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Mystery Science Theater 3000, often abbreviated MST3K, is an American cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson and produced by Best Brains, Inc. that ran from 1988 to 1999.
It features 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) those of the science fiction genre. The premise 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 in the style of a movie theater peanut gallery. 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 won a Peabody Award in 1993.
The loosely-defined plot of the show serves chiefly as a pretext for the movie commentary and the comic sketches known as "host segments" which appear throughout each episode.
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 Gizmonic 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 sycophantic 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 the Lou Reed song — Joel builds four sentient 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 beginning in Season 2), and Crow T. Robot (voiced first by Beaulieu, then by Bill Corbett beginning in Season 8), 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 in a mirror 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, 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 most commercial breaks, Joel (and later Mike) and the bots 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 a shown movie, such as Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate, "Jan in the Pan" from The Brain That Wouldn't Die, and Mothra from Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. But before too much frivolity can transpire, the "movie sign" lights flash, signaling the resumption of the movie.
Many episodes without movies long enough to fill the show's runtime 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. On one occasion a Gumby cartoon was used as a short. These are less frequent in later episodes. They are nonexistent in season 8 (the first Sci-Fi Channel season), as during that season the Sci-Fi Channel's executives required that every film be a science-fiction, fantasy or horror movie. The restriction was lifted for the last two seasons, with season 9 featuring two shorts (including the aforementioned Gumby film) and season 10 one short (in the penultimate episode).
Hodgson credits Silent Running, a 1972 sci-fi 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 around 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, though they are not able to converse with him. MST3K and the Joel Robinson character also occasionally reflected Lowell's "hippie"-like nature.
Hodgson cites "Beany and Cecil" as having likely been a subconscious childhood influence. The 1960s Bob Clampett cartoon series centered around a boy and his sea serpent friend. In an interview, Hodgson made loose retrospective comparisons to elements between the two shows, such as the ship (the Leakin' Lena, to the S.O.L.), and the characters of Beany (to Joel), Cecil (to Gypsy), Huffenpuff (to Tom Servo), Crowy (to Crow), and Dishonest John (to Dr. Forrester).
Another childhood influence was the "CBS Children's Film Festival," a 1970s live-action program which starred "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," Burr Tillstrom's puppet troupe which was made famous during television's early days in the '40s and '50s. The characters consisted of a human (played by Fran Allison), and her two puppet friends (both performed by Tillstrom). Each episode of the "Film Festival" featured an international children's film, with Kukla, Fran and Ollie serving as hosts. Fran would lead discussions of the film as the episode went on, in similar fashion to MST3K's host segments.[1]
The show featured many references to the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The Satellite of Love bore a slight resemblance to the ship featured in the film, Discovery One (while at the same time bearing an even closer resemblance to an actual bone, perhaps a humorous reference to the film's famous bone to spaceship cut). The film's "lip-reading" scene is parodied in Joel's final episode, "Mitchell," when Gypsy eavesdrops on the Mads' plot to eliminate Joel. The film's surreal climax is parodied in Dr. Forrester's final episode, "Laserblast," when an old version of the character reaches for a giant videotape labeled "The Worst Movie Ever Made," before transforming into a "starchild."
The signature sillhouetted movie seats were partially inspired by various Looney Tunes shorts, in which an on-screen character would interact with a "theater audience member" who could only be seen in silhouette.
The name of the Joel Robinson character likely is a reference to the 1960s television series, "Lost in Space," which followed the adventures of the shipwrecked Robinsons, a family of astronauts. The show was a spin on the the Swiss Family Robinson, an 1812 novel written by Johann David Wyss. (The novel itself was named after the 1719 castaway novel, Robinson Crusoe, written by Daniel Defoe.)
Hodgson initially came up with the concept for the "Mystery Science Theatre" (the "3000" suffix was added later to give it a retro sci-fi sound). Drawing partly on his own comedy act (which he was performing in the area at the time), the show's format was to showcase Hodgson. These initial episodes were filmed at the now defunct Paragon Cable studios/customer service center in Hopkins, MN.
In September 1988, Hodgson enlisted Twin City-area comedians Trace Beaulieu and Josh Weinstein, and producer Jim Mallon, to help him shoot a pilot for the show. The robots and the set, in their crudest format, were built overnight by Hodgson. The next morning, shooting commenced, and a 30-minute pilot, in which selections from the 1969 science-fiction film, The Green Slime, were the test subject film. Joel watched the movie by himself, and was aided during the host segments by his robots, Crow (Beaulieu), Beeper, and Gypsy (Weinstein). Camera work was by Kevin Murphy, who worked at the station and also created the first "doorway sequence" (see "Characteristic elements") and theater seat design.
Mallon met with station manager Donald O'Conner the next month and managed to get signed up for thirteen consecutive episodes. The show had some slight alterations — the set was lit differently, the robots (now Crow, Servo and Gypsy) joined Joel in the theater, and a new doorway countdown sequence between the host segments and the theater segments was shot. The back story was also altered from the pilot; In the pilot episode it is explained that Joel Hodgson (not yet using his character name of Robinson) had built the Satellite of Love and launched himself into space. Once the series was picked up this was retconned, with Joel now having been a janitor at a "satellite loading bay," who was launched into space against his will by his evil "mad scientist" bosses. Joel's captors (played by Beaulieu and Weinstein) did not actually appear outside of the opening theme until several episodes later.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 premiered at 6:00 PM on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 1988 with its first episode, "Invaders from the Deep", followed by a second episode, "Revenge of the Mysterians" [sic], at 8:00 PM. Initially, the show's response was unknown, until Mallon set up a phone line for viewers to call in. Response was so great that aside from the first 13 episodes, the station extended the season to 21, with the show running to May 1989. During this time a fan club was set up and the show held its first live show at Scott Hansen's Comedy Gallery in Minneapolis to a crowd of over 600. Despite the success, the station's overall declining fortunes forced it to cancel MST3K.
Just as its run at KTMA was ending, however, 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. New sets were built, the robots were retooled, and a new doorway sequence was shot. Another major change was the show's writing format: instead of ad-lib riffs in the theater, each show was carefully scripted ahead of time. Writer/performer Weinstein did not care for this new format, and subsequently left after the first season. Murphy replaced him as the voice of Tom Servo and Jim Mallon took over as Gypsy. Frank Coniff was Weinstein's replacement in Deep 13. At the same time, Mike Nelson was promoted to head writer.
After the second season, The Comedy Channel and rival comedy cable network HA! merged to become Comedy Central. During this change, MST3K became the cable channel's "signature series", expanding from 13 to 24 episodes a year, which would continue until its seventh national season, as the show gradually fell out of favor with the network's new management at the time.
Comedy Central ran a 30-hour marathon of previous MST3K episodes during Thanksgiving, 1991, including special promos and a "making of" show that featured a behind the scenes look at episode scripting, filming, voicing, and puppet construction. Bill Corbett first stumbled upon MST3K during this marathon and became an instant fan; he later assumed voice and puppeteer duties for Crow T. Robot, as well as the role of a new character, Observer.
The show's run coincided with the growth of the Internet, and numerous fans (MSTies) devoted websites to the series.
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 dual reference to the movie Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo and the children's TV series The Bugaloos).
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 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.
Among the many troubles the Best Brains staff had with Comedy Central was the latter's desire to cut the show down to a 60-minute timeslot. As part of this effort, in the summer of 1993, the MST3K staff selected 30 episodes to split into 60 one-hour segments, hosted by Mike Nelson in his "Jack Perkins" persona. The resulting repackaged series was titled The Mystery Science Theater Hour, and its first-run airings of these half-shows ran from November 1993 to July 1994. Reruns continued through December 1994, and it was syndicated to local stations from September 1995 to September 1996.[2][3][4]
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 Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. Distributor Gramercy Pictures had a limited advertising budget and devoted its funds instead to the marketing of the Pamela Anderson film Barb Wire.[5]
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.
The film ran for 74 minutes, making it, ironically, shorter than any episode of the actual series.
When Comedy Central dropped the show after a seventh season of only six episodes, MST3Ks 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.
By this time, Trace Beaulieu, who had played Dr. Forrester and Crow, had already departed the series. Mary Jo Pehl took over the lead "Mad" role as Dr. Forrester's mother, Pearl, who had been featured as a regular in season 7. 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; with this replacement, the series's entire central cast had changed from the original KTMA / Comedy Central cast. 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. By the final season, this restriction appears to have be loosened, allowing movies such as Girl in Gold Boots, and the Joe Don Baker film Final Justice.
The series finale, "Danger: Diabolik", premiered on August 8, 1999, although a "lost" episode produced earlier in the season, "Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders", 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, the MST3K cast and crew produced 198 full episodes of the show.
As with the run on the Comedy Channel, the Sci Fi Channel run ended due to a change in management. As a two-hour show involving long negotiations for the use of third-party films, MST3K was a tough sell for networks, despite the fan base and ratings. However, Best Brains insists to this day that they would have loved to run the show forever, and even after nearly 200 episodes there wasn't a shortage of bad films as candidates to riff.
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!":
" 11 - Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1989-1999) A space traveler and his smart-ass robots watch and crack-wise about bombs like The Brain That Wouldn't Die and The Killer Shrews. Cult-ability: Mike Nelson, writer and star (replacing creator Joel Hodgson), recently addressed a college audience: "There was nobody over the age of 25. I had to ask, 'Where are you seeing this show?' I guess we have some sort of timeless quality."[6]
In the book The Amazing Colossal Episode Guide (written by the season 6 MST3K cast members), Kevin Murphy related two tales about celebrity reactions he encountered. In one, the cast went to a taping of Dennis Miller's eponymous show; when they were brought backstage to meet Miller, the comedian proceeded to criticize the MST3K cast for their choice of movie to mock in the then-recent episode "Space Travelers" (a re-branded version of the Oscar-winning film Marooned).[7] In the other, Murphy discussed how he met Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., one of his literary heroes. When he had mentioned the show and its premise to Vonnegut, the author suggested that even people who work hard on bad films deserve some respect. Murphy then invited Vonnegut to dine with his group, which Vonnegut declined, claiming that he had other plans. When Murphy and friends ate later that night, he saw Vonnegut dining alone in the same restaurant, and remarked that he had been "faced... but nicely faced" by one of his literary heroes.[8]
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" and implied that he was too lazy to make his own films.) Because of this, Frank reportedly refused to allow the shows to be rebroadcast once MST3Ks rights ran out.[9]
Kevin Murphy had said that Joe Don Baker wanted to beat up the writers of the show for attacking him during "Mitchell".[10][11] Murphy later said Baker likely meant it in a joking manner, although Nelson said he deliberately avoided Baker while the two were staying at the same hotel.[12]
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.[13]
Miles O'Keeffe, the star of the film Cave Dwellers, called Best Brains and personally requested a copy of the MST3K treatment of the film,[12] saying he enjoyed their skewing of what he had considered to be a surreal experience (the film was shot in Italy). In the form of an essay and E.E. Cummings-esque poem, Mike Nelson paid tribute to Miles with a humorous mix of adulation and fear.[14]
Adam West, star of the 1960s Batman TV series, co-starred in Zombie Nightmare, another film MST3K mocked. West apparently held no grudges, as he hosted several MST3K marathons on Comedy Central, including the "Turkey Day" marathon in which the episode featuring Zombie Nightmare had its broadcast premiere.
The crew of Time Chasers held a party the night the MST3K treatment of their film aired. Reactions were mixed, but 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."[15]
Some noted fans of MST3K include 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, cartoonist Matt Groening, former Vice President Al Gore, Time film critic Richard Corliss, TV critic Tom Shales, singer/songwriter "Weird Al" Yankovic, actors Emilio Estevez and Neil Patrick Harris, the rock band Rush (who mentioned the show in the liner notes of the Counterparts album), and MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann.
Several unusual elements of Mystery Science Theater 3000 provide a unique feel to the show.
The theater silhouette — a row of chair tops with Tom Servo, Joel or Mike, and Crow sitting at the right side — is a simple row of rounded shapes cut from black painted foamcore board. Joel/Mike and the robot operators sit down in front of these, facing a white wall. When shot from the back it gives the illusion of sitting in a theater. A photograph of this appears in the book The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Amazing Colossal Episode Guide.[16] Its characteristic appearance has been used in several works, often as a homage to the show.
Featured in most transitions between the theater segments and "host" segments is a camera tracking through a tunnel leading from the bridge of the Satellite of Love into the Mystery Science Theater, or vice versa. Access to the tunnel from the bridge is through a hexagonal doorway, originally decorated with a large, gear-like "G" (for Gizmonic Institute, the original lair of the Mads).[17] As the camera (implicitly Cambot) moved through the opening doorway, a countdown of hatches, decorated with unusual artifacts and numbered "6" through "2" (in the style of a film leader countdown), moves out of its way, finally opening on the theater and the film. The hatches and decorations occasionally changed throughout the series, usually after a production move or cast change.[18]
The HVS was, as its name implies, a hexagonally shaped opening on the SOL's bridge that served as a kind of monitor, through which the inhabitants of the SOL could interact with a wide and diverse range of visitors, often characters taken directly from whatever movie they were watching at the moment (Gamera, Jan-in-the-Pan, etc), and sometimes not (Yakov Smirnoff, rowdy redneck neighbors, etc). The HVS was used more frequently during the Comedy Central years, and while it remained a part of the SOL set, it was used only twice during the show's final season (episodes "Soultaker" and "Final Justice").
Sometimes Joel/Mike and the Bots would become aware of something happening outside the ship, and would instruct Cambot to "give [them] Rocket Number Nine". Once they did this, they were provided with an external view of the ship and whatever was nearby. This is an oblique reference to a tune by Sun Ra.
During the host segments, a set of three colored lights/buttons was located on the table's left side (to the viewer) and above the door to the theater. The leftmost light was red and would light to indicate that the Mads were calling. The rightmost was yellow - "commercial sign" - and would light to indicate that the show had to cut to a commercial break. The middle button was blue and would light to indicate a visitor in the Hexfield Viewscreen (this occurred only during the Comedy Central episodes). While one of the characters would usually touch the flashing light to "execute" it, there were never any consequences for failing to do so. When all three lights flashed, it indicated "movie sign." When this happened the camera would shake, a buzzer would sound, and everyone currently on the bridge would scatter while yelling "WE'VE GOT MOVIE SIGN!" or some variant thereof.
At the end of each episode during the "Frank" years, Dr. Forrester would instruct Frank to push "the button," which was located on a computer keyboard. When this was done, the image would shrink and leave a black screen to make way for the end credit roll. "Push the button, Frank" has since become one of the show's more recognizable lines among fans. Occasionally there were variations of this custom, as in one episode where "the button" malfunctioned and would repeatedly interrupt the credit roll to switch the show back to the Mads in Deep 13.
Just like the films that they riff on, part of MST3Ks charm is its economical use of its low budget. Everything, right down to the sets, props and robots are made from household items found at thrift shops. Part of this started during the KTMA years, as there was little to no budget supplied to the crew for the set, so such items had to be made out of various "found junk". Despite an increasing budget, Best Brains never forgot their roots as a "cowtown puppet show" and subsequently kept the bric-a-brac motif of the show.
Many of the riffs and cultural references made by the humans and bots in the show are specific to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, reflecting the origin of the show (filmed throughout its eleven seasons in this area) and the Best Brains staff's Midwestern roots.[19] For example, in episode 422 (featuring The Day the Earth Froze), Crow remarks how Scandinavia resembles southern Wisconsin with the crack: "It's the Swedish Dells!" He then says in a heavy Swedish accent: "The Dooks! Ride the dooks!" (that is, the 'Ducks', an amphibious tour vehicle). The character of Mike Nelson is also from Wisconsin.
Once the Best Brains staff gained some experience from the earlier KTMA shows, they gradually increased the amount of riffing until they estimated they were doing about 700 jokes per 90-minute episode.[17] Many of those riffs are "callbacks", or references to earlier episodes and running jokes.
The MST3K cast was occasionally augmented by "guest stars" from the films — characters so memorable that they made interesting visitors to the Mads' lairs or the Satellite of Love. (See "Recurring guest characters" below.) These film characters were always portrayed by Best Brains staffers, giving some screen time to behind-the-camera workers. Other "guests" were real-life people portrayed by MST3K cast and crew. Two, however, were actual celebrities. Minnesota Viking Robert Smith appeared in a season 8 episode as "Howard", a "gift" to Pearl from her ape worshippers.[20] Film critic Leonard Maltin, who had been mercilessly mocked for some of his ratings of MSTied films,[21][22][23]
A brief (generally, three to five seconds) clip from that episode's movie (or occasionally the accompanying short) which played following the end credits of the show. The clip generally highlighted a moment or line of dialogue that the show's writers found to be particularly amusing. The tradition started with the second-season episode featuring Rocket Attack U.S.A., with a shot of a blind man walking down the street, then suddenly stopping to exclaim "Help me!"
Mystery Science Theater 3000'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 plummeted, 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, but only rec.arts.tv.mst3k.misc 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 The Satellite News. 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 is also 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. Although they had been abandoned for several years, the AOL message boards were still present, unused, in a backwater of the services message boards, until the summer of 2006, when the service finally deleted them. The Compuserve message boards are also gone. Its regulars, furious at the purchase of Compuserve by AOL, moved as a group to a private email list. When usage of the board subsequently dropped off to almost zero, the board was deleted.
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: The MST3K Discussion Board. It continues to thrive.
The re-airing of episodes on TV and packaging of episodes for purchase are difficult for MST3K due to rights issues involving the movies featured within the episode. Long negotiations are involved, and some (if not many) episodes are not possible due to dissatisfaction with the mockery made of the film.
Ironically, according to the official website, many of the problems in releasing the episodes is the increased cost of the movie rights thanks to the exposure that MST3K has given them.
Rhino Home Video released several episodes from the Comedy Central era on VHS in the late 1990s. Although out of print, most are still readily available, except for the episode featuring The Amazing Colossal Man, which was pulled due to rights issues. All other episodes have since been re-released either on single DVDs or as part of the "Collection" series (see below).
Best Brains has produced VHS tapes and DVDs for independent sale through their info club newsletters, including the Play MSTie for Me series, the Tom Servo's Favorite Host Segments series, and 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!, containing behind-the-scenes footage from the filming of the final episode of MST3K, "Diabolik". The Poopie series has since been resurrected as special feature on some of the Rhino DVD releases.
Since the show was taken off the air in 2004, much of MST3Ks loyal fanbase has relied on DVD releases by Rhino. To date, all releases have been single episodes, or "Collection" sets consisting of four movies and/or "shorts" DVDs. The exception was the Essentials collection, which contained the previously released "Manos: The Hands of Fate", fan favorite "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians", and a Poopie outtakes collection. Several Rhino releases ("Beginning of the End", "Bloodlust", "Catalina Caper", "The Skydivers", "The Creeping Terror", the complete contents of Collection 1; and 'The Sidehackers" from Collection 3) were recently discontinued due to the loss of rights to the movies in the episodes. However, recently Rhino has renegotiated the rights to those four films and Vol. 1 is now back in print. The Collection Volume 10 release was discontinued only months after its initial release for reasons unknown (though it is rumored that the Japanese film company Toho, producers of the Godzilla films, objected to the inclusion of the Godzilla vs. Megalon MST3000 episode in the set). A complete listing of releases is shown in the table below.
Some Rhino Home Video releases were found to have glitches on discs in Collection Volumes 5, 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 criticism from fans over Rhino releasing a DVD knowing it suffered highly noticeable audio and video errors. 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.[9]
The feature film Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie was released on VHS and DVD in 1998, but was taken out of print by MCA/Universal Home Video in 2000. A special edition, produced by an unknown Internet fan, was released in 2003 containing deleted scenes, trailers and other bonus features. Copies of the discontinued official release have sold on eBay or Amazon.com for upwards of $100.[10]
Best Brains have produced DVDs independently, 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 were produced to be marketed directly to fans through the Satellite News web site and through mail order.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 inspired widespread tape trading among fans, a practice that continues to this day. The catalyst for tape trades was the phrase "Keep circulating the tapes!" in the closing credits of episodes during seasons 2 through 4. Afterwards the catchphrase was discontinued when Best Brains lawyers questioned its support of piracy.
Episode trading continues to this day largely through Internet discussion boards and web rings. The Digital Archive Project is a noteworthy Internet activity that for years has dedicated itself to preserving and distributing the best copies of Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. They are maintained in 700 megabyte Xvid AVI format which are traded on the site's own EDonkey2000 network. An offshoot project called DAP-DVD trades full-resolution native DVD formats built entirely from scratch, but as of April 2007 only 75 out of the 198 episodes have been completed. The Digital Archive Project adheres to a policy of not overstepping distribution rights, and does not allow any commercially-released episodes to be traded. Tapes are often sold on online auction sites; these sellers similarly abstain from selling any episodes that have been commercially released.
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 Wikiquote.
The first three KTMA episodes are considered to be the "missing MST3K episodes". No fan copy is known to exist.[24] (Jim Mallon had once mentioned that Best Brains' master copies are stored in a vault.) The long lost episodes are K01 ("Invaders from the Deep"), K02 ("Revenge of the Mysterians"), and K03 ("Starforce: Fugitive Alien 2"), with K03 being redone in season 3. "Episode" K00, "The Green Slime", is often counted among those missing shows, but is actually only a never-broadcast, half-hour sample from the film used to sell the MST3K concept to KTMA.[24]
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), Monster A Go-Go (1965) (episode 421), Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) (episode 424), Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders (1995) (episode 1003), The Incredible Melting Man (1977) (episode 704), and Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964) (episode 321).[25]
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