The Mystery and The Science Behind MST3K
September 29, 2008

It was the spring of 1988, and production manager Jim Mallon was at wit’s end trying to come up with inexpensive live programming for KTMA, the Minneapolis-based TV station for which he worked.

Mallon knew some local stand-up comedians who were dying to get on television, and he asked one of them, 28-year-old Joel Hodgson, to come up with viable ideas for a low-budget show. Shortly thereafter, Joel requested a sit-down at which he produced a yellow legal pad covered with scrawled concepts.

They settled on one that would star Hodgson as future space traveler Joel Robinson, held prisoner by mad scientists on a satellite in space and forced to watch old B-movies with his wisecracking robot sidekicks, Tom. Produced on the fly for fifty bucks an episode, the largely improvised show debuted that summer to good reviews.

Servo and Crow T. Robot

Everybody loved the concept. Sensing greater potential, Jim culled the highlights and sent a demo tape to HBO, which had just announced formation of an all-comedy cable network. “We knew we were on to something,” Mallon recalls. “Ultimately the planets lined up and we got an order for 13 shows.”

Debuting in 1989, the Comedy Channel’s Mystery Science Theater 3000 was an instantaneous critical and commercial success. Before long, HBO’s fax machine was humming with requests from ardent fans. The series was renewed, sending Hodgson and the staff writers scurrying back to their screening room to select a new batch of cinematic turkeys for roasting. “We would sit around, watching these movies,” he recalls of their creative process. “And we’d just riff on them while somebody typed everything we said. Afterward we’d go through the transcript and cull the best jokes.”

Hodgson left the show in 1993 and was replaced by head writer Mike Nelson. After seven seasons MST3K moved to the Sci-Fi Channel, where it remained for another three years. Altogether the show logged 197 episodes and one feature film, winning a Peabody Award in ’93, securing Emmy nominations for comedy writing in ’94 and ’95, and delighting its loyal fan base.

On October 28^th Shout! Factory will revisit those halcyon days by releasing an MST3K 20^th Anniversary Edition DVD box set that among other things will include four oft-requested, previously unreleased episodes and exclusive footage from the show’s first family reunion, which was held at the past Comic Con in San Diego with Hodgson, Mallon, Nelson, Trace Beaulieu (Crow), Kevin Murphy (Tom), Bill Corbett, and J. Elvis Weinstein participating. The 20^th Anniversary box is just the first of a planned series of MST3K DVD collections.

Hodgson believes that MST3K pioneered the type of irreverent but affectionate humor that pokes fun at the popular culture—a strain of comedy that runs through many of the homemade offerings currently proliferating on YouTube. “The premise is still valid,” he says. “It’s all about the shared experience of watching really awful movies with your friends and having fun with it. The technology may change but the basic idea will always be good for laughs.”—Ed Hulse

Posted by Laurence Lerman on September 29, 2008 | Comments (0)