As long as we're going balls-deep into Red Dwarf lore, what happened to George McIntyre? He was the active hologram at the time of the disaster, and presumably he was unaffected by the Cadmium-2 explosion. Did Holly just shut him off straight away? Did he stay on the ship alone for 3 million years before being replaced by Rimmer (assuming Rimmer was activated very shortly before Lister was released from stasis)? You'd assume that procedure in the event of the entire crew being killed would be for Holly to activate Hollister's hologram. Maybe he deactivated George and activated Hollister immediately, and Hollister just gave Holly the order to take the ship out of the solar system since the radiation levels were too dangerous to attempt a salvage of the ship, or a rescue of Lister? And then ordered that his own hologram be shut off, leaving Holly alone for millions of years? Welcome to the RED DWARF OVER-ANALYSIS ZONE.
S01E02 Future EchoesOne of my favourites and a rewatch has only reinforced that view. The early Rimmer-Lister dynamic is front and centre, and there's a wealth of great stuff coming from it. Barrie's performance in the first series is outstanding and there's so much funny shit just in the first few minutes - the rant at Lister followed by "clock stop! not a bad little time for the mile - pity I was only doing the 300 meters", then the deluded attempt to cut his time down, the argument with Holly, the line about his dad's suicide (which absolutely fucking floors me every time) and the hair situation had me laughing the whole way through even though I more or less knew every line in advance. "THIS IS A HAIRCUT DESIGNED FOR ACTION, NOT FOR PONCING AROUND IN."
The science fiction isn't bad here either. A cool idea and the kind of thing that would easily and effortlessly fit into a deadly-serious TNG episode. Most importantly, the comedy and sci-fi blend together perfectly, which is what's so great about Red Dwarf at its best. The future echoes are unironically unnerving and spooky and yet they're also used almost entirely as fuel for laughs, like the Drive Room "deja vu" conversation and future-Lister managing to fuck with Rimmer from a century away. The comedy doesn't compromise the sci-fi and the sci-fi doesn't compromise the comedy, instead they work to uplift each other.
The low-key nature of the bickering between Rimmer and Lister is ace, I love this exchange in particular:
LISTER: It must be something to do with lightspeed.
RIMMER: Holly, what's going on?
LISTER: It's lightspeed, I bet you.
RIMMER: Is your name Holly?
LISTER: (Mocking RIMMER) Is your name Holly?
Wonderfully petty from both of them, and it's delivered in such a believable and understated way.
Only continuity/logic fuckup in this episode is... since Lister and Cat were getting ready to go into stasis at the start, why do they completely abandon that plan from this point onwards? I guess Lister wants to stick around to have Jim and Bexley, but since the future echoes seem to be guaranteed to happen, he'd end up with them even if he did go into stasis.