Keith Palmer's Multi-Purpose Journal

When I filled in the last space on my list of "episode thoughts" about Mystery Science Theater 3000, there were some "end of an era" thoughts, and yet there still could have been a certain negative space left open on that list. I'd commented on every episode shown on cable, the movie, and Joel Hodgson's proof-of-concept pilot, which he'd shown at a convention where someone had made a fully adequate recording that had wound up an online video encoding. I could have followed the pilot by seeking out those episodes people had managed to videotape off an Minnesota UHF station in 1988 and 1989, but along with all the comments overheard how the improvisational "KTMA episodes" had a lot of "unriffed space" in them and the personal impression the first cable episodes themselves can feel sort of tedious, I had what might seem the convenient excuse there were no fan copies of the first three episodes. Starting close to one beginning seemed fine to some, but somehow I was a little too conscious of the gap.
( 'I think it's a good time to point out these puppets do their own stunts.' )

I decided quite a while ago to save a well-respected episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 for the penultimate position in this project of rewatching and commenting on them. (Looking back, though, I did see I had once considered getting to it much sooner, only to put it off because it would have stretched out getting through the first episode of each season...) The episode is "Mitchell," famous first as the one where Joel Hodgson left the series and Mike Nelson was introduced "as himself" to take over, but also as a cop movie featuring Joe Don Baker. As Mike says as he helps TV's Frank and Dr. Forrester as a temp worker during an audit of Deep 13 (while Joel presents the infamous "Daktari stool" for his half of the "Invention Exchange"), "You guys watch Joe Don Baker movies?"
( 'Stop or my heart'll explode!' )
( 'But I'm not a salesman, I'm the chubby blue line!' )
( 'Mitchell. Even his name says, is that a beer?' )

In the clutches of "Manos: The Hands of Fate," Joel tries to rally his robot friends with "We survived 'Monster A-Go-Go,' we can survive this!" Now, as I close out rewatching and commenting on the fourth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I've reached that earlier episode myself. To put it in a few words, it's its own unique challenge.
( 'This is a test. Had this been an actual movie, you would have been entertained.' )

In finishing off the second season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, where the show started looking and sounding like it would for many seasons to come, I've also completed its loosely linked "trilogy" of "biker movies." The last movie of them by "series order" I didn't get around to until I was watching the last few episodes of the series for the first time (which made it one of the first few episodes I posted about), and the first of them I looked at a fair while ago, but now at last I've made it to "Wild Rebels," remembering it to be one of the better thought-of episodes of the whole second season...
( 'It doesn't get any stupider than this.' )
( 'He's kind of an easy target: fat, drunk, and stupid.' )
( 'You know... I'm going to miss her and all her murderous ways.' )

Jumping straight from the tenth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to the first, I've finished it off as well with "Women of the Prehistoric Planet." ("My sister saw this in junior high! All the guys had to go into the gym!") The episode is numbered "104," and practically every chronicle of the show (including the official episode guide) puts its entry for it in between those for "Mad Monster" and "The Corpse Vanishes." They also always seem to include a little note that it wasn't taped in between those two episodes, but was in fact the last produced for the first season. However, one person, in managing to watch every episode in the space of a single year, put "Women of the Prehistoric Planet" after "The Black Scorpion," and even though I haven't quite followed "production order" myself that did get my attention...

It's been argued through "Satellite News" itself that to draw too much attention to the delicate situation of this episode would be to call into question the arrangement of all the rest of the show, and I suppose there's a little something to that. It's also pointed out that it does manage to break up a long stretch of black-and-white movies "riffed" in casual fashion. (This was not the case when the first season was being shown on cable for the very first time, though...) At the same time, we know from official sources about this episode's situation, and callbacks in both "host segments" and riffing and the fine details of set and bot construction add up to show it following "The Black Scorpion," so to me being peculiar in my list of episode comments doesn't throw the rest of the series on to a slippery slope. With all of that said, now I suppose I have to acknowledge there's an actual episode and movie there too...
( 'You're pretty well groomed for having been in space for so long.' )

I suppose I'm getting back into my usual routine by commenting on a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode. At the same time, I only have ten left to comment on; I now seem in the definite final countdown. That feeling of closing things off begins as I complete the third season with "Earth vs. the Spider" ("I'll put my money on the spider.")... but before the movie, with Bert I. Gordon once more inflicting amazing colossal beings on the world, there's also a short.
( 'Let's find a place where we're safe from these process shots.' )

Getting back to the "Joel years" of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I've reached "The Human Duplicators." It might have been one of the episodes I have left to rewatch now more through simple accident than the feeling something about it was worth "saving for later," but that doesn't mean there weren't some surprises to the full experience...
( 'I sing the body pathetic.' )

After what seemed a fairly long sojourn among the "Mike episodes," it's back to the "Joel episode" "It Conquered the World." ("Oh, they're giving away the ending!") I now have the definite feeling of starting into the last few episodes I have left to rewatch (I have to admit I've seen them all already) and comment on, but to say that I was consciously "saving my absolute favourites for last" would be too much of a stretch. However, there are certainly interesting things about the movie...
( 'Yeah, everybody gets a day off at the end of the world.' )

Even after the Star Wars ripoffs, the James Bond ripoffs, the Indiana Jones ripoffs (although this might be more a matter of "personal opinion" than the others), the "Russo-Finnish troika," the "Coleman Francis trilogy," and the Union Pacific shorts, there were still two "thematically linked" episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 I had decided to save until I was working my way into commenting on the "last few" episodes of the series. There are a certain number of episodes from early in the "Mike years" I sort of see as "getting around to" specific types of movies that had been particular features or memorable moments of the "Joel years." When it came to Japanese movies, though, they didn't turn up again until the eighth season. I suppose I'm aware the second of those movies is often termed of the outright "difficult episodes" of the series, which might mean that in the end the joke will be on me. As for "Prince of Space," though, I was at least looking forward to it with straightforward anticipation.
( 'Powered by rotted fish, I will defeat you!' )
( 'Back to your three-by-five apartments, men!' )
( 'Humiliating game shows are beamed across the nation!' )
( 'Aah, just going to stop in here for some sushi burritos.' )
( 'If I could only reach this dried squid!' )
( 'Oh, please, not this. Anything but an old Star Trek set!' )

Heading into the ninth season of Mystery Science Theater 3000, I decided to watch the episode "The Space Children" not in small part because it happens to feature the first short of the whole "Sci-Fi Channel era," one touching both on "genre" and a topic of personal interest. While I suppose the closest I've ever come to visiting a World's Fair is EPCOT Center at Disney World, I do have a certain fascination in them, particularly the ones of the 1960s. After the episode begins with Tom Servo setting up a kissing booth, Pearl Forrester sends a cluster of telephones to the Satellite of Love, and after her phone conference doesn't work that well, she hurls the phone-focused short "Century 21 Calling..." at our heroes, who are sent on an enforced visit to the 1962 Seattle World's Fair...
( 'Aah, let's head over to the Steak and Martini Pavilion.' )
( 'I enjoy our warm chats about civil defence.' )
( 'Remind me never to be a child.' )
( 'He has a real screen absence.' )
( 'Oppenheimer took my stapler.' )
( 'Average suburban family to the rescue!' )