One of my supervisors at work has started closing our section’s morning meeting with bits of trivia. Today the subject was Christmas, and despite or because of a certain focus on holiday movies and specials everyone seemed to be quick with answers. At last, my supervisor said he had a last question, and that it would be so difficult he’d give anyone who could answer some of the mini-pepperonis he’d been selling yesterday for outside-work fundraising. He started reading off a question that described a science fiction movie from 1964 ranked among the worst films ever, and I said at once “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.” I’d known about it years before learning about Mystery Science Theater 3000, but I’m certain the show helped the title leap to mind.

Since last commenting here on the early days of the new, “self-streamed” Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes (right around when Emily Marsh became the second host of the season, “Emily Connor”), I have kept up with their premieres. The thought “it’s not all that good to drive yourself to the point of setting down an opinion on everything” that’s been coming to me of late, though, did nudge me away from making more posts on the episodes. So far as opinions unexpressed at the time on the subject went, my enjoyment did seem to be increasing as the premieres went on. Maybe too much could be made of the general opinion the original series picked up steadily from its first-season episodes to its third-season episodes and beyond. That might tie into a certain shaded thought of mine that’s been recurring ever since “the Gizmoplex” opened that the happy fandom is one that can blame “executives” for things going wrong with a continuing series, and with Comedy Central, the Sci-Fi Channel, and Netflix no longer in the picture an unfortunate clock might now be ticking.
( For the moment, though... )

Along with a new season of episodes, the just-started Mystery Science Theater 3000 streaming service promised “special presentations.” The first of them was announced to be a tribute to the infamous “Manos: The Hands of Fate,” obvious enough in a certain way but at least letting me suppose I could try it out as I’d tried out the opening episode. In the lead-up to the presentation, I was also informed one of the new riffed-on shorts that had been one of the several stretch goals reached in the crowdfunding process would be shown off, and then learned that would lead off the presentation. Hoping this would look further back than the current emphasis on “widescreen movies” might result in, I remained intent on taking in the presentation.
( Returns and discussions )

As my first benefit for chipping into the “revive the revival” Mystery Science Theater 3000 Kickstarter, I was sent an invitation to a new message board. It took me a little while to get around to completing my signup, but once I had some measure of nostalgia had me looking straight off for threads that might reference those antique fanworks of the series, MSTings.

There was indeed a thread on that subject, and along with happening to link to my minimalistic web site concatenating links to the MSTings that had been posted to Usenet, I noticed a site I hadn’t known about before called “The MSTing Canon.” In a brief compass, it sets out to introduce you to the subject (with “The Eye of Argon,” a work I’ve also thought would work well there even if its ever so slightly ominous conclusion leads on to the rest of Adam Cadre’s MSTings) and run through its decade-long history, with special emphasis on “the Marrissa MSTings.” While not all of my own personal favorites wound up included, that just proves the field is broad enough for interesting variations. Two group MSTings I contributed to did just happen to show up, anyway.

The person who put the site together has even written a new MSTing, in which Jonah and the bots “riff” on “My Immortal,” theoretically a Harry Potter fanfic. I recall having heard about the story back when I read the books to see what a good number of the positive Star Wars fans I’d fallen in with at last were also talking about, and diving into the MSTing now I realised I had looked at a work trying to be a deliberate parody of the source (although, of course, that’s a tricky thing to do with a poorly written story). It was a bit invigorating to discover I’m not alone in remembering MSTings, even if I can’t ask for much more; having got out of whatever habit of reading fanfiction I had, I’m not quite in a position to keep turning out MSTings of my own.

When I signed a Blu-Ray of the restored Manos: The Hands of Fate out of the city library, one of the disc’s bonus features had been about some people putting on an puppet adaptation. “Puppets,” of course, played their own role in embedding the infamous film in our collective consciousness, and I was amused enough to start looking for information on the adaptation. Before too long I’d found an online video of a performance. Just starting to watch it, though, had seemed enough to get the joke. It took quite a while, when not just one computer but my Internet connection itself was tied up downloading the Big Sur installer, to turn back to my saved copy of “Manos: The Hands of Felt” and finish watching it.
( Thoughts on felt )

Mystery Science Theater 3000 is indissolubly linked to the American Thanksgiving, but as that Thursday in November is just another day for me I didn’t think to visit Satellite News until late. The site, though, was passing along a message from Joel Hodgson there wouldn’t be any more episodes of the revival made for Netflix.

I suppose I thought not so much of the original Mystery Science Theater leaving Comedy Central after the six-episode seventh season (which happened around when I was just becoming aware of the series through MSTings) but of the Sci-Fi Channel pulling the plug two decades ago now, by which point I’d at least seen a few actual episodes on the first official videotapes and was much deeper into the MSTing community, which carried on for about three more years before just sort of drying up. While I know the revival has been performing live shows (the end of “The Gauntlet” did touch on that, although I’d started thinking almost from the moment I saw it could be taken as something of an “our heroes escape” ending), I don’t know if there’ll be any chance of actual episodes being made for any other video service. My own reactions to the revival were somewhat uncomplicated: it wasn’t throwing in blatant putdowns of the familiar targets for “every fan” every episode, so I was able to watch it. While I have found a legitimate source for Rifftrax productions and the now decade-old “Cinematic Titanic” on the streaming site Tubi, I’m still leery about both of them that way. This is a moment, though, where I’m at least trying to be thankful for what I did like.

When a PBS “American Experience” program on “the circus” showed up in the options Netflix presents me with, the recurring conviction I ought to use my subscription to that service for more than the anime series (or even “animated series”) on it cropped up again. I have watched a number of documentaries on it before (including some others sourced from PBS, “The Civil War” and a more recent piece about the Voyager missions), even if this might be a bit like how I read plenty of nonfiction but do grapple with the concern I’m not reading enough novels to escape the lazy thought “any fictional prose that doesn’t whoosh by over my head or at least depress me isn’t serious enough to really value.” As for why this particular case grabbed me, though, beyond “the draw of a reputable brand name” I might have been conscious “the idea of the circus” was picked up in my mind one second-hand bit at a time, and tied up with a sense of it being “antique.”
( Under the big top )

Five of the six movies in the latest series of Mystery Science Theater 3000 were revealed a little while before they went up on Netflix by a British ratings classification site. Some of the titles got my attention because I'd heard at least a bit about their reputations before. As I've already said, I'd seen "MAC and Me" described as an "E.T. ripoff with even more product placement" years ago. For the second episode of "The Gauntlet," though, having heard about the title not quite as many years ago had me wondering just a bit about how things would turn out, and without happening to notice a perhaps overwrought reaction from someone else.
( There's cheesy, and there's other stuff )

A few months after I'd listened to their podcast series taking a humourously skewed look at Ready Player One, Mike Nelson and Conor Lastowka started talking about Ernest Cline's second novel. I had kept looking back at their podcast's home page every so often, but didn't leap at the chance to listen to their take on Armada. Even if that novel seemed much less in constant deamnd at my local library and therefore easier to sign out to "see what they were talking about," my old uneasiness about what sort of putdowns the "Rifftrax" Conor might help write and Mike might help voice might have left me thinking I ought not to push my luck.

I still didn't leave the home page altogether alone, though, and one day I saw another post go up on it. This time, an electric shock of realisation flew through me. With the works of Ernest Cline used up for the moment, Mike and Conor were turning to an earlier work of "notable bad fiction." Not only was it one I already knew about, I just happened to have first learned about "The Eye of Argon" by Jim Theis via an altogether unofficial take on Mystery Science Theater 3000, Adam Cadre's MSTing.
( First things first, though )

The news Netflix would allow more episodes of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 revival to be made had seemed sufficient in itself, but an announcement from Joel Hodgson that taping of those new episodes was about to begin seemed a small but pleasant waypoint at first glance. At second glance, noticing his comment within the announcement that the new block of shows would have six episodes in it did get me wondering. I suppose I'm one part of "at least some Mystery Science Theater fans" who remember the seventh season of the original series had only six episodes, closing down the initial run of the show on Comedy Central.

Joel, though, did offer an update afterwards proclaiming "this is not a winding down; by making fewer episodes at a time, we'll have these blocks of new content showing up more often." I was able to contemplate how the blocks of Voltron Legendary Defender episodes on Netflix have become shorter with time (even with another new set of them approaching), and for that matter I've been watching a streaming series of documentaries about toy lines (which is often entertaining, even if it leaves me wondering about "being consumed by appropriative nostalgia, smirking and taking it too seriously all at once") that started with four episodes and then added another four. In any case, the additional announcement that Joel would be "riffing" in a new life show also got my attention even if I supposed I wouldn't be able to see this effort at "getting cash on the barrelhead from an assured audience."