Because there's a substantial amount of my brain dedicated to the show, I've been considering my old idea of rewatching series 1-6 of Red Dwarf and doing some kind of writeup of each episode focusing entirely on how much it demonstrates that being Arnold Rimmer is suffering.
Red Dwarf is a great show and I love it to death, but one of my favourite aspects of it is that it often manages to generate genuine pathos for the character of Rimmer, who is ostensibly the persistent antagonist throughout series 1 and occasional antagonist thereafter. Rimmer is a low-ranking and universally despised Second Technician on the mining ship Red Dwarf, whose only authority is over his bunkmate, Third Technician David Lister. In the first episode of the show everybody aboard the ship dies, except for Lister who remains in stasis for 3 million years. As Lister is the only surviving crewmember, the ship's computer Holly brings Rimmer back as a hologram to 'keep him sane', and Rimmer is unfortunately just the same as we was when he was alive, only he cannot touch, taste or feel, and is starkly aware that he is only a computer simulation of himself. So begins the tragedy of Arnold Rimmer.
Rimmer's a selfish, meanspirited, petty idiot who subscribes to a publication called Fascist Dictator Monthly and idolises Napoleon Bonaparte. He's also my favourite character in Red Dwarf. His role in the show is to be hated both by viewers and the other characters that have to endure him, but despite this he's given more depth than all the other characters combined and entire episodes are based around why he is this way, or that he is trapped in an eternal nightmare of self-hatred and existential dread. Did I mention it's a comedy show by the way?
So that's my maybe plan. I'll rewatch the series and whenever an episode comes up where the dread existence of Rimmer is a theme I'll write a bit about it. It won't be every episode, just the ones that have enough Rimmer suffering to be noteworthy. Off the top of my head I can think of a whole bunch, including: Me²; Better Than Life; Thanks for the Memory; Parallel Universe; Bodyswap; Timeslides; Justice; Dimension Jump; Holoship; The Inquisitor; Terrorform; Back to Reality; and Rimmerworld. I don't plan on going past series 6, for the obvious reason that Rimmer leaves the cast 2 episodes into series 7, but also just because the show gets pretty dire after that point anyway. I don't know if anybody besides me will care about this, but that's okay - I've been trying to do more creative/writing projects lately and it's doing them that counts for me.
