A plain cardboard box with one red and one green round button and a coiled cable on a blue surface.

Original artwork, not a still

Lister

It's just a box with "STOP" and "START" on it!

— Red Dwarf · 1988

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

A deflating, exasperated line: whatever grand mystery or device is being fussed over, the speaker sees only a plain box with two buttons. The humour comes from reducing something apparently important to its most basic controls, stop and start.

Context reviewed

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