MSTing

''Mystery Science Theater 3000'' (abbreviated as ''MST3K'') is an American science fiction comedy film review television series created by Joel Hodgson. The show premiered on KTMA-TV (now WUCW) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on November 24, 1988. It then moved to nationwide broadcast, first on The Comedy Channel/ Comedy Central for seven seasons until its cancellation in 1996. Thereafter, it was picked up by The Sci-Fi Channel and aired for three more seasons until another cancellation in August 1999. A 60-episode syndication package titled ''The Mystery Science Theater Hour'' was produced in 1993 and broadcast on Comedy Central and syndicated to TV stations in 1995. In 2015, Hodgson led a crowdfunded revival of the series with 14 episodes in its eleventh season, first released on Netflix on April 14, 2017, with another six-episode season following on November 22, 2018. A second successful crowdfunding effort in 2021 will bring at least 13 additional episodes to be shown through the Gizmoplex, an online platform that Hodgson will develop for future ''MST3K'' works that launched in March 2022. , 218 episodes and a feature film have been produced as well as three live tours.

The show initially starred Hodgson as Joel Robinson, a janitor trapped by two mad scientists ("The Mads") on the Earth-orbiting ''Satellite of Love'', and forced to watch a series of B movies to monitor his reaction to them. To keep his sanity, Joel crafts sentient robot companions, including Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot, and Gypsy, to keep him company and help him humorously comment on each movie as it plays, a process known as riffing. Each two-hour episode would feature a single movie (often edited for time constraints), sometimes preceded by various old shorts and educational films, with Joel, Tom, and Crow watching in silhouette from a row of theater seats at the bottom of the screen. These "theater segments" were framed with interstitial sketches called "host segments". The show's cast changed over its duration; most notably, the character of Joel was replaced by Mike Nelson (played by Michael J. Nelson) halfway through the show's fifth season. Other cast members, most of whom were also writers for the show, include Trace Beaulieu, Jim Mallon, Kevin Murphy, Frank Conniff, Mary Jo Pehl, Bill Corbett, Paul Chaplin, and Bridget Jones Nelson. The 2017 revival features a primarily new cast, including Jonah Ray who plays the new human test subject Jonah Heston, along with Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt as "The Mads" and Baron Vaughn, Hampton Yount, and Rebecca Hanson voicing Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot, and Gypsy, respectively. Season 13 brings back this cast while integrating Emily Connor, played by Emily Marsh, and others from the live tours in this era.

''MST3K''s original run did not garner high viewership numbers. However, the show's popularity spread through online word-of-mouth by its fans known as "MSTies" or "Mysties" (who would remind others to "Keep circulating the tapes"), frequent repeats, syndication, and home media offerings produced by Rhino Entertainment. Currently, this popularity continues through Shout! Factory, who along with Hodgson, now own the rights to the show and supported the revived series. ''MST3K'' was listed as one of ''Time'' magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME" in 2007, and ''TV Guide'' has noted ''MST3K'' as one of the top cult television shows. The show won a Peabody Award in 1993, was also nominated for two Emmy Awards in 1994 and 1995, and for the CableACE Award from 1992 to 1997. The show was considered highly influential, contributing towards the practice of social television, and former cast members launched similar projects based on the riffing of films, including The Film Crew, RiffTrax (ongoing as of 2022), and Cinematic Titanic. ''MST3K'' also brought to light several older movies that had fallen into obscurity or had received little or no public attention when originally released. Many of these films were subsequently identified as among the worst movies ever made, most notably '' Manos: The Hands of Fate''.

Premise

While the cast of ''MST3K'' changed throughout its history, the basic premise of the show remains consistent: a human test subject—first Joel Robinson (Joel Hodgson), then Mike Nelson (Michael J. Nelson), and most recently Jonah Heston (Jonah Ray) and Emily Connor (Emily Marsh)—has been imprisoned aboard the spacecraft ''Satellite of Love'' by mad scientists (collectively called "The Mads") and is forced to watch a series of bad movies in order to find one that will drive the test subject insane.

In an attempt to keep his sanity, Joel built sentient robots ("the bots") from parts aboard the ''Satellite of Love'', and they subsequently remained aboard with Joel's successors as test subjects. The Bots include Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot, GPC (formerly Gypsy) who is in charge of satellite operations, and Cambot, the silent recorder of the experiments. Crow and Servo join the human test subject in watching the film in the satellite's theater. To keep from going mad, the trio frequently comment and wisecrack during the movie, a process known as "riffing". At regular intervals throughout the movie, the hosts leave the theater and return to the bridge of the satellite to perform sketches (commonly called "host segments") that often satirize the film being watched.

Format

The general format of an ''MST3K'' episode has remained the same throughout the series' run. Episodes are approximately 90 minutes in running time (excluding commercial breaks) and begin with a short introductory segment in which the human host and the 'bots interact with the Mads before being sent the movie. During Joel Hodgson and Jonah Ray's tenures as hosts (and for a brief period at the start of the Mike Nelson era), the hosts and the Mads engage in an "invention exchange" in which they each show off their latest inventions. Sirens and flashing lights ("Movie Sign") then signal the characters to enter the theater.

In the theater, the human host and 'bots' Tom and Crow sit in a row of theater seats, shown in silhouette along the bottom of the screen, an approach Hodgson called "Shadowramma". The three then riff on the film (which is sometimes accompanied by one or more shorts) as it plays for both them and the audience. Occasionally the silhouette format is used as a source of humor or as a means of creating unobtrusive censor bars for scenes containing nudity. The show transitions into and out of the theater via a "door sequence", a series of six doors that open or close as the camera (presumably Cambot) passes through them.

At regular intervals throughout the episode, the characters leave the theater and perform sketches usually inspired by the events of the film or short being shown, frequently making use of original songs and prop comedy. Some sketches bring in new or recurring characters or other devices; the host would consult an external camera "Rocket Number Nine" to show events happening outside the ''Satellite'', and the "Hexfield Viewscreen" would be used to communicate with other characters from the ship's bridge. At the end of each sketch, "Movie Sign" (a reference to the concept of wormsign from Frank Herbert's classic sci-fi novel Dune), is triggered again and the characters must re-enter the theater.

During Hodgson's period on the show, the final sketch aboard the ''Satellite'' often included reading of fan mail from the "MST3K Info Club". Fan mail readings decreased during Mike Nelson's tenure as host and were dropped entirely once the show moved onto the Sci-Fi Channel. The final sketch of an episode typically ends on the Mads, with the lead Mad asking their lackey to "push the button" to end the transmission and transitioning to the credit sequence. After the credits, a humorous short clip from the featured film (or the accompanying short, on occasion) is replayed as a "stinger" to end the episode.

In November 1993, a limited selection of episodes were repackaged into an hour-long show titled ''Mystery Science Theater Hour'', meant to be better suited for off-network syndication. In these, the original episode was split into two parts of roughly 45 minutes each excluding commercials. New skits leading and ending each episode incorporated Mike Nelson portraying television host Jack Perkins in a parody of Perkins' ''Biography'' series in mock flattery of the ''MST3K'' episode being shown.

Production history

Concept

Hodgson is credited for devising the show's concept. Prior to the show, Hodgson was an up-and-coming comedian from Minneapolis having moved to Los Angeles and made appearances on ''Late Night with David Letterman'' and ''Saturday Night Live''. He had been invited by Brandon Tartikoff to be on a NBC sitcom co-starring Michael J. Fox, but Hodgson felt the material was not funny and declined (the proposed sitcom went unrealized). He further became dissatisfied with the Hollywood attitudes when they tried to double their offer, acquiring what he called a "healthy disrespect" for the industry. He moved back to Minneapolis-St. Paul, taking a job in a T-shirt printing factory that allowed him to conceive of new comedy ideas while he was bored. One such idea was the basis of ''MST3K'', a show to comment humorously on movies and that would also allow him to showcase his own prop comedy-style humor. Hodgson referred to these jokes as "riffs", based both on the idea of musical riffs as well as the idea of comedy riffs, a term he attributes to ''The Simpsons''s writer Dana Gould. In terms of movie selection, Hodgson had recalled that his college roommate had a copy of ''The Golden Turkey Awards'', and he had previously wondered why no one had made any program about these "adorable, weird movies" listed within it.

Hodgson said that part of the idea for ''MST3K'' came from the illustration for the song "I've Seen That Movie Too" (drawn by Mike Ross) in the liner notes from Elton John's ''Goodbye Yellow Brick Road'' album, showing silhouettes of two people in a theater watching a movie. Hodgson also likened the show's setting to the idea of a pirate radio station broadcasting from space. Hodgson credits ''Silent Running'', a 1972 science-fiction film directed by Douglas Trumbull, as being perhaps the biggest direct influence on the show's concept. The film is set in the future and centers on a human, Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern), who is the last crew member of a spaceship containing Earth's last surviving forests. His remaining companions consist only of three robot drones. ''MST3K'' and the Joel Robinson character occasionally reflected Lowell's hippie-like nature. Hodgson wanted the feel of the show to appear homemade, and cited the example of a crude mountain prop used during the ''Saturday Night Live'' sketch "Night on Freak Mountain" that received a humorous reaction from the studio audience as the type of aesthetic he wanted for the show. Hodgson had made dozens of such robots from random parts before as art that he sold to friends and others, and knew he could incorporate that into the show.

Both old movies and music inspired several of the show's character names as developed by Hodgson. The show's name came from the promotional phrase "Mystery Scientist" used by magician Harlan Tarbell and a play on the name of Sun Ra's band, the Myth Science Arkestra. The "3000" was added to spoof the common practice of adding "2000" to show and product names in light of then-upcoming 21st century, and Hodgson thought it would set his show apart to make it "3000". Dr. Forrester was named after the main character of ''The War of the Worlds''. The ''Satellite of Love'' was named after the song of the same name by Lou Reed. Crow T. Robot was inspired by the song "Crow" from Jim Carroll's '' Catholic Boy'', while Rocket Number 9's name was inspired by the original name of Sun Ra's album '' Interstellar Low Ways''.

The theater shots, the primary component of an episode, is taped in "Shadowrama". The "seats" were a black-painted foam core board sitting behind the seat (towards the camera) for the host, and stages for the Crow and Tom puppets. The human host wore black clothing while the robot puppets were painted black; the screen they watched was a white luma key screen as to create the appearance of silhouettes. The actors would follow the movie and the script through television monitors located in front of them, as to create the overall theater illusion.

The "door sequence" was created to transition from host segments to the theater segments, which Hodgson took inspiration from the ''Mickey Mouse Club'', noting that the commonality to the title credits of ''Get Smart'' were coincidental. In devising this sequence, this also led to Beaulieu creating the dogbone-like shape of the ''Satellite of Love'' with additional inspiration taken from the bone-to-ship transition in the film '' 2001: A Space Odyssey''. Hodgson had wanted to use a "motivated camera" for taping, a concept related to motivated lighting; in this mode, all the shots would appear to have been taken from an actual camera that was part of the scene to make the scene appear more realistic. This led to the creation of Cambot as a robot that the host would speak to during host segments or recording them while in the theater, and Rocket Number Nine to show footage outside of the Satellite of Love.

The show's theme song, the "Love Theme from Mystery Science Theater 3000", was written by Hodgson and Weinstein, which helped to cement some of the broader narrative elements of the show, such as the Mads and Joel being part of an experiment. The song was composed by Charlie Erickson with help from Hodgson in the style of Devo, The Replacements, and The Rivieras (particularly their cover of the song "California Sun") and sung by Hodgson. Initial shows used foam letters to make the show's title, but they later created the spinning-moon logo out of a 2-foot (0.6m) diameter fiberglass ball, covered with foam insulation and the lettering cut from additional foam pieces. Hodgson felt they needed a logo with the rotating effect as opposed to a flat 2D image, and though they had envisioned a more detailed prop, with the letters being the tops of buildings on this moon, they had no time or budget for a project of that complexity and went with what they had. Musical numbers would also be used as part of the host segments, which Hodgson said came out naturally from the riffing process; they would find themselves at times singing along with the movie instead of just riffing at it, and took that to extend songs into the host segments.

KTMA era (1988–1989)

Hodgson approached Jim Mallon, at the time the production manager of KTMA, a low-budget local television station, with his idea of a show based on riffing on movies, using robots that were created out of common objects. Mallon agreed to help produce a pilot episode, and Hodgson hired on local area comedians J. Elvis Weinstein (initially going by Josh Weinstein but later changed to J. Elvis as to distinguish himself from Josh Weinstein, a well-known writer for ''The Simpsons'') and Trace Beaulieu

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