Kinga Forrester

Kinga Clayton Forrester is the lead scientist in the revived "Mystery Science Theater 3000" experiment. She is the daughter of Dr. Clayton Forrester and (according to Dr. Erhardt) Kim Cattrall^[1] and the granddaughter of Pearl Forrester.^[2]

Biography

Kinga was raised by her father, Dr. Clayton Forrester, and was familiar with his associate, Dr. Laurence Erhardt. She grew up unaware of who her mother was, something she would not learn until an unexpected visit from Dr. Erhardt years later. She was pleasantly surprised by the revelation.

Kinga is in command of Moon 13, a research station on the dark side of the Moon that serves as their lair. Her main assistant is Max, "TV's Son of TV's Frank". She is also aided by Synthia, a clone of her grandmother Pearl. At Moon 13, she commands a team of minions known as the Skeleton Crew.

Kinga's main area of expertise appears to be chemistry (developing "Kingachrome Liquid Television", a liquid capable of delivering media), as opposed to her father, who was primarily an engineer and biologist. She likely attended Gizmonic Institute, because she almost always greets Jonah with an Invention Exchange, a traditional Gizmonic greeting.

At the conclusion of her experiment she and Max found themselves trapped in movie theater, forced to watch bad movies such as they had forced on the SOL crew. Her fate following this comeuppance is so far unknown.

Personality

Unlike Clayton and Pearl, Kinga does not seem to want to rule the world. Kinga's main motivation for her evil experiments appears to be focused on the profits she can stand to make. In addition to resuming her father's work in hopes of selling the show to Disney, she has also dabbled in multiple money-making ventures (via the Invention Exchanges) and has been known to attempt to cajole investors into putting money towards her work. However, she has yet to see any sort of monetary success from her actions.

Kinga's brand of "madness" is a bit different than that of her father and grandmother. While her father and grandmother were more traditionally mad, Kinga is more of an overbearing boss, constantly micromanaging, caring little for anyone else around her, readily demeaning and denigrating her lackeys, and having little originality, given her practice of stealing ideas for invention exchanges from Jonah (and in the case of the Mexican jumping bean-bag chair, Joel).

Kinga displays some capacity for affection and sensitivity. Her fondness for Neville Laroy seems genuine, and her tormenting of Jonah is based more on expediency than any personal animus towards him.

Behind the scenes

Felicia Day has apparently been a fan of the show since she was young and saw Joel Hodgson at a convention and "went up to get a picture with him because I wanted to rub it in my brother Ryon's face". This encounter inspired Joel to ask her to join the show.^[3]
In developing the character, Joel Hodgson stated that the character needed to be able to be "both comedic and threatening... and if possible, both at the same time", "formidable woman in the Forrester family line", needed to have red hair since he "always felt the Forrester clan were from Scandinavian backgrounds" and "should be someone who could be threatening, and could have moments of true irrational rage". Joel met Felicia at the Salt Lake ComicCon and made an inquiry via Twitter as to whether she would be interested in joining the show. Her answer was, Yes pleassssssssss@sse".^[4]
According to Joel Hodgson, the inspiration for Kinga came from the Dragon Queen character from the 1975 Chinese superhero movie Infra-Man, combined with Lucille Ball.^[5]
Kinga first appeared (in character) in the video accompanying the Bring Back MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 campaign's eighth update.
Dr. Erhardt's claim that Kim Cattrall is Kinga's mother may not be reliable. While he has no reason to lie, there's also little reason to believe that he would have first-hand knowledge of the situation. It may be that he has told Kinga what Clayton always told him, which may not be accurate (as Clayton was often an unreliable source regarding his personal history).