The Magic Flute was a game enjoyed by Kristine Kochanski's crew.
Sophisticated Entertainment[]
When Kochanski had joined the primary crew of Starbug, they decided to invite her to a games night. After deciding to limit the repertoire to games that did not involve dropping their trousers or setting fire to anything, Lister asked Kochanski to pick the first game. She chose "The Magic Flute", a game that she had played with her own crewmates in her own dimension, and with which her new shipmates were unfamiliar. Lister thought it was some version of Musical Chairs.
She explained the rules to them. Each player would hum a section from an operatic aria and then the others would have to try to guess which character was singing. Kochanski's Lister was very good at this game, throwing his crewmates off by singing from "The Birdcatcher's Song" in German rather than Italian. Kochanski found this hilarious, while Lister and Cat thought that it sounded like a form of medieval torture. When Kochanski said that they all "fell about", Lister asked if they had been going through a meteor storm at the time. Her new, less sophisticated shipmates preferred games like "Match the Bodypart to the Crewmember" and "What's That Smell?" ("Blue")
When Kochanski and Rimmer were trapped together aboard SSS Silverberg, Rimmer had been told by Cassandra that the two humans would have sex. Kochanski refused to believe the prophecy and suggested they play "The Opera Game" instead. This was presumably a reference to "The Magic Flute". ("Cassandra")
Trivia[]
- The game was named after the opera of the same name by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.