We’ve got movie sign…again! After giving us the Thanksgiving 2017 miracle of announcing the show’s renewal, The A.V. Club is now reporting that the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000 will flood into our televisions—and hearts—like so many quarts of gravy on Thursday, November 22.
Which, by the way? Is the show’s 30th anniversary! That’s right, the first-ever episode of MST3K premiered on Minneapolis’ KTMA on Thanksgiving Day, 1988.
Hi-keeba, indeed.
Obviously the show has had a rollercoaster of a history, hopping from the public access KTMA to Comedy Central with original host/creator Joel Hodgson, before adding Mike Nelson as host in time for a big screen debut with Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie in 1996, to another move, this time to Syfy back in The Before Times, when it was still the Sci-Fi Channel. The show was revived and picked up by Netflix after an insanely successful Kickstarter campaign.
The Netflix season rebooted the show with the concept that Kinga Forrester (Dr. Clayton Forrester’s daughter) is broadcasting a new version of MST3K from a base on the Moon. It introduced a new host, Jonah Heston (played by Jonah Ray) and new voices for the Bots: Baron Vaughn as Tom Servo, Hampton Yount as Crow T. Robot, and Rebecca Hanson as Gypsy, and and Patton Oswalt playing Kinga’s henchperson Max, who desperately wants everyone to call him TV’s Son Of TV’s Frank.
After a pretty successful season that included riffs on movies like Reptilicus, Avalanche, Yongary: Monster from the Deep, and The Beast of Hollow Mountain, and visits from characters like Kinga’s grandma Pearl Forrester, Brain Guy, and Professor Bobo, Kinga decided to boost the show’s rating by marrying Jonah. The wedding (which Jonah was emphatically against) was interrupted when lovelorn Max attacked Jonah with a metal sea serpent. I promise it made sense in context. Given that the entire cast is supposed to return for the new season, Jonah presumably escapes his reptilian limbo?
There were also hints throughout the season that Jonah’s show was not Kinga’s only experiment, so I’m hoping the show gives us even more worldbuilding along with ever-weirder films. Honestly, I found Yongary to be one of them ore traumatic film experiences I’ve ever had, so I am going into a new season full of hope for even more tragic rubber monsters.
Speaking to The AV Club, MST3K creator/ my personal comedic hero Joel Hodgson said: “I think the movies are even worse than last season, but I know the show is better…I could be mixing those two up.”
This news has kindled hope in the hearts of Tor.com and induced Muppet-flails of joy!
