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krpalmerWhen I got the latest official collection of Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVDs in the mail, there wasn't much time left before my vacation, so I decided I could leave the episodes to wait. It then turned out I still had to take a week's break right in the middle of the set, but I've now managed to see all of them.
The episodes in this particular collection came from just the fourth to the sixth seasons of the show, and while I'll certainly watch any episode from either the seasons below or above them there may be something to that particular time of the show (if a time that can be further divided into "Joel's last years" and "Mike's first years") that appeals to me in a special way. However, it's also possible the four movies in this collection were all atypical in varied ways from what makes for "a really memorable episode." "Space Travelers" (the DVD cover managed to emphasise the word "Marooned") was, of course, a big-budget picture that just happened to have fallen into the "cheap TV filler" category that made it accessible to the series; the DVD includes an interview with someone making a point of this, and as with Frank Conniff's introduction he wonders aloud whether the series had somehow crossed a boundary in taking it on. However, he also happened to mention how the novel the movie was made from, written half a decade earlier, had just involved a Mercury capsule stranded in orbit, which reminded me of how I'd once found that novel in a thrift store and yet it had wound up one of those books I flip a bit through here and there, enough to get a sense of how it ends (with the much more capable than reality craft nervous imagination had given the Soviets racing a Gemini capsule that just happened to have been a few days' rush short of ready to the rescue), but never get all the way through until I relinquish my chance of doing that by getting rid of it. "Hercules" led off the "muscles and mythology" movies but just happened to be the fourth such film on the series, and that in itself just might affect how it's viewed. However, it did happen to include a little documentary about how Joseph E. Levine used it and other imported fare to move up to bigger things. Frank Conniff mentions in his introduction to "Radar Secret Service" the famous tale of how the movie had attracted the attention of the "Best Brains," been denied to them for a while (he mentions "months" instead of "seasons," but this doesn't necessarily mean anything), and then left them rather more underwhelmed when they did have their chance to take it on, but he does seem enthusiastic about how it turned out and I seemed quite able to enjoy its low-grade proto-technothriller adventures once more myself. In any case, the episode includes the infamous short "Last Clear Chance" and the DVD includes footage from a recent trip Frank and Trace Beaulieu made to a convention in England. Some of the show was aired there, which was more than I managed to see of it on TV, but I was inclined to reflect anew on my own atypical backdoor introduction to it. "San Francisco International" does seem to be an episode I've found more in over the years, inspiring amused thoughts of the last frayed tag-ends of "Jet Age" glamour sliding into that large easy target known as "the seventies." However, it turned out Frank Conniff didn't provide an introduction for this episode, but the DVD did include an interview with the webmaster of "Satellite News," which went into a bit more detail about how people discovered the show (the "shadowramma" is mentioned as particularly eye-catching) and the first days of online fandom.
The episodes in this particular collection came from just the fourth to the sixth seasons of the show, and while I'll certainly watch any episode from either the seasons below or above them there may be something to that particular time of the show (if a time that can be further divided into "Joel's last years" and "Mike's first years") that appeals to me in a special way. However, it's also possible the four movies in this collection were all atypical in varied ways from what makes for "a really memorable episode." "Space Travelers" (the DVD cover managed to emphasise the word "Marooned") was, of course, a big-budget picture that just happened to have fallen into the "cheap TV filler" category that made it accessible to the series; the DVD includes an interview with someone making a point of this, and as with Frank Conniff's introduction he wonders aloud whether the series had somehow crossed a boundary in taking it on. However, he also happened to mention how the novel the movie was made from, written half a decade earlier, had just involved a Mercury capsule stranded in orbit, which reminded me of how I'd once found that novel in a thrift store and yet it had wound up one of those books I flip a bit through here and there, enough to get a sense of how it ends (with the much more capable than reality craft nervous imagination had given the Soviets racing a Gemini capsule that just happened to have been a few days' rush short of ready to the rescue), but never get all the way through until I relinquish my chance of doing that by getting rid of it. "Hercules" led off the "muscles and mythology" movies but just happened to be the fourth such film on the series, and that in itself just might affect how it's viewed. However, it did happen to include a little documentary about how Joseph E. Levine used it and other imported fare to move up to bigger things. Frank Conniff mentions in his introduction to "Radar Secret Service" the famous tale of how the movie had attracted the attention of the "Best Brains," been denied to them for a while (he mentions "months" instead of "seasons," but this doesn't necessarily mean anything), and then left them rather more underwhelmed when they did have their chance to take it on, but he does seem enthusiastic about how it turned out and I seemed quite able to enjoy its low-grade proto-technothriller adventures once more myself. In any case, the episode includes the infamous short "Last Clear Chance" and the DVD includes footage from a recent trip Frank and Trace Beaulieu made to a convention in England. Some of the show was aired there, which was more than I managed to see of it on TV, but I was inclined to reflect anew on my own atypical backdoor introduction to it. "San Francisco International" does seem to be an episode I've found more in over the years, inspiring amused thoughts of the last frayed tag-ends of "Jet Age" glamour sliding into that large easy target known as "the seventies." However, it turned out Frank Conniff didn't provide an introduction for this episode, but the DVD did include an interview with the webmaster of "Satellite News," which went into a bit more detail about how people discovered the show (the "shadowramma" is mentioned as particularly eye-catching) and the first days of online fandom.