Holly (Red Dwarf)
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Holly | |
---|---|
Red Dwarf character | |
First appearance | "The End" (1988) |
Last appearance | "Red Dwarf: The Promised Land" (2020) |
Portrayed by | Norman Lovett Hattie Hayridge |
Holly is a fictional character in the
Actors
The character was played by
In the unaired pilot for the American version of Red Dwarf, Holly was played by Jane Leeves.[2][3]
Appearance
Holly is an "
After meeting his female counterpart, Hilly, in the series 2 episode
In series VII–VIII, the upgraded male version of Holly appears to be around 60 years old with receding grey hair and a bald patch.
In 'Skipper', the final episode of Series XII, Holly re-appears in a brief appearance when Rimmer travels to a point in time where the crew are about to be killed by the radiation leak as demonstrated in The End. He appears to be approximately 70 years old, has less hair than his previous appearances and that hair has become more grey.
Character
Holly is the ship's Tenth Generation
Holly always speaks in a droll, slightly monotonous, and quiet voice, even when sounding alarms, which consist of himself speaking simply "Ding-dong. There's an emergency going on. (pauses) It's still going on." and repeating as much. He often greets the crew with "All right dudes?"
Among his achievements was the invention of Hol Rock,[5] where he decimalised music (having ten notes instead of eight—although he admits that this would result in "piano keyboards being the width of a zebra crossing, and women being banned from playing the cello"), writing an A-Z guide to the universe and reading every book in existence (concluding that the worst was Football: It's a Funny Old Game by Kevin Keegan).
He was friends with another computer called Gordon, who had an IQ of 8,000 and was an Eleventh Generation AI hologrammatic computer. Gordon resembled Holly in that he was represented as a balding middle-aged man. Despite having a higher IQ than Holly, Gordon showed a lesser understanding of technology than Holly.[5] One of the more worrying aspects of Holly's senility is that he has developed a blind spot for the number 7. When he invents the Holly Hop Drive, he claims that one mistake in his 13 billion calculations and they would be blown up. He then misses the seven in his countdown, possibly the cause of the error that sent them to the parallel universe.
Holly runs most of Red Dwarf's systems, although in several episodes such as Quarantine, Holly is shown to not have complete control of Red Dwarf, and in Holly's absence in Series VI and VII, a computer is mentioned by the crew, and is seen to control autopilot.
Holly was lost for some time, along with the ship, which had been stolen by
In
Kryten briefly mentions Holly in the series X episode
Holly made a return appearance in the final episode of Series XII ("Skipper"), once again played by Lovett. This version of Holly was still senile but located in an alternate universe which Rimmer enters, set just before the crew are wiped out by the radiation leak.
In Red Dwarf: The Promised Land, Lister discovers Holly's back-up personality disc and uses it to reactivate him, but the 'new' Holly, although once again smart, begins steps to destroy the ship as he concludes it is no longer fulfilling a worthwhile function for the company. Temporarily retreating to Starbug, the crew are eventually able to trick the new Holly into downloading the experiences of the original from the Red Dwarf archives, which restores his senility but also his old personality, prompting him to help them reclaim the ship from the rogue Cats.
References
- ^ "Twitter". Twitter. 21 March 2020. Retrieved 21 March 2020.
- ^ Red Dwarf Series II (19 July 2002). "Dwarf USA | Features". Red Dwarf. Retrieved 23 March 2009.
- ^ "Red Dwarf (1992) (TV)". IMDb. 9 August 2003. Retrieved 23 March 2009.
- ^ "Hilly | Mechanicals | Space Corps Database". Red Dwarf. Archived from the original on 31 December 2008. Retrieved 1 April 2009.
- ^ a b c Red Dwarf Series II (17 January 2003). "Holly Hunting | Features". Red Dwarf. Archived from the original on 21 November 2008. Retrieved 23 March 2009.
- ^ Red Alert, p. 8, SFX, Issue 181, April 2009