An Ace discussion.

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

Nessa mentioned pulling this out into a new thread, and I think it's a dandy idea.

We see four Aces in Red Dwarf. We see DJ-Ace, who is supposed to be the original, or one very like the original. We see Emohawk-Ace, who is Rimmer with his negativity sucked away. We see Reformed!Ace, who is a Rimmer much like our Rimmer after some time as Ace. And, of course, we see our Rimmer as Ace.

Here are some of my rambling thoughts.

The first Ace was meant to be The Man, the Marty Stu to end all Stus. And like any good Stu/Sue, a lot of people find him to be a real pain in the ass. He's brave and heroic, but he's also self-centered, pompous, and pretty shallow.

The second Ace was our Ace without his negativity. It's important, for me, to note that this is Rimmer before the events of Rimmerworld and Out Of Time, which I think were events that fundamentally changed Rimmer. The Emohawk could suck away Rimmer's negativity, but it could not give him anything he didn't have - like a general respect for life and consideration for others. He was kind to Lister, yes, but he was pretty darn quick to jump onto the idea of killing the Cat without his knowledge.

The third Ace was, in many ways, the best of the lot. He was all heroic and shit, but he was also kinder and more understanding, both of Lister and of Rimmer. He didn't bowl Lister over; he befriended him. It's as if his time as a soft-light hologram, his humiliation, and the lousy things he did all gave him a past that tempered the whole Ace-ness, making him a better person than Ace was.

And, of course, our Ace. I like to speculate on what happens to him, but it's rarely good. The Ace who recruited him abandoned Lister, Kryten, and Cat to die, and was trying to atone for that. Our Rimmer got pushed into the Ace thing by Lister, and I can't help but think that will affect what kind of Ace he becomes, and how he passes on the role (hence the fic I'm writing).

Comment? Add? Disagree heavily?

Comments

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

Yikes, this thread is aliiiive!

I think the idea is that the entire personality, everything that is Rimmer, is stored in the light bee, and it changes and grows as he does (pre-light-bee, Holly stored it, but for III on, everything seems to be contained in the bee - which is what allows him to be free of Red Dwarf and Starbug). So damaging the circuitry that encodes who he is would be 'killing' him. You could restore him from a backup on Red Dwarf, perhaps, or the backup in Psirens, but that wouldn't be our Rimmer any more than VIII-Rimmer was (I think they like to drive that point home - Me Squared, Rimmerworld, VIII...).

[nessaancalime.livejournal.com]

Its alive because it is all over the place ;-)
But you must assume all that stuff is loaded on the light bee, and as long as it is still working, one should be able to download it to a computer?
kahvi had that in that follow-up to your fic - that they had constantly kept back-ups of Listers brain so they could create a hologram of him. They must be able to keep back-up of the light bee? Ace should be able to do that on his ship, it must have fairly sophisticated computer equipment.

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

True that. I'll have to ponder on a way to reconcile RD continuity (love that stuff) with Rimmer's mortality. Maybe the bee has limited interface capabilities, so it's not easy to do. Maybe the process is so complex and trouble-prone (we're talking about downloading an entire human brain, after all) that each go at it has the potential for some pretty grody transcription errors. I like that one, actually. Maybe a fic where we meet a hologram who decided to become immortal by constantly updating himself, and by now (s)he's quite mad? Ach, they put that Psirens gag up for yuks, but it does mess with things. There was no reason for him to be downloaded from the computer, as his bee had been sitting happily in the freezer, and it brings up just what you said. Maybe the 'download' was just a systems check, and Kryten didn't understand it fully?

[nessaancalime.livejournal.com]

Now I am confused. Freezer in Psirens? Do you mean the mad holodoctor? One can wonder why the doctor didnt just power herself off instead of freezing herself down.

[roadstergal.livejournal.com]

Series opener of VI, when Lister's in deep sleep and Rimmer's in the cooler...

[nessaancalime.livejournal.com]

Ah, that's right. Seems strange, but maybe it was a way to save energy? Like why the Holodoctor was in the freezer. And his personality was clearly downloaded from the computer.
Do you know what really tickles me with this episode? Lister is seeing himself realistically, he is a slob, he has no taste, he cant play the guitar... and Rimmer is his best friend! The fact is, Lister dear, he is, you just don't want to see it like you don't want to see that you cant play the guitar.

[cyber-moggy.livejournal.com]

Maybe freezing the light-bee would in some way put the data stored in the light-bee's memory at risk, so they downloaded him into the computer first. I mean, that bee had been clearly frozen in some kind of liquid, and I doubt that the chip would have been designed for that. Although why they did it like that and not simply frozen the bee without the extras is beyond me.

Actually, that's an interesting thought. If downloading from a light bee is somehow a much more error-prone operation than downloading from a human brain, then how much of Rimmer's personality shifts can be attributed to his previous experiences, and how much can be attributed to errors in the download? And what haven't they told us...?