Kochanksi comes back at the end of series 1

[besbvesdy]

I was just watching the beginning documentary where they talk about how the plan all along was to bring Kochanski back, specifically at the end of Confidence and Paranoia with Lister finding her disc

BUT THEN they reconsidered (growing confidence as writers, zero chemistry between Craig and Clare) and brought back Rimmer instead. ‘Bodysnatcher’ is then offered as the episode the missing sixth episode that Me2 replaced…

EXCEPT that doesn’t make much sense cos Bodysnatcher doesn’t pick up where C+P left off, the Lister hologram comes about in a totally different way. It’s the same theme as Me2, sure, that living with yourself would be hell, so obviously it got replaced, but my question is – what happened to the Kochanski episode, that sixth episode they said they had written and then abandoned, where it’s her that Lister boots up and not Rimmer? That’s the lost episode i’m interested in…

Topic

[Warbodog]

It was originally going to be The End > Bodysnatcher > Balance of Power > Waiting for God > Future Echoes > Confidence and Paranoia (series finale cliffhanger). I think.

[Dave]

Maybe I’ve misremembered, but I thought the idea was that Bodysnatcher would have been earlier in the series, making Confidence & Paranoia the final episode, with the Kochanski hologram as a sort of cliffhanger for the end of series 1.

Removing Bodysnatcher left the series short, so they needed a new extra episode that went on the end and played out the two-Rimmers plot.

[Dave]

As Warbodog explained more succinctly in the meantime!

[besbvesdy]

AH I see. well that’s very satisfying, even if it doesn’t give me a legendary lost series 1 kochanski epsiode. ta!

[bloodteller]

it’s weird to think that Future Echoes was at one point going to be the fourth episode, right before Confidence and Paranoia- as in Future Echoes Rimmer delights at the idea of Lister dying, whereas in Confidence And Paranoia he’s genuinely worried when Lister falls sick and spends most of the episode telling him he needs to get better. So it would’ve just looked like he suddenly started giving a shit about Lister out of nowhere

As the second episode, Future Echoes works better, as it means there’s a gap between the the not-giving-a-shit and the giving-a-shit, so you can kind of see it as Rimmer getting to care about Lister over time

I don’t know if that made any sense, but my point was basically they made the right call on switching up the running order there

[Dave]

Future Echoes also provides the reason why Lister and Cat don’t just go into stasis for the return journey to Earth, which is good to get in as early as possible I think.

[cwickham]

In the parallel universe where Bodysnatcher wasn’t dropped and Confidence & Paranoia closed out Series 1 with its originally intended ending, what happened next? Did Kochanski become a regular, or was she quietly dropped with a Backwards-style text crawl at the beginning of Series 2?

[Dave]

Hologram-Kochanski could turn out to be a trick by Rimmer, and she quickly turns into another Rimmer at the beginning of the next episode. That way you get Me² to kick off Series 2.

[cwickham]

But in that universe, what episode gets bumped out of Series 2? Does Kryten not happen, given Rob Grant’s misgivings about including a robot character? And in the universe where Me2 was the second series opener, is the future of the series impacted by having another episode set entirely aboard the ship as the opener?

[Dave]

Series 2 gets seven episodes. Everything turns out fine.

[Jonsmad]

Somewhere lost in 1988 is the fact it was to be 13 episodes.

We have that strike to thank (or blame) for many things. The loss of Alexandra Pigg as Kochanski or she may have been the Kochanski returning end of series 1. If they hadn’t used a slot to re film The End. They could have filmed another episode. But a weaker opening and a duplication of hologramme
Plots across 13 episodes in a series of 7 and a series of 6. Would you swap? Unusual to have two series within a year but surely that came about because 1987s rehearsed series was reletively quick to remount and so they slid quickly into second commissioned series and with the show fresh in viewers minds really hit home with a strong second series before lister even sailed past his first Christmas!

[Author]

Replies