Rimmerworld is a little undercooked, but I love the ideas in it.
PLOT
Rimmer flees from a tense situation on an escape pod, which gets sucked into a wormhole and ends up stranding him on a planet for 600 years while he waits for the crew to rescue him.
ANALYSIS
This is a story that really would benefit from being a two-parter. Most of Rimmerworld is spent setting up the actual narrative. The titular planet isn't even onscreen until 18 minutes into the episode (over halfway through), at which point it's like the 1984 Dune film where the rest of the story gets crammed into a montage and then brushed under the carpet with a few quick scenes. I wanted so much more of Rimmer spending time on his own exploring the planet, looting the ship, trying to sort out entertainment, coping with isolation. His exile is such a rich concept, and the whole 'captain's log' segment is fantastic, both because of the exciting survival story and because of Chris Barrie's ASMR documentary voice. Yet this solid hook for a whole episode is used just for a brief exposition dump. And then of course there's Rimmerworld itself. We hear and see so little of its culture.
Even though Rimmer is a natural coward and often celebrates this behaviour as a coping mechanism, we know that deep down he doesn't really want to be anything like that. So how did the Rimmer clones end up worshipping these traits? Why was the original Rimmer overthrown and not the 'Great One', or has there been a long succession of leading Rimmers? What's the politics like? How were any of the clones educated? Are they all ardent devotees of the Space Corps Directives? Do they regard the original as some kind of god that they overthrew? How bad's the incest situation- okay, maybe we don't need to hear about that one. But my point is that this is another case where there's so much more to see than what we actually got.
That being said, I do really like it as a pure romp. The looting of the Simulant ship from Gunmen motivated by the damage caused to the ship in Emohawk solidifies Red Dwarf's temporary shift into having a much more internally consistent world, with memorable landmarks that the characters can return to and explore and a focus on supply runs. Starbug seems to be constantly on the verge of breaking apart and the crew are always low on vital necessities. Watching how sober and focused Lister is in this episode made me realize just how much he's changed from the goofy little janitor in series 1. This tense atmosphere that goes through all of series 6 is particularly well employed here. It's like they're all keeping a happy face, but underneath it, hope is starting to run out.
CHARACTERS
Rimmer sure handled those 600 years with aplomb, didn't he? I can only assume the crew wiped most of it from his hard drive to keep him sane. I must say, Chris Barrie's performance in the second half of the episode pretty much singularly carries that section of the story. His Roman "I am HE!" campfest is the stuff theatres are made of. I love the way Barrie overenunciates every single vowel, making all his words drip with sneering. He makes such a wonderful villain. And although the moment is glossed over, I did appreciate how dazed and defeated Barrie played Rimmer after he was in his dungeon for 557 years.
I felt a bit sad for Lister, seeing how personally he took Rimmer's betrayal (although I feel like Rimmer's done a lot worse than that - Bodyswap, anyone?). At this point, has anyone been in Lister's life longer than Rimmer? Not to mention, he's pretty much the only other person left from Lister's "generation". They're as close to family as one can get in deep space. No surprise then that the crew go through the massive effort of retrieving him rather than continuing the search for Red Dwarf.
NOTES
- Why doesn't Lister admit to the ship damage in front of the Cat? I know he said he didn't want to cause a panic, but he's telling Rimmer and Kryten!
- I love how they keep reusing Holly's activation sound effect for everything. It's the sound of the teleporter this week.
- The extra filming on the Simulant set being lampooned by Cat desperately hiding that he's wearing the same outfit is very funny.
- I cherish the reprise of the "you are a total, total..." gag from Queeg.
- Who knows where Rimmer got the DNA for all his clones. Maybe he carries his dandruff piece in his light bee for just such an occasion.
- 600 years pass in this episode (Starbug also travels through the wormhole), meaning it's now been 800 years since the events of series 5.
- Lucky that the Simulants never found Rimmerworld. They would've loved torturing all of them.
- The episode ends with the implication that something terrible has happened to Lister, which I can't help but suspect was meant to be foreshadowing the next episode, before rewrites.
- The crew revisit Denis Lill's spaceship from Gunmen of the Apocalypse.
- Lister mentions that Starbug's crash in Emohawk caused the fuel tank to rupture.
- This is the second time that an entire planet has been terraformed by Rimmer. The first was in Terrorform, with similar consequences.
KRYTEN: "Or we could use the teleporter."
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