Season 2 "Like life, only better!"
2.2 "Better Than Life"
Holly’s joke (another rib-tickler. Not) "Loneliness weighs heavily on us all. Personally the only thing that keeps me going is the thought that we are over sixty billion miles away from the nearest Berni Inn."
Rimmer is delighted with his first attempt at cookery, although both Lister and the Cat have other ideas! Rimmer complains about the scutters, claiming that they are members of the John Wayne Fan Club, and that it is "not the way spanners behave in my book!" Holly informs them that after three million years pursuing Red Dwarf, the post pod has caught up with the ship as it turned to make the journey back to Earth: he points out that three million years is about average for second class post! Rimmer and Lister go through the contents, noting the newest films, newsreels, sports and TIVs: Total Immersion Videos, which are so advanced that they can make the players feel as if they are really in the game. There is also a video letter for Holly, from Gordon, the eleventh generation AI on board the Scott Fitzgerald: the two are carrying on a game of chess.
Sorting through the post, Lister comes across a demand from the Outland Revenue for 8,500 pounds, and Rimmer smiles "How are you going to pay that, Lister?" Lister, however, tells him that it is Rimmer's, not his. Then he comes across a letter to Rimmer, which is from his mother, advising the hologram that his father is dead. Rimmer takes to the isolation of the Observation Dome at the top of the ship, and Lister joins him there, to try to console him. But whereas Lister believed that since Rimmer has taken the news so badly, he was very close to his father, Rimmer explains that he hated him! He tells Lister that his father had an obsession that all of his sons had to get into the Space Corps, and went to such lengths as stretching them all on a rack, so that they would not be beneath regulation height for the Corps, as he himself was.
Lister and the Cat invite Rimmer to join them in a TIV, and although he is not initially interested, this changes when he sees a newscast about Better Than Life, a TIV which can apparently detect all the player's dreams and fantasies, and then make them come true. Finding the game in the pile that came in the post pod, they have Holly plug them in and they are on their way...
Better Than Life does indeed live up to its name, allowing the trio to do anything they want, any way they want. Rimmer finds he is able to touch things again, and in addition to meeting Yvonne McGruder, his one romantic liaison ever, he becomes an admiral, and spends some time with his officer chums, dazzling them all with his repartee, as he had always dreamed he would. Lister and the Cat are not doing so shabbily either: Lister enjoys a caviar vindaloo and Don Perignon in a pint glass, and the Cat is dating both Marilyn Monroe and a half-human, half-fish woman called Miranda.
However, things begin to go very badly wrong for Rimmer: having been, as he sees it, treated so badly and despised by the world throughout his life, his brain is unable to cope with the concept of nice things happening to him, and he begins to upset the fantasy world. McGruder becomes pregnant, and has seven children, all in one day, and Rimmer is reduced to a drunken, beaten, henpecked wreck. Then the final ignominy: Outland Revenue catch up with him, with a final demand for 18,000 pounds! But when Lister goes to pay the bill for him, he finds that Rimmer's self-destructiveness has expanded to include his friends, and all of Lister's money has vanished. Things go from bad to worse, until the three are forced to terminate the game.
Best lines/quotes/scenes
“Is nothing sacred?”
LISTER:” Oh! The new Friday the 13th movie -- Friday the 13th part one thousand six hundred and forty nine”
RIMMER: “Look, Casablanca! They've remade Casablanca!”
LISTER: “Philistines. I mean how can you remake Casablanca? The one starring Myra Dinglebat and Peter Beardsley was definitive!”
Holly plays deep-space chess…
HOLLY: “Strike a light! It's Gordon!”
RIMMER: “Who's Gordon?”
HOLLY: “He's the eleventh generation AI computer aboard the Scott Fitzgerald. He's got an IQ of eight thousand.”
GORDON: “Awlright, Hol? (The voice belies the IQ estimate.) It-- It's Gordon.”
HOLLY: “Awesome, his intellect, I'll tell you.”
GORDON:” I'm just sending on the latest move in our chess game. My move is Pawn, right -- that's the little knobbly ones down the front -- Pawn to King four. Your move. Well, I'd better sign off now. See you, Hol. Bye!” (Waits some time and the image still remains on screen.) “H-How do you turn this off then?”
LISTER: (Turning off GORDON) “You were playing postal chess with him were you?”
HOLLY: “Well! A chance to lock horns with an intellect of that calibre, I'd be a fool not to. Pawn to King four eh? He's a sly one.”
LISTER: “So who's winning Hol?”
HOLLY: “Well, he is really. That was the first move.”
Rimmer gets annoyed that Lister has more mail then he does, though he maintains most of it is junk.
RIMMER: “You send off for every bit of rubbish going, you do. Just so you'll have some mail to open.”
LISTER (counting the mail out):” Me. Me.”
RIMMER: (Silly voice) “Please rush me my portable walrus polishing kit. Four super brushes that will clean even the trickiest of seabound mammals. Yes I am over eighteen, though my IQ isn't.”
Outland Revenue!
LISTER: “Me. Me. Smeg! Outland Revenue!"
RIMMER: (Sucks in breath and becomes very cheerful.) “Oh oh oh oh, Outland Revenue!”
LISTER: “Eight thousand five hundred?”
RIMMER: “Eight thousand five hundred?” (Happily) “That's a lot of tax isn't it, Lister? How on Titan are you going to pay for that, eh?”
LISTER: “I'm not.” (Pause) “It's yours.”
RIMMER: “What?” (Jumps up.)” No. This is wrong. It's wrong. This is well wrong, Lister.”
LISTER: “Relax! It doesn't matter now. They're not going to catch you now are they?”
RIMMER: “What do you mean? Just because we're three million years into deep space and the human species is extinct? That means
nothing to these people. They'll find us!”
Rimmer’s letter from home. Being a hologram he can’t open it so asks Lister to, and to read it to him. Lister complains that the letter, from Rimmer’s mother, is very hard to read as her handwriting is terrible.
LISTER: "
I write to-- I can't read that. Oh,
I write to inform.
I write to inform you that your father is dad. Well of course he is. Maybe it's your father stroke dad.”
RIMMER: “It's dead.”
LISTER: “I can't make it out.” (Holds letter up and examines it.)
RIMMER: “My father is dead.”
LISTER: “What?”
RIMMER: “My father is dead”.
LISTER: “Oh yeah it's an E!” (Happy to have solved it.) “That's what it is. Your father's dead, Rimmer!” (Realises what he's said.) “Oh, eh -- I'm sorry.”
RIMMER: “Is that all she says?”
LISTER: “Just that,
He passed away peacefully in his Jeep.(Looking at the letter again) "...
sleep."
The Cat puts his foot in it…
CAT: “Wow!!! My stomach has been pumped and now I'm hungry. Hey, there you are! Hey man, I'm so hungry, I just have to eat!”
LISTER:”Shhhhh. Not now, man. Rimmer's dad's died.”
CAT: “I'd prefer chicken.”
News surfaces about the Bible:
NEWSREADER: “Good evening. Here is the news on Friday, the 27th of Geldof. Archaeologists near Mount Sinai have discovered what is believed to be a missing page from the Bible. The page is currently being carbon dated in Bonn. If genuine it belongs at the beginning of the Bible and is believed to read
To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitous and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The page has been universally condemned by church leaders.”
The Cat tries to make amends for his insensitivity earlier…
CAT: “About your father. If it's any help, he's in the ground now. Sure it's bad news for him. But on the other hand it's
party time for all the little worms!” (Wiggles his fingers.)
Rimmer meets his hero in “Better Than Life”
RIMMER: “Excuse me. You're probably really busy but could I just say you are my all time favourite fascist dictator? I've read all your war diaries and I thought your Italian campaign was simply brilliant. Err, could you just sign this for me. Err, make it out to my good pal Arnie from your dear chum Napoleon Bonaparte. It's not for me, it's for my sister Alison. Errm, we call her Arnie.”
Cat is happy with his wardrobe
CAT: “Yeah? Well you should take a look at my wardrobe. It's so big it crosses an international time zone. When it's three o' clock where my shirts are it's seven in the morning for my socks!”
Rimmer tries to tell a funny story but has no punchline
RIMMER: “So, I said to Hollister ... well, I can't actually remember exactly what I said to him. But it was one of the most enormously cruel and frighteningly witty put downs ever.”
Cat has two girlfriends. What? Only two??
CAT: “We're having a really nice time. I'm dating Marilyn Monroe and also I have another girlfriend who's a mermaid. She's half woman, half fish.” (He starts licking and kissing a photograph then turns round.) “It's Miranda, my girlfriend.” As she comes out of the water we see the top half of her is a fish, the bottom half is a woman.
HOLLY: “Somehow I'd imagined she'd be a woman on top and a fish on the bottom.”
CAT: “No! That's a stupid way round!”
Outland Revenue! Sir…
TAXMAN: “Mister Rimmer?”
RIMMER: (Weakly) “Yes.”
TAXMAN: “Mister Arnold Judas Rimmer?”
RIMMER:” Yes.”
TAXMAN: (Smiles) “Outland Revenue, sir!”
RIMMER: “Oh my God!”
TAXMAN: “This is a demand for immediate payment.”
RIMMER: “Eighteen thousand?”
TAXMAN:” If you are unable to pay, sir, I am instructed by the Revenue to break both your legs and pull off your thumbs--” (twitches) “--sir.”
PCRs
Surprisingly none. I mean, there are references, but everyone knows who Marilyn Monroe is and the Outland Revenue is obviously the Inland Revenue (IRS to our US friends) so there’s nothing really to talk about. Instead…
CREATING THE FUTURE
Like many sci-fi shows, Red Dwarf often accurately predicted, whether intentionally or not, future developments, mostly in technology. In this section I'm going to note these "predictions", and how accurate or not they were.
Here we’re introduced to TIVs, Total Immersion Videos, games so real that there actually exists a breed of person called “gameheads” who are addicted to them and stay in them. You see, TIVs are insidious, particularly Better Than Life. The game wants you to keep playing it, so its artificial intelligence chip helps to make you forget it’s a game and tricks you into thinking that what you’re experiencing is real. Well, who wouldn’t want to stay in a world where your every dream, wish, fantasy can instantly come true?
Trouble is, while your brain is in there enjoying itself your body is not getting the care, exercise, food and medical attention it needs, and those who end up trapped in BTL often die, their bodies wasting away almost forgotten, a situation which caused the game to become banned on most planets. But as ever, a large black market flourished and you could get the game if you were prepared to pay, and risk the legal implications, to say nothing of the health ones. This was of course all back three million years ago, before mankind died out. Now the game has resurfaced, possibly the only one or maybe there are a few, still winging their way in seriously late post pods to other ships in deep space, unaware and uncaring that the crews of these ships have long turned to dust. But Better Than Life is still as addictive, still as dangerous, and really, though they snap at him the guys really have Rimmer to thank for their lives. Without his screwing up their perfect in-game world, what incentive would there have been to have returned to the lonely, stark emptiness of a hum-drum, boring, empty life, especially for Lister?
In fact, in the novels this is exactly what happens. Lister at first decides to stay in the game, then over time forgets that it is a game, and again it’s Rimmer who has to rescue him before the body of the last human alive wastes away. Although such addictions are, hopefully, far in the future yet, we have already seen since this show was transmitted first the rise of insanely popular computer games like Everquest and World of Warcraft originally, and now Call of Duty and its ilk, where people spend hours, days even essentially plugged in to the game, doing nothing else. Addictive gaming is a very real threat in our modern world, and with the quality of graphics in games these days it must be hard indeed at times to realise you’re playing one and not watching a movie, or indeed taking part in what you’re watching. I don’t game so I can’t say, but I have heard tales.
We haven’t quite got to the point of plugging our brains in to games yet, but surely it can’t be that far down the line? Who needs controllers, joypads, even computers? Just link in to the game universe, log on and you’re there. Exciting, but scary stuff. The thing to remember is that it is, will be, just a game, and that’s easy to say, but when you consider a game like BTL, where quite literally you can do anything you want --- own a mega corporation, marry the girl (or girls) of your dreams, be a rock star, change your sex, explore space… hell, you could probably meet God if you wanted to! Come to think of it, you could probably
be God! --- and compare that to your real-world, ordinary existence, well… Unless you’re already a tycoon, rock star, or God, you’re going to find it very hard to leave that imaginary world behind. And why would you? The game keeps throwing new treats your way, everything happens as you would like it to, and you get everything you ever wanted in life. And all you have to surrender in return is your soul. Well, your body, but it’s equivalent to making a deal with the devil really.
All of this can be yours…
So while perhaps pushing the concept a little further than we have at the moment, Grant and Naylor did sound a note of warning about the addictive qualities of computer and video games that has filtered into our society and is becoming a growing problem. Kids these days have probably the strongest thumbs and weakest legs in history, as they sit on their sofas, beds or chairs staring at a TV screen or computer monitor, promising themselves “just one more game” and knowing deep down that there will
always be one more game. Not exactly prophetic of course, but over the run of the series the writers certainly touched on some ideas that more or less came to pass, usually with less hilarity than they do in this series.