Future Echoes

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Red Dwarf episode
"Future Echoes"
Episode №	2
Airdate	February 22, 1988
Writer(s)	Rob Grant & Doug Naylor
Director	Ed Bye
Guest star(s)	John Lenahan as Talkie Toaster
Series I February 15 – March 21, 1988
The End Future Echoes Balance of Power Waiting for God Confidence and Paranoia Me²
List of all Red Dwarf episodes...

"Future Echoes" was the second episode to air in the original series of Red Dwarf, and the fourth produced.

Contents 1 Synopsis 2 The Future Echoes 3 Continuity errors arising from the echoes 4 Trivia

[edit] Synopsis

After three million years of constant acceleration the Red Dwarf passes the speed of light. This results in "future echoes", events that will occur in the future than can be seen in the present. Rimmer sees a vision of somebody dying in an accident in the Drive Room, who he believes to be Lister due to a physical resemblance. It turns out to be Lister's second son, Bexley, that Rimmer saw in the accident, which will occur in twenty years or so. Lister sees his 171-year old future self who then tells him to go to the medical room. There Lister sees himself a little older then he is now, holding two crying twin boys in silver foil. These are Lister's twin sons, Jim and Bexley, and the present Lister takes a polaroid photograph.

[edit] The Future Echoes

The visions of the future include:

• Lister seeing himself shaving in the mirror;
• Lister and Rimmer seeing Cat break his tooth;
• Rimmer seeing Lister's death (spoiler: actually Lister's second son Bexley);
• Lister seeing Rimmer in a future conversation, then participating in the conversation in his own timeline;
• Lister and Rimmer encountering Lister, aged 171;
• Lister and Rimmer seeing Lister's two baby boys, Jim and Bexley.

[edit] Continuity errors arising from the echoes

• In a rare attempt to keep in line with continuity, ten years after this episode aired Doug Naylor wrote it into the seventh series that Lister does indeed lose his right arm - this happens in the episode Epideme. This was to explain how the future version of Lister seen in Future Echoes lost his arm. However this continuity was rendered moot by the fact Lister was grown a new arm with nanobotic technology in the immediately following episode, Nanarchy. Therefore, Lister must somehow lose his right arm again sometime after this in an accident we haven't yet seen.
• A vision of Jim and Bexley, Lister's twin sons, are seen being born at the conclusion of the episode. It is also stated that Rimmer sees a vision of Bexley in his mid-20s being killed during a power accident in Red Dwarf's Drive Room. In the episode Parallel Universe, it is revealed that Jim and Bexley were conceived in another dimension and Lister gave birth to them himself. However, as revealed in the opening scrawl of the episode Backwards (and in the "lost episode" Dad), Jim and Bexley had greatly accelerated growth rates, so much so they were eighteen years old within three days of being born. To save their lives, Lister crossed back over into the parallel universe where the twins were conceived, and left them there. With Jim and Bexley no longer being aboard Red Dwarf, how could Rimmer have seen Bexley in his mid-20s being killed in Red Dwarfs Drive Room?
• Visions of the future are seen occurring aboard Red Dwarf decades or even over a century after this episode. However, five or six years after this episode is set, at least in the timeline of the show, Red Dwarf is destroyed (at least it appears so) in the final episode Only the Good.... How can visions of the distant future be seen aboard Red Dwarf is there is no ship in the future? There is the possibility that the ship was not actually destroyed, but since the cliffhanger at the end of Series VIII was never resolved, we may never know.

[edit] Trivia

• Future Echoes was the first episode of the series to deal with a science fiction plot based on real scientific theory, which was to become a common occurrence in later Red Dwarf episodes. For this particular episode, time dilation and various assorted time anaomalies caused by travelling close to the speed of light (or indeed even at the speed of light) are referenced in Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.
• Future Echoes was the second episode of the series to air, as Rob Grant and Doug Naylor felt it was one of the strongest so placed it following the pilot episode, The End. Future Echoes was originally supposed to be the fourth episode in the series, and was the fourth episode to be filmed.
• When Lister sees himself aged 171, his future self appears with a metallic false left arm. It may not be clearly visible, but Lister's new limb came complete with a bottle opener attachment (Craig Charles reportedly kept the prop).
• Wanting to know his own future, Rimmer asks the vision of elderly Lister what will become of himself, and the elderly Lister merely laughs at Rimmer before the vision disappears. After watching the seventh series, we can deduce the elderly Lister was presumably laughing because in the seventh series the cowardly Arnold Rimmer leaves to try and become a dimension-jumping heroic version of himself, Arnold Rimmer. He is not seen again after this until the nanobots resurrect him in the eighth series.
• The skutters, the tiny, motorised, three-clawed service droids, were actual working models. They were made up of parts including old shoe boxes and the engines of radio controlled cars. Interference originating from the radios of a nearby taxi company, which was particularly busy during filming of Future Echoes, caused havoc with the skutter models on set. One reportedly poked Craig Charles in the eye, and another launched an unsuspecting attack on Chris Barrie's groin. Coincidentally the skutters were in the script very inept towards their maintenance work and mischievous towards humans.
• The writers of Red Dwarf were convinced viewers would be swayed by the unusual premise of the show, and an introduction was written to be read by Holly at the beginning of each episode to remind audiences of the premise of the show and what events had preceded that particular episode. Doug Naylor frequently had to remind the cast of these things too, as it took them a while to get their heads around the plot.
• So complex was the plot of Future Echoes that writers Doug Naylor and Rob Grant found themselves needing to draw diagrams to keep things under control. Director Ed Bye would frequently be found by the team laid on his back trying to wrap his head around the plot.
• Future Echoes is the first Red Dwarf episode where we learn that Lister wants to call his twin sons Jim and Bexley after his idol, the (fictional) Zero-G football player who plays "roof attack" for the London Jets, Jim Bexley Speed.
• Lister's twin boys are also seen/referenced numerous times in later series; in the episode Parallel Universe at the end of the second series); in the "lost episode" Dad; and in the first episode of the sixth series, Psirens.
• Rimmer says to Lister, with regards to returning back to the planet Earth, "Well, you'll be in your element if insects are in control. You'll probably get a decent job at last. You'll probably run for government. You'll probably even make it as a male model." In the Red Dwarf novel Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers (which follows a different plot to the television series) the crew of Red Dwarf do indeed make it back to Earth and discover find that the dominant form of life are insects, and Lister does indeed rise to become their leader.
• "Goit" is an insulting term made up by the writers of Red Dwarf who observed changing trends in language over time, and so acknowledged that there will undoubtfully be different terms of insult in the future. The term "goit" makes its first appearance in this episode.
• Future Echoes marked the first appearance of Talkie Toaster.