Red Dwarf Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) List
				Part 3 of 7
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The questions:

   6. What does "smeg" mean?
   7. What does "LEVEL NIVELO" mean?
   8. What is "vindaloo"?
   9. What are the other foods mentioned on the show?
  10. Aren't there a lot of inconsistencies in Red Dwarf?
  11. How did Holly become female? Why did Kryten change?
  12. What happened to the Red Dwarf and Holly?
  13. What's the title of the last episode of Series 2?
  14. What are they really saying in "Backwards?"
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   6. What does "smeg" mean?

  It's a word made up by Grant Naylor for the characters to use as an
  all-purpose profanity. Some fans have theorised that it was derived
  from "smegma" (a particularly unpleasant bodily secretion), but Rob
  and Doug deny this. In the interview on the CD included with the Six
  of the Best box set, they state that "we wanted to invent a
  futuristic curse word which had the right sort of consonant and vowel
  arrangement to make it sound like a genuine . . . curse word." A
  detailed list of "smeg" references in the show is available at:
  http://www.transend.com.tw/~mah/smeglist.html.
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   7. What does "LEVEL NIVELO" mean?

  Red Dwarf is a bilingual ship, with English and Esperanto as the two
  official languages. "Nivelo" is the Esperanto word for "level". The
  signs in the corridors of the ship simply indicate (in both
  languages) what level you're on.

  Esperanto is a real language, developed in the the 1880s by Polish
  ophthalmologist L.L. Zamenhof. The episode "Kryten" establishes that
  Lister, Holly, and Kryten all speak at least some Esperanto. Rimmer
  doesn't seem to have mastered the language yet; he's shown trying to
  learn it from a videotape without much success.

  The name "Esperanto" means "one who hopes," a fact that is alluded to
  in "Back to Reality." (It's a blatant clue, innit?)
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   8. What is "vindaloo"?

  A very, very hot Indian curry dish that happens to be Lister's
  favorite food. Vindaloo can contain almost any sort of meat, so there
  are references to "mutton vindaloo," "chicken vindaloo," etc., in
  various episodes of the show.
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   9. What are the other foods mentioned on the show?

  Denis Cage has compiled the Red Dwarf Food and Drink Guide, an
  extensive guide to every dish and beverage mentioned on the show or
  in the novels. You can find the Guide at:
  http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Hills/6061/.
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  10. Aren't there a lot of inconsistencies in Red Dwarf?

  Many viewers have noticed that the details don't always match between
  one episode and another. The subject even comes up on the "Smeg Ups"
  tape when Kryten reads the Most Asked Questions About Red Dwarf, most
  of which have to do with one inconsistency or another. Annette
  McIntosh and Damone have compiled an exhaustive list of
  inconsistencies and contradictions within the TV series. This
  document is called the Red Dwarf Plot Inconsistencies Project (PIP)
  and can be found at:
  http://www.cobalt.demon.co.uk/alt.tv.red-dwarf/hyperpip.html

  Annette McIntosh maintains a similar document, the Red Dwarf Book
  Plot Inconsistencies Project (BPIP), which lists inconsistencies
  within the series of Red Dwarf novels:
  http://www.cobalt.demon.co.uk/alt.tv.red-dwarf/bpip.html
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   11. How did Holly become female? Why did Kryten change?

  The original actor to play Holly, Norman Lovett, left the series
  after a dispute over his salary. In an interview with Red Dwarf
  Smegazine (issue 9, November 1992), Lovett said that he asked to be
  paid the same as the other actors on the series, but his request was
  turned down. Hattie Hayridge had appeared in "Parallel Universe" as
  Hilly, Holly's female counterpart. "When Norman said he wasn't doing
  another series, I auditioned," she recalls. The character of Holly
  kept the same name and personality despite the recasting.

  Kryten's original actor, David Ross, wasn't available to commit to a
  series when Grant Naylor decided to make Kryten a continuing
  character, so he was replaced by Robert Llewellyn. (Ross later
  returned in "White Hole" as the new voice of Talkie Toaster.) There
   were also several changes in the show's look between Series Two and
  Three, including changes in costumes, sets, and miniatures,
  particularly the addition of the Starbug and its hangar bay.

  Most of these changes are more or less explained by the following
  words that scroll rapidly up the screen at the beginning of
  "Backwards":

    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 boys 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
    old three days after your birth. Shortly afterward, 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 crashed into an asteroid. Lister rebuilds the 'noid, but
    is unable to recapture his former personality. Meanwhile, Holly,
    the increasingly erratic 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.

  It is possible to read all this, if you have a VCR with good
  freeze-frame capabilities. Try it.
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  12. What happened to the Red Dwarf and Holly?

  Throughout Series 6 and 7, the characters travel aboard Starbug; the
  Red Dwarf (and Holly) don't appear at all. This tends to confuse
  viewers who missed the explanation in "Psirens".

  Briefly, what happened is this: Lister parked the Red Dwarf in orbit
  around a planetoid, and then forgot which planetoid it was. "They're
  all the same, those little blue-green planetoids. Blue-green and
  planetoidy." Subsequently, Red Dwarf was stolen "by persons or
  lifeforms unknown." Starbug followed the ship's vapor trail for over
  200 years, with Lister and the Cat in deep sleep and Rimmer switched
  off to conserve power. At the first opportunity to actually catch up
  with Red Dwarf, Kryten revived the others, and the saga continued...

  (In "Nanarchy," the situation is revealed to be somewhat more
  complicated than what's described above, but never mind.)

  The real reason for the change was to eliminate Holly from the show.
  According to Hattie Hayridge, the parts for Holly and the Cat had
  both been getting smaller and smaller. Grant Naylor decided to drop
  one of the characters and expand the other. It was easier to drop
  Holly because many of her lines could be given to Kryten instead.
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  13. What's the title of the last episode of Series 2?

  "Parallel Universe," according to the Radio Times and the BBC
  videotape. No title was given in the episode, which began with a
  musical number instead of the usual titles sequence. The title does
  appear on screen in the BBC videotape (and is on the label as well).
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  14. What are they really saying in "Backwards?"

  Most of the reversed dialogue in the episode "Backwards" is pretty
  much either what the subtitles say it is or what you'd expect from
  context; some of it actually appears to be random noise. There are
  two notable exceptions, however.

  When Lister and the Cat steal a bicycle, its owner yells after them,
  "You scoundrels! Return my bike immediately!" -- at least, according
  to the subtitles. What he actually says, however, is, "Oi! Hey! Oi,
  you robbing bastards, that's our tandem!"

  Later, when the stage manager comes in to yell at Rimmer and Kryten,
  he appears to be blaming them for starting the fight. Here's what he
  actually says:

    You are a stupid, square-headed, bald git, aren't you? I ain't
    pointing at you, I'm pointing at you. But I'm not actually
    addressing you, I'm addressing the one prat in the country who's
    bothered to get 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! . . . Frankly, your act's crap. Anyway, anybody could have
    done it. I hate the lot of you. Bollocks to you!
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