Tikka to Ride

"Tikka to Ride"
Red Dwarf episode
Episode no.	Series 7 Episode 1
Directed by	Ed Bye
Written by	Doug Naylor
Original air date	17 January 1997
Guest stars
Michael J. Shannon Toby Aspin Peter Gaitens Robert Ashe
Series 7 episodes
17 January – 7 March 1997 "Tikka to Ride" "Stoke Me a Clipper" "Ouroboros" "Duct Soup" "Blue" "Beyond a Joke" "Epideme" "Nanarchy"
List of all Red Dwarf episodes

"Tikka To Ride" is the first episode of science fiction sit-com Red Dwarf Series VII and the 37th in the series run. It was first broadcast on the British television channel BBC2 on 17 January 1997.^[1] Written by Doug Naylor and directed by Ed Bye, it was the first episode not to involve co-creator and writer Rob Grant.

Plot

The crew have survived their battle with their future selves. If the future crew had killed their former selves, they would have eliminated their own existence, and therefore not have been able to destroy themselves. (See temporal paradox.)

Unfortunately disaster has struck - Starbug is completely devoid of Indian food supplies—no curries, not even a papadum. Lister (Craig Charles) proposes that they go back in time to an Indian take-away and order 500 curries. Rimmer (Chris Barrie), Cat (Danny John-Jules) and Kryten (Robert Llewellyn) are against the idea and oppose going back in time because they want to avoid the timeline in which their future selves try to kill their former selves. However, Lister removes a guilt chip from one of Kryten's spare heads and swaps them, telling the new guilt-less Kryten to reassure the crew that it will be okay. The crew assents and they travel back in time.

Their time-travel calculations are a little off and they find themselves in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963. They appear at the Texas School Book Depository just as Lee Harvey Oswald is firing at U.S. President John F. Kennedy. They inadvertently knock him out the window where he dies by hitting the ground, thereby preventing Kennedy's assassination. Police arrive and attempt to arrest the crew for the murder of Oswald as well as the attempted murder of the president. However, the crew escapes by using the time travel device, which sends them three years forward to 1966.

Kennedy's survival causes an alternate timeline in which:

“

President Kennedy was impeached in 1964 for sharing a mistress with Mafia boss, Sam Giancana. It was the biggest scandal in American history. Kennedy was sentenced to three years in an open prison in July, '65. J. Edgar Hoover became president; he was forced to run by the mob, who had pictures of him at a transvestite orgy...Soon after his election, the USSR were allowed to install a nuclear base in Cuba in return for Mafia cocaine trafficking between Cuba and the States. With a Soviet nuclear base 30 miles from the US mainland, people fled from all the major cities.

”

The crew attempt to correct the situation by returning to the day of the shooting and driving Oswald to a higher floor in the building, but this plan still fails to lead to Kennedy's death; by sending Oswald up another floor, the shot's trajectory is now so steep that Kennedy was merely wounded. With none of the crew willing to shoot the President themselves, Lister travels to Idlewild Airport in 1965 and persuades a post-impeachment Kennedy to travel back to 1963, become a "second gunman" on the grassy knoll, and shoot himself to restore his place in history. The plan works: Kennedy shoots his past self and the timeline is restored. Kennedy grimly thanks the gang for the chance to restore himself to his proper place in history, and fades away as a result of the resetting timeline. Lister, too late, realises he forgot to ask Kennedy for the name of a good Indian take-away, and suggests that they use the time drive to start the search for Indian food all over again. The other members of the crew begin beating and kicking Lister in return for all he's put them through in the episode.

Production

Even though the previous series had ended on a cliffhanger, fans had been forced to wait three years for the resolution. This was due to a number of factors, which included Craig Charles being wrongly imprisoned on charges of rape,^[2] Chris Barrie making no secret of his desire to leave the show,^[3] and most notably Rob Grant deciding to leave the series, ending his and Doug Naylor's long-standing writing partnership.^[3] Naylor was left with the choice of either ending or continuing the series. Although tempted to end it, he later agreed to write two more eight-episode series of the show, as this would allow the episode count to reach 52 and therefore be eligible for syndication.^[3] In 2008-2009 he also wrote a three-part special called Red Dwarf: Back to Earth, making the episode count reach 55.

"Tikka To Ride" ushered in new production values. The cinematic quality and filming of the new episodes meant that the studio audience was no longer viable (however the show was shown to an audience at a later date and their laughter was added). Also the special effects were increasing every series and the majority of the episodes were pre-recorded.^[4] One of Naylor's desires for a seventh series was the prospect of international syndication and a movie.^[4] This vision was helped with the return of Ed Bye to the director's chair, having previously left due to a scheduling clash with directing his wife Ruby Wax's new TV show at the time.^[5] He agreed to return to helm the seventh series, his first Red Dwarf episode since Series IV's "Meltdown".

The arrival of the seventh series was also promoted by the show making its first appearance of the front cover of the Radio Times.

Guest stars included Michael J Shannon who played John F. Kennedy, Toby Aspin as Lee Harvey Oswald, Peter Gaitens as FBI Agent and Robert Ashe as Cop.

Cultural and historical references

The title of this episode is a piece of word-play based on the name of the song "Ticket to Ride" by the Beatles, in accordance with the theme of curry on which the storyline focuses, tikka being an Indian spice marinade.

When the second shooter fires at Kennedy from the Grassy Knoll, Lister, Rimmer and Cat are dressed up as tramps, an outfit which the normally vain and shallow Cat would not be seen dead in: "Superficial is my middle name".^[6] Three tramps are reported to have been found in a boxcar behind the Grassy Knoll when the police searched it after the shooting, but were later released. For many years, conspiracy theorists assumed that they were part of the assassination plot.^[7]

The concept of the crew travelling backwards in time and accidentally saving someone's life, leading to a change for the worse in history, was also used in the Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever. In each case the person saved was actually an advocate of peace; however, there were few other similarities between the episodes.

In the commentary for the Series III episode "Timeslides" when talking about Kryten's shouting "Duck!" at the Grassy Knoll line, they note how their characters actually did something similar later on.

Plot Inconsistencies

The plot of this episode is heavily flawed. The crew of the Red Dwarf had, in the very same episode, been saved from the previous season's finale, "Out of Time", in which they were spared from a gratuitous, self-indulgent future because their future selves destroyed their younger selves, thereby destroying their own histories in a temporal paradox.

After Lister explained this exact loophole and how it resulted in the canonical cast being spared, the episode goes on to contradict itself by allowing Kennedy to assassinate himself without creating the very same paradox that allowed the crew to survive their encounter with their future selves in the last season.

In a consistent manner, Kennedy's future self should have eliminated his own ability to commit the murder, thereby preserving the younger Kennedy and correcting the timeline.

In the previous episode it was made clear that the time drive was only a time drive and not a time and space drive, so the crew could travel any distance forward or backward in time but were still stuck in deep space. It was not explained in this episode how a spatial component had been added—or why, given that they could travel to 1963 Earth, they did not simply travel back to 21st century Earth as per their original plan.

References

1. ^ "BBC - Programme Catalogue - RED DWARF VI - TIKKA TO RIDE". BBC. http://catalogue.bbc.co.uk/catalogue/infax/programme/NMYJ411X. Retrieved 2007-12-12. 
2. ^ "The trauma of being falsely accused". BBC News. 2003-07-31. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3055859.stm. Retrieved 2006-12-27. 
3. ^ ^{a b c} "Red Dwarf Series VII Writing". Red Dwarf.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2007-10-22. http://web.archive.org/web/20071022124350/http://reddwarf.co.uk/deck05/series_7/writing.html. Retrieved 2007-12-17. 
4. ^ ^{a b} "Red Dwarf Series VII Production". Red Dwarf.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2007-10-22. http://web.archive.org/web/20071022124317/http://reddwarf.co.uk/deck05/series_7/production.html. Retrieved 2007-12-17. 
5. ^ Interview: Ed Bye, Red Dwarf smegazine, issue 12, January 1993, Fleetway Editions Ltd, issn 0965-5603
6. ^ Back to Reality, Red Dwarf Series V, episode 6, March 1992
7. ^ Posner, Gerald (1993). Case Closed. Warner Books. 

External links

• "Tikka to Ride" at TV.com
• "Tikka to Ride" at BBC Programmes
• "Tikka to Ride" at the Internet Movie Database
• Episode Guide - Series 7 at RedDwarf.co.uk