Arnold Rimmer
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Image:Rimmer1.jpgArnold Judas Rimmer BSC, SSC (Bronze Swimming Certificate, Silver Swimming Certificate), who sometimes goes by Arnold Jonathan Rimmer, is a character in the television series Red Dwarf, played by Chris Barrie. He is instantly recognisable by both the permanent sneer on his lips and the "H" (hologram) symbol on his forehead.
The creators of the series acknowledge that Rimmer's surname comes from a snobby prefect with whom they went to school. They claim, however, that only the boy's name was used, and not his personality.
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Life
He was born on Io, where he grew up in the shadow of his three older brothers, Frank, Howard, and John. His family life left much to be desired. His father had been rejected from the Space Corps in his youth for being an inch below regulation height, and was fixated on his sons succeeding where he had failed. The boys did not eat unless they could answer complicated astronavigation questions — Arnold nearly starved — and, to ensure that they would not be held back by insufficient height, stretched them on a rack to make them taller. By the time Frank was 11, he was six foot five. Religion was little consolation to young Arnold; the family belonged to an obscure fundamentalist sect, the "Seventh Day Advent Hoppists" (a play on Seventh-day Adventists), who followed literally a misprinted edition of the Bible. This led them to spend each Sunday hopping, thanks to a passage reading, "Faith, hop, and charity, and the greatest of these is hop." At the age of 14 Rimmer divorced his parents and left home.
Despite his loathing of his father, he still felt a perverse desire to vicariously live out his dream. He still left school early to join the Space Corps, and devoted his life to his career. Outside of work, his activities were few. He once volunteered for the Good Samaritans, a suicide-prevention helpline. Sadly, four people committed suicide after talking to him — one of whom had dialled the wrong number and only wanted the cricket results — and he quit the same day, which the newspapers dubbed "Lemming Sunday". Rimmer served in the Space Corps for fourteen years, during which he rose from the rank of third technician to second technician and received four medals: three years long service, six years long service, nine years long service, and twelve years long service. Sometime during his life, Rimmer also earned two swimming certificates: one Bronze Swimming Certificate, and one Silver Swimming Certificate (BSc and SSc respectively). It is alluded to later in the series that Rimmer cannot swim, so how he came to receive the certificates is something of a mystery. Although the episode "Back to Reality" suggests that the certificates are meant to be taken as a clue to Rimmer's "true identity" as a handpicked special agent of the Space Corps whose assignment was to guide Lister to his destiny as the creator of the second universe, this is not likely to be true, as the entire crew was hallucinating that their experiences on Red Dwarf were the result of four years in a computer game.
His years of ambition finally paid off when he was assigned to the mining ship Red Dwarf as Second Technician, which was not, to his immense pride, the lowest rank on the ship. That honour belonged to Third Technician Dave Lister, his bunkmate, for whom he instantly developed a warm and reciprocated loathing. His deepest ambition has always been to be become an officer, and he attempted the astronavigation exam no less than 13 times without success. Though he tries extremely hard to study and/or cheat, he usually loses his nerve once the exam begins. In one case, he wrote "I am a fish" on the answer sheet four hundred times, did a funny little dance, and fainted. He led a campaign to replace the standard Space Corps salute with an extremely elaborate one of his own design, which failed when absolutely no officers displayed any interest at all. He was invited to the captain's table exactly once in his entire career, and was served cold gazpacho, which he demanded be taken away and brought back hot which lead to mockery from everyone else present. He blamed this faux pas for the stagnation of his career (rather than the more obvious culprits, namely his personality and incompetence) and never forgave himself — his last words before he died were "gazpacho soup".
Rimmer died in the radiation leak which wiped out the entire crew of Red Dwarf, with the exception of Lister, who was in stasis at the time, and his pregnant cat, who was safely sealed in the hold and later gave birth to the cat civilization, Felis sapiens. The series contradicts itself on how Rimmer died, and, consequently, how the radiation leak came about. In Series 1, Rimmer is alleged to have failed to repair the drive plate properly, and blames Lister for his death because it was "a two man job". When Lister steals the video of Rimmer's death at the end of series 1, it shows the captain of Red Dwarf berating Rimmer for doing sloppy work on the drive plate at the time of the explosion.
In later series and in the Red Dwarf novels, it was decided by the show's creators that Rimmer's rank was far too low and his abilities far too lacking for the captain to have plausibly assigned him the responsibility of repairing the drive plate. Consequently, in Series 4 episode 3, "Justice", the story suggests that Rimmer's sense of responsibility for the disaster is due to his zealous egomania and that he could not possibly have been responsible for the accident. This is reinforced by the novel, Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers, in which the radiation leak is due to a complex chain reaction (including a reactor technician spilling coffee all over his control panel), in which Rimmer plays no part.
Personality
Rimmer is something of a disagreeable person: his character traits include anal-retentiveness, adherence to protocol and rank, cowardice, misogyny, and a severely inflated ego. This, combined with his utter lack of social skills, has made him fairly unpopular with everybody he has ever come into contact with. The only sexual relationship he had while alive lasted twelve minutes, including the time it took to eat the pizza. He did have one true friend in his youth, Porky Roebuck, who betrayed Rimmer in a Space Scouts survival course and spearheaded a plan to eat him. While Rimmer was turning on the spit, Porky "bagsied" (claimed) his right buttock; this experience, naturally, somewhat soured Rimmer on the concept of friendship.
He is fond of war, at least in principle, and dreams of being a general. He admires power and strength, regardless of what the power is used for, and his role models include Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, and George Patton. However, he is unlikely ever to pursue his martial dreams beyond the Risk board, because he is an utter coward. When he did get his chance at commanding in the Season Four episode "Meltdown", he was leading an army of 'hero' wax-droids against 'villain' wax-droids. Thanks to his training course, several melted and the rest were wiped out in Rimmer's 'surprise attack' of a charge over the mine-field undercover of daylight. Eventually, the population of the entire planet was wiped out by Rimmer's master plan - to raise the heat until they all melted.
His nature was neatly summed up in the captain's remarks from his confidential report, as revealed in Series One Episode Four: "Waiting for God";
"There's a saying amongst the officers: if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. If it's not worth doing, give it to Rimmer. He aches for responsibility, but constantly fails the engineering exam. Astoundingly zealous. Possibly mad. Probably has more teeth than brain cells. Promotion prospects: comical."
Death and afterlife
Virtually all of the Red Dwarf series takes place some three million years after Rimmer's death, when he was brought back as a hologram by the ship's computer, Holly. Lister, who was in stasis during the disaster, was now the only known human in the Universe, and Rimmer's mission was to keep him from going insane with loneliness. At first, Rimmer seemed the least obvious possible candidate for the job, but as time went on, Lister came to acknowledge that "driving Rimmer nuts is what keeps me going". Notwithstanding his desperate desire to not be turned off, the hologrammatic Rimmer bemoans his fate — he is dead, and is keenly aware that his current sensibility is just a computer simulation of how he would feel if he were alive.
As a "soft-light" hologram, Rimmer retained his memories and physical appearance, but was composed almost entirely of light and had no tangible form. Although he had not exactly used his body to its fullest during his lifetime, he found himself missing it after his death. He remained very unhappy with his lot for several years after his death. At one point, he managed to trick Lister into generating another Rimmer hologram to keep him company — but, as it turned out, he and his doppelgänger did not get along well, thanks to their shared self-loathing. The second Rimmer was soon turned off.
This conflict between Rimmer's various personality traits has formed the basis of several other episodes, as well. While passing through a penal colony called Justice World, Rimmer's mind was read and he was found guilty of the second degree murder of all 1,167 crew members of Red Dwarf. However, his crewmates proved that this guilt was entirely in his mind. Rimmer's massive ego had simply assumed that all of his actions were of the utmost cosmic importance, and thus that he was directly responsible for their deaths. In a later episode in Series 5, Rimmer attempts to officially claim a small planetoid in the name of the Jupiter Space Mining Corps, only to discover that the planetoid is a "Psi-Moon", an artificial planet that telepathically reads the mind of the first human(oid) being to land upon its surface and then telekinetically sculpts its landscape to reflect the psyche of its target. Thus, Rimmer is taken captive by a band of weirdos in black robes with red eyes (his "inner demons"), who plan to sacrifice him to the monstrous incarnation of his Self-Loathing, prompting the other crewmembers to come and rescue him.
On one occasion Red Dwarf encountered a holo-ship, the Enlightenment, with an all-hologram crew composed of the "best and brightest". Holograms can touch other holograms, so on the Enlightenment Rimmer could interact as if he were alive again, so naturally he cheated on a test to become a member of the crew. A female officer aboard the ship, Nirvanah Crane, explained that because they were all holograms and had zero chance of pregnancy or transmiting sexual disease, the holo-crew's R&R hours consisted of near-constant casual sex, with as many partners as you wanted over time with no emotional strings attached. Excited by this news, Rimmer made love with Crane; she, in turn, revealed that as an outsider he had brought a meaning to sex which had been, up until that point, lacking in her experience. Sex had become so trivialized amongst the crew that they usually just talked about mundane things like ship reports during the act. Rimmer treated it more emotionally, and despite (or because of) awkwardnesses such as yelling "geronimo", Crane and Rimmer truly fell in love with each other. However, the captain of the ship revealed that only a set number of holo-crewmen could be activated at any one time, and that the only way in was to defeat an existing crew member in intellectual combat. Unbeknowest to Rimmer, Crane was selected as his opponent. In spite of his failure to cheat his way though, he won the challenge when his opponent withdrew. When he discovered that Crane was the officer whom he had defeated (and effectively killed), however, Rimmer performed perhaps the only noble deed in his entire life, and resigned his commission so that Crane could be reinstated.
Rimmer was briefly and inexplicably reincarnated due to some ill-advised meddling with time and causality when, in Season 3, he went back in time to contact his eight-year-old self, but did not live terribly long afterwards, as, in his joy at no longer being dead, he punched a crate full of explosives, which brought a quick end to his celebration (Some speculate that, due to his meeting with his older self, when Rimmer took an earlier trip back in time in Season 2 to warn his past self about the upcoming accident, the earlier Rimmer was more prepared to accept his future self's presence and followed his advice). He also stole Lister's body at one point, almost destroying it in the process when he tried to escape his pursuing crewmates.
After some time as a "soft light" hologram, the Red Dwarf crew encountered a being known as Legion, who upgraded Rimmer's projection unit from "soft light" to "hard light", which gave him a physical form and the ability to interact directly with the world, in addition to making him virtually indestructible. This return to tangibility marked the beginning of a profound change for the better in Rimmer's personality. Though still undeniably obnoxious, his time as a "soft-light" hologram had given him a better perspective on life. To conserve power (More of which is required for Rimmer's hard light hologram) he normally uses soft light, only switching to hard light when necessary. (Rimmer's uniform jacket is red when in soft light and blue for hard light.)
Further evidence that Rimmer's personality flaws are not irrevocable can be found in the alternate universe in which he was kept back a year in school instead of being allowed to pass. That version of Arnold Rimmer learnt humility and inner strength, and grew up to become Ace Rimmer, Space Corps test pilot, interstellar hero, and sex god. Naturally, Rimmer hated Ace from the moment he laid eyes on him, seeing him as proof that Rimmer could have been something if he had achieved the break that Ace had been given. However, when Ace died, Rimmer took over for him, to his own great surprise. After Rimmer left, Lister found himself missing him profoundly- until, that is, he went through The Rimmer Experience and remembered just how obnoxious he had been. (It has become popular among fan fiction for Rimmer to return to Red Dwarf having handed his ship over to another version of Ace, as he was so pathetic that he couldn't manage as the dimension-hopping hero)
Shortly after the hologrammatic Rimmer left to become Ace Rimmer, nanobots reconstructed the original Rimmer's body along with the rest of the Red Dwarf crew and brought him back to life. Unfortunately for all concerned, the reconstructed Rimmer had gone through none of the experiences, and thus none of the character growth, that had made his hologram counterpart moderately tolerable. Along with Lister, Kryten, the Cat, and Kristine Kochanski, he was sentenced to two years in the ship's brig for misuse of confidential information.
Ultimately, Rimmer's fate was to die again on Red Dwarf, when a chameleonic microbe destroyed Red Dwarf as everyone else evacuated to a mirror universe. Although it has been suggested that at the beginning of the Red Dwarf movie he will be rescued by Ace Rimmer, that is, the old hologram Rimmer who had lived with the others for several years before.
The Rimmer Experience
The Rimmer Experience is a sequence from the UK science fiction comedy series Red Dwarf, appearing in the fifth episode of the seventh series, "Blue".
This episode takes place after Rimmer has left the crew and is the last episode before Series 8 to show Rimmer.
The Rimmer Experience is akin to a roller-coaster ride. The participants (Lister, Kryten, Kochanski and the Cat) are taken in a small car along a track, while viewing video and audio simulations made by Kryten based on Rimmer's diaries. Kryten suggests that they ride the Experience when Lister reveals that he is beginning to miss Rimmer (who has left to become Ace Rimmer.) The purpose of the Experience is to snap Lister out of his false, nostalgic memories of Rimmer and remind him of Rimmer's true nature.
The Experience begins by travelling through a large pair of fairground-style windows. A huge Rimmer head speaks to the three viewers about the heroism in the events that follow, and the remarkable nature of the man (himself) featured in them.
This is followed by a simulation of the Starbug cockpit, in which Rimmer corrects Kryten about the nature of asteroid belts, and Lister and the Cat tremble in fear. The second simulation is of Rimmer giving the Cat fashion tips, followed by Lister saying that he owes his life to Rimmer.
The Experience culminates in what is popularly known as the Rimmer Munchkin Song. This is sung by a chorus of Arnold Rimmer puppets, which also perform a marching sort of dance at the same time. The puppets, or Munchkins as they are popularly known (after the singing Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz) wear uniforms identical to Rimmer's in red and blue.
They are accompanied by an unseen choir chorus, a xylophone and an unidentified brass instrument.
By the end of The Experience, Lister is so fed up he declares "I never want to see or hear from that scum-sucking, lying, weasel-minded smegger, in my entire life."