Skipping

[Dave]

Rewatching Skipper for the umpteenth time last night (an episode that I think has got better with more viewings), I wondered about what happens to the other Rimmer that gets replaced by ‘our’ Rimmer in each reality.

Does he Skip on to another reality? Does he go to some kind of Waiting Room like Quantum Leap? When our Rimmer skips out, does he pop back in? If so, does he remember what happened while he was away?

Some of the characters from the alternate worlds definitely seem to be aware that he’s not ‘their’ Rimmer, so I wonder what they think is going on. And whether they ever get their own Rimmers back.

Topic

[Warbodog]

He was captain of the school skipping team as a child, it’s not a skill you lose.

[bloodteller]

Our Rimmer possesses the other Rimmer’s body, like Zuul and Dana in Ghostbusters

[Dave]

Or like how Quantum Leap works in the novels.

[bloodteller]

I’ve not read those

[Pete Part Three]

Interesting. I remember reading a couple of the QL novels when I was at school, but I don’t recall there being elaboration/differences in how it handles the person replaced. How was it handled?

[Dave]

The novels are different to the TV show in that they have Sam’s mind leap into the physical bodies of his counterparts – so (for example) if they are physically incapable in some way, he is too.

In the TV show it was shown that his body physically inhabits the space that would be occupied by their body (even though onlookers still see the image of the original person) – so there’s an episode where he occupies the body of an amputee without lower legs, and is able to stand up (with onlookers seeing the amputee’s body apparently hovering in mid-air).

I tend to prefer the way the novels handle it, I think. Physically replacing the leapees raises lots of distracting questions (like the episode where he leaps into the body of a pregnant woman).

[cwickham]

The fact that Rimmer is able to come back to life in the last universe (and become a computer program in another) he visits means it must be a Quantum Leap sort of thing, I think.

[Dave]

Yes, I think so. But what happens to those versions while he’s inhabiting them? And do they remember him being inside them afterwards?

(stop tittering)

[Dollar Pound]

where was rimmer between when he died and when he came back as a hologram and even where was lister while he was in stasis weirdly works?

[JamesTC]

They seem to be a little contradictory and confusing in how the leaping works in Quantum Leap.

Watching the episode What Price Gloria right now and Al explains that he sees the person Sam has lept into whenever he is speaking to Sam (Al is letching on the attractive woman he has lept into) and in the waiting room he sees Sam.

It seems the only person who sees himself as Sam is Sam (aside from when he looks in a mirror).

[Dave]

Doesn’t Al say at one point that he can kind of close one eye and see Sam and close another and see the person he’s leapt into? It’s been a long time since I last watched it.

Either way, I think they’re usually pretty consistent on Sam’s body being physically there in the TV show but not in the books.

[JamesTC]

It all goes out the window when Sam encounters an animal.

[Dave]

Animals and children can see Al too, can’t they?

It’s almost as if they were making the rules up as they went along.

[flanl3]

Perhaps, due to the strange quantum nature of the device, the Rimmer from every universe Rimmer visited had also left on their own skipping journey, they were all headed around in a cycle, and the true recharge time was just once enough of them had hit the button. It would also explain why people got less and less shocked to see him appear.

To summarize: Rimmer skipped in right where another had just skipped out, hence they all knew he wasn’t theirs, why he was there, and weren’t worried (so long as they’d witnessed the event – also why he’s not recognized as different on the first classic set)

[Author]

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