A character from the third
Red Dwarf novel,
Backwards, introduced shortly after
Ace Rimmer is introduced.
I was really confused by the whole thing because beta Rimmer is only a character in the novels and this was entirely skipped in the episode
Dimension Jump when Ace is introduced to the TV show. So, if you plan to read the book and prefer suprises, stop now because it's pretty impossible to tell you who beta Rimmer is without spoiling a good portion of the book.
You've been warned.
Ace goes to a
bar and picks a fight with a young man (the only guy in the place), with the secret motive of raising the boy's confidence so he would take and pass his flight exam the following day. Ace lets the boy win, and ends up getting a
black eye and having his
St. Christopher's medallion inadvertantly taken from him during the
scuffle. The accidental theft of his
medallion later saves his life.
For the past several days, Rimmer had been preparing to pilot an
expirimental craft capable of breaking the
light speed barrier. Since it has never been done before, nobody really knows what would happen when the drive is engaged. The day after the barroom fight, three days prior to take-off, the craft returns. Before it's even left. It is
scorched and
scarred, and inside they find the body of Ace Rimmer
burnt to a crisp inside, his
medallion melted to the
control panel and the conclusion is that faster than light speeds mean
time travel (and high temperatures). Despite the fact that Ace would die, two conclusions are drawn. The first is that
causality means Ace is destined to make the jump and can't
not jump. The second is as Ace put, "I'm a
test pilot in the
Space Corps. It's my job to do it." (
What a guy!) Therefore, the launch schedule remains unchanged, although Ace and
Spanners Lister do try to work out what went wrong.
Two things tip them off as to not what happened, but who it happened to. First, the date recorded in the wreckage's
black box was three days prior to launch. If it had come from the
future, the date should be a future date. The second was that the medallion Ace had lost wound up melted to the controls. So it appears to Ace and Spanners that this is not a future Ace, but instead, an alternate version of Ace from a
parallel universe who simply left three days prior to the time Ace is scheduled to leave. (As you can tell it's already getting confusing.) While the team tried to work out what went wrong with the alternate Rimmer's ship so that Ace could make the jump successfully, Ace suggests they refer to the dead Rimmer as "beta Rimmer" so as to avoid any further confusion.
Well I won't say what happens to Ace because this isn't a writeup on
the Ace Rimmer, just an alternate version of him. Just read
Backwards by
Rob Grant.
You'll like it.