weekend questions on BTL and BTE

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

I don't care if this has been done before, I wasn't here, and we haven't had a discussion in a while, so what-ever. :-P


Better Than Life is a game that gives you what you most want, or at least elements of it if you're sharing with other users, correct? Rimmer had a psuedo-McGruder; even the Cat had a mermaid girlfriend and boinked Marilyn Monroe in there. SO - WHERE WAS KRISTINE KOCHANSKI?? Inquiring minds and all that. (I'll grant you it's been a while since I saw BTL, but I don't think she was in it, or mentioned ...)


Related but separately, I could ask a few questions about Back to Earth. At least a few. Related - if it was a pleasure squid they encountered, why did Kochanski not make an appearance sooner in the hallucination? (I'd ask why it didn't turn out well with her in there, but I can guess easily enough that Lister still knew it wasn't real and he didn't want the fantasy.) But earlier, none of them knew it was merely a vision - and Lister has been chomping at the bit to get back to Earth all these years - so why does he spend his time running around trying to find this Creator, instead of enjoying his surroundings, going outside, talking to other people just for conversation ... all that good stuff?


I feel like these are fair questions to group together, since one is at the beginning of the series and the other is at the end, and neither makes sense, given that one of Lister's primary motivators throughout is his lost lover (in this case, I mean Kochanski, not Rimmer ;-) ). In fact, he so aggressively misses her that you'd think in "fantasy" or "dream" scenarios, she'd be right up there every time - or at least in the early episode I mentioned!


(Oh, and it's been over 2 years since BTE aired, so I don't really need a spoiler cut, do I?)

Comments

[kronette.livejournal.com]

Newbie to the active fandom here, but loved the show on original runs on PBS :D I just caught up with the series, thanks to Netflix; I didn't know there was a series after V8.

I concur with the statements that BtL VR game gave you the conscious desires, not what you openly thought about. Kochanski, to Lister, is the idolized one that "got away". I recognize it because my mother, turning 65 this year, still *ahem* fondly recalls her high school sweetheart, to the point she's told me I should have been a red-headed boy named Michael. On a trip to another state, she remarked that the HS boyfriend lived there with his wife and 2 kids (I didn't ask how she knew). I don't know if that kind of wistful 'what-might-have-been' has been eating at her for decades, or she's just remembering when, but it's disturbing...just like I've seen with Lister.

His recounts of her are always in a softer voice, like he's remembering his fondest memory, even if it's completely made up or out of proportion to what actually existed between them. We alter our memories to fit what we wanted to happen, sometimes. I don't think he wanted a VR Kochanski; she would ruin the illusion he already had of her.

As for S7 and getting a real Kochanski on board - he'd just suffered the loss of Rimmer, who had kept him sane for 6+ years and knew him at least as well as any of his mates. Kochanski's comparison of Lister to "her Dave" didn't help matters. The jokes she told and the games she played reinforced that this wasn't Lister's Kristine, so he was back to the idealized fantasy Kochanski to pine after.

Back to Earth-wise, the squid got them to Earth; what Lister wanted more than anything. The fact that they landed on earth splat in the middle of an electronics store with "Red Dwarf" plastered everywhere threw them and sent Lister's mind on a different tangent than remembering Kristine, even if he'd just been to read her tombstone a story (so she would have been relatively fresh in his mind). But, he was also mourning her, so he wouldn't necessarily be thinking about her and more pressing matters of the DVD comments keeping up with their "lives" on Earth took precedence.

Only as Lister breaks the tenth wall (I'd say BtE went far beyond the fourth wall) does Kochanski show up; a defense mechanism by the squid I'd guess. Kochanski tries to get him to stay, even knowing it's not real and succeeds for a bit; again, I'd assume some self-defense by the squid. Or did they kill the squid, then get sucked into the not-reality? Gah, I'll have to rewatch.

The thing that struck me most about BtE was the somberness of it. Maybe because they had no studio audience or laugh track, but the overall tone felt more serious. Some have said 'more mature', which I'll also agree with. I didn't get much sense of jokes or taunts between Lister and Rimmer, at least not in the humorous way we used to (except the extended bunk scene. That was gold). There was a seriousness to everyone's interactions; they weren't gallivanting around the universe, picking through space derelicts or playing golf on planetoids. Some may have to do with Kryten maintaining the lie about Kochanski's death. We saw how Kristine's death weighed on Lister. BtE did get my poor addled writer's mind thinking and I'll have a story to post in the coming weeks.

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

Agree with you that BTE was pretty sombre. I still like bits of it, but I hadn't realised before how used I am to Lister being cheery and optimistic. I love that about him, although if I was actually stuck in that situation with him it would no doubt start to grate eventually. Hopefully the new series will be more upbeat (it is possible to be mature and upbeat at the same time, IMO).

Look forward to reading your story. :)

[kronette.livejournal.com]

At times, Lister's cheerfulness did seem unbelievable, but this was a comedy series, not a drama. I think that's where BtE went a little sideways. The writers were trying to be a bit of both with such an absurd storyline, but have Lister react to it without his natural humor. It didn't straddle the line well, like Buffy did, for instance.

If the new series is more like season 6 (isn't that what's been reported?), then I'll be happy. After rewatching the entire series, I remembered through some of S7, but I didn't recall the ending at all, and certainly not the ending to S8. I know I was disappointed that Chris left in S7, and that may have taxed my younger self's attachment to the show.

[veronica-rich.livejournal.com]

That's the thing about something that's normally kind of lighthearted taking a serious turn; love it or hate it, it does give you ideas (sort of what "Dead Man's Chest" did to me for POTC a few years ago). BTE gave the characters a new sort of depth in that it peeled back some absurdity and showed what Lister and Rimmer were, at least, thanks to the squid. We found out Lister's going through a massive midlife crisis/depression of loneliness - not surprising, but not something we really had to think much about with the original series (except for bits and pieces of S7). We found out Rimmer's still trying to be his old flip, uncaring self to Lister's face - but when Lister's not watching him, he looks quite clearly concerned about the man at various times (to be fair, this isn't TOO different from S1 when Lister fell ill and Rimmer was trying to get Cat to help pick him up; there just feels like a different flavor to it in BTE though, as though Rimmer realizes what's wrong with Lister is worse than just having a virus).

Agh, I'm getting carried away with my slashy self; but I really don't think I'm too far off what Naylor & Co. intended for me to see. The actors know the characters too well to play them accidentally (and I won't even get into the subtle hints of L/R throughout Doug's book The Last Human - not to mention his not-too-subtle comparisons there and through S7 of Rimmer's and Kochanski's similarities).

ANYWAY - good points, all. tl;dr and all that *G*

[kronette.livejournal.com]

We found out Rimmer's still trying to be his old flip, uncaring self to Lister's face - but when Lister's not watching him, he looks quite clearly concerned about the man at various times...there just feels like a different flavor to it in BTE though, as though Rimmer realizes what's wrong with Lister is worse than just having a virus

You, quite literally, just picked my brain and came up with the story idea I'm working on :D Rimmer's still trying to act like everything's the same as it's been for years, but Lister isn't playing the same part. I'm in the final edits of the story; just trying to determine how much to put in the second-to-last scene. I swear, if I could ever write a short story, I'd be so, so happy but noooo, I bang out 30 pagers on a regular basis. Gah! Off to edit.

[fantasysci5.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I completely agree; BTE was more somber, less laughs. Which just didn't set well with me. I hope with the new series, with the studio audiences back, they go back to the laughs, and be poingnat and angsty at in teh background, like Terrorform and all its possibilites.