Rimmer disappears from Red Dwarf and re-materialises on the holo-ship Enlightenment, a ship made out of light and crewed entirely by holograms who can eat, drink, touch, feel, and taste anything on the ship, as light can touch light. The crew is also required to have sex at least twice a day for their own sanity. Rimmer takes advantage of this with Commander Nirvana Crane. They begin to fall in love, but the ship is crewed by the hologramatic cream of the Space Corps and the only way to gain a place on the ship is to defeat one of its crew in an intelligence test. Rimmer decides that as he has a 96% chance of failure, the only option left open to him is to cheat like the feeble-minded Judas that he is, but he does not know that in the challenge, he will compete against Nirvana. Nirvana finds out how much it means for Rimmer to join the crew and sacrifices herself for him. Going against his earlier statement that career would come before love, Rimmer resigns his new commission and returns to Red Dwarf, so that Nirvana can live again on the Enlightenment.Quotes
Rimmer is trying to say goodbye to his crewmates after being accepted aboard the Holoship.
Rimmer: Over the years... I have come to regard you... as people... I met.
Trivia
- "Holoship" overran by eight minutes and lots of the shots of the ship were cut.
- When a member of the Enlightenment's crew boards Red Dwarf to survey it, he recognizes the Cat as a Felis sapiens. This suggests, if continuity is followed (a big if in this series), that the holoship had previously encountered the second cat ark mentioned in the first series. However, it could be that the scanner came up with the name of the species in order to fully identify the crew members, as in Series III's last episode "The Last Day" where Hudzen 10 describes The Cat as Felix Sapiens--both could therefore be self-made conclusions with the aid of electronic devices.
- It could also be all earth cats eventually involved into humanoid form, not just the ones aboard Red Dwarf.
- In Series I, it is clearly stated that Holly can only maintain one hologram at once, but Rimmer and another hologram are on Red Dwarf at the same time briefly in this episode. This may be explained in 3 ways:
1: Rimmer was being generated by the holoship for the test.
2: In "Confidence and Paranoia" it is shown Holly can generate a second hologram if useless electrical systems are shut down; presumably at the end of "Me²" after the second Rimmer was shut down, Holly never bothered reactivating those systems, keeping the ability to generate the second hologram.
3: Rimmer is under light bee power whereas the second hologram is under supportive computer power.
