Some observations:
* MST3K is mentioned only briefly in the first few minutes and there are no comments from any of the cast members. As several people have noted: while the mention was brief, it puts them ahead of Comedy Central, which dropped its ersatz “signature show” into the memory hole and didn’t mention it at all during a retrospective a few years ago.
* The narration makes it sound as if MST3K was there at the beginning of the channel, when in fact the network had been around for more than four years before MST3K was picked up. A little misleading.
* TV Guide’s Matt Roush (who, by the way, had some comments in “This is MST3K”) says something strange: He describes the show as “the perfect show to rescue because it wouldn’t have cost anybody very much money to just film that thing.” I’m not going to make too big a deal about that comment, because I don’t think Roush has a clue what the decision process was and he was just making stuff up that seemed to sound good in his head, but I think if I worked on the show I’d be a little offended. In any case, it’s interesting that in the end one of the chief complaints of the network bigwigs was how expensive the show had become.
* Looking at the special as a whole, the oddest thing to me was the way all performers and executives of all the shows spoke of cancellation as something that just sort of…happened. Like getting a cold or having a meteor hit your house. Nothing any human could do about it! Very odd, and frankly what it felt like to me was a long series of justifications for some very ham-handed programing decisions. Just my opinion.
Did you see it? What did you think?
) to help our users cope with "trolls" and other commenters whom they find annoying. Go to our
I’m going to disagree a bit with post #50. Though it’s hardly “pure” or “hard” science fiction the premise of MST3K in and of itself is loosely science fiction, it’s a guy trapped in space with sentient robots. And it’s not the first science fiction comedy, for example, Red Dwarf. And even though MST3K did not do SF movies exclusively it was always the core and signature genre of the show. The fantasy/SF elements of the show certainly kept it from falling totally outside the original dedicated theme of the Sci-Fi Channel. One cannot say that about an awful lot of their programming now, but then it’s not the Sci-Fi Channel any longer is it? SyFy is clearly intended to be something different and it is something different, something that I rarely ever watch.
They could have done a little more on MST3K, it wouldn’t have killed them – unless, maybe now they no longer have the rights to show too much ?? don’t know.
They actually did a pretty decent job with the Farscape clips. I REALLY wish that show would come back in one form or other.
I’ve tried watching some of their other shows, but I just can’t get into them. I’ve watched a few eps of Being Human. I like the idea of it (even though it’s not original to them, it’s based on a British show), but it’s just too damn dull. Nothing ever HAPPENS. And I just couldn’t get into Warehouse 13, Sanctuary, Haven or Eureka, etc. One has high hopes for science fiction and fantasy shows, but they are always a big letdown.
I’m never satisfied with shows, movies, books with this kind of theme. That’s why when I find one I actually LIKE, it’s a big deal to me. That’s why I miss MST3K and Farscape. They spoke to me, man. (Perhaps I should see someone about that).
P.S.: Their reality shows can bite me.
@31 Did Ms. Hammer really say that? Wow…
For a two hour special, they did gloss over a lot of history. I don’t think they even mentioned SciFi Buzz or Inside Space, or that they started airing “original movies” fairly early on. I kind of miss SciFi Buzz, and even Harlan Ellison’s Andy Rooney segment, that made the corporate overlords nervous.
They made a big deal out of “we don’t need reruns of old SF shows anymore”, and then go to a commercial for a Star Trek TNG marathon. :rotfl:
Was surprised to see “I talk to dead people” John Edwards. Wasn’t he publicly debunked several years ago?
Here’s one clip they apparently didn’t think was worth showing.
http://youtu.be/98ma7eoR0N4
Seriously, nobody involved could remember Star Wars was the first movie they ever ran?
Sigh…I miss 1997 SciFi. It had that pre-CGI scraggy look, and MST3K fit in really well. The end of those days when cable was an outpost for some strange strange stuff…
Does anyone notice how perfect sci-fi’s movies are for riffing now? I mean “ice spiders?”! Come on! If Mst3k were still around they would have the perfect riffing fodder right there on their home network. It says a lot about how far sci-fi has sunk when they’re showing movies called “Megashark vs. Giant Squid”! With graphics by Mrs. Smith’s kindergarten class. And acting skills that make a Coleman Francis movie look Oscar-worthy. I liked “sci-fi” (I refuse to call them by that stupid new name) back when they were new and interesting. I’ll take “Outer limit” reruns and Mst3k anyday over the crap they show now.
Sci-fi/Siffie has definitely been the worst over the years for their shortsighted, careless, and often idiotic decisions over cancellations, scheduling, programming choices (my favorite being the brief time they inexplicably showed Law and Order SVU reruns), etc. There are other networks guilty of this as well (HBO cancelling Deadwood is easily the worst example I can think of) but Sci-fi has been the most frequent and egregious perpetrator over the years. And I HIGHLY agree with Frank’s comment about the John Edwards show. Disgraceful garbage.
These days the channel mostly consists of five or six (or seven or eight or nine) shows that seem to focus on full grown men and women running around in the dark screeching like school girls at every creek in a floorboard, or “ghost hunting shows” as they are more commonly known, professional wrestling (?!), terrible made for DVD movies whose very existence are to me the equivalent of spitting in the face of every starving child in the world, and low budget “dramatic” series that can’t even hold my attention through their commercials. Like most of American cable television the channel has become a focus-less bastion of lowest common denominator padding only there to fill the time between commercial breaks. I can’t imagine MST3K could have survived much longer than it did anyway. It was kind of becoming incompatible with television as a whole. And given the quality and creativity we now see from Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic I think those few years in between the cancellation of MST3K and the maturing of the internet as a viable way to independently create, promote and distribute new movie riffing material was actually worth it.
My only real complaint was they didn’t bother to expain what MST3K was, or what the show was about. They did the same with Sliders too, and I felt if you’re gonna acknowledge the show, at least give an insight what the show is, and why you’re even talking about it.
Granted, I am glad they mentioned MST3K.
SyFy may be a pathetic joke (those Twilight Zone marathons are about all they have going for it), but even when it happened, I was never too upset about MST being cancelled. It lasted for ten seasons and while it always remained good, they were pretty clearly getting tired by the end; it was a good time to stop. The fact we managed to get three more seasons was a bit of a miracle, really. The reputation of the show has only grown and as someone up above has already said, it’s never been a better time to be a MSTie. As dunderheaded as SyFy may be, MST3K did alright at the end of the day.
Just my two cents…
Huggybear, I think there is difference between the Saturday SYFY drek and the average MST3k flick, is that “Megashark Vs Gataorid” and the like are deliberately TRYING to stink, where the vast majority of MSTied stuff comes by it’s incompetence earnestly. Joel and other cast members have often said in interviews that it doesn’t really work when the movie makers are aware of how terrible the movie is, or if they do it in a self conscious, winking way.
I do think it would be a PR and ratings bonaza if SYFY they could somehow work out a deal with Rifftrax, Cinematic (or in a dream scenario both) for a marathon where they riffed the network’s own product. Won’t happen, but it would be damned exciting!
I don’t use Facebook or Twitter, so an open board or moderated board is best for me. I still have my coffee cup signed by the MST3K hosts (all three). It was signed using erasable pens (for whiteboards), so I had to spray it with lacquer to keep them from smearing more. The Twilight Zone is about all I watch any more on SyFy. the cheaply made dino-croc-python movies don’t make it. Lots more good things to watch on other channels. The 20th Anniversary show is on today at 9:00 am Eastern, so I guess I’ll have to watch it to find out what ya’all are talking about.
Didn’t watch it and not surprised, figured any mention would come across as dismissive. Not like they’re going to tell the truth, that Bonnie Hammer made Doug Herzog look like a rocket scientist. That said, I do watch the occasional movie, and will be watching for K9 The Series and (if they pick it up) Booster Gold.
@1 The Who omission may be out of spite, given the righteous guff fans gave them for the unnecessary editing to cram in more commercials even after the BBC itself did some edits, reaching it’s height when they first showed the 1hr10 minute 4th series finale in a standard forty minute minutes commercials slot. Who’s my other fandom, I liked that finale, but even I admit it was hard to follow in uncut form. They reran it uncut the next week, but yeah, given all that and it now being one of surprise-rival BBC America’s most popular shows they’re still smarting. Still a bit odd they didn’t make enough mention to get a chance to hype the K9 spin-off they’ve picked up.
@8 Loved the Quantum Leap blocks. They also had a great short movie showcase.
@19 Lapsed pro-wrestling fan speaking: They might have skipped it because, while Smackdown is successful, the ECW revival (or as fans call it WWECW) was godawful, to the point founder Paul Heyman resigned to avoid ruining his professional relationship with Vince McMahon.
@26 Agreed, they’ve been better about averting network decay than anyone else after Turner Classics.
@30 Right on, the series and it’s fan lost the battle, but won the war.
I haven’t seen this special but I can recount the attitude of the Sci-Fi Channel in the UK towards MST3K. The Sci-Fi Channel in the UK was not directly connected to the channel in North America and had great problems in showing episodes of MST3K due to the ridiculous rights issues in this country. Sci-Fi UK could purchase the episode itself but in most cases they could not show the film they were riffing on as the rights to show that were different! So we got endless repeats of the same bunch of episodes from season 8 and a couple from season 9.
When news came through in 1999 that show was cancelled, Sci-Fi UK announced that they were dropping the show from there schedules completely and would not be showing the final season. Understandably, UK fans were in uproar and I wrote to Sci-Fi UK asking why they had chosen to do this. The answer I got back was that viewing figures weren’t great and that MST3K was not as popular as I thought it was!! It seemed to escape them that as they showed the same bunch of episodes over and over again, fans would switch off having seen those episodes umpteen times before!!
There really is no answer to logic like that.
So we in the UK never saw Joel briefly return (not that we saw anything of Joel anyway as Comedy Central episodes were never aired here) and neither did we see how Mike and the Bots got home. Thank you so much Sci-Fi Channel UK.
Thank heavens for DVD is all I can say!