Killed… To death!
Killed… To death!
But if they stand up for what’s right then they won’t get reelected so they can actually make things better Our they could maybe actually do the right thing regardless, is not like Mal needed the pension to pay his mortgage.
Imagine thinking those were bad things! That’s close to 50% of the US voting population (and I’d like to pretend it was only them, but the rest of the world isnt necessarily better).
How the fuck did we get here? Actually scratch that, i know that humans are greedy, tribal animals who are driven by biological urges only sometimes obscured by higher level thought. The bigger question is how the fuck did we manage to make it as far as we have?
It’s very British. If you like British comedy then you’ll probably like Red Dwarf.
For all the gags and unashamed silliness, however, the show has been built on solid science fiction foundations since it first materialized on the BBC in 1988. With “Doctor Who” on hiatus between 1989 and 2005, “Red Dwarf” became the highest profile sci-fi show on British T.V., and writers/creators Rob Grant and Doug Naylor frequently came up with concepts every bit as smart as those encountered by Jean-Luc Picard and co in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” That instinct for pushing the limits of the final frontier has continued since Grant departed the show following 1993’s series VI.
Below we’ve pulled together 10 of the most sophisticated – and unconventional – sci-fi ideas from “Red Dwarf”'s epic 35-year history. And, it’s worth noting that they’ve done it all without any alien visitations…
However, if you want to get your fill of creatures from outer space, then check out the best sci-fi movies and best T.V. shows of all time – you won’t be disappointed!
In early seasons, Rimmer was unable to interact with solid objects, but the introduction of a “hard light” emitter in “Red Dwarf VI” episode “Legion” gave him physical form, emulating the solid light found in “Star Trek”'s holodecks, and making life a lot easier for actor Chris Barrie. Rimmer got another upgrade in 2020’s feature-length “The Promised Land,” thanks to a “diamond light” drive that briefly turned him into a superhero. This was a superlative evolution with one minor flaw – his battery life was shockingly bad.
We subsequently learned that, in the many millennia since “Cloister the Stupid” was frozen in time, those Felis sapiens had developed their own society, fought holy wars, and subsequently abandoned Red Dwarf to find the promised land of “Fuchal” (aka Fiji). Cat was one of those left behind, though the boys from the Dwarf did run into more of the species in “The Promised Land.”
The crew have also encountered several cyborg Simulants (usually notable for their passionate dislike for humans) and a giant genetically-engineered “despair squid,” whose ink could induce mass hallucinations (“Back to Reality”). Perhaps the most intriguing lifeform, however, was Legion, a “gestalt entity” with the ability to combine any mind in close proximity into a being with an intellect greater than the sum of its parts – who else could have created the wonder of anti-matter chopsticks?
Where “Star Trek: The Next Generation” generally used the holodeck to get away from it all, “Red Dwarf” has traditionally preferred virtual reality. Decades before metaverses became fashionable, the show was strapping the gang into artificial reality headsets, some of which looked more like bicycle helmets than anything like the cutting edge tech of the best VR headsets we have today.
From the game-gone-wrong of “Better than Life” to “Gunmen of the Apocalypse”'s Western-themed assault on a computer virus, the show has frequently explored the comedic potential of transporting yourself to another world. Best of the bunch, however, was “Back to Reality,” in which the aforementioned despair squid caused the crew to hallucinate that they’d spent the last four years playing a total immersion videogame called “Red Dwarf.” It’s the most emotionally powerful episode in the show’s history – and no, Cat does not want to be Duane Dibbley.
The backwards universe On one level, a world where time runs in reverse is simply an excuse for gags that would be impossible in any other sitcom – it’s best not to think too hard about what going to the toilet would involve. Nonetheless, “Red Dwarf III”'s “Backwards” was also based on the ingenious sci-fi premise of an anti-universe, as Rimmer, Lister, the Cat, and service mechanoid Kryten (by this point a regular member of the crew) landed on a planet where time’s arrow had been flipped. Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” riffed on similar ideas in 2020, though it was nowhere near as funny.
The Justice Field Science fiction loves finding cruel and unusual ways to incarcerate the worst of the worst, from “Superman: The Movie”'s two-dimensional Phantom Zone to “Escape from New York”'s abandoned Manhattan. But, few prisons are as ingenious as the facility in “Red Dwarf IV”'s “Justice,” where committing any crime is impossible thanks to the site’s in-built Justice Field.
Any criminal act you perform will instantly be inflicted back on you – in other words, when Lister tried setting some bed sheets alight, his own jacket quickly caught on fire. Luckily for the Dwarfers, they were able to turn the prison’s unique security measures to their advantage, when they goaded the ruthless simulant on their tail into blasting himself to smithereens.
However, there were undoubted parallels with the anomaly that spewed anti-time into the universe in “The Next Generation” finale “All Good Things” (which debuted three years later). Indeed, it remains a shame that Jean-Luc Picard didn’t follow Lister’s lead, playing pool with planets to permanently seal the fissure. Trick shot!
Yes, it was incredibly convenient when Lister used a literal dose of good fortune to enter the correct door code to escape quarantine, and when he found all of the correct components to defeat a Rimmer driven insane by a nasty holo virus (alongside Mr. Flibble, his evil penguin hand puppet) . Even so, deus ex machina has rarely been so funny, or felt so justified in terms of the plot.
The whole scheme was part of Lister’s destiny to form an unbreakable circle in time – the ouroboros symbol represents a snake eating its own tail – to ensure the human race never became extinct. It was also the reason why Lister subsequently sent himself a Father’s Day card every year (“Fathers and Suns”).
Series X’s “Entangled” paid homage to one of the more esoteric concepts in contemporary physics, when a “quantum rod” from the S.S. Trojan’s drive system caused Kryten and the Cat to experience quantum entanglement on a macroscopic scale – and, in a beautifully choreographed sequence, they ended up mirroring their actions in perfect unison.
Writer Doug Naylor’s interpretation of quantum theory probably wouldn’t stand up to much scientific scrutiny, but, let’s face it, you could frequently say the same of “Star Trek”.
I don’t think anyone seriously thinks you can actually get rid of cars entirely, but rather they’re annoyed that everything is built around the idea that you drive everywhere. This is damaging to the environment, human health, and probably even stifles community and culture.
I bet someone brought a signal jammer.
I had a few coins for some reason, so I gave out some “fuck spez” awards. I wont be buying any.
Surely that’s a road.
Cost of living pressures that are the fault of a worldwide pandemic, a war on the other side of the world, neoliberal policies, and policies that the LNP brought in and actively fought against reforming (capital gains reforms, inheritance tax, degradation of Medicare, etc)
Get fucked Voldemort.
Procreate is software? That’s a relief. I thought you’d had sex on it… Or with it.
Cash flow at twitter remains negative because I don’t understand the business.
FIFY Elmo.
Yep. Once SMS was gone then all my contacts left and I had no reason to keep it. I unfortunately had to install WhatsApp as that was where the critical mass was.
They’re sticking to the “get rid of every second edition” process I see. I still haven’t even used 11 and 12 might come out before I need to.
There’s nothing better to do in Albury than burn things.
No idea, but I refuse to use it on principle. They are still some small communities in Reddit that I stay part of, but I come to Lemmy first.
Perhaps mini blimps for birding?
They spent most of the 20th century telling us that Russia was the biggest threat to the world. 25 years later Russia starts invading its neighbouring countries and the halfwits are taking the Russian side.
This is hardly surprising. It’s immediately noticeable in images, but we’ll have to be very careful with other forms of output as the decline could be subtle enough to go unnoticed at first. There’s a very real risk of poisoning our sources of data by allowing AI to write back to them without oversight. And given that the sources of data seem to be things like Reddit and twitter this is a real concern.
Links to another news aggregator rather than directly to article. The article is from Sky.