Holly (Red Dwarf)

Holly is played by Norman Lovett in series 1, 2, 7 and 8. Following a "head sex change" to look like his parallel universe alter ego "Hilly", Holly was played by Hattie Hayridge in series 3-5. Holly did not appear at all in series 6, and as the male version he appeared in series 7 only in the final episode.

Holly is an intelligent computer. Holly's user interface appears on ship screens as a disembodied human head on a black background, and can also be downloaded into a watch worn by Lister. As a male he appeared as around 50 years old with receding brown hair (completely bald on top as of series 8), and as a female she appears as a woman of ambiguous age but probably 30-ish with long blond hair. In series 1 he was pixelated but this idea was dropped in series 2.

Holly is the ship's Tenth Generation AI hologrammatic computer with an IQ of 6000. After releasing Dave Lister from stasis, Holly tells him that the crew have been wiped out by a radiation leak and has spent three million years in stasis.

Holly's first love was a Sinclair ZX-81 but she wouldn't load (well for him anyway). After meeting his female counterpart Hilly, he was so in love and based his new face on hers. He is friends with another computer called Gordon, who has an IQ of 8000 and is an Eleventh Generation AI hologrammatic computer. Gordon appears visually identical to Holly and seems just as senile.

Holly prides himself on the fact he had an IQ of 6,000 but after three million years by himself, he has become computer senile, or as Holly puts it "a bit peculiar". He claims that 6000 is not that great, saying it's the same IQ as 6,000 PE teachers. Later, with the help of the toast obsessed Talkie Toaster, her IQ expands to 12,368 but her life expectancy is reduced to three and a half minutes (luckily this timeline was erased and she went back to being senile).

The crew often ridicule Holly on his senility but Holly often comes out on tops. His finest practical joke was when a backup computer, Queeg 500 claims that Holly's IQ is only 6, "a poor IQ for a glass of water" and takes over the ship. Queeg makes the crew's lives hell. Then Holly challenges Queeg to a game of chess and the loser gets deleted. Holly loses the game and supposedly says farewell to everyone. It turns out that Queeg was in fact Holly, who was playing the "jape of the decade". He also fooled Lister that Norweb spacefighters were after him and wanted £180billion (Lister supposedly owned 98% of the Earth's wealth due to interest on an old bank account, and had left a half eaten sausage in his kitchen, which now covered 7/8s of the Earth's surface). He is often cruel to Rimmer. After being called a "stupid ugly goit" by Rimmer (who had Petersen's arm), Holly allowed the arm to beat Rimmer up. He gave Rimmer a haircut that made him look like Helen Shapiro. He also gave Rimmer a massive boil on the back of his neck after being called immature.

Holly runs most of Red Dwarf's systems despite now suffering from computer senility. Among Holly's systems are the service droids known as skutters that clean, perform engineering tasks and function as Rimmer's hands since he cannot touch anything non-holographic.

While on his own for three million years, Holly invented Hol Rock, where he decimalised music (having ten notes instead of eight), an A-Z guide of the Universe and claims that he has a collection of singing potatoes to keep him sane. He discovered that there were six main Universes, one of which ran backwards. He believed Kevin Keegan wrote the worst book ever (Football, It's a Funny Old Game). He is proud of the fact that he can do moon impressions just by lowering his face on the screen. He often greets the crew with "Alright dudes!" He hates being a watch, especially on Lister's wrist. One of the more worrying aspects of Holly's senility is that he has developed a blindspot for the number 7. When he invented the Holly Hop Drive he claimed that one mistake in his 13 trillion calculations and they would be blown up. He then missed out the seven in his countdown.

Holly was lost for some time along with the ship, which had been stolen by Kryten's nanobots. He was found on a planet made of junk from Red Dwarf, having reverted to his male form, and was downloaded into Lister's Holly-watch. When the nanos rebuilt the ship, there were two Hollys, the original, who generally remains in the watch, and a rebuilt version which has not suffered the effects of three million years alone. The non-senile version only appeared in one episode, "Back In the Red, Part III", and was distinguished by having a head shaped like an egg.