Arnold Rimmer

Template:Reddwarf character Arnold Judas Rimmer BSc, SSc (Bronze Swimming Certificate, Silver Swimming Certificate), who sometimes goes by Arnold Jonathan Rimmer, is a fictional 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' symbol on his forehead, which stands for 'Hologram'.

The creators of the series acknowledge that Rimmer's surname comes from a snobby prefect with whom they attended school. They claim, however, that only the boy's name was used, and not his personality.

Fictional biography

Life

Within the fictional universe of Red Dwarf, Rimmer was born on Io, where he suffered an unhappy childhood. He grew up in the shadow of his three older and more successful brothers, Frank, Howard, and John, who tormented and bullied him throughout his youth and whose successes in both school and career greatly overshadowed his own meagre abilities. His father had been rejected from the Space Corps in his youth for being an inch below regulation height, and was thus fixated on his sons succeeding where he had failed; to which end, he refused to allow his sons to eat unless they could answer complicated astronavigation questions — Arnold nearly starved — and, to ensure that they would not be held back by insufficient height, were stretched on a rack to make them taller (according to Rimmer, by the time his brother Frank was 11 he was six foot five). His mother was little better; a cold, severe woman, she viewed Arnold largely with open contempt for his numerous failings, and barely paid any attention to him at all. 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.' He was also bullied by other children at school - his one 'friend', Porky Roebuck, once spearheaded a plan to eat him during a 'Space Scouts' survival course. While Rimmer was turning on the spit, Porky claimed his right buttock. Another of Rimmer's other class mates was Fred "Thicky" Holden, who eventually went on to invent the highly successful "Tension Sheet" and married sex bomb supermodel Sabrina Mulholland-Jjones.

At the age of 14, Rimmer divorced his parents and left home. Despite his loathing of his father, Rimmer nevertheless felt a perverse desire to vicariously live out his dream. As such, Rimmer joined the Space Corps at a low-entry level as a third technician, and devoted his life to his career, engaging with few activities outside of work. On one notable occasion, he volunteered for the Samaritans, a suicide-prevention helpline, only to resign after one day when five people committed suicide after talking to him — one of whom had dialled the wrong number and only wanted the cricket results — an event dubbed "Lemming Sunday" by the newspapers.Sometime during his life, Rimmer also earned two swimming certificates: one Bronze Swimming Certificate, and one Silver Swimming Certificate - BSc and SSc respectively - to which he often makes reference to on his official correspondence in lieu of any actual qualifications (it is alluded to later in the series that Rimmer cannot swim, thus making his possession of these certificates something of a mystery). He is also rather unsuccessful with women, managing to have a sexual relationship with only one woman, Yvonne McGruder, the ship's female boxing champion (who was apparently concussed at the time, a fact that Dave Lister never fails to point out). The entire encounter lasted little more than twelve minutes, including the time it took to eat a pizza.

Rimmer's deepest ambition is to be become an officer in the Space Corps, but his career is little more distinguished than his previous efforts. Despite serving in the Space Corps for fourteen years, he only managed to further himself from third technician (the lowest rank on the ship) to second technician (the second-lowest rank on the ship), and the only medals he ever received were for his long service to the Space Corps, awarded to him every three years. His attempts to further himself usually end in failure; he attempts the astronavigation exam no less than 13 times without success, despite his efforts to study and / or cheat. In one case, he reportedly wrote "I am a fish" on the answer sheet four hundred times before performing "a funny little dance" and fainting. He is also invited to the captain's table once in his entire career, only to humilate himself when served cold gazpacho, which he demanded be taken away and brought back hot, to the amusement of everyone else present. He blames this faux pas for the stagnation of his career (rather than the more obvious culprits, namely his personality and incompetence) and never forgives himself — his last words before he dies are "gazpacho soup". He also leads a campaign to replace the standard Space Corps salute with an extremely elaborate one of his own design, which fails when absolutely no officers display any interest at all.

During his service on "Red Dwarf", he is assigned to both work with and share quarters with Third Technician Dave Lister, his only inferior in rank on the ship, for whom he instantly develops a warm and reciprocated loathing. The two are notably different in personality - unlike the uptight and pompous Rimmer, Lister is unmotivated, slovenly, relaxed and well-liked - and they clash often.

Death and afterlife

Rimmer dies in the radiation leak which wipes out the entire crew of Red Dwarf, with the exception of Lister, who was in stasis at the time, and Lister's pregnant cat, Frankenstein, who was safe in the ship's hold. Three million years later, when Lister is brought out of stasis, he is chosen by Holly to be reactivated as a hologram in order to keep Lister company and prevent him from being driven insane with loneliness. It is this point in Rimmer's 'life' that is covered in Red Dwarf.

The series contradicts itself on how Rimmer died, and, consequently, how the radiation leak came about. In Series I, 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". A video of Rimmer's death seen in 'Me²' supports this version of events, showing 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, however, it was decided by Grant Naylor that Rimmer's rank was too low and his abilities too lacking for him to have been plausibly assigned the responsibility of repairing the drive plate; consequently, in Series IV 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, having just woken up after fainting during his exam.

As a "soft-light" hologram, Rimmer retains his memories and physical appearance, but is composed almost entirely of light and had no tangible form. Although he didn't exactly use his body to its fullest during his lifetime, he finds himself missing it after his death. He remains very unhappy with his lot for several years after his death, and frequently and loudly bemoans his fate — he is keenly aware that the 'real' Arnold Rimmer is long dead, and his current sensibility is just a computer simulation of how he would feel if he were alive. Despite his dissatisfaction with his life, he bitterly resists any move to turn him off, and attempts to improve himself intellectually and in career with little further success than during his life. At one point, after attempting to use time-travel in order to establish himself as the multi-millionare creator of 'tension sheets', he is briefly returned to life - however, he accidentally triggers an explosion that sees him quickly restored to being a hologram once again. He remains as obnoxious and difficult to like for his crewmates as before his death, and gradually develops a pompous tendency to quote Space Corps regulations at any possible opportunity; he usually gets them wrong, however, and the regulation he has quoted is frequently one that has no relevance whatsoever to the situation in hand.

After some time spent as a "soft light" hologram, the Red Dwarf crew - having lost 'Red Dwarf' and reduced to living on 'Starbug' - encounters a being known as Legion, who upgrades Rimmer's projection unit from "soft light" to "hard light", giving him a physical form and the ability to interact directly with the world, in addition to making him virtually indestructible. 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 or green when in soft light and blue for hard light). This return to tangibility appears to show an improvement in Rimmer's personality; although still cowardly, pompous and neurotic, he is shown to be more capable of acts of bravery and nobility (such as in 'Out of Time', when he surprises his crewmates by insisting they fight their corrupted future selves rather than backing down).

Soon after his conversion to hard-light status, he is approached by an dying alternate version of himself, Ace Rimmer (see below), who asks Rimmer to become a defender of the multiverse upon Ace's death. Although initially hesistant, Rimmer finds himself rising to the challenge, and after a moving send-off from his crewmates (in which he was retroactively promoted by Lister for managing to keep him sane), Rimmer left to start his new life. Initially, Lister missed his old sparring partner and was briefly convinced that he had actually liked Rimmer. However, a virtual reality 'amusement park called 'The Rimmer Experience' based on Rimmer's diaries - in which Rimmer had interpreted events in order to present himself as a fearless hero saving his incompetent crewmates, complete with a flattering song sung by a chorus of Rimmer puppets - soon reminded Lister of just how obnoxious Rimmer had been (see episode Blue) and convinced him that his nostagia was misplaced.

Returned to life

This was not the last of Arnold Rimmer, however; when 'Red Dwarf' was restored by the nanobots in series eight, the entire crew was restored to life as well - including a new version of Rimmer. However, the reconstructed Rimmer has gone through none of the experiences, and thus none of the character growth, that has 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. This version of Rimmer, however, soon loosened up once in prison, and he and Lister began playing pranks on the warden and other prisoners, particularly in the 2-Parter Pete. If one were to have just started viewing at this point, one would think Rimmer and Lister were friends. At the end of Series VIII, when a chameleonic microbe destroys Red Dwarf and everyone else evacuates to a mirror universe, Rimmer is trapped on the disintegrating ship. His fate is currently unknown, but at the end of the episode he encounters the Grim Reaper and knees him in the groin, saying, "Only the good die young," indicating that he may very well survive. However, with no new episodes of Red Dwarf being broadcast since 1999, no resolution has been achieved.

Personality

Something of a disagreeable person, Rimmer's character traits include anal-retentiveness, over-adherence to protocol, cowardice, misogyny, and a severely inflated ego coupled with a deep-seated self-loathing. This, combined with a lack of social skills, makes him unpopular with almost everybody he comes into contact with. As Second Technician, he was the second-lowest ranking crewmember of Red Dwarf before the accident (Lister being the lowest-ranking); after the accident, he is the highest ranking survivor (despite his holographic status) and is eager to flaunt his new position. However, his attempts at throwing his weight around are frequently hampered by the fact that none of his crewmates are disposed to pay any attention to him, and the only way he initially gets Lister to obey him is to bribe him with cigarettes from the ship's hidden supply. Once Lister discovers the location of these cigarettes, this comes to naught. Nonetheless, Rimmer frequently deludes himself into believing that he is in charge and that he has somehow been moulding 'his' crew into an effective spacegoing unit.

Fond of war, at least in principle, Rimmer dreams of being a general. He admires power and strength, and his role models included Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, and George Patton. He puts this down to being the reincarnation of Alexander the Great's chief eunuch, which he believes also explains his fear of nutcrackers and, according to Lister, why he is such a good singer. However, his martial dreams never progress beyond playing Risk, because he is a complete physical coward, more likely to flee from any situation involving danger. When he does get his chance at commanding in the Series IV episode "Meltdown", he leads an army of 'hero' wax-droids against 'villain' wax-droids. Several melt on his training course, while the rest are wiped out in Rimmer's 'surprise attack' of a charge over the mine-field under cover 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 justification for the genocide of an entire species was that, working under the principle that the 'villain' army had been wiped out and despite the fact that so had all his own men, he had won the war. (It should be noted that Kryten suggests that his mind was affected in some way by Lister's earlier chewing of his Light Bee.) Besides his fondness for militarism and hammond organ music, he is also an authority on telegraph poles, especially those observed while train spotting.

Many episodes of 'Red Dwarf' focus on the conflict between Rimmer's ego and his neuroses. In 'Me²', Rimmer manages to trick Lister into generating a holograph duplicate in order to provide him with a companion; however, as a consequence of Rimmer's self-loathing, the two Rimmers are incapable of getting along, and their interaction becomes so bitter and hatefilled that the duplicate must be turned off. In 'Justice', he is convicted of the second degree murder of the 1,167 crew members of Red Dwarf besides himself and Lister after a justice computer reads his mind and picks up on his guilt; however, his crewmates manage to prove that this guilt is entirely a result of his massive ego, which had simply assumed that he was directly responsible for their deaths. In 'Terrorform', a 'psi-moon' sculpted to reflect Rimmer's psychological make-up, becomes a desolate, swampy hell-hole dominated by Rimmer's Self-Loathing, personified as a sadistic beast, with a metaphysical graveyard marking the 'demise' of his various virtuous qualities.

File:Ace Rimmer.jpg

Ace Rimmer

However, it is also shown that Rimmer's personality flaws are not irrevocable, and are in fact almost completely a result of his hang-ups. The most obvious example of this is Ace Rimmer, an alternative version of himself who is kept back a year in school instead of being allowed to pass (as was the case with the 'proper' Rimmer), and as a result learns humility and inner strength, growing up to become a charming and well-liked Space Corps test pilot, interstellar hero, and sexual seducer (see episode Dimension Jump). Rimmer immediately hates his alternative self, bitterly resenting the proof of what he could have achieved had he only received the 'break' his alternative self got (the irony being that, by Rimmer's terms, he did get the break).

However, it is also established that the 'proper' Rimmer is not incapable of nobility and honour; when Red Dwarf encounters a holo-ship in Enlightenment, with an all-hologram crew composed of the "best and brightest", Rimmer can interact as if he were alive again, so naturally he cheats on a test to become a member of the crew. A female officer aboard the ship, Nirvanah Crane, explains that because they were all holograms and had zero chance of pregnancy or transmitting sexual disease, the holo-crew's R&R hours consists of near-constant casual sex, with as many partners as you wanted over time with no emotional strings attached. Rimmer and Crane fall in love, and Crane sacrifices her place on the ship for Rimmer, only for Rimmer to do the same in return. This act of nobility surprises even Rimmer himself.

Trivia

• Kryten, Lister, the Cat and even a service robot have all given Rimmer the finger (or the two finger gesture for the last one) at some point.
• There is evidence scattered throughout the series that Rimmer may have a different father to his brothers- specifically that he is actually the only one of the four Rimmer children to be the biological child of both Mr. Rimmer and Mrs. Rimmer.

Links

• Arnold Rimmer's Bio at Red Dwarf.co.uk