Backwards

This Story: Season 3, Episode 1
Overall: Story 13, Episode 13
Airdate: 14 Nov 1989
Written by Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
Directed by Ed Bye

Notes

• There is a remastered version of this episode, but I will be using the original version.
• This is the first episode for quite a lot of things.  Hattie Hayridge as Holly, Robert Llewellyn as Kryten, the new shuttle Starbug, the show’s theme song, the new standard Red Dwarf logo, the new sleeping quarters sets (which were never explained on screen).
• The episode started with a text scroll which explained away the ongoing plot that ended Season 2.  However it scrolled by you couldn’t read it, which I remember irritating me at the time.  The full text of the scroll is below.
• The text scroll replaces what was to be the first episode of the season called “Dad” where the events in the text scroll were to be their own episode. Grant & Naylor abandoned that halfway through and replaced the episode with this one.  There is some extensive info on the unmade “Dad” episode on a Red Dwarf wiki here.
• The episode starts with a joke about Wilma Flintstone, that was re-used a few years later when they tried to do a US version of Red Dwarf.

Backwards Speech

As the bulk of this episodes takes place in a parallel universe (hang on, the last episode was about that!), but backwards… The speech of the native characters there is backwards to us.  This was 1989.  I was determined to figure out what it was, because on screen there was no explanation for most of it.  Some of it was, and when it was shown it was relevant to the plot, so they needed the audience to understand that.

At this point I was still using Apple // computers (I was still on an Apple //e or had an Apple IIgs – can’t recall the timing now).  So what I did is I recorded all of the backwards speech from the episode, loaded it into a sound editor program (late 80’s version of something like Audacity today), and turned it around. Nearly all of it was relevant to the plot – it was what you would think it would be based on context.

Except for one segment.  Towards the end of the episode, there was a club manager who came in to fire Kryten & Rimmer from this stage show act they had put together in the backwards universe.  It goes on a for a bit, and has no text saying what he’s saying.  We get a little bit from Kryten saying they’re fired, but no direct explanation.  Even the subtitles simply say “speaking backwards”.  This was the most interest to me.  The start of it is relevant talking about firing them, but halfway through he changes gears and says..  “I’m not actually addressing you, I’m addressing the one prat in the country who has bothered to get a hold of this recording, turn it round and actually work out the rubbish that I’m saying. What a poor, sad life he’s got!”

Oh my lord, when I heard that coming out of my Apple // speakers, it was the moment I fell in love with Red Dwarf forever.  That they would put a plant in there to insult fans who were studious enough to figure out the backwards speech was bloody gold to me.  I LOVED THAT – even though it was me they were trashing in the episode.  :)

Here’s the audio of that bit.  (The backwards speech in the middle is Kryten from the episode reversed).

Pre-Title Text Scroll

RED DWARF III
THE SAGA CONTINUUMS
THE STORY SO FAR…

Three million years in the future, Dave Lister, the last human being alive discovers he is pregnant after a liaison with his female self in a parallel universe. His pregnancy concludes with the successful delivery of twin boys, Jim and Bexley. However, because the twins were conceived in another universe, with different physical laws, they suffer from highly accelerated growth rates, and are both eighteen years old within three days of being born. In order to save their lives, Lister returns them to the universe of their origin, where they are reunited with their father (a woman), and are able to lead comparatively normal lives. Well, as normal as you can be if you’ve been born in a parallel universe and your father’s a woman and your mother’s a man and you’re eighteen years three days after your birth.

Shortly afterwards, Kryten, the service mechanoid who had left the ship after being rescued from his own crashed vessel, the Nova 5, is found in pieces after his space bike crash lands onto an asteroid. Lister rebuilds the ‘noid, but is unable to recapture his former personality.

Meanwhile, Holly, the increasingly erratic Red Dwarf computer, performs a head sex change operation on himself. He bases his new face on Hilly, a female computer with whom he’d once fallen madly in love.

And now the saga continuums

AND NOW THE SAGA CONTINUUMS…

RED DWARF III

THE SAME GENERATION

-NEARLY-

Links

[ Wikipedia | Tongue Tied Wiki | Amazon US DVD | Amazon UK Blu-Ray ]