Holograms have been around for quite a while. To most people at the moment they mean nothing more than tacky unconvincing pictures of Spiderman stuck to the front of comic books in the hope of making collectors pay more for them. Their potential as a Science-Fiction concept certainly hadn't been realised before 1988, when Rob Grant and Doug Naylor did just that in their fledgling series Red Dwarf.
Their creation of the hologram as we know it was necessitated by one important factor. Having decided that Dave Lister, the major character in their new show was to be the last human alive, Grant and Naylor realised they had to find some non-humans populate the series with. Aliens were out, androids (at the time) were also out, and the idea of the hologram (along with the Cat, of course) provided the perfect solution to the problem. Thus it was that in the opening moments of The End we were shown the funeral of Flight Co-ordinator George McIntyre (Robert McCulley) and later treated to a glimpse of his 'Welcome Back' party as he was returned to life in hologramatic form.
Physically, the new McIntyre was identical to the old one - except for one thing. Something at least was needed to differentiate the dead from the living, and the writers originally hoped that their hologram characters would appear in black & white. However whilst this effect would have been possible, it would also have proved costly and time consuming. In the end they settled for the now famous idea of a simple letter H on the hologram's head.
For the benefit of the crew - and the viewers at home - Captain Hollister explained what the transition to hologramatic form actually meant. "He is in every respect like George. He has George's personality and George's knowledge and experience. Of course he can't touch or lift anything…" And from McIntyre himself we learned perhaps the most important fact of all; that the energy drain caused by a Hologram was so huge that Holly could only maintain one at any given time. This lead neatly to Rimmer's own resurrection towards the end of the episode, setting the scene for the rest of the series.
Frustrated by the presence of Rimmer, as opposed to that of say, Kristine Kochanski, Lister spent most of Red Dwarf I doing everything in his power to get rid of his bunkmate and bring his lost love back to life. Rimmer did everything in his power to stop him. Holograms, we learnt, were projected from the ship's hologram projection suite, where personality discs for each of the dead crewmembers were stored. All that was needed was for one of those discs to be popped into the hologram projection box and hey presto! So all Rimmer had to do to ensure the continuation of his existence was to take those discs and hide them.
Once this basic premise had been established, it formed the perfect springboard for any number of situations. In Balance Of Power we saw Rimmer waking unexpectedly with the arm of Catering Officer Olaf Peterson - an arm which had a life of its own. The physical data on Rimmer's disc had apparently become corrupted and Holly had to refresh the graphics from the back-up disc, albeit not before Petersen's limb could make an assault on Rimmers privates. This incident set the scene for one of Rimmers' own plans as he was able to house his own mind in Kochanski's hologramatic body. Much the same principle was used later on in Red Dwarf II - Thanks for the Memory when Lister pasted some of his own memories into the mind of Rimmer.
Red Dwarf I ended with another significant development. Spurred on by his own confidence Lister was able to work out a way in which Holly could project two Holograms at a time. Attempting to bring Kochanski back to life he was astounded to see that he had instead created a second Rimmer. This lead to the classic Me2 in which even Rimmer found that he couldn't stand himself. The two-holograms idea hasn't been used since presumably as it relied on diverting power from all non-essential systems to the hologram-projection suite, it is, at the least, impractical for Holly to sustain two holograms for any length without jeopardising the safety of the crew.
Rimmer's hologramatic status has often caused writers problems. After all how easy can it be to write action sequences for somebody who can't touch anything. Many of these difficulties were easily overcome with Holly's phenomenal capabilities providing a way out in most cases. We quickly learnt for example than when Rimmer wanted a haircut, shower or something to eat or drink, Holly could easily simulate the effects of such stimuli. It was even possible for Rimmer to use an exercise bike as long as it was a hologram of an exercise bike. The problems did start to become noticeable, however, when Red Dwarf returned to our screens at the end of 1988 for a second series. It had been decided to expand the action beyond the frontiers of the ship. This opened up any number of questions. How, for instance, was Holly able to maintain control of Rimmer's projection when he was exploring the crashed vessel 'Nova 5' or conversing with his own living self three million years in the past?
Only one of the series II episodes made any real attempt to answer this question. In Thanks for the Memory Rimmer was seen celebrating his own death-day party along with the rest of the crew, on a life supporting planet. In order for him to function so far away from the ship, it was shown that a hologramatic projection cage was necessary. Only inside this could the signal from Red Dwarf be boosted sufficiently to allow Rimmer to exist. Again this idea was never reused.
The difficulties became even more apparent when Red Dwarf III hit our screens in 1990. All of a sudden Rimmer was leaving the ship in almost every episode. (4 out of 6, in fact) and on two of those occasions he was again separated from the ship by the gulf of time. On a further two it was shown that Holly had no idea where he had actually gone. As it happens these situations were eventually explained albeit retrospectively as we will see later. How Rimmer was able to lean on a console and operate a radio in 'Marooned' is another problem, best ignored.
Speaking of problems Grant and Naylor found themselves faced with yet another as they reached Red Dwarf IV. Their script for Meltdown called for Rimmer to travel via Kryten's newly devised matter paddle - which, of course wasn't possible. Again a subtle change in the continuity was required; thus contrary to what we'd been told in the past Rimmer was now revealed to have a 'small physical presence', this in the form of a light bee which buzzes around his hologram body constantly maintaining the projection. As we saw in Meltdown this also houses Rimmer's intelligence, which was active even when his hologram was turned off.
The creation of the light bee solved a few other niggling problems, in particular it provided an excellent rationale for Rimmer's extreme cowardice - whereas before we had seen him running form foes we believed couldn't possibly affect him, we now found that a well-placed shot to the light bee could effectively disable him. This concept was put into practice by the Inquisitor and by a mind controlled Lister during Red Dwarf V. That same year we were also treated to an explanation of some of those earlier discrepancies.
According to Quarantine the existence of Rimmer's hologram whilst away from Red Dwarf and it's shuttles was made possible by a device referred to as the Remote Projection Unit which is obviously capable of taking over Holly's job for a short time at least. Also in Quarantine, it was stated that it would have been possible for both Holly and the remote projection unit to sustain holograms simultaneously, an idea which ties in quite nicely with that put forward in Me2, so long as you assume that this was only possible because the main ship was empty and in orbit at the time. (i.e. there was plenty of unused power to spare.) We therefore have a logical explanation for everything we've seen in the series, with the one proviso that we assume that the remote projection unit was malfunctioning in Thanks for the Memory necessitating the use of the more primitive cage. With the past tidied up we can therefore look ahead at some of the developments Red Dwarf V offered.
Certainly Rimmer's hologramatic status was used to it's full in the fifth series. As well as Quarantine and the twin assaults on his light bee, the series opened with a whole episode based around the hologram concept. Although we had already learnt that two holograms could touch (Parallel Universe) Holoship expanded this concept to the nth degree. Invited on board the hologram spaceship 'Enlightenment' Rimmer found that he was able to touch, feel and taste anything and anyone - including, of course, Flight Commander Nirvanah Crane!
Another point of interest in this episode was Lister's reference to a device known as a holo-whip, obviously an implement which could be wielded by humans and used on holograms. Although it was never seen in Holoship this creation opens up more avenues to the writers making it far more practical to use Rimmer in a battle situation. Indeed this was demonstrated only four weeks later when the evil low Rimmer used such a device to attack the real Lister in Demons and Angels. Obviously they work the other way around as well! And again this explains such seeming inaccuracies as the escort boots in Justice; whether by accident or by design series V did sort the shows continuity with the technology to create such devices obviously having been developed during Red Dwarf's absence from our solar system.
Series VI saw two major developments in the history of Holograms. In Legion more technology created in the 3 million years since Red Dwarf left the solar system was revealed - Rimmer acquired a Hard Light Bee which technically gave him a body. There was a problem with this. The new hard light drive was immune to almost every thing. Rimmer could now take a blow over the head with out being knocked out or a punch in the stomach without being winded. It was impenetrable which lead to the age old problem of Rimmer's extreme cowardliness. This was solved by making sure that Rimmer would still feel the pain of any blow but not suffer from it - this lead to that great slapstick scene with Kryten smacking Rimmer about to deactivate the Hard-Light Bee. The extreme power of the hard light bee was demonstrated when Rimmer (in the form of Ace) saved the whole crew by smothering a grenade with his own body - he wasn't even scratched.
The second major development was the revelation that holograms could actually die. Kryten revealed that if an error occurred when the humans personality was being encoded onto the personality disc it would later manifest itself in the hologramatic recreation particularly in times of stress. This leads to the hologramatic form of raised blood pressure and eventually death. With plenty of rest and meditation this problem can be solved and thankfully Rimmer had 600 years of relaxation to deal with this. The only glitch in continuity in Series VI occurred in Out of Time when we saw Rimmer from the future - the problem was he'd aged. The writer's did address this in the same episode when the real Rimmer stated "I'm a Hologram - hologram's don't age" so presumably the Future Rimmer had altered his appearance to make his ageing shipmates more comfortable.
In Series VII we learnt that Rimmer's destiny was to travel through Parallel Universes battling evil. In Stoke Me a Clipper we witnessed a hand held device that could reprogram the light bee on the spot to alter the hologram's appearance. (i.e. change of clothes - though it couldn't alter Rimmer's hair, instead he had to don a wig!)
In the past 11 years we've seen that in the world of Holograms anything is possible. Red Dwarf VIII won't be featuring a hologram - Rimmer is now flesh and blood - but one thing for sure, if we ever do see a shiny H in Red Dwarf again then something interesting is probably about to happen.
