is so appealing.
There is something Adams-esque about the tone.
I don't think we can deny the influence.
I'm sure they wouldn't try to.
But it's got its own definite flavor.
The flavor is both sort of at the same time a bit more serious.
And slightly more malicious and wry.
And I think really it's kind of ultimately, I think it comes down to a class difference, doesn't it?
Because Douglas Adams is just from this middle class background.
And Rob Grant and Doug Naylor are very much, you know, of working class origin and in the sort of more traditional sense.
So they just have this different outlook on life, this more sort of, you know, from the bottom up view.
And it gives the novel, the authorial voice, this lovely tone.
Yeah, without disrespecting Adams in any sense at all, but the novels mean everything to me, the Hitchhikers ones.
There's that Daughtins-esque impatience with, as Daughtins would have called them, dundridges in the Hitchhikers books, with the bureaucracy slowing a man down who just wants to enjoy the freedom that he's accustomed to.
And that's where much of the tension and humour comes from in the Hitchhikers.
As opposed to the Red Dwarf book here, where we can see these characters scraping by, just trying to survive and flourish.
And that's some of where the sense of relief comes, we've talked about, after the catastrophe.
Where Lister's kind of just enjoying a post-scarcity existence there.
He's just like, oh, I've got my place in the universe and I've got my mission.
And in some ways he's more comfortable with himself and more able to grow than he's ever been when there's been those systems around him.
But yeah, you certainly wouldn't get a Dave Lister wandering around the universe in his dressing gown, you know?
There's one aesthetic difference right there at the top.
Yeah, his priority would never be, you know, getting a cup of tea.
Yeah.
Much as I have affection for Arthur Dent.
Yeah.
Yeah, there is a way where there's a sense in which, you know, Lister goes to sleep and then he wakes up post-accident.
And what he's gotten away from is a world where he has to work into a world where, as you say, it's a post-scarcity world.
It's, you know, You could look at it almost as like, it's only for one guy, sadly, in the end, but it is the achievement of socialism, you know?
Full luxury, automated communism.
Space communism, yeah.
It works if there's one guy.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think that there's one of the things I feel about these books is the idea that these These guys are improving.
They're getting better.
The books kind of have this clear-eyed view of these people as deeply flawed.
The book loves Lister, but it's not in any illusions about him.
This is a deeply flawed guy, as is Rimmer, even more so.
And that even as it has affection for them, it kind of stares in a very clear eyed way at them, warts and all, faults and all.
But it kind of shows them muddling.
You know, that's what these books are about to me.
They're like ordinary guys With deep flaws, deep scars, you know, from their past, etc, etc.
Fundamentally just bimblers and farter rounds and etc, etc.
But muddling through and ultimately getting there, you know, ultimately improving and sticking together, etc, etc.
And it has that kind of spirit to it that in a way I, as much as I will always love Hitchhikers, I feel closer to the spirit of these books.
Yeah, 100%.
No, I'm in the same boat on all of that.
I've recently done a re-read of all the Hitchhikers.
I've recently watched the television series and I've done the same now with the Red Dwarf book and I've watched, for some reason, Red Dwarf in reverse order.
I couldn't tell you why I did that.
Series 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
It was nice to watch the cast slowly get better looking.
Like a backwards universe?
Yeah, a bit like it.
And yeah, there's just that much more humane and even though these guys are trapped and the situation is hopeless, the view of Red Dwarf is that these people are capable of bettering themselves and that's their success.
Whereas Hitchhikers is a depressed, we're stuck in the kind of position we're assigned to.
Unless we transcend with a romance if we're very very lucky, but even that won't last, you know?
yeah yeah certainly the last I think Adam said he was planning to write more but of course he died before he could do it but mostly harmless is a very unhappy book.
I kind of as much as I like many bits of it I kind of wish he'd left it with so long and thanks for all the fish which is very sweet in many respects and probably the most mature of the Hitchhiker's books in many respects but yeah I Yeah, as I say, I just feel closer to the spirit of Red Dwarf.
It just feels like a clearer eyed and fundamentally more humane vision of people.
I mean, like at the end of the second book, I love the line about when Rimmer when they have Lister's funeral and just that bit where Rimmer says bye man to Lister before they send him off into space and then he gets the cue from Holly that they can bring Lister back to life and there's this wonderful line about you know Rimmer laughing and it's not his usual hollow bray it's real laughter it's just it's it's quite moving to me That idea of this guy who is deeply, deeply flawed.
I mean, this is a horrible guy in many respects, certainly at the start, but just through just through basic friendship, you know, that he's he's he's getting there.
He's turning into a better person.
It's it's a fundamentally optimistic vision, I think, which kind of it's there in embryo in the TV series, but it can never quite breathe because of, as I say, the imperative to give you a laugh line every three lines, whereas the books let it out.
Interestingly, in the later episodes, in the later series, when Rimmer does You know, embrace the Ace Remmer character and he does start to, you know, to try to be the better person.
What the series then has to do is to just reboot the character almost literally by resetting the entire universe, right?
Which kind of tells you what you need to know about, you know, about the kind of the structure of writing a sitcom like this.
I will finish off with one more comment and then I think we can wrap up.
We can wrap up, yeah.
This is going to be heresy, but I would love to see the Infinity Welcomes, Careful Drivers, and Better Than Life books to be adapted as a prestige Netflix miniseries of some kind.
I can imagine the really good looking version of this.
I would love to see it.
they could really be something very different than the existing sitcom.
And I would, I would personally love to see it.
I was rereading it and just thinking like you could, it would be not, it would not be difficult to imagine the kind of, you know, the high budget version of this, like, cause clearly there's a lot more going on and you know, the budget constraints of particularly series one and series two are just like the version of this in the books is much more sophisticated in a lot of ways than, the budget constraints of particularly series one and series two are just like the version of this in the books So.
Also in terms of characterization, like a movie or a prestige series now could obviously the pressure to have a laugh every three lines is gone.
You don't need a laugh to track.
You could have more less overtly comedic performances and bring out the pathos and stuff like that.
It'd be great.
Like eight episode series covering the first two books would be amazing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it would be hard to replace Craig Charles, because, you know, I can imagine different actors playing different versions of the others.
But to me, Lister and Craig Charles are just kind of completely inextricable.
I think I think you have to go with unknowns.
I think that's the only way to do it.
Yeah.
But but yeah.
Hey, it might it might work the same way the American pilot did with Craig Bierko.
Terry Farrell as a female cat.
Yeah.
Yeah, that was a DS9, you know.
Written by the guy Linwood Boomer, who'd make a great success for himself doing Malcolm Middle, by the way, that US pilot.
I mean, it's not it's not impossible to imagine a US version of Red Dwarf.
And even around that time period, like it's not it's not a it's not a completely ridiculous idea.
It just didn't work at all.
There's been enough decent American adaptations of sitcoms that seem British at their core.
Steptoe and Son becoming Sanford and Son.
What's the one with Alf Garnet?
Till Death Us Do Part becoming All in the Family.
There is a track record particularly around the 70s and 80s for that.
So yeah, I can see an American version, absolutely.
Get lists to come from somewhere like Boston or Detroit.
Yeah, I'm not against the idea.
I think throw 10 million dollars at it and have Jeff Bezos fit the bill.
Let's do it.
Well, you could do it as the Netflix one, or you could actually do it as like a straight sitcom.
But I think if you were doing it as a sitcom on American TV, you'd just have to take the basic premise and then get American writers to write their version of the basic premise, not do what the American pilot did, which is just take sections of the script from the British versions and get American actors to say it because the, I don't know, the original scripts for Red Dwarf, they're so intensely British.
It just didn't work at all, did it?
Yeah, no.
Craig Bierko as Lister, that's, you know, he's not terrible by the standards of 1992 television pilots.
I mean, you know, we'll give him that.
But yeah, Yeah, I think we should wrap up.
Yeah, great.
Almost two hours.
Well, I mean, this is this is a much more important topic than we normally talk about.
Oh, yeah, definitely.
Definitely.
So, James, where can we find you on the Internet?
The best place to find me, my old landing page on the Internet is my Twitter, which is at JimCrop1916.
And I'll take you to all the other stuff I do.
I do podcasts, which can be found at the PetsLives page, PetsLives.Libsyn.com.
And as well as the ongoing Pets Lives with my friend Kevin Burns, where we're going to cover every classic Doctor Who serial, there's also other great podcasts from our friends and comrades there too, including one that I've recently joined, of Human Bondage, where we're going in order with the great writers Christine Kelly and Kit Power, going through every James Bond movie.
That's a lot of fun.
I do writing, which you can mostly find on my Patreon, and that's Patreon forward slash JimCrop1916, which is what I also use for my Twitter there.
So, yeah, check me out.
Yeah, definitely do that.
OK, thanks for coming on, James.
It's been a blast.
It's been a pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
That is the end of the episode.
That was I Don't Speak German.
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