Trollheart

Rimmer and Kryten end up in another parallel Earth, this time one where time goes backwards, and earn themselves something of a reputation as The Sensational Reverse Brothers, before their promising career is cut short. Marooned on an ice planet with Lister, Rimmer tells his compatriot that he once used hypno-therapy to have himself regressed to a past life, and discovered that he was once Alexander the Great's chief eunuch! During the time they spend together as they wait for a seemingly hopeless rescue, it comes to light that Rimmer has in his camphorwood chest over £24,000 in notes, priceless (as they are now the only copies left) books, and a collection of hand-carved Napoleonic miniatures. The money, books and soldiers all go to feed the fire which is keeping Lister alive, and Rimmer is less than happy when he discovers that, far from burning, as he thought, his guitar, Lister has in fact cut out the shape of the guitar from Rimmer's chest and burned that!

When they discover how easy it is to switch personalities, Rimmer badgers Lister into allowing him to occupy his body for two weeks, with the intention of getting it fit again. However, not having had a solid body for 3,000,002 years, Rimmer snaps and when Lister regains control of his own body Rimmer steals it back, taking Starbug and almost killing Lister's body in the process!

When Lister reorganises the timelines so that he never joins Red Dwarf but instead invents the Tension Sheet and becomes mega-rich, Rimmer, left facing the prospect of life alone with Holly, tries to sort it so that he and not Lister invents the Tension Sheet, but he only succeeds in putting things back the way they were originally.

Sentenced by the Justice Computer to a total servitude of 9,328 years for his believed culpability for the deaths of all aboard Red Dwarf, Rimmer is saved from this fate by Kryten, who presents a case that proves beyond all doubt that there is no way in hell anyone with an ounce of sense would put Rimmer in charge of anything important, much less the safety of the ship.

Some time later, Rimmer meets his double from yet another dimension, this being the universally-liked, brave and courageous Ace Rimmer. Arnold hates him on sight, as he is a reminder to him of what he could have achieved. It turns out that the only difference between the two is that Ace was held back a year in school, and this made him buckle down and determine to do well. Rimmer finally realises his destiny (or so he thinks), when transporting to a world where wax-droids fight a war against one another; he takes over the leadership of those deemed "the forces of good", and leads them into battle. Unfortunately, he manages to wipe out not only the bad ones but his own small army as well. Little wonder, with strategies like "We attack tomorrow, under cover of daylight!"

But when they encounter a holoship, crewed by top-flight holograms, Arnie is in his element! He petitions the captain to let him join, but has to battle another crew member for that privilege. He uses a mind patch--- downloading the minds of the most brilliant scientists that were in the crew ---, but this goes wrong and he declares that he will withdraw from the contest, defeated. His opponent, however, is Nirvana Crane, with whom he has fallen in love, and she withdraws herself to let him win. When he discovers what has happened though, Rimmer uncharacteristically gives it all up to allow Crane be reinstated --- and no-one more surprised than himself!

Left alone on a psi-moon, a sateliite which reconfigures its terrain to the mindset of anyone who lands on it, while Kryten is incapacitated, Rimmer is taken before the Unspeakable One, which is a manifestation of his own self-loathing. The entire planetoid has reconfigured itself to mirror his own personality, and has created such things as The Swamp of Despair and The Chasm of Hopelessness. Rimmer is rescued by his mates who pretend they like him, in order to get off the moon.

He contracts a holovirus and goes completely mad, imprisoning his friends in quarantine and turning off their oxygen. In his holovirus-enhanced state, Arnie is capable of telekinesis and hex-vision, a powerful form of psi weapon. He is eventually defeated (along with his friend, the glove puppet Mister Flibble!) just before the virus would have taken his life. When they meet Legion, the ancient creation of some of the most brilliant minds in history, Rimmer is given a hardlight body, this being a hologrammatic form that can touch and be touched, allows him to eat, taste, feel but makes him almost impervious to harm.

Despite this, Kryten runs a routine check on him and finds that he is suffering from a hologrammatic version of nervous disorder. He is instructed to take things very easy, but this is not helped when he is catapulted into a wormhole and emerges on an uninhabited planet, light years from anywhere. Having successfully created a clone of himself, Rimmer is soon overrun by more clones, all of whom are using his basic cowardice, snideness, sarcasm and treachery as the template for what they consider normal behaviour. Rimmerworld is born, and the original Rimmer left to rot in a cell until his friends come to find him, 557 years later!

Rimmer does however in the end reveal that there is a spark of decency and courage in him when, when faced with the prospect of fighting their future selves in a battle for Starbug, and hopelessly outclassed by the latter, he declares that they should fight. As he says: "Better dead than smeg!"

When the charismatic Ace Rimmer comes on board Starbug, Arnie is concerned: "We're down to our last three thousand vomit bags!" he declares, shaking his head. "It'll never be enough!" Ace, it transpires though, is dying. In point of fact he is a hardlight hologram, and not the original Ace which the crew met in "Dimension Jump": the story will be further related in the profile on Ace. He wishes Arnie to take over as guardian of the universe, a position at which Rimmer scoffs, but eventually, goaded to it by Lister, he accepts and with the help of his old friend settles into the role.

Eventually, Ace having died and Lister having convinced the crew that what stands before them is not the sad shell of a man that they used to know as their crewmate (or, as the Unspeakable One put it, "That walking vomit-stain that the world knows as Arnold Rimmer"), but the dashing, brave and handsome Ace, Rimmer, having sat through his eulogy and watched his funeral, bids the boys farewell and leaves to take up his new post.

This episode, "Stoke me a clipper", shows for the first time a glimmer of the man Rimmer could have been, and the traits we saw embodied in Ace, as he stares out at all the thousands (millions?) of previous Rimmers who have held the post of Ace Rimmer, and declares "All those Rimmers!" Lister looks at them, and says "They all did it. They all passed on the flame. Are you going to be the one who breaks the chain?" And we finally see the humanity, the compassion and the belief in Arnold Rimmer that he can finally make a difference, be appreciated in the world. Somehow, it looks like the man we knew will be nothing like we remembered when he returns!

Again, the scene in which Arnold Rimmer is remembered, spoken of and posthumously promoted to First Officer by Lister, and then taken to his final resting place with all the other Rimmers, is enough to bring a tear to the most jaded eye. The scene is, typically, lightened by the presence of Rachel, the inflatable sex-doll, whom Lister solemnly refers to as Rimmer's widow (and yes, she is dressed in black)! And that is the last we see of Rimmer, but for his finest hour to date, when in a dream he returns to Lister, seeming to have lightened up, learned to have fun, and even kisses Lister!

Worried by the suddenly good memories he is having of his old bunkmate, Lister seesks Kryten's help, and the mechanoid constructs The Rimmer Experience, which depicts Rimmer as he believed he was: a leader, a hardened space adventurer to whom the others looked to in times of crisis, and who always knew what to do no matter the situation. Rimmer sings The Rimmer Song, below, showing exactly what type of man Arnold Judas Rimmer believed he was, no matter how others saw him. We can only look forward to his return in season eight!

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