The online campaign to get Mystery Science Theater 3000 rebooted is only a couple of weeks old, and yet the casting news just keeps coming. Creator and former captive janitor Joel Hodgson announced his desire to have a certain actress play a new mad scientist character (known as a Mad) on the show. And now, that actress has signed on to take the role.
Actress, gamer and all around internet geek Felicia Day announced on Twitter today that she’s playing the new Mad on the new MST3K. Her character (also a new addition to the MST3K world), Kinga Forrester, will be responsible for launching a brand new unsuspecting janitor (Jonah Ray) into space and forcing him to watch horrible, terrible, no good movies on an almost constant basis.
The new iteration of Mystery Science Theater 3000 will play much like the original version. The show focuses on a time in the not too distant future where two mad scientists decide to test how many viewings of B-movies (and sometimes C- and D-movies) it will take to drive a person bat crap crazy. They hope to find the perfect B-movie to use as a weapon in their scheme for world domination. I suppose finding a way to drive the whole world nutty so you can take over as emperor of Earth, or whatever, does make a certain amount of ass backward sense.
We don’t know much about the character of Kinga right now, but we do have one important part of information from Joel Hodgson via the Kickstarter fundraising page for the new show. Kinga Forrester will be the daughter of Pearl Forrester and sister to Dr. Clayton Forrester. Both characters were featured as head Mad on MST3K during the first run of the series, which took place from 1988 until 1999.
Felicia Day has become something of internet maven since creating, writing, producing and starring in her online show The Guild in 2007. The show, about a guild of online gamers who play a massively multiplayer online role playing (MMORPG) video game and decide to hang out in real life, gained a huge following among gamers and the unabashedly geeky during its six seasons. The actress has also had recurring roles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, Eureka and Dollhouse. She’s also known for her voice work in several video games and her starring role in Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Geek & Sundry, Day’s premium YouTube channel featuring exclusive content, started in 2012.
It’s not really surprising that someone with as much geek street cred as Felicia Day was seen as being a good replacement for the former Mads. Joel Hodgson has said that he felt the only way to renew the show was to start over with a new cast. It makes sense that he would look for people who had an appreciation for the first version of the show, like Day and new host Jonah Ray, so that the spirit of MST3K would live on.
Well, Felicia Day has her work cut out for her. Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans are obsessed with the Forrester line as Mads on the show. Day’s history of playing nerdy, shy, giggly characters doesn’t exactly line up with the mad scientist role. But, Joel Hodgson has put a lot of thought into his new casting choices, and since he created the show, he probably has a good idea about what works.
