[HN Gopher] Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Definitive Oral Hi...
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Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Definitive Oral History of a TV
Masterpiece
Author : indigodaddy
Score : 101 points
Date : 2025-12-08 05:13 UTC (6 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wired.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wired.com)
| gnabgib wrote:
| (2014)
| KingMob wrote:
| Which is funny, because since then, MST3K had a wildly-
| successful Kickstarter, and managed to bring back 3 more
| seasons.
| tstrimple wrote:
| I remember enjoying quite a bit of MST3K but also have been
| burned by revisiting nostalgia too many times so I tend to
| just leave things alone now. I know it's subjective and not a
| fair question, but is the newer MST3K worth following up on?
| bink wrote:
| pluto.tv has the older "Joel" episodes and I've been
| enjoying them occasionally. The newer stuff for me has a
| bit too much "drama kid" energy, if that makes sense.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Regardless, I suspect we all agree it would be a poorer
| world without MST3K.
|
| (And happy "thousand" got shorted to "K" -- perhaps the
| early USENET nerds coined that.)
| 1123581321 wrote:
| I don't like them as much, but Jonah at least feels like a
| legitimate third human on the satellite after Joel and
| Mike. Starcrash is one from that Kickstarter season to
| check out.
|
| At this point it sees the fans are split into people who
| follow whatever MST3K and Rifftrax do, "keep sharing the
| tapes," and people who liked MST3K because it was funnier
| and scrappier than other shows and tapered off when it lost
| that. I lean toward the latter, but I'm friends with the
| former and we make it work.
| uhoh-itsmaciek wrote:
| The vibe is not the same, but Jonah is likeable, Felicia
| Day and Patton Oswalt are good as the Mads, and the movie
| selection is fantastic: Reptilicus? Munchie? The Christmas
| Dragon? Every film is a magnificent slice of different
| B-movie territory.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| Absolutely, if nothing else it's a fantastic entry point
| for new people to watch the show (especially kids).
|
| Note also, there's another season that's on the streaming
| services as individual movies post the Netflix reboot with
| much of the same team.
| 5555624 wrote:
| The host segments with Jonah aren't too bad. I don't care
| for the host segments with Felicia Day & Patton Oswalt;
| but, I didn't care for Pearl and Bobo, either. I don't care
| for the changing voices and characteristics of the bots,
| either.
|
| I think the riffs are more "generalized." In the original,
| there were riffs that were regional or more obscure (e.g.
| Hamdingers).
| jryan49 wrote:
| There were definitely some Philly area jokes in there :)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| The live stuff stands out as particularly good... I suppose
| because you get audience feedback and they seem to lean
| into it.
| mpalczewski wrote:
| I helped fund that kickstarter. The first season released on
| that kickstarter was such a disappointment. As if they forgot
| to be funny.
| dlhavema wrote:
| I loved their spin off Rifftrax.com, a bit tricky to get working,
| but worth it to hear the same guys trashing blockbuster movies
| instead of B movies.
| awayto wrote:
| Both have 24/7 twitch channels
|
| https://www.twitch.tv/rifftrax
|
| https://www.twitch.tv/mst3k
| czbond wrote:
| I think one or both also have Roku channels as well
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Worth mentioning that RiffTrax has a large catalog of riffed
| shorts (and a few lousy films) that _don 't_ require that.
|
| E.g., two of my favorites: "Shake Hands with Danger" and "More
| Dangerous than Dynamite".
|
| And the ones dubbed by Bridget and Mary Jo are great! Before
| them, the only narrator group I _really_ liked was
| Mike+Kevin+Bill.
| cube00 wrote:
| The effort they put into the cover art for the blockbuster
| riffs is always impressive, also Big McLargeHuge.
| psyclobe wrote:
| Jurassic Park with Weird Al is hilarious.
|
| "Save the bones!! The fat kid can fend for his or her self!"
| michelpp wrote:
| Cinimatic Titanic is also great, with a mix of the original
| mst3k cast doing studio and live shows. The live show of Alien
| Factor is hilarious!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinematic_Titanic
| elif wrote:
| Something about the way they aggressively released all their
| content, streaming it 24/7 on all platforms, removed the magic
| for me completely.
|
| I used to love these, but now I can't sit through more than 5
| minutes, because that sense of "oh this is special" is gone. I
| think for slow burn/buildup art, you have to kind of keep it
| special.
| LatencyKills wrote:
| Isn't that just "I can't regulate my media intake" problem?
|
| Why wife and I watched the entire series over a year and loved
| every minute.
| ghaff wrote:
| I get the parent's point though. There's a certain late night
| weekly thing that, for many of us, is hard to replicate with
| anytime/anywhere even if you could in principle.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That's just basically, "Don't binge watch."
|
| There are shows like "Twin Peaks" that, if you first
| introduction to them is binge watching, you'll wonder what
| all the fuss was ever about. (Some shows seem to need some
| water-cooler time in order to keep you on the edge of your
| sear, wondering, trying to make the connections yourself.)
| ghaff wrote:
| While it had its flaws, Babylon5 was like that as well.
| Probably Lost even if it IMO went downhill latterly. I'm
| not really a fan of binge-watching. A lot of shows are
| constructed in a way that rewards a slow rollout even if
| that's not the modern style.
| p_ing wrote:
| It's like ST:TNG Season 3 Episode 26 and Season 4 Episode
| 1.
|
| You had to wait a _whole ~four months_ to see Episode 1
| when Episode 26 ended in a "holy shit!" moment on top of
| one of the best TNG episodes to-date.
|
| If you watch the subsequently, you miss that feeling of
| build-up; there's no school-yard discussion about what
| could happen next.
|
| Doesn't keep me from watching it roughly once per year,
| but the original impact of the cliffhanger was
| incredible.
| Loughla wrote:
| I'm not trying to be a dick, but there is nothing stopping you
| from self regulating.
|
| We watch one episode of mst3k as a family Sunday night.
| Popcorn, lights off, huddled under blankets on the floor.
|
| If anything, it's more special for my kids (than it was for me)
| because they can see what we'll watch next week, and enjoy
| looking up random trivia about the terrible movie throughout
| the week.
| basedrum wrote:
| Meeeeemories... manos hands of fate, what an era
| indigodaddy wrote:
| All, if anyone is interested in the classic episodes without ads,
| I believe that the official MST3K/Gizmoplex channel on
| Roku/AndroidTV/Apple TV etc and gizmoplex.com website are still
| ad-free for the classic episodes. You have to register, but it's
| free. Note, I used the Roku app (I do not use any ad-blocking
| software/infra) and did not encounter ads, but have no experience
| with the website or other app platforms.
|
| https://mst3k.com/gizmoplex-visit/
| mrandish wrote:
| They just launched a Kickstarter for an MST3K table top game.
| https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cze/mst3k-the-game
| PeterHolzwarth wrote:
| The technically unnecessary due to pluto.tv, twitch streams etc.
| if you want to relive that early 2000's period of pre-youtube
| Shoutcast streaming, a guy has kept a number of low-rez streams
| going for posterity and nostalgia - including two MST3k streams.
| You can control-n these right into VLC:
|
| https://www.pracdev.org/channel99/pls_files/channel_3000.pls
|
| https://www.pracdev.org/channel99/pls_files/channel_3000_hal...
|
| from his site: https://www.pracdev.org/channel99/
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(page generated 2025-12-14 20:01 UTC)