Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988–1999), usually abbreviated MST3K, is an American cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson featuring a man and his robot sidekicks who are trapped on a satellite in space and forced to watch particularly bad movies, especially (but not limited to) the science fiction genre. The gimmick of the show is that the man and his robots make a running commentary on the film, making fun of its flaws and wisecracking their way through the film. Series creator Hodgson originally played the stranded man, Joel Robinson. When he left in 1993, series head writer Michael J. Nelson replaced him as new B-movie victim Mike Nelson, and continued in the role for the rest of the show's run.
The format proved to be popular. During its eleven years and 198 episodes (including one feature film), MST3K attained a fiercely loyal fan base, and much critical acclaim. The series also garnered a Peabody Award in 1993.
The "plot" of the show never pretended to be anything other than just an excuse for the movie commentary and the comic sketches called "host segments."
Two mad scientists, Dr. Clayton Forrester (named after the main character in The War of the Worlds), played by Trace Beaulieu, and his sidekick Dr. Laurence Erhardt, played by Josh Weinstein, launch Joel Robinson (Hodgson), a janitor working for the Gizmonics Institute, into space and force him to watch truly horrible B-movies. They do this in order to measure how much bad movie-watching it takes to drive a person crazy, and to pinpoint the perfect B-movie to use as a weapon in Dr. Forrester's scheme of world domination. Forrester's scheme was that when he found a movie so bad that it broke Joel's spirit, he would unleash it on an unsuspecting populace and turn everyone into mindless zombie slaves. (The sycophant TV's Frank, played by Frank Conniff, replaced Dr. Erhardt in the second season premiere following Weinstein's departure from the series.)
Trapped on board the Satellite of Love (S.O.L.) — a reference to a Lou Reed song — Joel builds the robots that populate the ship (ostensibly because he is lonely, and as a homage to the 1970s film Silent Running). The robots are Tom Servo (voiced first by Weinstein, then by Kevin Murphy) and Crow T. Robot (voiced first by Beaulieu, then by Bill Corbett), who accompany Joel in the screening room; Gypsy (voiced first by Weinstein, inhaling as he spoke, then by Jim Mallon and later by Patrick Brantseg, both using a falsetto voice), who does not appear in every episode but handles the "higher functions" of the S.O.L. (such as steering the ship); and Cambot, the recorder of the experiments who is visible only during the opening credits and occasionally interacts with the others. Also making intermittent "appearances" in the show's early years is Magic Voice, a disembodied female voice whose primary role is to announce the start of the first commercial break in each episode.
Joel has no control over when the movies start, for, as the theme song states, "he used those special parts to make his robot friends". He must enter the theater when "Movie Sign" flashes, though, as Dr. Forrester has numerous ways to punish Joel for non-compliance (including shutting off all oxygen to the rest of the ship and electric shocks). As the movies play, the silhouettes of Joel, Tom, and Crow are visible at the bottom of the screen, wisecracking and mocking the movie (a practice they often referred to as "riffing") to prevent themselves from being driven mad.
Just before or after commercial breaks, Joel (and later, Mike) and the bots sometimes perform skits, songs, or other short sketch pieces (called "host segments") that are sometimes related to the movie they are watching. These segments sometimes even feature "visits" by prominent characters from the movie, such as Torgo from The Hands of Fate or Mr. B Natural from the short subject B-movie of the same name (which MST3K spoofed). But before too much frivolity can transpire, the "movie sign" lights flash, signaling the resumption of the movie.
Many episodes also include screenings of unintentionally hilarious short films or "shorts," including propaganda-style films from the 1950s, a training film for Chevrolet sales managers, and films intended to teach children about posture or personal hygiene. These are less frequent in later episodes.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 first aired on local TV in the Twin Cities on KTMA-TV, a UHF station (not a cable access channel, as is sometimes reported, but an over-the-air station that continues to exist today as WUCW-TV) from November 24, 1988 to May 1989. The station's declining fortunes forced it to cancel MST3K. However, just as its run was ending, the creators used a short "best-of" reel to pitch the concept to executives at the Comedy Channel, a national cable channel that was then being created. It became one of the first two shows picked up by it. After two seasons there, the Comedy Channel and rival comedy cable network HA! merged to become Comedy Central. It would run there for five more seasons, reigning as its "signature series" for several years, before falling out of favor with the network's management. When Comedy Central dropped the show after a shorter-than-normal seventh season, MST3K's Internet fan-base staged a precedent-setting write-in campaign to keep the show alive. (This included taking contributions from MST3K fans worldwide for a full-page ad in the television trade publication Daily Variety magazine. One notable contributor to the campaign was TV personality and Biography host Jack Perkins, whom Nelson had impersonated on the series several times.) This effort led the Sci Fi Channel to pick up the series, where it resumed with some cast changes and ran for three more seasons. The series finale premiered on August 8, 1999, although an episode produced earlier in the season was the last new episode of MST3K broadcast on September 12, 1999. Reruns continued on the Sci Fi Channel until January 31, 2004. Including the feature film, in total there were 201 full episodes of MST3K.
The show's run coincided with the growth of the Internet, and numerous fans (MSTies) devoted websites to the series. The Internet also facilitated tape-trading of previous episodes among fans, a practice the show's creators encouraged by including the phrase "Keep circulating the tapes!" in the closing credits of episodes during seasons 2, 3, and 4. Before season 5 started, the practice was discontinued after Best Brains' lawyers alerted them that the phrase may constitute a support of piracy.
There were two official fan conventions in Minneapolis, run by the series' production company itself (zanily called "ConventioCon ExpoFest-A-Rama" (1994) and "ConventioCon ExpoFest-A-Rama 2: Electric Bugaloo" (1996), the second being a misspelled reference to the movie Electric Boogaloo). Some noted celebrity fans of MST3K are film director and producer Steven Spielberg, songwriter-musician Neil Young, musician-composer Frank Zappa (whom the show honored at the end of episode 523 on January 22, 1994, a month after his death), writer-director Paul Schrader, former Vice President Al Gore, Time film critic Richard Corliss, singer/songwriter "Weird Al" Yankovic, actor Emilio Estevez, and MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann.
When Joel Hodgson decided to leave the series, halfway through season five, an episode was written in which his character escaped from the S.O.L. (after being forced to sit through the Joe Don Baker movie Mitchell). Joel escaped with the help of Gypsy and Mike Nelson (a temp hired by Doctor Forrester to help to prepare for an audit from the Fraternal Order of Mad Science), after they discovered an escape pod (amusingly named the Deus ex Machina) in a box marked "Hamdingers". To replace Joel, Dr. Forrester sent Mike up in his place. The series head writer Michael J. Nelson played Mike from 1993 until the end of the series. Debates (sometimes heated) raged in fan forums about who was the better host for quite some time, but in more recent years a consensus has developed among the fanbase that acknowledges that each performer had his merits.
A feature film, in which Mike and the bots worked over This Island Earth, was released in 1996 during the gap in the show's run between seasons 6 and 7. Unfortunately, Universal Studios invested few resources into the resultant The Movie. The film was never given wide release, instead playing for a limited time in different cities and then moving to another city. The result was that many fans did not even know it had been released.
Before the series moved to the Sci Fi Channel, Trace Beaulieu, who played Dr. Forrester and Crow, departed the series. Mary Jo Pehl took over the lead "Mad" role as Dr. Forrester's mother, Pearl. Her sidekicks were the idiotic, Planet of the Apes-inspired Professor Bobo (played by Murphy) and the highly evolved, supposedly omniscient, yet equally idiotic Observer (AKA "Brain Guy"), played by writer Bill Corbett. Corbett also competently took over Crow's voice and puppetry. In the middle of the first season on the Sci Fi Channel (the eighth national season overall), Mallon handed over the voice and puppetry work for Gypsy to BBI staffer Patrick Brantseg.
At first, Sci-Fi Channel officials mandated that every movie featured on the revived series had to fit within the channel's broad definition of science-fiction (which included horror and fantasy), instead of the varied genres present in past shows. But by the final season this restriction seemed to be loosened, allowing movies such as Girl in Gold Boots, and the Joe Don Baker film Final Justice. In any event, the network's vast library of science-fiction films provided an abundance of bad movies to "riff". The show finally ended with Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders being the last episode to be shown, although, technically, the last episode was episode 1013, featuring the movie Diabolik, in which Mike and the bots return to earth, only to riff bad movies in their small apartment.
In the May 30-June 5, 2004 issue of TV Guide, a feature article listed Mystery Science Theater 3000 among the 25 Top Cult Shows Ever!:
Among the more notable movies dismembered on the series are the infamous The Hands of Fate, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, five Japanese Gamera monster movies, Red Zone Cuba starring John Carradine and Coleman Francis, Space Travelers, an edited version of Marooned starring Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman, Mitchell, Prince of Space, and the Ed Wood films Bride of the Monster and "The Sinister Urge". Most of the movies were edited to make room for commercials and the sketches surrounding them, a practice which some people suspect allowed the Best Brains writers to introduce discontinuities that would render the movies all-the-more ripe for ridicule (although many such discontinuities are clearly shown in the original films or in their commercially available prints).
Eras of ''MST3K:
Alternatively, some view the KTMA era and the first Comedy Central season as a separate era ("the Beginnings"), when the series was still experimenting with its form. The departure of Josh Weinstein, who portrayed both Dr. Erhardt and Tom Servo, marked the end of this early phase of the show's development. At the start of season 2, Frank Conniff replaced Weinstein as the new Mad sidekick, TV's Frank, a character which would remain until season 6. At this point, Kevin Murphy took over as the voice of Tom Servo, a role Murphy played for the rest of the series. Furthermore, by the start of season 2, the Deep 13 and Satellite of Love sets took on the form that they would have for the rest of the series' run on Comedy Central.
The reactions of those parodied by MST3K has been mixed. Sandy Frank, who held the rights to several Gamera films parodied on the show, was "intensely displeased" by the mockery directed at him (the crew once sang the "Sandy Frank Song," which said that Frank was "the source of all our pain.") Because of this, Frank reportedly refused to allow the shows to be rebroadcast once MST3K's rights ran out.Satellite News Murphy says that Joe Don Baker wanted to beat up the writers of the show for attacking him during Mitchell. Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt "MST3K Touches Down For Good" Others have been more upbeat: Robert Fiveson and Myrl Schriebman, producers of parts: the clonus horror, said they were "flattered" to see the film appear on MST3K.Robert Fiveson and Myrl Schriebman Interview, The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Review. The crew of Time Chasers held a party the night the MST3K treatment of their film aired; director David Giancola said "Most of us were fans and knew what to expect and we roared with laughter and drank way too much. I had a blast, never laughed so hard in my life."David Giancola Interview, The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Review
MST3K's run coincided with the birth and growth of the Internet in all its forms, and MST3K fans created communities, relationships--and sometimes controversy--in cyberspace.
Tape trading, and now DVD trading, has always been active on the Internet and still is today.
One of the first Internet communities for MSTies grew up in 1992 and 1993, on bulletin boards hosted by the Prodigy online service. In the era before chat rooms, fans staked out a spot on the TV bulletin board and "chatted" in real time by posting, then reading the other posts and responding, then repeating the process over and over, night after night. However, in 1993 Prodigy perpetrated a self-inflicted wound that signaled the beginning of its downfall: It began to charge hourly rates to access its popular message boards. After the first month, when members received bills well over $100 (and sometimes much higher), membership plummetted, creating what some wags called "the great Prodigy diaspora."
Many of those Prodigy members found a new home on a then-fledgling online service called America Online, where a nightly online fan chat was very popular. Others found a place on Compuserve, and created a very lively and close-knit community.
At about the same time three different Usenet newsgroups were created, alt.fan.mst3k, alt.tv.mst3k and rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc. All three were very active during the show's heyday. The latter is the only group that is still active.
Following the vicious "flame wars" that consumed many of these forums following the departure of Joel Hodgson, nearly all of the communities adopted rules -- some simply on the honor system, others enforced by online service monitors -- that posts on the topic of "Joel vs. Mike" were forbidden. In recent years, however, such restrictions have long been abandoned as no longer necessary.
With the arrival of the World Wide Web, many fan Web sites sprung up. By 1996, there were hundreds. The official MST3K Web site is Satellite News at mst3k.com *. It was created in 1997 when Best Brains, which could no longer afford to mail out its fan newsletter, asked longtime fans Chris Cornell and Brian Henry to create a Web site that would provide the latest news. It continues to thrive today, offering the most up-to-date news on anything related to MST3K and its now-far-flung cast. It's also is the home of the official MST3K FAQ, the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide (written by the cast) for seasons 7 through 10 (picking up where the 1996 book left off), and many other features.
When the series moved to the Sci-Fi Channel, the network provided a message board space, and it was popular and well-maintained for some time, but visitors tended to be newer fans, less-familiar with the Comedy Central days, and before.
After the series was cancelled, internet activity around the series understandably ebbed. There are now perhaps a few dozen actively maintained MST3K-related Web sites, and a few dozen more that still exist on the Web, but have been abandoned by their owners. But the vast majority are gone. The AOL message boards still exist but have been completely abandoned. The Compuserve message boards have long since been deleted: Its members, furious at the purchase of Compuserve by AOL, moved as a group to a private email list.
The message board on the Sci-Fi Channel website, one of the largest online MSTie communities in the final seasons of the series, was abandoned by the network Website's monitors, and it quickly devolved into a haven for internet trolls and obscenities. This motivated MST3K fans Don MacGregor and Forrest Rice of MST3K Review to create the most active and largest MST3K online community: MST3K: The Discussion Board. It continues to thrive.
Best Brains also produced VHS tapes including the Play MSTie for Me series, the Tom Servo's Favorite Host Segments series, as well as the Poopie series of outtake collections. They also released several Sci-Fi era episodes that have since been re-released on DVD by Rhino. The last original Best Brains video product was The Last Dance - Raw!, backstage footage from the filming of the final episode of MST3K, Diabolik
Recently, some fans have expressed anger and disappointment in Rhino Home Video, due to glitches on discs in Collection Volumes 7 and 8. In one of these cases, Rhino officially announced that the errors were from the original analog master tape and could not be fixed. This led to further criticism over why Rhino would release a DVD knowing it suffered highly noticeable audio and video errors without mentioning the problems earlier, and note that Rhino could have tried to obtain a broadcast copy without said problems or released another episode instead. Rhino responded to these complaints by stating that choosing another film would result in another lengthy process of rights negotiation, further delaying the set's release.
Best Brains themselves have also produced DVDs including Play MSTie for Me Triple Decker (a collection of musical numbers from the show) and Tom Servo's All Time Favorite Host Segments Vol 1 (with bonus Poopie 1). They are available directly from BB through the Satellite News web site and through mail order.
Most of the humor in MST3K episodes comes from quotable quips that the S.O.L. crew insert into the dialog and scenes of the movies they mock, as well as clever riffing during the "host segments". A large sample of notable MST3K quotes is available on Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Several of the movies used in the MST3K series have consistently made the Internet Movie Database list of the Bottom 100 movies* over time, including Hobgoblins (1987) (episode 907), The Hands of Fate (1966) (episode 424), Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders (1995) (episode 1003), and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) (episode 321).
Mystery Science Theater 3000 | Comedy Central shows | 1980s TV shows in the United States | 1990s TV shows in the United States | Digital Archive Project
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