Discussion Main / FlashBackWithTheOtherDarrin

Pulled this:

• Red Dwarf's character Kochanski, as played by Scottish brunette Clare Grogan, only appeared in flashbacks and hallucinations for the first six series, as she was the long-dead girlfriend of Lister (and anyway, Grogan was too busy with other projects to feature regularly). When Chris Barrie (Rimmer) was too busy to be a regular character in Red Dwarf Series 7, his character was written out, and Kochanski was brought into the show to replace him. Since four years had passed and Grogan had no interest in playing her anymore, so English blonde Chloe Annett was recruited instead. Her appearance, personality and accent were so different that the show handwaved it by having her come from a parallel universe where she was raised in a middle class English family rather than a poorer family from Glasgow. Now, this is relevant because, especially in Series 8, the show continued to make flashbacks, only now they featured Annett rather than Grogan. This naturally made the 'parallel universe' story fall flat, and fans really had to suspend their disbelief (not that Red Dwarf was ever focused on being consistent).

There are a number of problems with this:

1) There were no flashbacks in season 8. There was one flashback featuring Kochanski in season 7, which was to the parallel universe the Chloe Annett Kochanski was meant to be from anyway.

2) It's not especially clear that the parallel universe thing was meant to explain why she looked different, rather than simply why she wasn't dead; Lister recognises her straight away, suggesting that, in-universe, she just looks like Kochanski. The aforementioned flashback is arguably meant to be the point where the universes diverge.

3) While Grogan is Scottish and Annett isn't, the first (and only) reference to Kochanski's Glaswegian background is the season 7 episode "Duct Soup", where Annett claims in her cut-glass accent that she was "brought up in the trendiest part of Glasgow". Which is ridiculous, but again doesn't suggest they were using the parallel universe thing to claim this Kochanski was English. I'm not sure where the idea Claire Grogan Kochanski was from a poorer background comes from at all.

4) In her initial appearance, at least, Chloe Annett Kochanski isn't blonde.

How does The Other Jennifer sound as an alternate name, because it's a sister trope to The Other Marty?

Not sure about saying Farscape and TNG "couldn't be bothered to" recreate Season One makeup - I don't know about Farscape but in TNG we were supposed to pretend Worf had always looked like this. Recreating the original forehead for flashbacks would have made it look like his forehead had actually changed in-story, which wasn't meant to be the case.