Slashdot Mirror
17 Years Later, A New Season Of MST3K Premiers On Netflix
Launched in 1988, Mystery Science Theater 3000 ran for ten seasons on Comedy Central and The Sci-Fi Channel, with its last episode airing in August of 1999. But now Slashdot reader #5844 ewhac writes:
17 years later, Season 11 of MST3K debuted Friday on Netflix. A full season has been produced, including a stretch-goal Christmas special, funded by the highest-earning Kickstarter Film & Video campaign to date ($5.76 million) -- thousands of contributors are listed in the show's end credits, spread across all fourteen episodes.
The show remains true to its low-budget roots, relying almost exclusively on models and practical effects, including a very inventive new door sequence. The backstory for the new season is very swiftly established in the opening to Experiment 1101, as Jonah Heston (played by co-producer Jonah Ray) is abducted by the evil mad scientist Kinga Forrester (Felicia Day) and her sidekick Max a/k/a TV's son of TV's Frank (Patton Oswalt). Together with Gypsy (Rebecca Hanson), Tom Servo (Baron Vaughn), and Crow (Hampton Yount), Jonah quips his way through a barrage of bad movies, including Reptilicus, Starcrash, The Loves of Hercules, and The Christmas That Almost Wasn't.
In 2008 MST3K's original creator Joel Hodgson answered questions from Slashdot's readers, and said he was fascinated by the popularity of Creative Commons licenses. "For most of the public domain titles that we've used, it's a matter of the garbage not being taken out. Basically, they forgot to apply for a copyright so it in fact lapsed into the public domain."
The show remains true to its low-budget roots, relying almost exclusively on models and practical effects, including a very inventive new door sequence. The backstory for the new season is very swiftly established in the opening to Experiment 1101, as Jonah Heston (played by co-producer Jonah Ray) is abducted by the evil mad scientist Kinga Forrester (Felicia Day) and her sidekick Max a/k/a TV's son of TV's Frank (Patton Oswalt). Together with Gypsy (Rebecca Hanson), Tom Servo (Baron Vaughn), and Crow (Hampton Yount), Jonah quips his way through a barrage of bad movies, including Reptilicus, Starcrash, The Loves of Hercules, and The Christmas That Almost Wasn't.
In 2008 MST3K's original creator Joel Hodgson answered questions from Slashdot's readers, and said he was fascinated by the popularity of Creative Commons licenses. "For most of the public domain titles that we've used, it's a matter of the garbage not being taken out. Basically, they forgot to apply for a copyright so it in fact lapsed into the public domain."
I doubt Felicia Day could begin to fill the shoes of Trace Beaulieu or Mary Jo Pehl (also underrated, IMO). I caught a bit of the opening, and saw Wil Wheaton, which did little for my optimism.
Fuck FireFly and fuck Lex too!
It stinks!
I've watched the first three episodes so far, and the movie sequences are all pure Mystery Science Theater. Not legendary episodes (although holy crap, Cry Wilderness is bananas), but solid throughout.
But the skits feel off. It's not the cast, they're fine off the bat and are finding a rhythm more and more. It's more that the show has more money now than it did before, and a larger crew to go with it. It takes away a lot of the DIY feel from the early episodes, but it doesn't really bring anything new to compensate. The skits feel really flat too, in the physical sense. Compare the "family" visit in 1102 with almost any skit set in Castle Forrester.
Settling in, maybe? Here's hoping. It still feels like Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I'm happy about that.
Netflix is for Old People!
Seriously, this region crap has got to end.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Is the new MST3K really the new MST3K or is Rifftrax still the true successor to the series?
Not seen the new ones yet, but I'm not really excited by the fact that the only person from the original still involved seems to be Joel, who I never found that funny.
Yeah, I never got it either. Sometimes the bad movies behind it were somewhat interesting, and I'd have rather watched the bad movie without a bunch of crap in front of it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
This and "roasts" are two things an American friend of mine tried to explain to me when he realised we don't have either - and then our Comedy Central tried to get the UK all het up about Justin Beibers "roast" and it all failed miserably over here.
The Americans just have some unique sense of humour, one that is hard to decipher some of the time :)
It's not for everyone. I remember first seeing MST3K when our cable (in the Netherlands) offered the SciFi Channel for 6 months as a sort of trial, and I was watching with a friend when an episode came on. First thought was "What the hell...", half an hour later we were fans. When I was in the States for work for a few months, I faithfully recorded every episode that aired during that time.
My brothers didn't get it at all though, and with the many people I've tried to introduce to the show it's been hit-and-miss: people who I thought might enjoy it hated it, and others unexepectedly loved it. Same for Rifftrax, of which my wife (thankfully) became a big fan as well.
By the way, I don't get "roasts" either.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
As of last night, there were NO torrents for the Netflix version. That seems to me to be a bad sign. Or the current seeders don't care.
Sig for hire.
I remember the first time I saw it. My friend and I were visiting another friend out of state and were flipping through the channels, when we came across the classic MST3K silhouette of the characters in front of the movie screen. "What was this?" we proclaimed? Our out of state friend said, "Oh that's Mystery Science Theater. It's pretty funny." Then they showed a gauge of some sort go to zero (The movie was Rocketship XM) and Crow said, "Muffins are done!" Immediately, my friend and I fell into a tonic-clonic seizure of laughter. As we watched the rest of the movie, exhausted and our guts sore with pain from all the laughing, we struggled to find new ways to laugh. We were sore for days. When we returned home, we told everyone about the show. Comedy Central was not available where we lived, so we would have out of state friends record and smuggle VHS tapes of the show to us for us to feast on.
In my many travels throughout the world, I have found two types of people: those who find MST3K funny, and those who have no souls! ;-)
I hate to get off-topic on this story but you realize that most of your "big chunk" goes toward the military, veterans, retirees and people too sick to work?
You want to tell which of them they're just being lazy?
Politicians.
I'm American, so I think it's just a matter of tastes. In the golden age of Dean Martin roasts, I was too young. There was a sweet spot where I understood what SNL was satirizing and loved it. Now I'm middle aged and out of touch with the popular culture in many ways. I *know* I'm watching satire on SNL, but I don't know what they're satirizing so it isn't funny. Likewise, a roast isn't going to be funny if you don't know the people being roasted. Of course it's also possible for these things to be poorly executed or out of touch with the culture as you say. I think a lot of SNL is poorly executed these days... but people have probably been saying that since the show first aired.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Pearl was criminally unfunny, though, and a bad actor. Just about all of what was bad about MST3K was her.
Or simply .... the two types of people:
- People who like MSKT
- People who are unable to lower their IQ down to such a low level.
more of thatlike Samus Aran.
Ditxh that bussboy Stanley Tweedle wtf they thinkin with that bootliquor in the show?
When we were teenagers we made fun of the bad movies on television just like MST3K does, but we were doing it a couple of decades before the original series was broadcast. One thing we did back then that MST3K never did was watch foreign language films with subtitles and do our own, funny translations.
When MST3K came along in the 80s, it reminded me of the old times and it was hilarious.
I'm watching the new series on Netflix right now and it's just as funny as ever. I could (and will) watch it over and over to catch jokes I missed the first time.
Jokes fell flat/weren't as edgy. Guy playing Crow wasn't as good as the old Crow (my favorite character). Not sure if I will keep watching when there are so many old episodes of the first show to watch on Netflix.
It was silly when it came out, with the mostly inane comments of the three front row clowns. It will probably be stupid now, but, hey, it does have its legion of fans.
Stupid people making lame jokes about stupid, lame movies. Like is to short of this crap. There is a firehose constantly streaming Good Stuff, more than many lifetimes.
I never was a huge fan of it, myself. When the episodes were good, it was pretty awesome. But most of them just seemed kind of boring.
Nonetheless, a lot of my friends were into it. And in kind of a meta sense, it's a lot more fun to watch this kind of show together with other people.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
True. It's totally an American thing. Thanks why the show never got cancelled because the American audience loves it so much!
Come on really, who cares this was/is garbage, stupid comments and their heads at the bottom of the screen for the movie. I don't know anyone who liked this. Must be a super low IQ thing no one understands. Just my two cents.
"I wonder if there is beer on the sun!?"