RD V–”Holoship”, or Hologrammatic Love, as Real as Any Other

…or “Arlene Lets Her Chris Barrie Fangirlism Run Wild” ^_^’ .

I started myself out on a fairly easy episode of Red Dwarf to review–one that not only appeals to my inner Carrotiste (yes, I have a bias, I’ll admit it right here) but which simply has a lot of emotion to sift through, and tons of character growth to pick apart. Besides, the library will want its DVDs back soon, and I figured I’d better hop to it. Publish or perish!

Anyway, “Holoship” opens with a shot that pans across the faces of the four Dwarfers as they watch the ending of what one is led to understand is a fairly sappy romantic film. Kryten is enthusiastic, but a bit disengaged from it, which seems a bit odd to me, considering his grand affair with Camille–you’d think it’d hit a bit closer to home in light of his sadly brief tete-a-tentacle and enforced separation. Or perhaps Kryten simply chooses to recall the good times, that elysian hour or two spent at Parrots bar, and that is why he smiles. Lister, almost uncharacteristically, is crying, quite openly. Maybe he’s thinking of Christine, and the past, and the things that might have been, and weren’t–and could never be, since, in Series V at least, their separation is as absolute as death. (Incidentally, I wonder how Craig did it; he doesn’t seem to me to be the crying type.) The Cat is fighting off sleep, which isn’t at all surprising. We know the Cat is notorious for his short attention span and his very physical, animal-like view of romance–for him, a full ninety minutes of love, with only one woman and hardly any sex, would likely be appallingly tedious.

And Arnold Rimmer? To judge from the look on his face, he couldn’t be more disgusted with what he’s just seen if you presented him with a rotting mole carcass on rye bread with snot sauce and a side of cooked spinach.

He then goes on to viciously rubbish the film he’s just seen–not only the film, but the very concepts of love and sacrifice and setting aside one’s ambitions for the happiness of a loved one. Lister then accuses him of having no soul. But is that really true? I don’t think someone who really believed that love and the sacrifices it inspires is “blubbery school-girl mush” would have fallen in love so swiftly (for the whole of “Holoship” can’t have taken place over more than three days by my reckoning, probably more like two) or so completely as Arnold fell for Nirvanah.

Incidentally, when do you think Arnold actually realizes that he loves Nirvanah, and when does he finally admit it to himself? When does he realize that Nirvanah loves him, that a woman could love him, that maybe they weren’t so very different after all? ‘Cos one thing’s for certain: Arnold and Nirvanah had more in common than perhaps either of them realized.

Think about it. Nirvanah has spent (probably) millennia immersed in a breathtakingly arrogant culture which seeks, in effect, to sever itself from every natural impulse except the fizz of the high-brain and the throb of the genitals. How is such an environment any less twisted, less damaging, less unnatural than the household that produced the brothers Rimmer? At any rate, if the denizens of the Enlightenment think that the family is the root of all neurosis, they’re lying to themselves.

So there it is. Two people discover that they love each other, and that they can be loved by each other; and each sacrifices everything they care about for the sake of that bond. Which is a big turnaround for Rimmer, only not really, because he was probably waiting for this kind of love all along. What do we learn? Scratch prissy, rule-obsessed Arnold Rimmer, and you’ll find a sentimental fool who, if anything, falls in love too quickly and too entirely (see also “Thanks for the Memory”).

D’you know, I’d give my eyeteeth to be able to know what it was Arnold wrote to Nirvanah in that letter (remember? He hands it to Captain Platini near the end). But at the same time, I can’t help but feel it’d be wrong, somehow, to read it.

And I’m sorry this review wasn’t funnier.