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Old 03-11-2013, 09:40 AM   #52 (permalink)
Trollheart
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Season 1: "Three million years from Earth..."

1.5 "Confidence and Paranoia"

Holly's joke: We have been travelling through the galaxy now for three million years and there are many things we've discovered. The highest form of life in the universe is Man and the lowest is a man who works for the Post Office.

After having visited the officers' block on the ship, which he had thought decontaminated but which Rimmer had left on the long finger, Lister develops a mutated form of pneumonia, which results in his fever-induced hallucinations taking physical shape and form. Rimmer accuses him of having gone to the officers' quarters in order to sit in Kochanski's quarters and wallow in self-pity. Lister wakes in the night feeling terrible, and goes down to the medical unit. On the way there however he collapses and is found by the Cat, who is no help to him at all, totally self-centred as ever. Rimmer comes by, having found Lister, and tries to get the Cat to help him, as being a hologram Rimmer can lift nothing. The Cat, however, shallow and self-serving as always, is more interested in his lunch, and so it is left up to Rimmer and the scutters --- the little manual robots that look after menial tasks onboard the huge ship --- to look after Lister.

Lister bemoans the fact that he never had the guts to ask Kochanski out, and Rimmer declares that if she had accepted, then the only things stranger than that occurrence, in his opinion, would be the spontaneous combustion of the Mayor of Warsaw in 1546, and the time in 12th century Burgundy when it rained herring. Lister tells Rimmer of a theory he and Chen had, that everyone has two people inside them: the person that tells us we are great, and gives us our confidence (and so they called this facet of personality Confidence), and the person that puts us down and tells us we are useless, holds us back and is known as Paranoia.

That night, sleeping after his treatment in the medical unit, Lister dreams of fish falling from the sky, having listened to what Rimmer had been saying earlier, but the dream becomes real, and it does rain fish in their sleeping quarters! A moment later, the Mayor of Warsaw appears and then spontaneously combusts! To complete the list of hallucinations which have become solid, two figures have materialised in the drive room; these are Lister's Confidence and his Paranoia...

As expected, Confidence builds Lister up from the moment he arrives, and tells him he can do anything. Indeed, with the hallucination's help, Lister divines Rimmer's hiding-place for the rest of the personality disks of the crew, and prepares to retrieve them from outside of the ship so that he can bring back Chrissie Kochanski as a hologram. In opposition to Confidence, Paranoia brings Lister down, telling him he is useless, and that he should listen to Rimmer (which wins him a measure of kinship from the hologram), but Lister goes off, not surprisingly, with Confidence. They can't go outside the ship yet, because there is a magnetic storm in progress, but as soon as it passes, they are ready to make the trip outside.

Meanwhile, Rimmer tries to get rid of Paranoia, but his plan fails. The dust storm passes, and Lister and his Confidence go out in spacesuits to retrieve the disks. Rimmer notices however as they leave that the medicom has been wrecked, and challenges Lister to explain that. He can't, and Rimmer points out that both Lister's Confidence and his Paranoia have a vested interest in ensuring that Lister does not get better, as they are both symptoms of his sickness, and once he recovers they will both disappear. Lister is unconvinced however, and out they go.

Outside Red Dwarf, Confidence admits that he has killed Paranoia, but when Lister makes to go back inside, Confidence says he should take his helmet off; "Oxygen is for losers!" He goes to prove it by removing his own helmet, and the inevitable happens. With both his Confidence and his Paranoia gone, Lister is cured and now has the disk back. He is warned by Rimmer that the disk will only bring him misery, but he ignores his bunkmate, which as it turns out is unfortunate, as Rimmer has swapped the disks, and what Lister brings back is not Kochanski but ... another Rimmer!!

Note: this is the first of what could be called a two-parter in this series. Every other episode up to now has just ended, with little or no reference to what happened in the next one, but "Me2" (me squared) follows on directly from this, carrying through the consequences of Lister's ignoring Rimmer's warning, and indeed brings to a close the first season.

The idea of Confidence and Paranoia is a great one, and just one of many clever and innovative ideas Grant and Naylor will come up with over the course of the coming seasons, with some theories and plots which would not be out of place in a normal sci-fi drama --- minus the laughs, of course!

Best lines/quotes/scenes

Holly is bored. He's read everything that's ever been written anywhere, on any subject, and come to the conclusion that the worst book in the history of man is "Football: it's a funny old game" by Kevin Keegan.

HOLLY: "I'm at a loose end now. I don't know what to do with meself."
LISTER: "Holly, why don't you just read everything all over again."
HOLLY: "I was thinking it might help pass the time if I created a perfectly functioning replica of a woman, capable of independent decision-making and abstract thought and absolutely undetectable from the real thing."
LISTER: (Sitting up eagerly) "Well why don't you, then?"
HOLLY: "Because I don't know how. I wouldn't even know how to make the nose. Heh."
LISTER: "Holly, is there something that you want?"
HOLLY: "Well, only if you're not busy. Would you mind erasing some of my memory banks?"
LISTER: "What for?"
HOLLY: "Well, if you erase all the Agatha Christie novels from my memory bank, I can read 'em again tonight."
LISTER: "How do I do it?"
HOLLY: "Just type, HolMem. Password override. The novels Christie, Agatha. Then press erase."
LISTER jabs two-fingered on a keyboard. "I've done it."
HOLLY: "Done what?"
LISTER: "Erased Agatha Christie."
HOLLY: "Who's she, then?"
LISTER: "Holly, you just asked me to erase all Agatha Christie novels from your memory!"
HOLLY: "Why should I do that? I've never heard of her."
LISTER: "You've never heard of her because I've just erased her from your smegging memory!"
HOLLY: "What'd you do that for?"
LISTER: "You asked me to!"
HOLLY: "When?"
LISTER: "Just now!"
HOLLY: "I don't remember this."
LISTER: "Oh, I'm going to bed. This is gonna go on all night!"

Rimmer's to-do list, sadly not quite properly prioritised...


Rimmer: "Ah! Had a good day, Lister? Scrummed enough choccies? Watched enough drivel, have you? Look at you: you're turning into a sad, middle-aged woman. Next thing you know you'll be varnishing your nails and buying girdles."
LISTER: "Oh yeah? And what've you done that's so great?"
RIMMER: "I've achieved seventeen things today off my daily goal list, whereas you've never achieved anything ever in your entire life."
LISTER: "Don't know, you know. I went to the Officer's Block."
RIMMER: "When?!"
LISTER: "This morning."
RIMMER: "But it hasn't been decontaminated!"
LISTER: "You said it had last week!"
RIMMER: "No, I said it was on last Thursday's daily goal list!"
LISTER: "And you haven't done it yet?!"
RIMMER: "Tomorrow. It's on tomorrow's daily goal list. Item 34, right after "Learn Portugese."

The Cat finds a sick Lister crumpled on the ground:

CAT: "Hey, this is mine. That's mine. All this is mine. I'm claiming all this as mine. Except that bit. I don't want that bit. But all the rest of this is mine. Hey, this has been a good day. I've eaten five times, I've slept six times, and I've made a lot of things mine. Tomorrow, I'm gonna see if I can't have sex with something! (Dancing away) "Oooooooooow, yeaaaaaaah..."

(Coming across Lister's prone body)

CAT: (Singing) "S-E-X, you know I want it! S-E-X, I'm gonna get it! (Seeing Lister) S-E-X, I think I found it!" (Recognizes Lister and crouches down beside him.) "Oh, it's you! Hey, monkey, you're sick. Sick, helpless, and unconscious. If you weren't my friend, I'd steal your shoes! Time for a snack. This way!" (Dances away.)

On discovering Lister is unconscious, Rimmer tries to get the Cat to help, as being a hologram he can't pick him up. The Cat though, is not budging. Hey, he's eatin'!

RIMMER: "Is there something wrong with you? Lister's collapsed!"
CAT: "Yeah?"
RIMMER: "What do you mean "yeah?" He needs help!"
CAT: "And?"
RIMMER: "And if you don't help him he might die."
CAT: "Aw, no. That's too bad. I really liked him, too."
RIMMER: "So, come and help him."
CAT: "What? And interrupt my lunch?!"
RIMMER: "What is more important: a man's life or your smegging lunch?"
CAT: "That doesn't even deserve an answer."

Rimmer tries to cover up the fact that he's been trying to get rid of Paranoia, one half of Lister's delusional hallucination:

RIMMER: (Shouting to the scutter, who is armed with a syringe) "NOW! STAB HIM! STAB HIM! STAB HIM! QUICK! STAB HIM!"

PARANOIA turns to look at the scutter which has hardly moved.

RIMMER: (To PARANOIA) "Uh, you haven't met "Stabem," have you? He's one of the scutters. Stabem, meet Lister's paranoia. Lister's paranoia, this is Stabem."

Lister susses out where Rimmer has hidden the personality discs (with a little help from his Confidence):

CONFIDENCE: "Come on, King, you know Rimmer. Where would he hide 'em?"
LISTER: "I don't know."
CONFIDENCE: "Yes, you do."
PARANOIA: "No, he doesn't."
CONFIDENCE: "Come on! Think : winner!"
LISTER: "Outside. Outside the ship."
RIMMER: "Uh... Wrong, actually!"
CONFIDENCE: "Where outside?"
LISTER: "Well, he'd have to send the scutters... and the disks would have to be safe...."
RIMMER: "Wrong, wrong, absolutely brimming over with wrong-ability."
LISTER: "And they'd have to be right under me nose he could laugh at me."
RIMMER: "Wrong and getting wronger all the time."
LISTER: "Outside out sleeping quarters. The solar panel outside our sleeping quarters!"
RIMMER: "You followed me, you goit!"
LISTER: "Is that where they are?! That's incredible! I did it!"

Rimmer tries to be cool...

RIMMER: "Holly, put a trace on Paranoia."
HOLLY: "What's a trace?"
RIMMER: "It's space jargon. It means find him."
HOLLY: "No, it doesn't. You just made it up to be cool."

As Dave switches on the hologram generation unit, the awful truth is revealed..

On the other side of the room, another hologram of Rimmer appears.


RIMMER #2: "Well, he did warn you!"
RIMMER: "I certainly did." (To LISTER) "Do you honestly think I'd put Kochanski's disk in Kochanski's box where any Munchkin could find it? You think you had it bad before, Lister? Well now you've got it in stereo, baby!" (To RIMMER #2) "Welcome aboard, Rimmsie!"
RIMMER #2: "Nice to be here, Mr. Rimmer, you son of a gun."
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Last edited by Trollheart; 04-17-2015 at 01:39 PM.
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