How can Rimmer leave the ship?
Because Rimmer is a computer-generated hologram, some viewers are confused when he leaves Red Dwarf and visits planets, space stations, other ships, and so forth. In early episodes, Rimmer was generated by the Red Dwarf’s onboard holographic equipment, which allowed him to move freely about the ship. He was also able to travel on the Red Dwarf’s auxilary vessels (Blue Midget and White Giant), which presumably carry their own hologram generators. He could only visit the surface of a planet within a Hologram Projection Cage, as seen in “Thanks for the Memory”. This limitation proved to be inconvenient, so Grant Naylor came up with another explanation, the “light bee”. This device is a tapered cylinder about one inch in diameter and three inches long that “buzzes around inside him and projects his image” (as described by Holly in “Meltdown”). The light bee can go anywhere, allowing Rimmer to leave the ship without needing a projection cage. Some fans have speculated that the light bee was
