So we all know that every episode of MST3K begins with a remind that “it’s just a show. I should really just relax.” But I think every fan out there has blatantly ignored that advice on multiple occasions. We are all obsessed with the show and thus cannot resist dissecting it in a fashion better fit for “Star Trek.” MST3K basically celebrates its lack of continuity, from casually joking about Servo’s arms not working to not even acknowledging Frank’s tendency to come back to life one week later without fanfare. Sometimes a shallow explanation is made, like citing the existence of an air duct on the way to Servo’s seat in the theater, but, most of the time, the poor continuity is just part of the humor. So I would like to dedicate a weekend discussion to “The Science of Mystery Science Theater.” What explanations have you come up with for aspects of the show that aren’t meant to be explained?
Okay, I’ll give you one I’ve conjectured on: Why was it called “The Satellite of Love?” Perhaps Gizmonic Institute was building the rocket to send couples into space and show them romantic movies to study their, um, reaction? Hmmm?
And how DOES he eat and breathe? What do you think?
) to help our users cope with "trolls" and other commenters whom they find annoying. Go to our
I know there’s no answer to this, but why does Frank sometimes call Dr. Forrester “Steve”?
On the subject of just relaxing:
-One thing that always bothered me: In “Soultaker” Joel says Dr. F sabotaged the SOL to malfunction after ten years. But Crow had lived on the SOL till the year 2525, making the ship far more than a decade old.
-Crow went from being made of “high density kevlar” in the Joel years to molybdenum in the Mike years.
-Crow’s mother is thrown off the ship in “Code Name Diamond Head” yet he has her again in “Diabolik” (although he could have found her again during the aforementioned thousands of years he spent on the SOL)
If it’s not cheese, what is it?
There is an off-screen explanation for the S.O.L.’s name. It’s in the first draft of the movie where Dr. Forrester says that Mike has mockingly renamed his Stationary Orbiting Laboratory to Satellite Of Love. So there!
As for the breathing thing, I can buy that Joel/Mike can breathe on the actual ship, but in the vacuum of space, having hot chocolate with Pearl? Don’t think so!
I’ve often tried to map the layout of the SOL in my head. Have to try paper and pencil one of these days.
I think there’s a convenient way (not very original) to answer all questions about “how he eats and breathes” and other such things, simply by bailing out into the catch-all explanation that there is no actual ship, no ‘bots, or anything else because it’s a hallucination of Joel’s. He even hallucinated turning into a different person as the ultimate escape mechanism (see also David Lynch’s Lost Highway.)
Here’s a question to ponder: How, exactly, does Gypsy move around the ship? All we’ve seen of her is her head and her many coils (which are presumably connected to the ship somewhere). And yet, we know she goes all over the ship, doing the various jobs required to keep the ship up. She has mobility, yet never seems to have any means of propulsion. My theory: Gypsy actually inhabits the interior hull of the SOL, where she can direct herself to any point on the ship, and then pop her head out where required.
What do you think, sirs?
Its called SOL because Dr. F likes to watch them for a little while. He loves to watch things on TV.
@#7 I always thought she moved around like a huge snake….
I really do just relax when I watch MST3K. If they need an arm to work for a sketch because it’s funny great, when it’s not working the rest of the time and they joke about it, no problem. As obsessed with the show as I have been for 2 decades I’ve never had those kinds of “issues”. They tend to spoil the fun and fun(ny) is what MST3IK is all about. It’s just a show and I relax and enjoy it, thoroughly.
#1-MPSh-I think the Steve and Steve-a-reeno’s were a reference back to Steve Allen, who they also referenced with the Steveometer. He thought of everything comic first. The one I’ve wondered about from time to time is the different colored jumpsuits that Joel and I think Mike as well wore-the easy answer to this is that it was a sly joke on the original Star Trek series, where Kirk would wear different captain’s shirts from time to time with no explanation whatsoever. My more sinister take on it is that Joel had just the jumpsuit he was wearing when he was blasted into space, but later discovered more on the ship, perhaps left behind by previous “lab rats” who either managed to escape minus their skivvies or met with some rather gruesome fates(“…and leaves nothing behind but the great smell of Brut!”) at the hands of Dr. F and his various assistants. Who knows how long this experiment was going on before Joel? Perhaps even before Dr. Forrester? Joel was obviously more wily than the previous inhabitants, as he was not only able to cheat death, but also construct robot friends and invention exchanges from “extra parts” lying around the ship.
Oh and #7 Canucklehead-that makes perfect sense to me.
To anyone who was distressed by Joel’s recent offhand “definition” of “real MST fans” being “really just interested in the movie and not (so much) the shorts”… The Creator just misspoke, you see. From the
twenty years I have been observing his behavior I feel absolutely certain he would never intentionally disparage those of us who love the shorts (and gosh all fishhooks, who couldn’t love them?) as “not ‘real’ MST fans”. So rest easy. SLEEP!
Just how many “special parts” are there in a VCR “that controls when the movie begins and ends” that Joel had enough “to make his robot friends”?
#9, true that’s probably how she does move around. But if her coils were all over the hallways of the ship, then Mike (poor dope!) would be tripping all over her 8 ways to Sunday. So her coils have to be somewhere. I like to think that there are several Gypsy heads all over the SOL, so that whenever something needs her attention, she inhabits the head closest to it.
And thank you, #11.
Another poser that came to me. Mike is usually characterised as a, well, what’s the polite way to say this? Oh, I know: an idiot. He cannot do any number of things which require mechanical skills. And yet, we are to believe that he is able to “repair his robot friends?” Don’t think so. Indeed, it appears that, in actuality, the robots seem to repair themselves often.
I’ve always wondered where Joel was getting the raw materials to make his inventions. More ‘special parts’ he wasn’t using to control when the experiments begin or end?
Solution to the “Steve” thing … (MPSh #1 et al)
Knowing that Frank is a classic-cinema scholar, I suspected it referred to “To Have and Have Not.” Got the chance to ask Frank about this at one of the CT shows and he was happy to confirm that this is indeed exactly what that running joke was about, and pleased that somebody in the audience got it. He said it’s always been his dream to grow up to be Lauren Bacall. (I assume he was kidding about that part.)
What troubles me is how exactly the bots moved. I know Tom had his hoverskirt and Crow his legs, but, first of all, Crow’s legs look more suited to carrying a spider. I don’t mean to insult the puppets, I just think he looks oddly disproportionate with those feet, and that making sure to hide them whenever possible was definitely the way to go. Tom, on the other hand, has worried me in that, in “Monster-A-Go Go” for example, there’s that scene where Joel and Tom are playing Monkey in the Middle with Crow and, at one point, I seem to remember Tom popping up on the side of the screen. Now, assuming that Tom’s hoverskirt propels him when activated, wouldn’t that at least send him a little ways across the room before falling to the ground. Otherwise, if it was off, how would he be able to float in the first place?
Don’t my answer my questions, though.
You’ll ruin them.
And part of the show.
#17: I’m envious–in a good way–that you got to talk to Frank about that!
How does a scientist as obviously inept as Clayton Forrester get enough capital to have a massive underground laboratory(almost all of which he doesn’t use) and launch a giant satellite into orbit? How do you sell taking over the world by showing horrible movies to an investment group?
Here’s a question I have even though it’s just a show, and I should really just relax. Why don’t Crow, Joel/Mike, and Servo ever fully run down the doors?
Here’s an attempt to rationalize:
Any orbiting station gets relief shuttles from Earth.
If the mad scientists hate Joel/Mike that much they probably throw anything from the trash into the cargo pod and shoot it up to the Satellite Of Love. Failed inventions, broken machines, leftover TV dinners, it all goes up to Joel/Mike and that’s where probably most of the Inventions and other manufactured things come from.
As for people. . .they only showed up during Mike’s tenure up there. I would assume Brain Guy willed them up there.
Purchased items like a WINDOW! or the occasional free coffin have to be through Fed X’s new Sub-orbital transporting system. (You do know about that right?)
There’s also ROCKET #9. I would assume the outer rockets watch out for and either move or collect random space junk that might pose a threat to The SOL.
I thought the most intriguing set-up was the Umbilicus. But it must have played havoc with local air traffic over Deep 13.
As for relaxing. . .If I put “Catalina Caper” or “The Girl on Lovers Lane” on I usually get a good nap in.
@#13 – Special Parts List:
CR0 – Control Remote Zero
TOM – Tape Operation Mechansim (plus lots (and I mean LOTS) of servos, of course)
GPSI – General-Purpose Sequence Indicator
1) So, since it was specifically said that the experiments were being recorded and sold to cable TV, how come nobody at Gizmonic Institute said, “Hey, that’s Forrester on that show! What happened to him anyway? Has anyone checked the basement recently?”
2) So, what really did happen to Larry Ehrhardt?
They did eventually provide an explanation for how Joel/Mike eat in either I Was a Teenage Werewolf or The Giant Spider Invasion. Anyway, it’s the one where Pearl and co. are going camping and leave Mike and the bots to fend for themselves. Pearl tells Mike that there’s “food in the synthesizer”. So apparently Mike gets his food from some sort of food synthesizer, like they have in the TARDIS and the Heart of Gold. We also see Mike drink from a giant gerbil water bottle thingy (whatever you’d call those) in MST3K: The Movie. As for how he breathes, we know that there’s some sort of oxygen supply in the SOL, which Clayton/Pearl can empty at will to keep Mike in the theater. Presumably Joel enjoyed these luxuries too.
@Zee: My made-up answer to why the SOL didn’t fall apart centuries before Soultaker is that Crow fixed the problems on his own the first time around, during his centuries alone onboard the satellite. Then when the ship returns to present day Earth, once the date reached the 10th anniversary of the ship’s construction again, all the same problems resurfaced. I’m assuming here that the self-destruct mechanism Dr. F built into the SOL works sort of like the Y2K bug, in that it goes into effect whenever the satellite’s computers register a certain date. Alternatively, it could be triggered via some sort of radio signal from Earth. When the ship really turned 10 years old, it was at the edge of the universe and therefore safely out of range, but when they returned to present day Earth it got the signal and started malfunctioning.
@mansquatch: I know this doesn’t explain how Dr. F managed to launch a satellite in the first place, but I like to think that the bulk of the Mads’ financial resources came from all that money Dr. F won in Vegas during the KTMA episodes. Maybe Gizmonic helped pay for launching Joel into space?
Remember the loaner Crow, with the radio from Delta Knights? I have friends who explain this as there being two Crows because of the time travel in Time Chasers. But that doesn’t make any sense, because the other Crow was left behind working the counter at a cheese factory in Wisconsin in the 1980s. I do not accept that explanation! So where did the other Crow come from?!?!?!?
Since Tom Servo has two grammas (one EVIL!) what
about his grampas?
#14 No doubt Tom Servo found a reason to install railings
after all-
to prevent Mike from tripping over any of Gypsy’s coils.
similar topic as 13 & 23, and I’ve tried asking this here before.
Joel can’t control where the movies begin and end becasue he used the special parts to build his robot friends.. I ccare less abotu the hardware and more about pre-bot life on the SOL… so there was a time when Joel COULD stop and start the movie.. what’s the point of trying to drive someoen mad by forcing them to watch bad movies if they can just switch it off whenever they want.
#23 That’s what I was thinking, too. It kind of makes Joel seem rather masachistic to deliberately sabotage his one aspect of control.
Also, how exactly are “the parts that make the movies begin or end” critical in building artificially intelligent robots?! Especially since he never turns them off, or they would die.
And I could go into detail about how they eat and breath, but it would take a scientist to explain it.
Dr. Forrester and Dr. Erhardt moved to Deep 13 to keep out of view from management of Gizmonic Institute, because they would not probably approve of the experiment. But, Deep 13 was radio active, explaining Clayton’s weird hair and probably Frank’s curl. But my question is what about Deep 12? Would that not be radio active enough to discourage Mary Jo and Bridget from moving in?
Always wondered about Rocket # 9. Whenver they use it they get an exterior shot of the ship, or sometimes things around the ship, like the time Glen Manning visited. Is it another rocket following the SOL with a camera on it?
#2 Zee – Over time, high density kevlar breaks down into the metal known as molybdenum. In turn, molybdenum breaks down in to creamy nougat and really satisfies.
#29 INAMIAP – Exactly! Along those same lines, being the unwilling subject of a torturous experiment, why did Joel even build his robot friends if that meant giving up at least some control over the experiment?
And how did Mike climb down a ladder to Earth in “Werewolf”?
@24 – 2) So, what really did happen to Larry Ehrhardt?
Think we saw a milk carton in #201, “Rocketship X-M”…Or am I thinking of “Married With Children”? ;)
Me, I’m still waiting for an explanation of why Joel basically didn’t bother doing anything after returning to Earth.
(It was the Mike era, so we got “I could’ve done something, but, uh…I’m insensitive, so I didn’t”, but I’m still waiting for a more plausible Joel-era explanation.)
Always count on EricJ for some light Mike Era bashing… :-(
I’d rather have it called the Satellite of Love rather then the Satellite of Hate. And in their own way, Joel, Mike and the bots did love each other. And it helped to deflect all the bad karma coming from deep 13.
Plus it’s what the creators decided to call it. So we should all just relax.
Whenever I read or hear the term “S.O.L.” I always think of the phrase “$#!+ outta luck” ;)
Oh, good discussion thread!
One thing that has always bothered me…its explained that Servo has to be carried into the theater because of an air grate or something like that. But in latter movies he goes right in by himself, and exits. Why?
And where does all the stuff come from? Like Tibby the turtle? Mike’s earthworms? The material to make the jester uniforms? The Car? The Plane? Tell me!
Oh, and where do all the other Toms come from? Especially the hot female Tom?
There’s so many more, but I think I’ll go rewatch Gamera and just relax.
GizmonicTemp wrote: . . . being the unwilling subject of a torturous experiment, why did Joel even build his robot friends if that meant giving up at least some control over the experiment?
*********
Because he was faced with this choice:
Being in a bad situation that he couldn’t end, but could sometimes pause.
or
Being in a bad situation that he couldn’t end, but with friends to
help him through it.
I’d choose the one with friends, too. :)
And what about Scarecrow’s brain?
As shown in MST3K:TM, Gypsy does all of Mike/Joel’s cooking (“And that delicious smell is a lamb roast I have in the oven!”).
Here’s something I figured out that I don’t think many people have realized: the “doorway sequence” is Cambot’s route into the theater (Cambot IS shooting the show, after all). Also, I always wondered why “Magic Voice” wasn’t just applied to Cambot. I mean, we have a disembodied voice and a robot that can’t talk. Hello!
I too, always thought Gypsy moved through the SOL like a snake. By the way- anyone else find it a little weird that Gypsy is a one-eyed, purple-headed snake?
Whoa there, Steve!
He who thinks of things like that incites cold showers all around. And you wouldn’t want us to have to sleep with wet hair under forty blankets of varying thicknesses, now would you?
By the way, since the Satellite of Love is basically made of a cobble of household objects, maybe Dr. F. just spent all is free time gluing it together and, when he was finished, lured Joel aboard and set him off. But then that wouldn’t explain why there was an escape pod in a crate of hamdingers. Unless this whole thing was really because Joel had done something bad to Dr. F. Then, Dr. F. just kept torturing him with bad movies, originally intending to let him go after a little while, but then having so much fun that he traps him up there for years on end. Then, when Mike comes, he entraps him as well, simply because his life feels empty without somebody to torture. It was probably all based on deep-seated psychological problems his mother started.
Huh.
And to think this all started when I reprimanded another poster for a willie joke.
More of a real world question, why does Kevin(as Servo) always tell the others when it’s time to leave the theater before the host segments?
Actually, I always assumed Joel dubbed the SOL the Satellite of Love when he was stranded there.
Also figured the Satellite was already in place orbitting the Earth as part of a previous experiment and they just shot Joel up there in a one-way rocket.
Presumably, the Mads sent supplies and such up to Joel periodically. This was replaced by the Umbilicus, which afforded instantaneous transport, then by Brain Guy zapping things up.
During the Sci-Fi years, the nannites took care of all the repairs to the ship and bots. And where did they come from?
okerry #39 – Jean-Paul Sartre said Hell is being locked forever in a room with your friends. But, yes, some buds would be good to have.
It was at least once mentioned that Dr. F sells what we see to cable tv on earth. Thus making MST a reality tv show. But what kind of audience would watch people forced to anything? Scary future world to ponder. A true dystopia.
Just repeat to yourselves-It’s just a show-It’s just a show-etc.
I always just thought Satellite of Love was just a nod to Lou Reed. Bum bum bum! Either that or it’s just an excuse to call it the SOL, which gives it a nice dual meaning.
I’ve never really thought about any other questions, though. When I’m told to just relax, I take it very seriously.
In Projected Man (I think) Crow gains the touch of death and promptly kills Mike with it. The bots then roll his body off the command deck, and Crow asks Tom, “Wait, if you don’t have feet how come you have footsteps?” Tom answers, “I don’t know! Well, back at it.”
I always thought they missed an easy explanation. “I don’t have feet, but I DO have foley!”