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I was a bit slow to open the latest official collection of Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVDs once I'd received it in the mail. Going on vacation last month had something to with that, but I was aware even so of the feeling the episodes in the set ranged for me from "not personal standouts" to "actually uncomfortable to watch." What with the nagging worry I'll be stuck with personal disagreements with the "riffing" in the upcoming revival, it might have been an especially awkward time to have some reluctance towards the original series.
Once I did have the set open, though, I started finding things to interest me about the episodes and the movies (or thereabouts) featured in them. Getting past the infamous blandness (and a certain emphasis in the "riffing" to 1970s TV) of "Stranded in Space," I also found myself thinking past the cheapness of "this other world just happens to exactly look like the Earth" to contemplate how it's easier to exposit about a conformist dystopia than to actually work out how an ordinary person might have to get by in it. The disc also included a short feature on "Film Ventures International" as the last of the episodes featuring its cheap video credits got on official DVDs, and explained that by the point it was making up those for-TV packages it was pretty much all the way down the declining slope. It had risen from "foreign imports" to making movies cashing in on trends, but one feature's promotion had been just a bit too much like the way its inspiration was being sold and that had caused problems that had built until the company's founder had cleaned out the office safe and vanished.
( A limited incredible ride )
Once I did have the set open, though, I started finding things to interest me about the episodes and the movies (or thereabouts) featured in them. Getting past the infamous blandness (and a certain emphasis in the "riffing" to 1970s TV) of "Stranded in Space," I also found myself thinking past the cheapness of "this other world just happens to exactly look like the Earth" to contemplate how it's easier to exposit about a conformist dystopia than to actually work out how an ordinary person might have to get by in it. The disc also included a short feature on "Film Ventures International" as the last of the episodes featuring its cheap video credits got on official DVDs, and explained that by the point it was making up those for-TV packages it was pretty much all the way down the declining slope. It had risen from "foreign imports" to making movies cashing in on trends, but one feature's promotion had been just a bit too much like the way its inspiration was being sold and that had caused problems that had built until the company's founder had cleaned out the office safe and vanished.
( A limited incredible ride )