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The best laid plans are doomed to failure, in this case by my lack of brevity and forgetting how much there actually was for me to cover. No matter! Maybe I'll get 4 and 5 in one post like I originally intended lol
All right, Episodes 3, 4 and 5 of Series 1.
Episode 3: The Balance of Power
Rimmer is off on a power trip and is having Lister help him do inventory of all the ship's food. he's Lister's superior technician and therefore the highest ranking person on the ship. Rimmer reads something out and Lister says 'Check'. When Rimmer gets to the 4,691 irradiated haggis, Lister breaks and begs with Rimmer to stop saying "4,691 irradiated haggis" and speak to him. When Lister tells him he wants to go and have some fun, Rimmer's immediate response is "This IS FUN, are you mad?" while looking exactly like the insane twit that he is. Rimmer agrees to let Lister stop for the day and we learn that he has been doling out Lister's cigarettes, 1 cigarette for every day Lister obeys him, and in this case penalises him a quarter of a cigarette for saying 'check' in silly voices while they were doing the homogenised puddings, forcing him to pull it apart and make in 3/4 of a cigarette under threat that if he doesn't the rest of the ship's stock will be jettisoned into space.
Ahahaha! So they're somewhere near an airlock?"
"'Ahahaha'. You'll never find them, Lister. I was always a master at hide and seek as a child, it's not a gift you lose.
Rimmer at this point seems determined to lord his power over Lister and make his life miserable.
14 million words
Lister, back in his room frustratedly asks Holly why he brought Rimmer back as a hologram, that Rimmer was the most unpopular man on the ship to the point that he had to organise his own surprise birthday party. Holly tells him that it's because Rimmer was the person Lister knew best and therefore the best person to keep him sane. Lister had only shared 173 words with Kristine Kochanski - less than his rubber glove - Holly tells him when he asks if she could have been brought back, while he shared over 14 million words with Rimmer. lister doesn't buy it though, telling Holly that 7 million of those words were him telling Rimmer to smeg off, and the other 7 million were Rimmer putting him on report for telling him to smeg off.
Jean Paul Sartre said, hell was being locked forever in a room with your friends."
"Holly, all his mates were French!
Lister goes to the ship's disco and sits down at an empty table.
He remembers a time when it was full and he was surrounded by his matess who are making fun of him for having a thing for Kochanski. Rimmer pushes through the crowd of dancing people, who include Kochanski, picks up her handbag and tosses it across the room because she was in his way. He marches up to Lister's table and asks him where he put the revision timetable he spent the past seven weeks making instead of studying for an exam which is tomorrow, and now he has to cram seven weeks of study into one night in what has to be the most impressive level of self-sabotage achievable. Lister jerks him around about it for his mates' entertainment before finally explaining that he pinned it up on the wall to dry out after he spilled a goat vinadoo on it. Rimmer, bastion of sensibility and rational action that he is decides that the only correct course of retalion is to take illegal learning drugs and memorise the whole conversation that they just had. I've heard it said that people usually remember bad things that happen to them over the good things - it's part of why people moan about missing 95% chances to hit in games - and this is an intentional determined attempt by Rimmer to force that in himself. It's as if by making sure he remembers this he's somehow making sure he's absolved because he'll always be able to blame Lister for failing this exam. He storms out of the disco quickly repeating the words of the conversation to himself as Lister's mates continue to rib him about liking Kochanski by saying that they, and a whole lot of other people have slept with her.
Lister returns to reality, alone in an empty disco hall and he lights the 3/4 cigarette, which catches on fire and he has to stamp out. Thanks Rimmer, you prick.
Black Card
Later Lister asks Rimmer if he remembers Kochanski. He does, he calls her a 'snooty cow' and claims she used to look down on him. In particular, she called him 'Rimmer'. Bewildered, Lister reminds him that everybody called him 'Rimmer' (it's his fucking name), to him the way she said it was 'Rimmer' to rhyme with 'scum'. I think in the entire show we only see Rimmer and Kochanski pre-crew-extinction interact one time, in that flashback earlier, so who can blame her? Lister carries on with the conversation, telling Rimmer that he wants to go on a date with Kochanski's hologram which Rimmer immediately attempts to shut down - that would mean turning him off, though Lister promises he would turn Rimmer back on. When he continues blocking the discussion, Lister finally asks "What is it man? Don't you trust me?". Rimmer immediately and firmly announces 'Black card' and declares the conversation over, but Lister persists until Rimmer pulls rank and reminds Lister that he's the superior technician and is in charge. Things get heated and Lister threatens1 Rimmer, telling him that he's going to take the exams and become an officer and when he does, Rimmer will have to salute him, call him 'sir', and he'll have to give him Kochanski's disk. Rimmer clearly dreads the thought of Lister, who he believes to be the lowest human imaginable, unable to make eye contact with him before trying to blow it off and walk out.
Denmark Forever
The next day Rimmer wakes up late because he forgot to set his alarm and immediately blames Lister for not waking him. ("Have I got to remind him to do everything for me? He's so irresponsible", this is a quote from Rimmer but it's also a quote from my actual boss)
Rimmer asks Holly to give him a cold shower, and we hear the sound of a shower running while Rimmer stands there and begins to shiver and ask Holly to make it hotter, before yelping in pain and jumping to the side out of the invisible shower. Trying to put the shower behind him, Rimmer starts to ask Holly where Lister is, but loses that thought as he notices something is wrong with his right arm.
Er, Holly, where's my arm? This isn't my arm. Whose arm is this?"
"I'm sorry, Arnold. Your physical data disk has become corrupted."
"Don't give me excuses, give me my arm back!"
"I'll have to refresh the graphics from a backup."
"It's got tattoos... 'Candy,' 'Denmark forever.' Is this Petersen's arm, Holly? I've got the arm of a Danish moron."
"If you'll just bear with me for a few minutes, Arn."
"It's not good enough, Holly! It's traumatic enough being dead.
He then looks in the mirror and asks whose ears he has, that they look like two radar dishes stuck higgeldy-piggeldy to the side of his head. They are of course, his own ears.
Rimmer's lack of bodily of autonomy is once again rearing its head and the distressing situation of being stuck with another person's bodyparts overlaps with his existing poor body image with his ears.
Holly tells Rimmer that Lister's location is security protected, and Rimmer goes off hunting for him. In the drive room he encounters the cat, eating 6 plates of trout a la creme. Failing to learn anything from either The Cat or Holly, Rimmer once again orders Holly to tell where Lister is, and to give him his own arm back. Then he slaps himself in the face. Petersen's arm, it seems, has a mind of its own and begins slapping him, and he struggles to hold it back from poking him in both eyes.

Standing there, good hand over his eyes after just being blinded by Petersen's arm he begs Holly to make him stop and Holly finally concedes that he'll try but just before he fixes the issue Petersen's arm smacks Rimmer square in the balls, then once more in the side of the head. As he collapses in a puddle of agony on the ground Rimmer says maybe the truest thing he's ever said: "I hate everything..."
Boyle's Fourth Law: Don't Eat Greasy Foods
Rimmer finally finds Lister studying and grills him for writing on the inside of a chocolate wrapper and not having the right equipment. When Lister tells him that he'll pass the exam by knowing things, Rimmer starts to ask him questions about engineering and has a good chuckle when Lister can't answer any of them that he'll never pass the engineer's exam. Lister immediately shoots him down however by telling him that he won't, because he's doing the chef's exam. He doesn't want to be a chef, but it outranks Rimmer. Rimmer is incredulous at the idea and retorts that a 'white hatted ponce' and isn't a 'real officer'. He tries to call Lister out for using illegal learning drugs, but when he asks from whom, where and when Lister got them the answer is of course "Arnold Rimmer, his locker, this morning!" and Rimmer tells Lister he'll never pass and storms off.
What the hell is a quasar?
Rimmer is trying to take an exam by dictating his answers to the scutters, and doesn't know anything at all. Lister comes in with a cake he just made (it was supposed to be roast beef) and Rimmer tries to get chummy with him and talk him out of taking the exam, but he can't help constantly insulting Lister every time he tries to say something. He does however try to extend an olive branch by telling Lister he can have the cigarettes and where they are. The Cat had found the cigarettes earlier and Rimmer tried to bribe him with fish to keep it secret, but he told Lister anyway. "Good. The Cat betrayed me. I don't mind. I'm delighted!" Rimmer says, trying to retain his friendly composure while avoiding eyecontact. He then goes on to attempt to engineer a long shared friendship between himself and Lister to remenisce on, but the only example 'good times' he can think of is a time when Lister was seriously engineer and Rimmer laughed so hard he nearly puked. "Okay, give me Kochanski." Lister tells him, and Rimmer refuses, saying that Lister won't turn him back on. Out of desperation, Rimmer orders Lister not to take the exams. Lister holds up a black card to Rimmer's shock, and tells him that when he becomes an officer he's going to order Rimmer to do a whole bunch of shitty jobs and he knows Rimmer will do them because of how much he respects the chain of command. Rimmer starts to say what sounds like denial he follows orders blindly and unquestioningly no matter who his superior, but pauses for a moment to aggressively agree that yes, he does. When Lister climbs into bed, Rimmer says this:
You always become the thing you hate the most. Look at you, Lister. Obnoxious, ruthless, single-minded, insensitive... You're more like me than I am."
A Woman's Period
The day of Lister's exam Rimmer stands in his way to block the door, imploring Lister not to take it and telling him "You can't do this to me!" The risk of Lister becoming an officer doesn't just threaten Rimmer's continued existence, it threatens his entire worldview and sense of self if the one person that he thinks he's better than surpasses him. Lister gives him one final chance to give him Kochanski's disk, but Rimmer again refuses and Lister walks through him.
While Lister is cooking... something, for his exam, Kochanski - as a hologram - walks in and nearly gives him a heart attack. She tells Lister she never liked him so it's pointless him taking the exam. She says that she needs "A man who's going places. Up, up, up the ziggurat lickety-split!", a distinctly Rimmer-ish line which tips Lister off and he manages to trip Rimmer up by asking about the time they made love, which didn't happen, but Rimmer as Kochanski flip-flops on before trying to explain that "I'm having a woman's period." and Lister, incredibly distressed, tells him to leave. Creep that he is, Rimmer pulls Kochanski's shirt forward and looks down and taunts Lister that he's "Seen something you haven't, squire." before commanding Holly to switch him back to himself. He changes back... except one breast, which he insists to Holly is 'no rush' to fix, and walks away with an exagerated feminine strut.

The episode ends with the two waiting on Lister's exam results from a machine. Lister looks at the results and turns away as Rimmer insistently asks how he did and Lister triumphantly announces, "How did I do, Mister Lister Sir?".
That's a lie though, he failed.
You never learn, do you?
So what did we learn from this one? Well we learned that the number of words exchanged is a terrible metric by which to measure the closeness of a relationship. We learned Rimmer used to organise his own surprise birthday parties which I can't imagine anybody actually showed up to so I've gotta wonder what that was like. The learning drugs thing reitterates that Rimmer is a cheater but shows he's also a hypocrite. I think the two biggest themes though are Rimmer's bodily autonomy and the horror of not only losing control of your own body but of parts of it being replaced by other peoples', and as suggested by the title of the episode The Balance of Power that Rimmer's authority over Lister is the most - and only - important thing to him and that it represents his continued ability to exist at all as well as probably being being the foundation of his sense of self.
We also learned that I can't keep it short to save my life and will descend into recap instead of analysis whether I want to or not, whoops! I'll get better at that, probably. If I don't then no great loss, that's not the point of the project, the project is the point. I also spent 9 hours writing those 3 posts and the ritalin definitely wore off at some point there lol. Stick around for Episode(s) 4 and maybe but not certainly 5, Waiting for God and Confidence and Paranoia!
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Actually, 'okay' isn't actually a threat no matter how many 'ays' you put on the end of it.
