Thoughts on Jim & Bexley

[felineranger.livejournal.com]

I've been thinking about this a bit recently and wondered something. What do other people imagine happening to the twins in the future in show/book canon? We know Bexley dies in one reality from Future Echoes but other than that it's very open-ended, and actually kinda depressing. In any reality where the twins are born on Red Dwarf after the accident, surely a time will come when Lister and Cat have died, Rimmer and Kryten have burned out, and they'll be left alone. Even more so than Lister. What would they do? Go into stasis in the hopes of getting back to Earth? Find a planet with a GELF population and make the best of it?
Even at the end of Last Human, Kochanski tells Lister that they're about to make the first of many children. But what's going to happen to those children? Are they going to encourage them to breed incestuously to restart the human race? If they have a daughter are they going to encourage her to have sex with McGruder, the only other human man left, in order to widen the gene pool a bit?

It seems like whatever happens, Lister having kids ultimately puts those kids in a pretty shite position. Any thoughts?

Comments

[rosecathy1.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've always felt that Grant Naylor didn't really think this through. In IWCD it's even Bexley's son, not Bexley, who dies, and how did he come to exist? Or maybe they had an "anything could happen" philosphy — the twins could find a time hole, go through a wormhole to an alternate dimension where there are more humans, come across a settlement in deep space (like in that one fic of yours), meet more cats??

I guess if all else fails, they could try to address the breeding issue by using artificial insemination rather than sex, which would be a smidgen less...eww.

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

I think they said the reason for making it Bexley's son rather than Bexley himself who dies was because they felt that in hindsight, Lister's reaction in "Future Echoes" to learning his son will die young and horribly was really OOC. I agree. ;)

[rosecathy1.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know, but did they give any thought to how/with whom Bexley could have children? I doubt it. That timeline probably isn't valid anymore, anyway..

[janamelie.livejournal.com]

It probably is a redundant timeline, much as we think the "Stasis Leak" one where Lister marries Kochanski is. The difference is that that timeline was unofficially explained away because it seems highly likely that the future crew in "Out Of Time" were the "Stasis Leak" wedding party a couple of decades down the line. Witness the uncharacteristic rudeness of bearded Lister to his younger self, for instance.

There's no such explanation for fans to have fun with for Jim and Bexley, which is kind of weird when you consider that they're Lister's children and the continuation of the human race is a major theme of the show.