Red Dwarf/Rimmerworld

Rimmerworld
Season 6, Episode 5
Airdate	November 4, 1993
Written by	Rob Grant, Doug Naylor
Directed by	Andy DeEmmony
← 6x04 Emohawk - Polymorph II	6x06 → Out of Time
Red Dwarf — Season Six

Rimmerworld is the fifth episode of the sixth season of Red Dwarf, and the thirty-fifth episode overall.

Guest Stars: Liz Hickling (Rogue Simulant)

Plot Overview

Rimmer has just finished a medical exam; and Kryten has bad news: Rimmer has a stress-related disorder that could prove fatal. Kryten gives him Chinese worry balls to grind together whenever he feels tense.

The crew encounter a simulant ship they disabled a few weeks earlier. Lister convinces the others that it would be worth their while to search it for food and supplies. They take bazookoids just in case any simulants are still alive.

Once aboard, they find that the ship is so weak and fragile that, if they were to use the bazookoids, it would start a catastrophic "ship quake", killing them all.

Kryten finds a working teleporter; and using that they are able to make short work of rounding up supplies, teleporting them directly onto Starbug.

A female simulant catches them in the act of looting. While she is recounting their transgressions against her, Rimmer sneaks behind her. But instead of attacking her, Lister and the others watch in disbelief as he makes his way to an escape pod.

The escape pod's launch touches off the disintegration of the ship. A huge chunk of debris falls on the simulant, burying her. With no time to run to the launch bay, they take the teleporter.

But because of a programming error, they end up in the past (a week last Thursday). As their prior-selves look on, the earlier Kryten chides the newcomer about, "... how rude it is to burst in on an earlier version of yourself without warning."

After they return to their own Starbug and get out of the simulant ship's disintegating launch bay, they receive a signal from Rimmer. He wants to be rescued, but his pod is accellerating too fast for Starbug to catch. The pod, looted from a 25th century colony seeding ship, has no controls. It is programmed to seek the nearest S3 planet, which in Rimmer's case is on the other side of a nearby wormhole.

Starbug will take four days to get to the planet, but owing to the wormhole's time dialation effects, Rimmer will have to wait 600 years to be rescued.

Rimmer lands on the planet and uses eco-rockets to terraform the desert world in just six days. He also uses equipment aboard the pod to create a woman using his own DNA as a template, but something goes hideously wrong. The "woman" that comes out of the incubation cocoon is a man, so Rimmer goes back to the manuals and tries again.

Shortly after arriving on the planet, Lister, Kryten, and the Cat are captured by a group of Rimmer Centurians, and taken to the leader of Rimmerworld. The leader charges them with displaying freakish behavior: charm, bravery, compassion, and honor. Cowardice, pompousity, snidieness, and double-dealing are considered normal here. They are to be thrown into the dungeon and executed at dawn.

In the dungeon they find the real, hologramatic Rimmer. He has been alone so long that he has difficulty recalling everyone's names. He calls them: Dave Custer, Kit, and Titan. He has been held in this cell by his own people for 557 years! The other Rimmer's couldn't damage him in his "hard light" form, so they put him in this dungeon.

On Rimmerworld the smallest physical flaw results in banishment. Displaying un-Rimmerlike behavior is a death sentence. Being brave, sexy, noble, or charming is a crime here. Kryten and the others use the teleporter to escape.

Notes

• Rimmer creates the humans on Rimmerworld using his own DNA, but Rimmer is a hologram. He doesn't have DNA. He would have had to carry a sample with him.

Arc Advancement

Referbacks

• The simulant ship they encounter is the same ship they attacked "a few weeks ago" in the episode Gunmen of the Apocalypse.

Trivia

The Show

• Rimmer cheated on his eye exam. He claims it was because he is a competitive person.
• Rimmer goes through the wormhole located at 495372.

Allusions and References

• Kryten tells Rimmer that with time dilation factored in, he will have to wait six times as long as "that medievil war ... that lasted quite a long time." Stunned, Rimmer says "the Thirty Years' War"? But Kryten actually meant the Hundred Years' War.
• When Rimmer realizes he'll be on his own for 600 years, he tells the others "... I'll never survive. I'm not the Robinson Crusoe type."
• Rimmer's use of the eco-rockets to create Rimmerworld in six days has biblical overtones, including references to Adam and Eden.

Memorable Moments

• During their audience with Rimmerworld's leader, the leader orders his concubines to leave, saying "These deformed monsters are no sight for my concubines." As they stand to leave, he motions for one of them to come kiss him. "Avert your eyes from her great beauty", he says. As he removes her veil we see that even the women on this planet look exactly like Rimmer. Ugh!

• Locked in the dungeon with Rimmer, Lister outlines an escape plan in which they will lay out a guard, put Rimmer in his uniform, get swords, and fight their way back to Starbug. Kryten, still holding a control panel in his hands, says, "or we could use the teleporter."

• When they escape from Rimmerworld, they teleport onto Starbug where they find another Rimmer, another Cat, and another Kryten playing cards. It seems that Kryten has done it again—they have gone back in time. The newcomer Rimmer apologizes for just popping in, and tries to explain that they have just escaped from Rimmerworld. Cat cheerfully adds that Rimmer will spend 557 years locked in a dungeon.
  "Rimmerworld was weeks ago," the other Rimmer says, "We're far more concerned at the moment about the quite hideous thing that's happened to Lister." Before Lister can find out what "hideous thing" is going to happen, Kryten activates the teleporter.

Quotes

• After barely escaping the simulant ship ...

Cat: All in all, a hundred percent successful trip.

Kryten: Sir, we lost Mr. Rimmer!

Cat: All in all, a hundred percent successful trip.

• Rimmerworld's leader is appalled by how Lister and the others look ...

Leader: Dear Lord, what created such foulness? Is this the product of a marriage twixt woman and gerbil?

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