The Satellite Is Still Up There

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THE SATELLITE IS STILL UP THERE
a Mystery Science Theater 3000 page for MSTies who aren't ready to go home

Front Row · My Tape Library & Trading Rules

So it's over. The last new episode, Danger: Diabolik!, aired on the Sci-Fi Channel on August 8, and that's that. Eleven years, ten seasons, and it's done. I taped it, of course. I've watched it three times. At the end, the guys are back on Earth, in a regular apartment, sitting on a couch making fun of a movie, which is exactly where the rest of us have been all along.

I'm Phil Okerlund. I'm 34, I work the overnight copy desk at a newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin, and I'm a MSTie. I started watching in 1990 at a friend's apartment because he had cable and I didn't, and I got cable the next week. I made this page because I didn't want the show to just stop, and because the one thing every MSTie knows how to do is keep talking back.

WHAT IT WAS
A guy is trapped on a satellite by mad scientists who force him to watch the worst movies ever made. To keep his sanity he builds robot friends, and the three of them sit in the front row and make jokes all the way through, and we see them in silhouette at the bottom of the screen. That's it. That's the whole idea. It's the best idea anybody ever had for television.

It started on a little UHF station in Minneapolis, KTMA channel 23, on Thanksgiving Day in 1988. It went national on the Comedy Channel (later Comedy Central) in 1989, and moved to the Sci-Fi Channel in 1997. Joel Hodgson created it and hosted until 1993, when head writer Mike Nelson took over. The bots are Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot, with Gypsy running the ship. On the ground, the Mads: Dr. Clayton Forrester and TV's Frank, and later Pearl Forrester, with Professor Bobo and the Observer. Along the way it won a Peabody Award and made a movie, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1996), riffing This Island Earth.

Joel or Mike? Both. Next question.

TEN I'D SAVE FROM A FIRE

01	Manos: The Hands of Fate (Joel). Made in El Paso by a fertilizer salesman on a bet. Torgo. The opening drive that never ends. The one every MSTie shows new people, and the one that makes the bots beg for mercy.
02	Pod People (Joel). A boy, a lost little alien he names Trumpy, and a subplot about a rock band that makes no sense at all. Plus one of the best host segment songs they ever did.
03	Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (Joel). The Christmas one. Martians kidnap Santa. Look for a very young Pia Zadora as a Martian kid. Every December at my place.
04	Cave Dwellers (Joel). Miles O'Keeffe as Ator, a barbarian with an actual hang glider.
05	Mitchell (Joel, then Mike). Joe Don Baker as the least likable cop in film history, and the episode where Joel escapes and Mike comes aboard. I still get a lump in my throat, and it's a movie about a cop who drinks beer on the job.
06	The Final Sacrifice (Mike). A Canadian teenager, a hidden treasure, a cult, and Zap Rowsdower, a bearded drifter with a pickup truck who became a hero to thousands. They go to town on Canada. My Canadian pen pal loves it most of all.
07	Space Mutiny (Mike). A starship made mostly out of a factory floor, a hero the guys give a different ridiculous name every time he's on screen, and bad guys who keep falling off railings.
08	Werewolf (Mike). An archaeologist, a werewolf skeleton, and nobody in the cast agreeing on how to say the word "werewolf."
09	Hobgoblins (Mike). Maybe the worst movie the show ever took on, and that is saying a great deal.
10	Danger: Diabolik! (Mike). The last one. A 1968 Italian comic-book caper that's actually pretty stylish, which almost seems unfair. A good way to go out.

KEEPING THE FAITH
Back in the early years, the end credits used to ask us to keep passing the tapes around. We did. That's how this show spread in the first place: somebody dubbed a tape for somebody, who dubbed one for somebody else. So here's my plan for the rest of my life, and I invite you to join me:

• Watch an episode every Saturday, same as always.
• Show one to somebody who has never seen it. Start them with Pod People or Mitchell, not Manos. Work up to Manos.
• Keep your tapes in good shape. Rewind them. Don't leave them in a hot car.
• Pass them on. See my tape library and trading rules.
• Never, ever sell a copy. That's not how we do things.

Nothing that good really goes away. Somewhere out there, the Satellite of Love is still orbiting, and the movie sign is still flashing. I'm keeping my seat.

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(that's us, down in front)

MSTies in the theater since 1997:

Write to the Satellite: [email protected]

Last updated Sunday, September 5, 1999
Mystery Science Theater 3000 belongs to Best Brains, Inc. I'm just a guy with a VCR and too many tapes.
© 1999 Phil Okerlund