Dark observation dome

[loadoftottnumb]

With apologies to Mr/Mz Warbodog for pinching  their thread title idea, I was thinking recently about how sad/grim it is that Rimmer’s fake dad and half brothers were so horrible to him, possibly because he wasn’t really a Rimmer. We don’t know if his brothers knew of course. 
There are other things in the Dwarf universe that are really grim, dead people having the choice between being trapped in a company controlled body so they can still work or staying dead, the gradually decaying corpses of the Nova 5 being served soup, Lister desperately trying to shag his mum, anyone have some more? 

Topic

[Rudolph]

Rimmer hoping for a bit of incest with his cousins in The Last Day, only to be the victim of some accidental incest from his uncle. Come to think of it, there’s nothing to say that his Uncle Frank wasn’t Mrs. Rimmer’s own brother.

Oh, and Back in the Red Part 3 ending with Lister setting Rimmer up to be gang raped as a joke.

[Renegade Rob]

1) Holly admittedly has dead zones on the ship that he can’t keep track of, but it’s weird that he knows categorically that Paranoia is no longer on the ship but isn’t a witness in some way to his murder. Or was he and just didn’t care?

2) Rimmer literally said in the first episode that he’d always wanted to interfere with a woman sexually. Like that was an actual thing he said in the show. And then come Series VIII, he gets his wish via a simulated positive virus. 

3) Unless Kochanski was somehow already in stasis or had inside knowledge of the events in Krysis, it’s very likely that even if she was out there somewhere during the Dave era, she’s almost certainly dead because they overshot her in time, since it seems like they were in stasis for a while when looking for the Nova 3. 

4) There’s literally nothing stopping Lister from trying to take another exam to outrank Rimmer, even if it’s not about getting Kochanski’s disc. He just gives up. 

5) It’s a good job that White Hole was there, otherwise the Dwarfers would’ve been well and truly fucked with no power and only months to live, and with their memories reset, there’s nothing stopping them from making the same dire mistake again (give or take an original Holly who reset before the timeline faded, so maybe she remembered some of what she saw?). 

6) In Demons and Angels, seeing as even when the High and Low versions of Red Dwarf faded, the Low Lister was still seen hiding on Starbug, so he existed for a least a couple more minutes, there’s a decent chance that the other Low Dwarfers didn’t just vanish instantly but lingered for a few minutes and choked in the vacuum in space as their ship vanished around them. I mean, fuck em, but still. 

7) Seeing how the villain wax droids could melt down the good ones and insert new programs to make more villains, it seems like there’s some kind of wax droid production machine, so theoretically nothing stopping the Dwarfers from repopulating the planet with good guys except indifference and Lister’s need to eat a vindaloo. If Lister really cared about those corpses littering the battlefield, he could’ve done something about it, which undercuts his war speech a little. 

8) Casablanca parody or no, it was kind of a dick move for Kryten to unilaterally decide FOR Camille that she belonged with Hector, and rob her of any agency with regards to staying or not. Also he didn’t even know anything about Hector, who could’ve been a total smeghead for all he knew. 

9) In Ouroboros, Kochanski puts a cat in a microwave. It probably wasn’t plugged in, in real life, and she obviously didn’t even go through with it in the show but still, that’s definitely a microwave, no? In the making of the episode, a cat was physically placed in a microwave. 

[GlenTokyo]

 9) In Ouroboros, Kochanski puts a cat in a microwave. It probably wasn’t plugged in, in real life, and she obviously didn’t even go through with it in the show but still, that’s definitely a microwave, no? In the making of the episode, a cat was physically placed in a microwave. 

It’s the microwave from Polymorph without a back so they could put the food through it. So it couldn’t do anything to the cat.

[Renegade Rob]

It’s the microwave from Polymorph without a back so they could put the food through it. So it couldn’t do anything to the cat.

I mean I figured as much. Still feels icky when I watch it though. Just a gut thing I guess, which to be fair, is what they were going for. 

[GlenTokyo]

It’s the microwave from Polymorph without a back so they could put the food through it. So it couldn’t do anything to the cat.

I mean I figured as much. Still feels icky when I watch it though. Just a gut thing I guess, which to be fair, is what they were going for. 

Yeah, I feel like, they made an effort to make the Matsui microwave look a bit more space age with a red light in the back and a box of blinky lights over the buttons, but it still looks like a microwave so it’s not something you really want to be putting out into the world if you had time and budget, but they had a gutless microwave without a back already and used it.

[Warbodog]

4) There’s literally nothing stopping Lister from trying to take another exam to outrank Rimmer, even if it’s not about getting Kochanski’s disc. He just gives up.

Rimmer loses his power over him throughout Balance of Power and seems to accept defeat in Waiting for God (made as episodes 2 & 3), so it doesn’t matter any more, except when their job and rank become briefly relevant in Queeg, Officer Rimmer and anything else. 

5) It’s a good job that White Hole was there, otherwise the Dwarfers would’ve been well and truly fucked with no power and only months to live, and with their memories reset, there’s nothing stopping them from making the same dire mistake again (give or take an original Holly who reset before the timeline faded, so maybe she remembered some of what she saw?).

I prefer thinking that they (or at least Lister for the Demons & Angels reference) retained the memories because they were free from the laws of causality and concentrating during the reset, as seen earlier on when some of them resisted getting stuck in the loop for longer than Cat.

[Moonlight]

This seems like a perfect thread for me to outline the reasons Rimmer is a rapist. I’m not going to though because the examples are so obvious.

Just gonna say “Serves her right for being concussed” and the letters V, I, I, and I for no particular reason.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

That microwave in Ouroborus literally has disintegrator on it, and you’re all concerned it looks like a microwave. Her intention was to kill it, by disintegration, that’s the disturbing there. 

> I was thinking recently about how sad/grim it is that Rimmer’s fake dad and half brothers were so horrible to him, possibly because he wasn’t really a Rimmer. We don’t know if his brothers knew of course.

I think his brothers were horrible to him because he was the youngest. His dad knew but apparently he was tough on everyone. Frank and John seemingly succeeded, yet Howard didn’t. 

Mrs Rimmer clearly sleeps around. Rimmer’s “uncle Frank” (who though he was in Rimmer’s mums bed) is probably his dads brother. And she even chose to shag the gardener. I would be surprised if she shagged the head master at Rimmer’s school to keep him from staying down a year.  Even the Polymorph knew she was unfaithful.

Anyway, Howard likely isn’t a full blood Rimmer either. Especially as Doug seems to subscribe to genetics informing intelligence which, The Beginning suggests. The issues with that I’ll leave for another time. 

[loadoftottnumb]

Rimmers dad was tough on everyone but there was a line in Me2 about how all his brothers were sent to the academy and he wasn’t. 

[Ridley]

I suspect Rimmer’s brothers are all Frank’s children and the father’s problem with Dungo is one of class (and breeding).

Until an episode retcons Dennis into a Mr Rimmer roleplay.

[International Debris]

3) Unless Kochanski was somehow already in stasis or had inside knowledge of the events in Krysis, it’s very likely that even if she was out there somewhere during the Dave era, she’s almost certainly dead because they overshot her in time, since it seems like they were in stasis for a while when looking for the Nova 3. 

Just the fact that the Kochanski we spent two series with basically just left to live out the rest of her life and die completely alone is really fucking grim. And then Kryten lying about it so Lister didn’t take the opportunity to go after her. And then the fact that by XI he’s completely given up and just accepted that the woman he loves chose to spend probably decades on her own in space, possibly going mad, maybe running out of supplies, and dying, rather than discuss things with him and try and resolve stuff.

Also the fact that they were in a relationship and she was his mum.

[Flap Jack]

See, this is why – until they make an episode which directly contradicts it – I subscribe to the theory that they found Kochanski in between Series X and XI, and were able to get her back to her home universe.

[Renegade Rob]

See, this is why – until they make an episode which directly contradicts it – I subscribe to the theory that they found Kochanski in between Series X and XI, and were able to get her back to her home universe.

I like this theory. Adding it to my headcanon. 

[Unrumble]

Adding it to my headcanon.

[Dave]

[Stabbim]

The Dream Recorder, and the Hologramatic Archive in general.

Rimmer seems to remember his own death firsthand: ergo, there is a constantly active link in each JMC employee’s brain that keeps the hologramatic backup up to date.  How is this installed?

In Confidence & Paranoia Lister checks the dream recorder and confirms that Kochanski dreamed about him three times. Thus, its possible to view someone else’s dream archive.

Very disturbing lack of privacy.  In the Red Dwarf future, it’s possible for your very brain to no longer be your own Intellectual Property?

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

I think that was more likely a reconstruction based on the security footage than a literal real-time brainscan. It’s a plot point in M-Corp that JMC memory scans aren’t updated in real time.

[Dave]

It’s a plot point in M-Corp that JMC memory scans aren’t updated in real time.

Yeah I prefer the novel explanation where hologram backup files are like a save point, and you start off from whenever you last did a brain scan (like Petersen and his hangover).

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

In the case of the Dream Recorder, I would imagine that under normal circumstances, users can only play back their own dreams unless someone else gives them access.  As Kochanski is dead and has been for three million years, there’s no privacy concerns by allowing Dave to watch her dreams.

[Dave]

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Honestly, I think the larger moral concern would be how little agency and control holograms have over their own lives. Their entire existence is dependent on the survival of more vital crewmembers, the computer or the company can decide at any time to add, alter or erase bits of memory, take control of their hologrammatic presence to force them to perform actions… 

Oh, bugger it. I’ll just repost what I said in Refresh for the Memory.

You know, it’s only in retrospect that it’s occurred to me just how sucky it must be to exist only as a corporate-owned hologram. In addition to the aforementioned problems of having no physical presence to speak of, having to come to terms with the knowledge that the real you is dead and you’re only a projection of photons, and of course fostering the emnity of the crew for both hogging a position after you’ve snuffed it that would in days of yore have gone to the next down in the chain of command, and of course for having to ask to have everything done for you and being so damn fussy about not being walked through – in addition to all those points, you’ve essentially signed away the rights to your mind, your personality, your memories, everything that makes you who you are, and they have free reign to do whatever with it – we got a taster of that in Officer Rimmer with the call centre Listers.

But Queeg shows just how extreme the moral quandaries of this can be – as the company is paying for your hologrammic existence, they have the means to dictate everything about it. What Queeg does to Rimmer is probably an extreme example, but the fact that it is possible to override the actions of the hologram is a rabbit hole in and of itself, and it opens the possibility that others could similarly abuse this for whatever reason. And just imagine living in constant dread that the company may decide your runtime would be more efficiently used elsewhere and decide to power you down.

I’m sure this is all just the tip of the iceberg as far as ethics and philosophy are concerned, but it’s only just now that I really started thinking about it.

[Dave]

That’s OK because they’re not actually real people with free will, they’re just simulations of real people with free will.

[Flap Jack]

[Dave]

The Cat was right that time. Luckily he didn’t really existentially upset Rimmer, it was just a hologrammatic simulation of Rimmer being existentially upset.

[Dave]

Seriously though, that scene was brave as it comes close to breaking the show in a major way by making the audience think about Rimmer very differently (and invest in his character less). Even though from the start we’ve been told “I’m not me, don’t you see, I’m a computer simulation of me”.

[Flap Jack]

Wholeheartedly agreed.

Although it would be nice to live in a world where it actually mattered if they broke the show in The Promised Land or not.

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

But they think they’re thinking, therefore they possibly are.

Although it would be nice to live in a world where it actually mattered if they broke the show in The Promised Land or not.

Well that’s a whole other can of worms. Hmmm, might need to start a thread on that…

[Moonlight]

That’s OK because they’re not actually real people with free will, they’re just simulations of real people with free will.

But that’s assuming we don’t get into the philosophical debate of whether truly free will is even possible in living people anyway, which sounds counterintuitive until you start thinking it through.

[Renegade Rob]

If holograms are indeed non-sentient beings without free will, that’s dark and sad in its own way, but if they are indeed sentient with free will, then Rimmer legit murdered a sentient free-willed being when he pushed Katerina into oncoming traffic (which was a hallucination, but he didn’t know that at the time, so the criminal intent was still there), and also, killer simulant or no, Lister still basically enslaved a malfunctioning but theoretically otherwise sentient free-willed Sim Crawford into being his personal drink-stirrer, which is some serious Last-Human-Evil-Lister sick and twisted shit. As was Lister  having the Simulant in Justice strangle itself when the threat was already neutralized (and it’s a good job the Justice Field was unable to account for someone being baited into committing criminal actions that would reflect on themselves because I’m pretty sure in real life, tricking someone into committing self-harm is or could be a criminal act in itself). 

Also, if holograms are indeed free-willed and sentient, then Lister murdered the second Rimmer in Me2, just for being annoying.  

Additionally, as an unrelated dark mundane observation, in Stasis Leak there was nothing stopping some unsuspecting crew member from stumbling into the shower wall and instantly becoming dust (which would happen to them anyway in three weeks but still). 

Additional additional dark mundane observation: if alternate Lister’s hand survived the reset when the Inquisitor was erased from time and space, allowing Lister to say he can give Kryten “fifteen”, presumably the rest of alt-Lister’s blown-up body was still there on Red Dwarf in the aftermath, probably being nibbled on by space weevils or whatnot. 

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

Time, I think, to resurrect my personal favourite RD meme template besides Condescending Lucas McLaren.

[Flap Jack]

and also, killer simulant or no, Lister still basically enslaved a
malfunctioning but theoretically otherwise sentient free-willed Sim
Crawford into being his personal drink-stirrer, which is some serious
Last-Human-Evil-Lister sick and twisted shit.

In the case of Crawford, I assumed that she was dead at that point, it’s just that enough of her mechanical parts were still workable. She wasn’t trapped in the eternal torment of being fully conscious as a drink stirrer but unable to move or speak.

Obviously, it is still horrific, don’t get me wrong.

As was Lister having the Simulant in Justice strangle itself when the
threat was already neutralized (and it’s a good job the Justice Field
was unable to account for someone being baited into committing criminal
actions that would reflect on themselves because I’m pretty sure in real
life, tricking someone into committing self-harm is or could be a
criminal act in itself).

I’m not sure about this one. If the simulant was still able to try and attack him, then he wasn’t fully neutralised. If Lister had left it there, the simulant could have just waited a minute to recover, realised what had been happening, and then just chased Lister out of the justice field (or grabbed him and dragged him out of it). It might require some argument, but I think even the “baiting” aspect can be justified as self-defence.

[Frank Smeghammer]

Are Confidence and Paranoia capable of independent thought? Are they also practically people?

[Flap Jack]

Hey, whether or not Confidence & Paranoia count as people, their deaths weren’t Lister’s fault.

[Renegade Rob]

Speaking of deaths and culpability, one thing that always puzzled me: was cleaning or repairing or generally futzing at all with the drive plate within Rimmer’s purview as Second Technician?

Kryten’s argument in Justice indicates that it was bureaucratic neglect that led to an unqualified person messing with the drive plate, but it still wasn’t clear to me… do Rimmer’s duties extend beyond vending machines, like was he actually officially assigned to fix the drive plate or did he just erroneously mess with the wrong thing and there weren’t systems in place to stop or catch the error before it was too late? 

[cwickham]

I *think* Rob and Doug said somewhere that they regretted it because in retrospect someone like Rimmer obviously wouldn’t be entrusted with such an important job, but the scene with Hollister in Me2 where he expressly states that it *was* Rimmer’s job to fix the drive plate is pretty much impossible to retcon away

[Dave]

Yeah, I think this all dates back to the original version of The End (as seen in the script in the novel omnibus and (I think) in the Original Assembly) where the opening scenes had Lister and Rimmer actually doing proper repair work on circuit boards etc. rather than just fixing chicken soup machines.

Obviously the rewrite is a lot funnier, but changing them to be lowly vending machine engineers rather than more serious mechanics does then create a disconnect with the source of the accident. 

Which I think they just about get away with, until Kryten hangs a lampshade on the whole thing with the courtroom scene in Justice.

[Flap Jack]

My interpretation is that any employed technician on board would in theory be qualified to work on the more essential parts of the ship. That even if in practice less experienced or respected technicians such as Rimmer end up just fixing vending machines and toilet roll dispensers 99% of the time, it would still be within their job descriptions to work on engines and oxygen tanks and such if called upon.

Although I don’t think this necessarily extends to jobs of any difficulty or complexity. Perhaps the (suspected) issue with the drive plate was regarded as a straightforward repair, and Hollister/Todhunter/whomever was feeling sympathetic towards Rimmer and his desperation to prove himself, so naively decided there would be no major risk in throwing him the bone of a more “serious” job. Then either Rimmer accidentally made the problem worse, or he fixed the problem they were aware of but failed to spot there was a more critical one.

So, “It was your job to fix it, Rimmer!” doesn’t mean it was always his job to keep the drive plate in good nick, just that it was on that occasion.

Another interesting thing about the death video scene – it seems like even after discovering that Rimmer had fucked it, they don’t realise how serious the situation is, because they prioritise telling Rimmer off over rushing to fix things. Sure, other technicians could be working on that at the same time, but if you thought a nuclear explosion might hit you at any moment, is that how you’d choose to spend what could be your final minutes? So I take that as evidence that even if the Red Dwarf higher ups regarded Rimmer’s drive plate repair as serious, they didn’t realise it was a life-or-death call.

[Dave]

In the novels they don’t even have Rimmer be the one responsible for the accident on Red Dwarf, so maybe they intended that novel continuity to replace the show continuity as they did with stuff like Lister’s prior relationship with Kochanski.

[Stabbim]

I’ve always been willing to accept (as per the Captain’s Remarks on Rimmer’s file in “Waiting For God”) that Rimmer is constantly begging/nagging Hollister for an opportunity to prove his worth and volunteered to fix the drive plate even though it was technically out of his normal field of responsibility.  We know taking the written exam always backfires for Rimmer, so perhaps Rimmer decides demonstrating some hands-on practical competence can compensate and leaps for a chance to do that.

Hollister, then, lets Rimmer have the job A) to shut him up B) because Hollister underestimates how severe or immediate the problem is and/or thinks it’s so easy even Rimmer can get it done/can’t screw it up that badly C) if he does someone else can fix it in time. D) Perhaps Hollister is so distracted by the contamination threat posed by Lister’s unquarantined cat that he’s not thinking clearly about other dangers.

Of course, this undermines the vibe of general competence Cpt. Hollister exudes in S1 & 2, but as mentioned Kryten’s defense in “Justice” kinda does that anyway, not to mention the luster Hollister loses in the general miasma of S8.  So Hollister underestimating the threat/foolishly giving the critical task to an unworthy subordinate isn’t too out of step with what his character becomes, in the end.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Of course there is always the chance that the death video is entirely told by an unreliable narrator. As with Justice, Rimmer is placing blame on himself when it really wasn’t his fault. “It was your job to fix the drive plate Rimmer” could be how Rimmer feels about it, not exactly how it went down. 

In The End Holly says he was explaining to Hollister why he didn’t fix it properly. Not that he was getting a bollocking for it. Hollister likely called him up to ask him why he did a sloppy job, and whilst Rimmer was explaining himself (probably blaming the fact that Lister was in stasis) he gets a nuclear explosion in the face. 

It’s his own guilt coming across on video. I’m be that he has asked Holly to prepare and no doubt directed to the point of being so far away from reality little if it is true. The video is in part a way for Rimmer to continue beating himself up about the accident. And would be why he left in the gezpacho soup line, because it’s another event that haunts him even in death.  

[Flap Jack]

In the novels they don’t even have Rimmer be the one responsible for the
accident on Red Dwarf, so maybe they intended that novel continuity to
replace the show continuity as they did with stuff like Lister’s prior
relationship with Kochanski.

Maybe, but if so I think they realised it was too big a detail to retcon. In Series IV – a generally retcon-happy year – they not only keep that continuity but do a whole episode focusing on it.

Of course, this undermines the vibe of general competence Cpt. Hollister
exudes in S1 & 2, but as mentioned Kryten’s defense in “Justice”
kinda does that anyway, not to mention the luster Hollister loses in the
general miasma of S8.  So Hollister underestimating the
threat/foolishly giving the critical task to an unworthy subordinate
isn’t too out of step with what his character becomes, in the end.

I think people exaggerate the idea of Hollister as being ultra-competent as a rejection of the Series VIII “doughnut boy” version, and while I agree that he is competent, that doesn’t mean he’s above making mistakes. If Rimmer was generally good at his regular jobs and just a mess when it came to exams, it’s plausible that Hollister could make this misjudgement. Plus we don’t know that Hollister was even the one to make the decision.

Also, remember that in Stasis Leak – in Hollister’s “competent” era – Rimmer flew into a rage and physically attacked Hollister in his office, and Hollister ultimately apologised to Rimmer for being too mean to him in response. Hollister is clearly a soft touch when it comes to Rimmer.

[RunawayTrain]

I think captaining a mining ship that just flies back and forth within the solar system maybe speaks to his competence level – good enough, but not so good that he’s off captaining a ship further away from help if anything goes wrong.

(I’m not really very conversant with the general Red Dwarf universe at the time of the accident – is interstellar travel a thing?)

[Renegade Rob]

I always liked the soft touch of Hollister because there’s this dichotomy of Rimmer being all aspirationally official, but then all the actual senior officers in the upper ranks he’s trying to become a part of are all nothing like that, they’re all just like meh, like they’re all just relatively normal, reasonable people like Hollister and Todhunter and MacIntyre. It’s not like there’s an actual Rimmer-like legitimate officer in the show who gets away with his Rimmer-ness because of rank, literally only Rimmer is like that. (Maybe the douchebags on the Enlightenment are Rimmer-like, but of course that was the entire point of the story.) But the super-Draconian overly formal stickler smeghead version of an officer that Rimmer’s trying to be doesn’t seem to match up to any actual JMC officer (though his family background obviously informs a lot of this ideal). Which makes the soft touch of Hollister so interesting, especially when it’s a soft touch towards Rimmer himself, because Rimmer takes everything so seriously and personally that when Hollister, who definitely isn’t perfect, personally goes to apologize while wearing a chicken costume, that’s like the least Rimmer-y thing you can do: to show mercy to a subordinate while also being secure and with a sense of humor. Rimmer should’ve taken notes because that sort of stuff is more in line with what an actual officer in that universe is like. Of course Rimmer isn’t really capable of picking up that kind of lesson  

It’s like the opposite of Syril Karn in Andor being all overly serious and formal and relentless even though he’s a lowly bureaucrat, because despite some mediocre Imperials above him, the Empire IS like that, like there is a Tarkin and a Krennic and a Thrawn who are like that who he’s aspiring to be like and hopefully one day will see and appreciate his potential. But with Rimmer, nobody above him is actually LIKE the kind of officer he’s trying to be, so intentionally or not, Hollister’s soft touch is sort of an insult, however well-meaning and reasonable it might actually be. Either punish Rimmer properly (ugh Series VIII actually scores a point on this front) or throw him a line to help him ascend, but just being generally distantly tolerant towards Rimmer really did him no favors. I mean, it’s not like they owe him anything, but I could always feel the sting of Hollister’s soft touch, like Rimmer must really feel insulted and condescended to when that happens. 

[Flap Jack]

(I’m not really very conversant with the general Red Dwarf universe at
the time of the accident – is interstellar travel a thing?)

Yep, because Todhunter thinks that’s the way Lister may have had experience of stasis before.

Although by novel continuity, they had given up on interstellar travel by Lister’s time (due to them finding neither alien life nor worthwhile resources in other solar systems), and that’s why stasis booths were just being used as punishments instead.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

I think captaining a mining ship that just flies back and forth within the solar system maybe speaks to his competence level – good enough, but not so good that he’s off captaining a ship further away from help if anything goes wrong.

(I’m not really very conversant with the general Red Dwarf universe at the time of the accident – is interstellar travel a thing?)

Red Dwarf is supposedly only going up and down the solar system – which is retconed later on to be the entire Milky Way – but Todhunter does ask Lister if he has ever travelled interstellar. So it does exist in universe at that point. 

[International Debris]

If Rimmer was generally good at his regular jobs and just a mess when it came to exams, it’s plausible that Hollister could make this misjudgement.

Given that Hollister specifically cites the saying “if a job’s not worth doing, give it to Rimmer” in his personal records, I’d say he wouldn’t consider him the best person to repair something that could put the ship at risk. It also suggests that the crew of the ship would generally agree. On the whole, Rimmer repairing the drive plate never sat completely right with me as it doesn’t fit the way he’s perceived by others or the nature of his job.

[Renegade Rob]

It’s also conceivable that the Dwarfers’ personal timeline changing (likely due to all the interferences in time, many of which they were direct participants in) accounts for Hollister saying it was Rimmer’s job to fix the drive plate in Me2 but Justice depicting the same task as being outside Rimmer’s purview. 

The century the Dwarfers are from, Lister’s appendix, his earlier relationship (or lack thereof) with Kochanski, the size of Red Dwarf’s crew… these are like fundamental but accepted discrepancies in the show’s mythos, and we’re talking about a show that retcons Rimmer being a hologram as an ending punchline. And one has to imagine that erasing the Inquisitor’s influence from time and space would cause waves that would radically shift continuity. (Holy shit… what if by erasing the Inquisitor, whose job it was to make everyone’s lives worthwhile, the Dwarfers themselves CAUSED the time wave in Timewave, and propelled through time a ship full of all the people who the Inquisitor would’ve immediately culled in the original timeline?)

[Unrumble]

Holy shit… what if by erasing the Inquisitor, whose job it was to make everyone’s lives worthwhile, the Dwarfers themselves CAUSED the time wave in Timewave, and propelled through time a ship full of all the people who the Inquisitor would’ve immediately culled in the original timeline?

[Flap Jack]

Given that Hollister specifically cites the saying “if a job’s not worth
doing, give it to Rimmer” in his personal records, I’d say he wouldn’t
consider him the best person to repair something that could put the ship
at risk. It also suggests that the crew of the ship would generally
agree. On the whole, Rimmer repairing the drive plate never sat
completely right with me as it doesn’t fit the way he’s perceived by
others or the nature of his job.

Aha, that’s a fair point. I’d forgotten about Hollister’s appraisals.

Still, it’s not too unbelievable that he was just in a particular mood when he wrote that, or that he became more empathetic towards Rimmer later (Like not “Rimmer’s great, he can definitely handle this”, but maybe “ugh, all right, I’m tired of this guy begging for more responsibility. I’ll give him this one chance, and send others in after him to check his work”).

Or that the decision about who should repair the drive plate was delegated, and whoever it was delegated to didn’t know enough about Rimmer to avoid giving him the job.

[Flap Jack]

Rimmer legit murdered a sentient free-willed being when he pushed
Katerina into oncoming traffic (which was a hallucination, but he didn’t
know that at the time, so the criminal intent was still there)

Had a belated thought about this – is it murder to shut a hologram down, or is it only murder to do so and also actively prevent them from being booted back up? Rimmer pushes Katerina into traffic, but her data should still exist back on Red Dwarf (if she were real). Whereas Katerina was planning not only to shut Rimmer down but destroy all of his data, permamently.

I’ve never heard anyone suggest that Lister and Holly murdered Rimmer at the end of Meltdown, but that wasn’t fundamentally much different to what Lister did to Rimmer2 at the end of Me². (Although they use the word “wiped” a couple of times, it’s not clear if they actually erased his unique memories, or just switched him off.) It’s kind of mind-boggling, this concept of murder as a passive act. That you could murder a hologram by switching them off while never intending to boot them back up, but if you change your mind later (or someone else overrules you) and bring them back online, were they still murdered, given the culprit would be fully aware the victim isn’t truly gone? If 2 people shut down 2 different holograms and both boot them back up 3 hours later, does the fact that one of them wanted the hologram off forever but changed his mind, and the other was just giving a light bee some routine maintenance, mean that one of them is a murderer and one of them is totally innocent, when they both took the exact same actions as each other?

With regards to the 2 Rimmers, switching Rimmer2 off is slightly less murderous just because both Rimmers agreed that one of them should be switched off, but what about the decision to boot him (or Kochanski) up in the first place? If Red Dwarf had the capacity for 2 holograms, then surely the moral imperative would be to bring back George McIntyre, who was murdered by Holly so that Rimmer could live. With the passive definition of murder in mind, they’re in a way being accessories to McIntyre’s murder by turning down the opportunity to resurrect him, in favour of creating someone else.

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