 This is the SF Productions podcast network Netflix sign from the pop culture bunker. I'm Mindy and I'm Mark You can check out our audio podcast how I got my wife to read comics on iTunes or on our website SF podcast network com By the time this episode is published 14 new episodes of mystery science theater 3000 will be available on Netflix Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign. Yes, Mark won't have watched them all. He's gonna ration them. Yes And I try to avoid the whole binge thing Now before I get into the new season I wanted to go over the history of MST 3k and then I realized we had already done so on Episode 41. I Remember it like it was 2013 Well, it all starts with this guy Joel Hodgson who's this stand-up and a writer for Minneapolis He was this prop comic and he had these wacky devices And so he had a few appearances actually on SNL as a as like a they did like Like stand-up bits sometimes in the middle of the show back in the 80s Do you ever remember seeing I remember seeing him and you can find his stuff on YouTube once in a while now That was 1984. He was at that point offered a sitcom deal But according to interviews, he felt that LA was phony. Yeah, I personally think that he's allergic to success Yes, it's probably more like it. So he returned to his hometown and Then in 1988 Jim Mallon who was running this UHF station KTMA in Minneapolis He needed a show to fill up two hours on Sunday nights And he thought of the idea of maybe a show based on Joel's act and Joel came up with the concept for MST 3k And they produced 13 episodes. So what's the concept? Regular guy Joel works at Gizmonics Institute There are these two mad scientists who send him into space Dr. Clayton Forester who's trace Baloo and Dr. Lawrence Earhart. Who's Jay Elvis Weinstein? They're basically testing his ability to withstand watching the worst movies ever made and they put him in space So he doesn't have anything else to do exactly. Okay, and they can control the experiment And this is also a way for KTMA to use this movie package. They bought the rights to So they have the movies, but they didn't want to just show the movies, right? So this was really sort of like doing it instead of a An Elvira type or a Goularty. Yeah, that type of thing. Okay. So just kind of a variant on that So Joel builds these robots aka puppets to keep him company while he's up there in space Crow played by trace Baloo. This is crow. Yep Gypsum later called Gypsy voiced by originally Weinstein and Beeper who was later reformed into servo also Weinstein did And so they basically make fun of the movie While they were on screen as silhouettes who were seated in these movie seats They did these bumpers back on what they called the satellite of love the the ship He's on to basically break up the movie a little better KTMA ended up going up bankrupt soon after it aired these episodes. So look, he's pretty much out of a job So Joel sends this pitch tape, which is just a collection of stuff He had done it was the segment from SNL and a few other things He did send those out to various outlets and also on that tape was MST HBO saw it and they needed something to fill time on their brand new comedy channel Which later became Comedy Central when they merged with hop another comedy-based channel And they ordered a bunch of episodes in 1989 and is that when you first thought it was on Comedy Central? Yeah, yeah, okay. I think I kind of remember seeing some of the KTMA episodes but the KTMA stuff you the only way you see them is through tapes because They never aired those those ones nationally see I seem to recall seeing something on TV And I may have actually gotten those stations when I was in college up in Upper Peninsula of Michigan Oh, that's a possibility. So the show became a cult hit and In fact, it was really Comedy Central's first real hit until South Park and Daily Show came on came came by This was their biggest hit in the second season Weinstein roll of he moved on and Kevin Murphy took over the role of Tom Servo TV's Frank Frank Conniff took over the role of Dr. Forrester's lackey and The two mad scientists were usually referred to as the Mads We're now down in deep 13 at underground layer So they were no longer directly working for the Gizmonics Institute. Did they change this theme song then? Yes, okay. Yeah, and they reshot the opening actually at that point because I can sing the one about Gizmonic Institute Just saying yeah and in 1991 a Tradition began on Thanksgiving. The Comedy Central did this turkey day, which was a 24-hour MST marathon In fact, it was just recreated this year online for the anniversary I've got a link to at least some of the clips from it on our Facebook page And it was just basically reruns. I mean there was no new material was there except Joel did new Rapparounds for each one. Okay, but it was very basic. There wasn't too much to that so 1993 Joel and Jim Mallon Started to fight for control of the show Because they had very different creative concepts for the show Mallon wanted to do a movie like a theatrical release a fat group after release because they already do movies, right? But Joel really wasn't interested and in fact he wanted to pull away from being on camera at that point So Joel ends up leaving the show and he's replaced by the show's head writer Mike Nelson who was playing his role was an office temp at deep 13 and After Joel escapes the Mads are like, what are we gonna do? And here's that temp in 1996 TV's Frank left the show and at that point dr. Forester's mother Who was played by another writer on the show? Mary Jo Pell joined the cast? In that same year Comedy Central canceled the show and in the final episode dr. F becomes a star child Now was that a concept from one of the movies? Oh well? Well, it was it was a 2001 parody. Oh, okay There's this whole there's a VHS tape of a huge VHS tape of the worst movie ever made That's what it says on it is the obelisk and all this and So that same year MST 3k the movie came out They use this island earth as the movie that they did within the movie Universal for whatever reason decided to make this what's called a rock-and-roll film now It has nothing to do with music. Okay, it means that you you make a very limited number of prints And then you move it from town to town And in fact there were only 26 prints made of the movie that was the the widest release was 26 The movie bombed it all it made just over one million dollars in the theaters As you would expect from something that has 26 prints and has to move from city to city, right? We actually flew to Minneapolis to see it. Yeah, that's right. That's right with your friend. Yes. I didn't go. That's right And later you were nice enough to track down the laser disc for me Yes, I did get the laser disc and of course now though. It's available everywhere on exactly DVD and blu-ray and whatever. Yeah, so There was a fan-based write-in campaign That got the sci-fi channel now sci-fi or siffy or whatever. They're calling it now Skippy, I guess there's no see right And they they agreed to pick it up and they ran it for three more seasons between 97 and 99 And as you would suspect it was a lot more sci-fi based they for the first I think season and a half They did nothing but universal movies that from Universal International Which were a lot of there are a lot of schlocky movies from then from that studio at the time But it was all stuff that Universal that also on sci-fi had the rights to Writer Bill Corbett took over the crow roll Mrs. Forrester was now the main villain Yes, well she had to be because because Frank was gone Frank was gone and Dr. So her henchmen were Professor Bobo played by Kevin Murphy a talking gorilla a reference to Planet of the Apes and Observer played by Bill Corbett who's omniscient and yet idiotic And the reason they both hate Mike is because he accidentally blew up their planets. Yes I sort of thought that was a pretty good concept Yeah, yeah, so that ran for three years three seasons at least and there were reruns for five years after the show left the air in 99 It's a 2004 was the last time a rerun was on there We Attended both of the convention con expo fester Rama events. They were held in Minneapolis So it was just MST fans came together And in fact the pickup that sci-fi did for the show was announced at the second one And they had a rep from the sci-fi channel who probably got the the greatest applause event that he probably ever gotten his entire entire life and would ever get in his entire life because He's in front of all the fans who had just saved it their favorite show. Yes So Joel went on to various projects at one point He brought part of the team back together for cinematic Titanic Which involved live performances and videos with the same movie riffing concept and he brought back Weinstein and Belu and Conniff and Pell for all brought together for that Meanwhile Mike went on to ref tracks Doing a similar concept with Murphy and Corbett and the idea is they sell these MP3s That you can match with big movies that would never have been on MST That was always the thing they could never get the rights to a big blockbuster movie, right? And as long as you know, they're not trying to sell you the movie. They can do whatever they want exactly So it's audio So it's the the mp3 has their riffing and you just match it up with the DVD of the movie And they also sell these rift shorts Now the MST episodes are on DVD they came out first from a rhino and now they're coming out from shout factory and Shout actually does a great job. I think they do these mini documentaries about the movie being ripped I'm collecting them all as they come out. Yes And with some nice little extras too, I mean, you know, these were all extras. Oh, yeah the box sets and there's some little Postcard yeah, like mini posters for the Mary's movies Mark Mark. Oh, sorry. Ah, sorry So Joel has been trying to bring back the series for years He partnered with shout factory who's been putting out the DVDs of the old show to buy back the rights And then began a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of two million dollars in order to create three new episodes But by the time the dust settled 48,270 backers pledged five million $764,229, which was enough to do 14 episodes including a Christmas show I'm back in 1921 In addition to $630,000 generated from add-on deals that were outside of Kickstarter So the show has a brand new cast with Joel as the exec producer Now this was a very controversial thing online because a lot of people are like, oh why can't you just get the old cast together and Joel made it very clear in his various interviews and writings that It needed a new fresh group. He wants the show to go on for a very long time And I think he's right. Yeah, you it would be like trying to get the cast of firefly back together now Yes But we should really just relax. Yes Jonah Ray got the jumpsuit as host Jonah Heston, which is of course a plan of the ape slash omega man reference Stand up comedians Hampton yount and baron vaughn take over as the voices of crow tea robot and tom servo And what's interesting is unlike on the old show They're not also the puppeteers There's a separate group of puppeteers plus They will have like this rc thing that allows them to move the mouth the mouth. So as they're talking Felicia day steps in as new mad kinga forester So dr. F's daughter or pearl's granddaughter, right third generation third generation Pat noz walt is tv son of tv's frank And they're going to be cameos from pearl forester mary jopel professor bobo kevin murphy an observer slash brain guy bill corbett There is an all-star writing team which includes elliott kailyn who is the head writer of the daily show Dan harman who created community Neal scolvel who is a writer on the simpsons pollin storm Dana gould plus some of the original writing staff and of course joel So I guess not one person or not one group of people will have to watch all the movies, right? Yeah, they're they're kind of switching out I guess And there are many cameos planned with celebrity misties Now as a backer, I just got to see the first episode in advance. We just watched it this morning Without any spoilers. I can say that if you're worried that the new cast and the budget will ruin things You should really just relax It's a cheesy movie There's riffing. There's host segments. There's the door sequence. There's the mabs. Everything's there. Yes So by all means because it's available to you now as this is published Go watch it on netflix, please because we want a season 12 and 13 and 14 and 15. That would be nice for you Yes, yeah And if you're not watching that you can check out our audio podcast How I got my wife treat comics on itunes or on our website as a podcast network dot com from the pop culture bunker I'm indy and i'm mark. Thanks for watching. They tried to get in with the forklift