Trollheart

NOTES
I haven't really made an attempt to write much extra material about Red Dwarf up to now, as the show is so funny and clever it really needs nothing added from me, but I feel here I need to talk about the final episode in season one. As mentioned earlier, it's the first episode that follows on directly, scene for scene, from the previous one, and so essentially is the only Red Dwarf two-parter, until season eight, when the opening episode, "Back in the red" is split into three parts. But up to the end of season seven, there were no other episodes leading into others, bar the ending two episodes from that season, "Epideme" and "Nanarchy", which more or less ran into each other, the story from the one spilling over into, and having resonance with the other. Generally speaking though, these episodes were the exception rather than the rule.

The true awful truth about Arnold J. Rimmer is made painfully apparent to him in this episode. Who else, when given the chance to bring someone back from the dead to be their companion and/or ally, would choose a copy of themselves? But factor in that Rimmer had, in life, no friends at all, no colleagues who didn't despise him, no lover and only one person who had actually slept with him (and that by accident), and you can see his problem. In fact, sad as it may seem, Lister, whom he has nothing but contempt for, is the closest thing Arnie has to a friend. Even the Cat took an instant dislike to the man.

But then, faced with that decision, who to bring back, he could have earned huge brownie points and been a real friend to Lister by allowing him to bring Kochanski back, except he knows that, should that occur, Lister would no longer need him, and so at some point might order Holly to delete him. At best, Rimmer would be left to wander the lonely corridors of Red Dwarf, trying to fill up his time, with nobody wanting to talk to him or spend time with him. You can almost feel sorry for him in such a scenario, until you remember what a total smeghead he is, and realise he brings this treatment down on himself. If he hadn't spent so much time in "Confidence and Paranoia" trying to prevent Lister from retrieving the holodisc, and then, when Dave found it, if he had admitted defeat and let him have his wish, perhaps after all Lister might have been better disposed towards him.

As it is, Lister is delighted to get rid of Arnie, and quickly gets over his disappointment about Kochanski when he realises he will no longer have to share his quarters with Rimmer. The hologram is just as happy, believing that it is Lister, and people like him, who have held him back throughout his career, and his life. Now, with only himself for company, literally, he'll be finally able to achieve all those things he failed to accomplish when alive. Perhaps he can even take the exam and become an officer! Without Lister, as he says in his death video, dragging him back, dragging him down, he'll be able to climb up, up, the ziggaraut, lickety-split!

Ah, but...

Rimmer has failed to factor in one very important fact. He is, in any incarnation (apart from one we will meet in season four) and any life a total and utter smeghead, and multiplying that by two just gives you two smegheads. Worse, two smegheads, each of whom believe they are always right, superior in every way. As he says to Lister later, it's quite an amusing thought, having a blazing row with yourself, but this is exactly what happens. As someone once said, hell is being locked in a room with all your friends forever. Rimmer soon finds it is even worse to be locked in a room with yourself. There's nowhere to hide. All the little annoying things about your "roommate" you now notice, all the little sounds he makes, the way he walks and talks, the things he does, the expressions, the platitudes: they're all you. You're looking in a living mirror, and if there's something wrong with the reflection you're seeing there's something wrong with you.

Rimmer soon learns that living with himself is not the rosebed he had envisaged. You see, Rimmer has a certain view of himself that does not tally with reality. He does not, cannot, see the way he treats other people, the condescension, the arrogance, the lack of a sense of humour, the short temper. He thinks everyone else is wrong and he's right. But when he can see himself doing these things, he is forced to admit that maybe after all he is not the perfect speciment of mankind, the officer-in-waiting, the man who was cruelly denied all the advantages he should have had: he is not the man he thinks he is. He is, to put it quite plainly and simply, a goit.

And what is worse, he realises too (although the episode does not make this clear; the book does) that the Rimmer he has brought back to life is the original one, the one from three million years ago. Like it or not, his exposure to Lister and the Cat, even the batty Holly has changed him. It's a marginal change, for certain, and doesn't do much to soften his approach to people, but day by day, month by month, year by year a little of his self-assuredness and smugness is being chipped away, like the wind eroding a mountain, or water lapping over the course of millennia at a rock. Slowly, very, very slowly, he has changed to be perhaps 0.00000000001 percent less of a git than he used to be. He is, to put it simply, improving, if only the tiniest bit.

His double, on the other hand, has had no such exposure and is exactly as he was before the accident that wiped out the crew. He still thinks he's number one, that everyone else is inferior and determined to prove himself. He sneers at the proper Rimmer's lack of discipline, stamina and mettle. To put it mildly, he hates the current Rimmer, probably more than he hates anyone else. In fact, he doesn't even hate Lister --- he doesn't care about him, but devotes no time to annoying or browbeating him the way the original one did. He's more interested in tearing down his double and coming out on top. Maybe somewhere in his hologrammatic mind, the mind of Arnold J. Rimmer, he knows that a time is coming when the computer will have to switch one of them off, and he doesn't intend that it be him!

Rimmer's self-absorption knows no bounds: who else but he would have his death recorded and then narrate poetry and make it into a tribute to himself? Who else would compare himself to Napoleon? He even goes so far in his pettiness as to demand back from Lister, not the posters in their cabin, but the blue-tac that holds them to the wall! But he finds he cannot match the pace of his younger (three million years younger!) copy and as a result the copy looks down upon him with the sort of contempt the real Rimmer usually lavishes only on Lister. It's quite a turnaround: Rimmer is not used to being sneered at, certainly not by someone he looks up to and admires, ie himself. There's no defence: he can't say anything against the other Rimmer, because the two are one and the same person, and they each know the other. All their secrets, all their shames are shared, culminating in the height of the row when the new Rimmer uses the most hurtful insult he can on the old, calling him Mister Gazpacho.

Finally pushed to his limits, and having got what fun he can out of watching the two Rimmers squabble, Lister decides one of them has to go. He tells them it's a toss-up; he doesn't care who it is that's deleted. But in reality he probably knows that if he has to keep a Rimmer it may as well be "his" Rimmer: the copy is too much like the man he used to work under, and as I said, even though it's the very tiniest improvement, Lister must be able to see that the Rimmer who is with him now is ever so slightly better than the one he worked with three millennia ago. Very slightly. Case of the devil you know, really.

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