Pearl Forrester
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Pearl Forrester was a character on the Mystery Science Theater 3000 television series. Forrester was played by Mary Jo Pehl. Forrester was on the show from the seventh through the tenth season of the series. Forrester was the mother of Dr. Clayton Forrester (Trace Beaulieu).
At the end of the sixth season, TV's Frank, who had a strong friendship with Pearl and was the assistant to her son, died. Forrester moved in to help her son during the seventh season. When Trace Beaulieu left at the end of the season, Pearl took over as the head mad at the beginning of the eighth season; according to the backstory presented at that time, Pearl killed Dr. Forrester (after he had re-attained adulthood following his transformation into a 2001-esque Space Baby), then vowed to "avenge his death" by continuing his experiments on Mike and the Bots; she had herself cryogenically frozen until the year 2525 and became the leader of the Planet of the Apes-like apes who now dominated Earth, at which point she (apparently) somehow drew the Satellite of Love's crew back to the ship so that she could send them bad movies. From then until the end of the series, she was assisted by Professor Bobo, who often addressed her as "Lawgiver" (another Planet of the Apes reference), and Observer (aka Brain Guy). (During the epsiode "Quest of the Delta Nights", she is called "Mintgiver" by the bots.)
When the Satellite of Love returned to the present, Pearl and her lackies followed and took up residence at Castle Forrester, ancestral home of the Forrester family, where she found records of a long line of Forresters who had performed experiments similar to those she and Dr. Forrester conducted on Mike and the Bots. Oddly, Pearl claims to be descended from these Forresters, indicating that Dr. Forrester used his mother's original surname, rather than that of his father (whoever that might be), which might suggest that he was born out of wedlock, or possibly that his father died before he was born. Indeed, Pearl has been married several times, with all of her husbands meeting gruesome fates on their honeymoons:
- Chuck — became a prairie dog when he and Pearl visited a prairie dog colony in South Dakota; cause of death unrevealed
- Felipe — shot
- Jerome — cause of death unrevealed
- Maury — had hatpins shoved through his eyes right before the ceremony, presumably lingered long enough to in fact marry Pearl, then die on the honeymoon
- Wendell — shot
Which, if any, of these men was Dr. Forrester's father is unrevealed.
At the end of the series, Pearl accidentally used a new controller to send the Satellite of Love crashing back to Earth. She supposedly became the ruler of Qatar, where she vowed that her first item of business would be to insert a "U" in the nation's name. Her last words to Mike and the Bots before pulling the plug on Castle Forrester's observation equipment were, "Look, Nelson. Move on. I am."
