Arnold Rimmer - Personality

Personality

Rimmer's primary character traits include anal-retentiveness, over-adherence to protocol, cowardice, misogyny, and a severely inflated ego which is likely a coping mechanism for his deep-seated sense of self-loathing, which he tries but sometimes fails to hide from others. As the highest ranking survivor aboard the ship (despite being a hologram), Rimmer often deludes himself into believing that he is in charge and that he has somehow been moulding "his" crew into an effective spacegoing unit, despite the fact that the others tend to take suggestions from Lister or Kryten in a crisis.

Rimmer's poor repair work on the drive plate was responsible for the radiation leak that killed the crew, and Rimmer bore the guilt of this (although he also partly blamed Lister for the accident, as he was unable to help repair the drive plate due to being in stasis at the time). However, in "Justice", after Rimmer is jailed for over 9000 years for the accident, Kryten successfully argues at his appeal that Rimmer's guilt is misplaced- as a second technician (and one who "couldn't outwit a used teabag"), he could not possibly have been responsible for (and indeed would not have been trusted with) work that might endanger the crew if not performed correctly. Kryten further argues that Rimmer only felt guilty for causing the accident because of his delusions about his importance to the mission, comparing him to a front-gate security guard who considers himself corporate head.

Rimmer was finally able to live his fantasy of commanding an army in the Series IV episode "Meltdown", leading an army of "good" wax-droids against a much larger force of "evil" wax-droids. Although Rimmer ultimately succeeds in destroying the opposing army, his forces are completely wiped out when he uses most of them as a diversion and then has Kryten turn up the heating to melt all the droids. In addition to his fondness for militarism, elitism and Hammond organ music, Rimmer also enjoys Morris dancing and is an authority on 20th century telegraph poles, especially those observed while train spotting. Rimmer has also been attempting to learn Esperanto for eight years, but has failed miserably.

Many episodes of Red Dwarf focus on the conflict between Rimmer's ego and his neuroses. In "Me", Rimmer manages to trick Lister into generating a holograph duplicate in order to provide him with a companion; however, as a consequence of Rimmer's self-loathing, the two Rimmers are incapable of getting along, and their interaction becomes so bitter and hate-filled that the duplicate must be turned off. In "Terrorform", a "psi-moon" sculpted to reflect Rimmer's psychological make-up becomes a desolate, swampy hell-hole dominated by Rimmer's Self-Loathing, personified as a sadistic beast, with a metaphysical graveyard marking the "demise" of his various virtuous qualities. Despite his cowardice, and tendency to run from any kind of danger or fight, Rimmer is the member of the crew most willing to kill, preferably in the safest and most cowardly way possible, although, due to a mixture of cowardice, and the fact that for much of the series he cannot physically harm anyone, he seldom manages to. He has attempted to coerce Lister to shoot a dangerous Simulant in the back (bemoaning the fact that said Simulant was currently awake), suggested shooting Kryten and Lister into space when they appeared on the ship in a timeline where they had been erased from history, suggested that he and Kryten eject Lister and Cat from Starbug when it was revealed that the ship lacked fuel to reach the nearest planet- although this was also prompted by the discovery that the ship only had air for seven minutes and was ended when Rimmer learned that his projection unit only had enough power for four minutes-, and casually pushed a fellow hologram into traffic after she repeatedly threatened to have him "erased".

Rimmer's personality flaws are in fact almost completely a result of his hang-ups. An alternative version of Rimmer, Ace Rimmer, who was kept back a year in school, learned humility and inner strength and grew up to become a charming and well liked Space Corps test pilot, interstellar hero, and sexual seducer.

Surprisingly, however, Rimmer is still capable of nobility, honour and love. When Red Dwarf encounters a Holoship, with an all-hologram crew composed of the "best and brightest", Rimmer desperately wants to join. A female officer aboard the ship, Nirvanah Crane, falls in love with him and sacrifices her place on the ship for Rimmer, only for Rimmer to do the same in return for her. This act of nobility surprises even Rimmer himself. Furthermore, in the episode "Out of Time", Rimmer is disgusted by his corrupt future self to the point where he'd rather do battle with him than surrender, Rimmer later frantically risking his life to save the others after they are killed by their future selves.