Review:Red Dwarf: Confidence and Paranoia and Me^2

Series One, Episode Five - Confidence and Paranoia

Often one of the less reccomended episode of this series, Confidence and Paranoia has an interesting concept that isn't properly explored, despite still being a fun and entertaining episode.

Lister has visited the Captain's quarters, which haven't been decontaminated. He contracts a wildly mutated strain of pneumonia, and for some reason his hallucinations are solid, including fish rain and the spontanious combustion of the Mayor of Warsaw. Also manifested are the personifications of Lister's Confidence and Paranoia; Confidence a cheeky, well-dressed, tanned game show host and Paranoia a thin, spindly, hateful man (Rimmer loves him). Lister and Confidence work out that Kochanski's hologram disk is in a chamber outside the ship, but as they head towards the chamber, Confidence admits that he had killed Paranoia and destroyed the Medicomp so that they could be together. He pulls off his helmet to show how "oxygen is for losers" and explodes.

When Kochanski's disk is brought back in, it is applied to Red Dwarf and a duplicate of Rimmer appears. To be continued...

Series One, Episode Six - Me^2

The first finale works to a degree not because it closes any storylines but because of how it acts as a good insight into the depths of Rimmer's self loathing.

Rimmer and Rimmer move into their own room, and Lister starts to do all of the things that annoyed Rimmer - but he can't appreciate the pay off that he got from Rimmer's reaction. Lister watches Rimmer's death tape, and finds that his last words were, "Gazpacho soup," and this puzzles him.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the other hologram holds all of Rimmer's self-loathing but in a more confident manner, exerting himself over the original and eventually having a large fight. Lister decides that one of them must be wiped, and chooses the original Rimmer. Before his "death," Rimmer tells Lister the story of Gazpacho Soup - and Lister then reveals that the other Rimmer was erased shortly after he left the room.

Thanks.