Random Dredd Questions

[Proudhuff]

Skev almighty, what a mess.  And that's even before the original Rogue met Friday and gave him Gunnar.  And who exactly was Venus Bluegenes in this version?  The one from the original Rogue stories, or a new one from Friday's location that looked exactly like the one on that other Nu Earth a few light-years away? 

To be fair, the Gibbons and Simpson reboot was great - an oddly successful blend of Platoon and Blade Runner.  Even without Fleischer, they probably should have ended it there and then while the going was good.

Anyway, sorry, I've completely thrown the thread off-course - please don't mind me and keep asking Dredd questions.

And before you add in that blue chap who drove the space ambulance...

[JayzusB.Christ]

  🤯

[Lawman of the Present]

Just listened to Big Finish's "99 Code Red" which largely follows a team of Judges from B-Watch in Meg East, with Dredd rotating in. Which leads me to a Random Dredd Question:

The story features Judges working a shift format we've seen before, notably in The Pit (and much like real police forces) - Judges are assigned to a particular Sector House, on a particular 'watch' unit under a Watch Commander, who cover their Sector in 8-hour shifts. The different units rotate duty to cover round the clock.

This format sees each team with a handful of Judges who work regularly together. They'll attend briefings then go out on patrol and respond to incidents in their Sector.

So where does Dredd himself fit into this pattern? Has it ever been established whether he fits into a particular team or unit?

Older stories saw him working Meg Central, most commonly based from the Grand Hall. Before Sector Houses were introduced, all Judges reported to the Grand Hall before duty (Day the Law Died). But since then, despite his rhetoric on the importance of teamwork, he's very much portrayed as a loner to goes across the city wherever he likes, with no set unit or location.

I recall some stories showed he has a (rarely used) office at the Grand Hall, and we can also take into account Rowdy Yates Block which firmly based him in Central. We see him commonly teaming with Giant etc so could infer they're on some overlapping pattern/location.

So does Dredd just have some kind of special dispensation to do whatever he likes? Is it his role as a Senior Judge which sees him rotating frequently around the city? Is it his authority which sees him reporting directly to the CJ and going wherever they want him?

'99 Code Red' also suggests that Dredd's insistence on using sleep machines and working 24/7 is a personal choice, and that other Jays take downtime aside from Mandatory Eight.

Also, the 2012 movie gives Dredd as assigned to Sector 13, though I've never seen this as part of comics canon.

[JohnW]

This is another of those questions to which the answer is, 'However the story requires.'
A judge's routine is determined not by department regulation and sector house timetable, but by the needs of the story. We just have to believe that the regulations and timetables exist.
Myself, I'm convinced that Mega-City 1 just doesn't work. The numbers don't add up.
If you look at a picture by Ezquerra or Ron Smith then you can believe in it all, but that's about as far as it goes. Once you trying to correlate all the details in all the stories you appreciate that it is all just stories and pictures as opposed to a perspective on a real place.
So long as the details are plausible and serve the story – and don't too obviously contradict anything that's come before – then we should just suspend our disbelief and enjoy the ride.

But specifically? Judges get rotated, and Dredd does what he wants.

This is my take on it.
From Pack Instinct:

Jimenez was shift commander, which was something of an archaic title that didn't mean anything much except that he was the sector chief's deputy. Judges didn't really work shifts. What were they supposed to do? Clock off at five and go home to the kids? A Judge was always on duty. The shift commander coordinated those duties for twelve hours of the day. So Jimenez's job title didn't mean anything much except that he was in charge of and responsible for every damn thing that went on in this sector house. No big deal.
...
Judges came and went and their coming and their going was his business. You needed your people to know the streets, but you didn't want them going stale. So Judges were assigned to a sector—and even to a single patrol grid—until they knew it inside out. Then, so they didn't get too comfortable and maybe lose their edge, they were rotated out. These were the tides and currents that governed the deployment of Justice Department's personnel, and Jimenez played his part in governing them.

[The Legendary Shark]

Maybe Dredd's rank as a senior street judge gives him a city-wide remit to chase leads wherever they go and to be constantly assisting and monitoring the lower ranks; keeping them in line and focused. A kind of wandering general.

[Richard]

The Pit said that judges normally patrol alone, but Sector 301 is exceptional in that it is so dangerous there that the judges have to go around in pairs. Even then, when somebody told Dredd he should take someone with him Dredd said "don't be ridiculous" and went alone anyway.

The Graveyard Shift showed judges mainly working solo, except for the bit when Dredd and Hershey teamed up for a while to do some 59Cs.

So they usually work alone, except when they don't. *shrug emoji*

[The Legendary Shark]

Bloody judges. A law unto themselves, the lot of 'em.

[GizmoDuck]

Tangent:

I'm now on Case Files 12 - and blimey they've shrunk aint they? Though I'm pretty pleased that almost half of it is in colour. I guess '89 was when they started printing in full colour.

[IndigoPrime]

It's probably worth noting the paper stock changed as well. So although the page count did drop, it's not as precipitous as it first appears. (Early case files, bar the skinny #3, which may well be the thinnest of them all, were up to 400 pages, but often in the high 300s. Colour ones appear to be 300 +/- 20 or so pages.)

[JohnW]

Sorry if this has been asked a dozen times already, but what is the exact nature of creds?
Why is there a paper Mega-City credit? Even assuming that the physical cred isn't made out of actual paper, it still seems a little bit old fashioned, dunnit?
And what's the cred worth? Famously, four of them would have bought you an ice cream back in 2103, but it's possibly ill-advised to apply the Freezy-Whip Standard to a whole monetary theory.

Economics were never my strong suit (which might explain why I live in genteel poverty).

[The Legendary Shark]

I dunno', exactly. I think it was probably originally just a cool name to give to traditional money, reflecting the fact that all money is, in essence, debt or credit. Creds don't actually belong to the citizens, who are mere temporary custodians of money issued and owned by the City - just like today. I guess the name was also chosen to illustrate how the USA, and its dollar, are defunct in Dredd's era.

With hindsight, China's social credit system (which is gaining favour amongst our own apex parasites) would fit in very well with Mega City One...

[JohnW]

With hindsight, China's social credit system (which is gaining favour amongst our own apex parasites) would fit in very well with Mega City One...

See, you might have written that in actual Chinese for all it means to me.
Just plain thick in money matters, I am. I'm the sort who'd buy pretty copper coins with ugly paper money. (I mean, the coppers are very shiny.)
What we need* is a Mega-City One price index to give us an idea of what things cost in Dreddworld.
Like, how much should you expect to pay for a treemeat hottie? What (if anything) should you tip the robo-waiter in a high-class eaterie? What would be the price tag on a pair of kneepads fancy enough to provoke an ARV on Hayte Street? If you need to, say, remove a competitor with the aid of a team of blitzers, how much would that set you back? (Ignore that last question, Judge – I wasn't being serious.)
And what's the point of cash? With most cits on welf, the prime purpose of cash seems to be to fill briefcases that change hands solely for nefarious purposes.

(Yes, yes – I know that the whole set-up is fictional, and the needs of the story dictate all the incidentals, etcetera, etceteraah, but just play along, huh?)

*need, I tell you

[nxylas]

What we need* is a Mega-City One price index to give us an idea of what things cost in Dreddworld.
Like, how much should you expect to pay for a treemeat hottie? What (if anything) should you tip the robo-waiter in a high-class eaterie? What would be the price tag on a pair of kneepads fancy enough to provoke an ARV on Hayte Street?

I think there was something like that in the original Dredd RPG.

[The Legendary Shark]

Cost = plot + character / relevance.

[Dash Decent]

Several years ago (maybe more), there was a suggestion that the USA might eliminate the penny, and perhaps even the nickel.  It was on the local (Australian) news, showing an American reporter vox popping with the crowd.  There were lots of disparaging and mystified comments from the people on the street, as if removing one cent pieces was a threat to democracy etc.  I particularly remember it because the interviewer told one fellow how Australian had eliminated one and two cent pieces years ago.

"Oh yeah!" snickered this fellow.  "Australia -- where all the convicts are!"

Having seen this, I can totally accept that MC1 would still have physical paper/polymer money in circulation, even if it were barely used, simply because the citizens would go bananas about it otherwise.

As for the price of things, I would treat a cred as equal to a dollar and price things as per 'now', whenever your now is.  "A haircut sir?  Certainly sir, that will be thirty creds.  Fifty if we trim your beard too."  If nothing else it will keep costs in proportion (e.g. a car costs way more than a haircut).  It may look wrong in retrospect but I don't really see anyone complaining that if Dredd is in the future why don't we see mobile phones and tablets in prog 3, why does Dredd talk into a radio handset as if he's operating a CB etc.