Cats and Holograms

Episode One – The End

As I stated in my introductory post, my aim is to show you in which ways Red Dwarf is philosophical and which philosophical problems are shown or can be questioned in almost each episode. Therefore, I won’t retell the plot here, I will only state the problems, ideas, topics which have or can have philosophical background.

Setting aside Rimmer’s and Lister’s argument at the beginning, first episode of Red Dwarf awakens philosophers in us with several different topics, but we can discuss the two main concepts. First one concerns human nature and the second one is about the future.

I would like to start with the issue of holograms. In first episode, character George is welcomed back to crew, after his funeral, as hologram. The crew was warned not to walk through him and to treat him as normal human being. Since late 80’s when Series One was aired, a lot has changed in the field of holography, but lets stick to basics and imagine our lives with holograms or as holograms. If holography would developed as shown in Episode One, we would have a chance to live with our loved ones after their death, but the real question here is should we. Sure, they are in different form and can’t perform as they used to when alive, but their thoughts, ideas, their mind would still be with us and it can provide comfort to some people, who have difficult time in accepting death. I have always wondered, should we live forever and how could this affect our world, since progress is possible only through new ideas and new ways of thinking. If everyone would live forever, in any possible form, even as holograms, I fear that variety would vanish and that we couldn’t think of new ideas the way we are thinking of them now. Our Dave Lister experiences that in a hard way, after Rimmer is brought back to life as hologram. If I were to live as a hologram, eventually I wouldn’t do philosophy, but would probably switch to physics or biology, or maybe even astronavigation, perhaps I would be more cappable than Rimmer in that field; but I believe that my personality wouldn’t much change – for example, if I was brave it is unlikely that I would become a coward, or vice versa. Lister came out of stasis after 3 million years the very same as he came in, Rimmer was brought back as hologram of himself, with same drives, emotions, same virtues and flaws. ‘I know you’re dead Rimmer, but you’re still a smeghead’ said Lister, and proved a point. Of course, Lister’s and Rimmer’s personality need to remain the same in order to create a conflict and action in the show, they need to stay black and white characters. One can argue that people can change during their life and there are probably many examples to back that up – but what about cats? Could cats change if they would really evolve into humans?

This is the other important topic in Episode One. Entire new specie has evolved during 3 million years and I wonder could that really happen, and if it could what kind of being would they really be. In Red Dwarf, cat people are just like us, they go to school, read, write, they are religious, they go to wars (I will get back to each of these points later on, in Episode Four), they made the same mistakes we did. Only through portrayal of cat people’s evolution, when we see them as others, we become aware of our own silly ways. On the other hand, when Lister suggest they return home to Earth, Rimmer states a point of other kind of evolution, the one that has been going on on Earth for the last 3 million years, where people might not exist anymore, or even if they do who knows what they would look like. We often don’t think about distant future as far as 3 million years and what will happen with our planet, our species by that time, but it is extremely important to think of the future, whether it’s our personal our the future of our kind and our world. This concept of future – together with previously mentioned concept of human nature – is what Red Dwarf illustrates, questions, ridicules and later on, as we follow the crew, by each episode, we will question these topics together with them.