Mystery Science Theater 3000
Mystery Science Theater 3000 is an American science fiction comedy television series created by Joel Hodgson. The show premiered on KTMA-TV in Saint Paul, Minnesota, on November 24, 1988. It then moved to nationwide broadcast, first on The Comedy Channel for two seasons, then Comedy Central for five 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 produced 13 additional episodes shown on the Gizmoplex, an online platform that Hodgson developed which launched in March 2022., 230 episodes and a feature film had been produced as well as four live tours.
The show initially starred Hodgson as Joel Robinson, a janitor trapped by two mad scientists 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, Cambot 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, 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 halfway through the show's fifth season. Other cast members, most of whom were also writers for the show, include Trace Beaulieu, Josh Weinstein, 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 brought back this cast while integrating Emily Connor, played by Emily Marsh, and others from the live tours in this era.
Initially MST3K did not garner high viewership numbers, but the show's popularity spread through online word-of-mouth by its fans known as "MSTies" or "Mysties", frequent repeats, syndication, and home media offerings produced by Rhino Entertainment. Currently, this popularity continues through Shout! Studios, 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 projects similarly on riffing on films, including The Film Crew, RiffTrax, 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, then Mike Nelson, and most recently Jonah Heston and Emily Connor —has been imprisoned aboard the spacecraft Satellite of Love by mad scientists 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 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 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 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 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, the hosts and the Mads engage in an "invention exchange" in which they each show off their latest inventions. A buzzer and flashing lights then signal the characters to enter the theater.File:Mrb5.jpg|thumb|left|An example of MST3Ks "Shadowramma" effect used as the central motif for the show. Here, Tom Servo, Joel Robinson, and Crow T. Robot, in silhouette, are watching the short Mr. B Natural in the 1991 episode featuring War of the Colossal Beast
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 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 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" 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 with 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 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, each about 45 minutes long, excluding commercials. New skits opening and ending each episode included Mike Nelson portraying television host Jack Perkins.
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 an NBC sitcom co-starring Michael J. Fox, but Hodgson felt the material was not funny and declined. 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 Simpsonss 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.File:Liner notes ive seen that movie too.jpg|thumb|right|The illustration for the song "I've Seen That Movie Too" in the liner notes of Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, from which Hodgson took inspiration for MST3Ks theme and approach
Hodgson said that part of the idea for MST3K came from the illustration for the song "I've Seen That Movie Too" in the liner notes from Elton John's Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album, showing silhouettes of a couple sitting in a theater watching Gone with the Wind. 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, 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, are taped in "Shadowrama". The "seats" were a black-painted foam core board sitting behind the seat 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 so 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 was 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 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 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.