The Best Person to Keep You Sane

Rimmer was outraged at Lister's accusation. 

Even though it was True, he felt it was so out of kilter with his own image of himself, he was able to summon up genuine indignation. 

True, he did it, but it wasn't like him!

'Fifty-odd years? Alone with you?'

'What's wrong with that?'

Lister stopped and put down his trunk. 'I think we should get something straight. I think there's something you don't understand.'

'What?' said Rimmer.

'The thing is,' said Lister as kindly as he could: 'I don't actually like you.'

Rimmer stared, unblinking. This really was news to him. He didn't like Lister, but he always thought Lister liked him. Why on Io shouldn't he like him? 

What was there not to like?

'Since when?' he said, with a slight crack in his voice.

'Since the second we first met. Since a certain taxi ride on Mimas.'

'That wasn't me! That guy in the false moustache who went to an android brothel? That wasn't me!'

Rimmer was outraged at Lister's accusation. Even though it was true, he felt it was so out of kilter with his own image of himself, he was able to summon up genuine indignation. As if he, Arnold J. Rimmer, would pay money to a lump of metal and plastic to have sexual intercourse with him! It just wasn't like him.

True, he did it, but it wasn't like him!

'I've never been to an android brothel in my life. And if you so much as mention it again, I'll . . .' Rimmer faltered. He suddenly realised there wasn't very much he could do to Lister.

'I don't get it. What point are you trying to make?'

'The point I'm trying to make, you dirty son of a fetid whoremonger's bitch, is that we're friends!' Rimmer smiled as warmly as he could to help disguise the massive incongruity he'd walked straight into.

'Sniff your coffee and wake up, Rimmer; we are not friends.'

'I know what you're referring to,' Rimmer nodded his head vigorously. 'It's because I gave you a hard time since you came aboard, isn't it? But don't you see? I had to do that, to build up your character. To change the boy into a man'

'Oh, do smeg off.'

'I always thought you saw me as a sort of big brother character. Heck - we don't always get on. But then, what brothers do? Cain didn't always get on with Abel . . .’

'He killed him.'

'Absolutely. But underneath all that they were still brothers, with brotherly affection. Heaven knows, I didn't always get on with my brothers - in fact once, when I was fourteen, I needed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after all three of them held my head down a toilet for rather too long - but we laughed about it afterwards, when I'd started breathing again.’

'You're not going to persuade me not to go into stasis. I am not spending the rest of my life with a man who keeps his underpants on coat hangers.'

Rimmer held up his outspread palms in a gesture of innocence. 'I'm not trying to persuade you '

'Then what's all this about?'

'I don't know. I'm not sure what anything's about any more.

Here comes the emotional blackmail, thought Lister

'It's not easy, you know, being dead.'

'Uhn,' Lister grunted.

'It's so hard to come to terms with I mean death. Your own death. I mean, you have plans . . . so many things you wanted to do, and now. . .'

'Look - I'm sorry you're dead, OK? It was cruddy luck. But you've got to put it behind you. You're completely obsessed by it.'

'Obsessed??'

'It's all you ever talk about.'

'Well, pardon me for dying.'

'Frankly, Rimmer, it's very boring. You're like one of those people who are always talking about their illnesses.'

'Well!' said Rimmer, his eyes wide in astonishment.

'It's just boring. Change the disc. Flip the channel. Death isn't the handicap it once was. For smeg's sake, cheer up '

'Well!' said Rimmer. And he couldn't think of anything else to say. So he said 'Well!' again.

'And quite honestly, the prospect of hanging around and having to listen to you whining and moaning, and bleating and whingeing for the next three quarters of a century, because you happen to have snuffed it, does not exactly knock me out.'

'Well!' said Rimmer.

'Fifty years alone with you? I'd rather drink a pint of my own diarrhoea.'

'Well!'

'Or a pint of somebody else's, come to that. Every hour, on the hour, for the next seventy years.'

'I can't believe' - Rimmer was shaking - 'you've just said that.'

The three of them clumped noisily to the habitation deck, and were quarters when they heard the voices.

'Shhh!' Lister held up his hand.

Faintly at first, then gradually increasing in clarity, the sound of a heated argument filtered down the corridor.

'What did you call me?'

 'I said you were a bonehead, Bonehead!'

'I'm a what?'

'It's no wonder Father despised you.'

'I was his favourite.'

'His favourite boneheady wimpy wet!'

'You filthy, smegging liar!'

'Everyone hated you. Even Mother.'

'Pardon?'

'You're a hideous emotional cripple, and you know it.'

'Shut up!' ,

'What other kind of man goes to android brothels, and pays to sleep with robots?'

'THAT WASN'T MEEE!!!!'

'Of course it was you - I'm you. I know.'

'Shut UP!!'

'You've always been afraid of women, haven't you?'

'Shut UP!!!'

The argument had begun at eight o'clock, shortly after supper. It was now five hours later, and it was showing no signs of abating. 

Neither of them could remember why it had begun or, indeed. what it was about. They just knew they disagreed with one another. It was all-out verbal warfare. They'd gone beyond the snide sniping stage; they'd gone past the quasi-reasonable stage, when each pretended to put his case coolly and logically, and would begin with phrases such as: 'What I'm saying is . . .', 'The point I'm making is . . .', and prevent the other from speaking with the perennial: 'If you'd just let me finish . . .'

They had made exactly the same points in a variety of different ways for nearly two hours, before tiredness crept in and the argument turned into a nuclear war.

Rimmer's double had launched the first nuke: the bonehead remark. 

Bonehead. Rimmer's nickname at school. He was really quite irrationally sensitive about it. The word yanked him back to the unhappy school-yards; reminded him of the mindless taunts of his cruel peers, of the dreadful mornings when he ached to be ill so he wouldn't have to go on the green school shuttle and have 

That Word daubed on his blazer in yellow chalk. He was branded. It was a brand that might fade, but would never completely disappear. He might be eighty years old, and successful as hell, but if he bumped into an old classmate he would still be Bonehead.

Before the double launched the bonehead nuke, Rimmer was unquestionably on top in the argument. The double had said something stupid, and Rimmer had been at the stage of saying: 'Give me an example of that,' knowing full well there were no examples to give. 

He was strutting up and down in his pyjamas, arms folded, a man in control, a man in command, when the bonehead nuke looped across without warning and blew him away.

'Pardon me, Bonehead.'

Rimmer actually physically staggered. Their arguments had never escalated this far before. They'd gone up to Def Comm Three, but never past it. Rimmer had to employ the time-honoured device of pretending not to have heard him properly, while his psyche's lone bugler sounded muster, and his tattered thoughts tried to regroup and launch an offensive.

But his double had capitalised on Rimmer's temporary silence by immediately launching three follow-up nukes in quick succession. The one about his Father hating him. K A B O O M! The one about him being a hideous emotional cripple. K A B O O M! And the one about him being afraid of women. K A B A B A B O O M!

Rimmer was about to use a nuke of his own. His left leg had gone into spasm caused by rage. His eyes were wide and crazed. And he didn't care any more. He was going to use the nuke. The nuke- to end all nukes. The total annihilation device. When his double used it instead.

'Oh, shut up,' the duplicate sneered, 'Mr Gazpacho!'

Rimmer stood, his mouth half-open, swaying dizzily. He felt as if someone had sucked out his insides with a vacuum cleaner.

'Mr What?' he half-smiled in disbelief. 'Mr What??'

'I said: "Mr Gazpacho, " D E A F I E!’

'That is the most obscenely hurtful thing anyone has ever

said . . .’

'I know,' the double grinned evilly.

Rimmer's hatchway slid open.

'That's the straw that broke the dromedary!' Rimmer screamed back at his double. Then he turned and padded into the corridor where Lister, Kryten and the Cat were standing. 'Ah, Lister. You're back,' he said quietly.

'Everything all right, is it?' Lister asked.

'For sure,' Rimmer smiled. 'Absolutely.'

'No problems, then?'

'Nope.'

'Everything's A-OK?'

'Yup! Things couldn't really be much hunky-dorier.' 

'It's just - we heard raised voices.'

Rimmer laughed. 'That's quite an amusing thought, isn't it? Having a blazing row with yourself'

From the sleeping quarters the double's voice screamed: 'Can you shut the smeg up, Rimmer! Some of us are trying to sleep!'

'I mean,' Rimmer continued, ignoring the outburst, 'obviously we have the odd disagreement. It's like brothers, I mean . . . a little tiff, an exchange of views, but nothing malicious. Nothing with any side to it.'

The double screeched: 'Shut up, you dead git!'

Rimmer smiled at Lister and, perfectly calm, he said: 'Excuse me -I won't be a second.'

He walked slowly down the corridor, paused outside the hatchway, and bellowed at maximum volume: 'Stop your foul whining, you filthy piece of distended rectum!'

Lister, Kryten and the Cat shuffled uncomfortably and examined the floor.

'Look, it's pointless concealing it any longer,' said Rimmer, walking back towards them. 'My duplicate and I . . . we've had a bit of a major tiff. I don't know how it started but, obviously, it goes without saying: it was his fault.'

Rimmer had been avoiding himself since the argument. He didn't know how to begin a reconciliation conversation. Things had been said which . . . well, things had been said. Hurtful things. Bitter, unforgivable things which could never be forgotten. Equally, he couldn't just carry on as if nothing had happened. So he spent the day in the reference library, keeping out of everyone's way.

It was 4.30 p.m. when he finally swallowed the bile and slumped reluctantly into his sleeping quarters, looking curiously unkempt. His hair was uncombed and unwashed. A two-day hologramatic growth swathed his normally marble smooth chin. His uniform was creased and ruffled. He flopped untidily into the metal armchair.

His double sat on the bunk, looking moodily out of the viewport window. As Rimmer entered he'd looked round over his shoulder, then turned back without acknowledging him.

They sat there in silence. One minute. Two minutes. Three minutes. Bitter, accusing silence. They were both masters at using silence, and right now they were using it in a bitter, accusing way. After twenty minutes of stonewalling, Rimmer could take no more.

'Look . . .' he began, 'I want to apologise for . . .' Rimmer faltered, uncertain as to precisely what he was supposed to apologise for. 'I want to apologise for everything.'

'Ohhhhh, shut up,' his double said dismissively.

Rimmer's eyes shrank, weasel-small. 'You don't like me, do you? Even though I'm you, you don't actually like me. Even though we're the same person, you actively dislike me.'

His double turned from the window. 'We're not the same person.'

'But we are. You're a copy of me.'

The double shook his head. 'I'm a recording of what you were, what you used to be. The man you used to be before the accident. You've changed. Lister's changed you.'

Lister? Changed him? Preposterous.

'I haven't changed. In what way have I changed?'

'Well, for a start, you've just apologised.'

What was it his father used to say? 'Never apologise - never explain.'

'I'm sorry,' Rimmer apologised again; 'it's just - I want us to get on.'

'Oh, don't be pathetic.'

Rimmer closed his eyes and leaned back on his chair. Was it just him? Was it some dreadful flaw in his personality that prevented him from having a successful relationship even with his own self? Or would it be the same for most people? Would most people find their own selves irritating and tire- somely predictable? When he saw his face in the mirror in the morning, that was the face he carried around in his head: he never saw his profile; he never saw the back of his own head; he didn't see what other people saw. It was the same with his personality. He carried around an idealised picture of himself; he was the smart, sensitive person who did this good thing, or that good thing. He buried the bad bits. He covered up and ignored the flaws. All his faults were forgiven and forgotten.

But now he was faced with them; all his shortcomings, personified in his other self.

Rimmer had never been aware how awesomely petty he was. How alarmingly immature. How selfish. How he could, on occasion, be incomprehensibly stupid. How sad he was; how screwed-up and lonely.

And he was seeing this for the first time. It was like the first time he'd heard his own voice on an answering machine. He expected to hear dulcet tones, clear, articulate and accentless, and was embarrassed and nauseated to discover only incoherent mumblings in some broad Ionian accent. In his head he sounded like a newsreader; in reality, he sounded nasal and dull and constantly depressed. And meeting himself was the same, only worse, raised to the power 1000.

And there were other things. He was at least thirty per cent worse-looking than he thought. He stooped. His right leg constantly jiggled, as if he wanted to be somewhere else. He snored! Not the loud buzz-saw hunnnk-hnnnunk of Lister; his own snore was, if anything, more irritating - a high pitched whiny trill, like a large parrot being strangled in a bucket of soapy water. It was a terrible thing to admit, but he was reaching the devastating, inescapable conclusion that he, as a companion, was the very last person he wanted to spend any time with.

Was this the same for everybody? Or was it just him? He didn't know.

The Game of Rassilon

I gave you companions to help, an old enemy to fight. 

Why, it's a game within a game.

BORUSA: 

Immortal, Doctor. Before Rassilon was bound, he left clues for his successor, whom he knew would follow him. 

Oh, I have discovered much, Doctor. 

This Game control room, the casket with the Scrolls, the Coronet of Rassilon.

DOCTOR 5: But not the final secret.

BORUSA: The secret of immortality, Doctor? It lies in the Dark Tower, in the Tomb of Rassilon itself. There are many dangers, many traps.

DOCTOR 5: So, you sent me to the Zone to deal with them for you.

BORUSA: 

I gave you companions to help, an old enemy to fight. 

Why, it's a game within a game.

DOCTOR 5: Only you botched it, didn't you? One of my selves is trapped in a time vortex, endangering my very existence.

BORUSA: 

Oh, you need have no fear, Doctor. 

Your temporal stability will be maintained. 

I need you to serve me.

DOCTOR 5: 

Oh, I would not serve you.

BORUSA: 

You have no choice, Doctor. 

I wear the coronet of Rassilon.

DOCTOR 5: And very fetching it is, too.

BORUSA: It emphasises my will and allows me to control the minds of other people. You bow down before me, Doctor.

(Against his will, the Fifth Doctor is pushed to his knees.)

BORUSA: Come, Doctor.

Earth-Angel/Blue Devil

Black + White

Red + Green

The Funkiest Thang U Ever Seen —

(EYE'll Tell U What His Name Is :— )

Everyone Knows That The Science Station is on The Right Side of The Enterprise Bridge.

" Gene Roddenberry also wanted Spock's appearance to be very similar to typical portrayals of SATAN,  The Devil. "I did purposely give him a slight look of the 'devil' because I thought that might be particularly provocative to women, particularly when his nature contrasted so greatly to this," Roddenberry stated. 

The following character biography appeared in Roddenberry's original, 1964 series pitch Star Trek is... (and was reprinted in The Making of Star Trek):

"The First Lieutenant. The Captain's right-hand man, the working-level commander of all the ship's functions – ranging from manning the bridge to supervising the lowliest scrub detail. His name is Mr. Spock. And the first view of him can be almost frightening – a face so heavy-lidded and satanic you might almost expect him to have a forked tail. Probably half Martian, he has a slightly reddish complexion and semi-pointed ears. But strangely – Mr. Spock's quiet temperament is in dramatic contrast to his satanic look. Of all the crew aboard, he is the nearest to Captain April's equal, physically, emotionally, and as a commander of men. His primary weakness is an almost catlike curiosity over anything the slightest 'alien.'"

In the revised first draft script of "The Cage" (dated 6 October 1964), Spock was described thus; "The only exception to the familiar types represented by the crew, Mister Spock is of partly alien extraction, his reddish skin, heavy-lidded eyes and slightly-pointed ears give him an almost satanic look. But in complete contrast is his unusual gentle manner and tone. He speaks with the almost British accent of one who has learned the language in textbooks." The episode's revised final draft script (dated 20 November 1964) excluded mention of the "reddish skin" but otherwise remained the same. Later in the script, one of Spock's statements was directed to be delivered in an "excited" manner. "

"This is Ravenna in North Italy.

'This unassuming town was once just about the most important place in the world.'

It was the last capital of the Western Roman Empire and in the early days of the Christian church,

its citizens wrestled over the great religious questions.

'Was Jesus divine?'

A : CONCENTRATE AND ASK AGAIN

'What was his relationship to God and the Holy Spirit?'

A : BETTER NOT TELL YOU NOW

When the Basilica of Sant'Apollinare Nuovo was built in the sixth century, many of the main beliefs of what we recognise today as Christianity hadn't yet been decided - including who or what the Devil was.

A : Benedict Cumberbatch. 

But I've come here because some people believe this is where his story begins.

So if you come through this little doorway, you enter the Basilica.

This is a spectacular church.

These splendid, glittering mosaics are how they would have been when they were first created.

The sixth century is a critical era for Christianity because the iconography of the religion wasn't yet secured.

There's no crucifixion here, for example.

Even the appearance of Jesus varies.

The important series of mosaics here for us is right at the very top -

up near the roof, about a metre high where there are 26 scenes from the life of Christ.

And somewhere in here - they say - is the first depiction of the Devil in Western art.

And you have to look around to find it.

It's not going to be on the side with the Passion.

It's somewhere up here.

In fact, here it is. If you look up there, there is a scene which may be the first Last Judgment in Western art and what we're looking at is 

GOD

Christ in Purple in The Middle

and to 

His Right is an angel dressed in RED

MICHAEL

and to 

His Left is an angel dressed in BLUE

LUCIFER

and that angel dressed in blue may well be Satan.

Why do we think it's Satan?

The answer is because in front of him you have these 3 Goats.

Matthew's story in the Bible tells of when Christ comes in judgment at the end of the world

and separates out the nations and humankind into 

The Good - 

The Sheep, who he places to his Right -

and 

The Bad - 

The Sinners, The Goats, who go to the Left.

There you can see The Goats.

He's enacted that separation and it's bizarre because,...

instead of the grizzly ruler of Hell who we're all familiar with, you have, from down here, someone who looks radiant, he's glowing.

He is a beautiful angel. 

He's quite ephebic.

And, of course, he's Blue not Red, which is exactly the opposite of what we might expect.

In modern minds, red is the colour of Hell, 

but in the sixth century,

Blue was the colour associated with 

darkness, with error.

What's so strange about this image in particular is that, in a sense, it's an exception. It's a one-off.

There are no depictions of the Devil that we know of which exist before this mosaic.

Which kind of makes you think.

Satan, supposedly central to Christianity -

The Personification of Evil itself - seems absent from the artistic world for hundreds of years.

And when he does turn up, he arrives with no ceremony, almost hidden amongst a grand programme of decorative mosaics.

And not only that, he looks like an angel.

But this Blue Angel doesn't convince everyone.

Arguments have raged for decades about his significance.

Giovanni Gardini is a local religious historian and writer.

[ And a Christian — The Arian Christians who made the mosaic are declared Heretics (although, the Basilica itself and its contents are still consecrated sites of Christian worship according to Rome, which is interesting in and of itself). ]

"But what about this bloke up here - 

The Blue Angel, the Devil?"

[ He can't openly admit the Truth of a Heretical Teaching and remain in The Church - he could be excommunicated. ]

"No...

It's The Devil."

[ He accepted The Premise of The Question — Nobody mentioned Darkness. ]

"No —

I can see him. He has the goats."

This argument about the blue angel encapsulates a big problem with the Devil in early Christian art.

There's no clarity about his image because there's no clarity about his role.

I don't think art historians will ever agree on whether or not that blue angel is meant to be the Devil.

It seems accepted that his colour is about evoking shadows and the night to represent the erring ways of the goats or sinners in front of him.

It's in contrast to Christ who's associated with the light, but no-one could argue that he is the personification of evil.

He's got this mysterious, unsettling aspect.

He emanates an aura of error, but there are no horns, no tail or a cloven hoof or even the merest whiff of sulphur, so he seems to be almost more like a heavenly functionary.

He's a custodian of sinners and he's not Satan as we know him today.

But seeing the Devil as an angel isn't as surprising as it might seem when you think of the theological context - a century before the Ravenna mosaic was created, Christian thinkers had fixed upon an ambiguous passage in the Book of Isaiah.

To them, it suggested that Lucifer, the most beautiful angel in Heaven,had rebelled against God and been cast out of paradise.

The fallen angel Lucifer had become the Devil.

But that was just about all contemporary artists had to go on.

Satan isn't even mentioned in Genesis.

So does this mean the Devil was simply a beautiful angel gone wrong 

and if so, how did he become the figure we recognise today -

The implacable enemy of God and the tyrant who rules in Hell?

The Man I Knew.

The Man I Came to Help.

Earth-Angel, Earth-Angel —

Please Be Mine...

My Darling Dear,

Love You for All Time.

I'm just a Fool —

A Fool in Love

Wi-ith Yooooou....