Kristine Kochanski - Series 1 To 6

Series 1 To 6

Liverpudlian actress Alexandra Pigg was originally cast in the role of Kochanski, but was unavailable for new recording dates following an electrician's strike, so the part then went to Scottish actress and lead singer of the new wave band Altered Images, Clare Grogan. She appears in the first episode of Red Dwarf "The End"; in the third episode "Balance of Power"; in the second series episode "Stasis Leak", and in the sixth series episode "Psirens".

In the first two series it becomes apparent that Dave Lister lusted after Kochanski (as played by Clare Grogan) from a distance and occasionally flirted with her but never had a relationship with her, never having had the courage to ask her out. Indeed, he was told by Holly that he had shared a total of 173 words with her, fewer words than he had shared with his rubber plant. Nonetheless, Lister includes Kochanski in his fantasy of buying a farm on Fiji. Lister likes to think that Kochanski was infatuated with him too, such as when he finds out that she dreamed about him three times, but is also insecure enough to believe it when Rimmer, posing as Kochanski, tells him "I just don't like you."

When Lister is revived from stasis, one of the first things he wants to do is revive Kochanski's hologram. But as the ship can only generate one hologram at a time Rimmer refuses to allow it, and goes so far as to hide all the personality discs of the crew including Kochanski's. In the episode "Confidence and Paranoia", Lister (along with a physical manifestation of his confidence) hits upon an idea of how to generate two holograms at once and also deduces where Rimmer has hidden the personality discs – only to discover too late that Kochanski's personality disc has been switched for a duplicate of Rimmer's.

In a possible future seen in the episode "Stasis Leak", Lister finds out that his future self from five years hence had gone back in time and married Kochanski three weeks before the accident, implying that the couple will somehow make it back to the Solar System within five years time. However it is unclear if this future will still come to pass as the timeline has been altered numerous times over the following series. Stage manager Dona DiStefano briefly portrays Kochanski near the end of this episode. In a behind the scenes interview on the Bodysnatcher DVD set, Donna DiStefano reveals that Clare Grogan had only been scheduled to appear in the pre-recorded scenes and not in the studio scenes. DiStefano has no lines, and her face is mostly obscured by the brim of a hat.

Clare Grogan briefly reprised the role one last time during a hallucination of Lister's in the sixth series episode "Psirens".