History of My Fandom & What MST3K Means to Me

I don’t think I’m alone in saying MST3K had a huge impact on my life. You might say that’s ridiculous, that a guy and two puppets cracking jokes at bad movies could be anything but passing entertainment, but it’s true. While the premise of MST wasn’t entirely new, as people have been making jokes during movies since they were first invented (the first riff probably being something along the lines of “Wow, that train was coming at me so fast I didn’t even notice it was late to the station!”), MST gave it personality. I look around at the new wave of internet entertainment videos and I see the MST3K influence everywhere. From abridged anime series like Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged to the movie, comic, and video games reviewers such as the Nostalgia Critic, The Spoony Experiment and the many, many other contributors at sites like Channel Awesome, I doubt less than a handful weren’t inspired by MST in some way.  Heck, Doug Walker himself even listed it as his the 2^nd largest comedic influence on him.

We live in a world where Mystery Science Theater 3000 ran for 10 years. 10. 1-0. X.  Think of how many great shows ran for only two or three years, or only one. Serenity. Invader Zim. Surface (anyone remember that one? Sea Monsters: The Series? Lake Bell and Leighton Meester were in it?) But MST3K, one of the weirdest shows with one of the oddest premises ran for in fact over a decade, counting the KTMA episodes. Truly, God does love us. Somewhere out there is an alternate universe where MST3K only ran for one or two seasons, while Firefly lasted longer than Buffy, the Clerks cartoon outlasted Family Guy, where Kings got to continue its modern-alternate-reality King David story. But you know what? We got the better universe. To me, a decent run for a show is 26 episodes, just long enough for it to find its feet and deliver some great episodes. So while I may wish Zim lasted longer or that Megas XLR got to continue, that MST3K ran for a DECADE…well, I can’t complain.

I mean think about it. There are episodes of MST3K we take for granted. How many episodes of Firefly, or Kolchak: The Night Stalker do fans take for granted? Not a one, because there are so few. But we are blessed to have such a treasure trove of MST that we forget some jewels of episodes underneath others simply because they don’t shine as bright. How blessed are we as a planet to have that luxury?

I can still easily remember the night I discovered Mystery Science Theater 3000. It was early 1996, a Friday night, and I was up late playing the Gargoyles video game for the Sega Genesis. After being up for hours and running through my lives on that difficult-as-hell platformer ('member when video games had lives?), I finally ran out, no more continues, and so turned on the TV. I channel surfed for a while, not seeing anything good on Cartoon Network or the rest of cable, until I cycled back to the basic channels. Nothing on Fox 4, or NBC 5...

But on ABC, Channel 8, something was on. It was some old, cheesy, dubbed Italian sword-and-sandals movie. But something wasn't right. There were shadows at the bottom of the screen, of a man and two robot-puppets, and they were watching the movie. And making jokes at it. And they were hilarious! Thinking it was a Siskel & Ebert type review show, I waited for them to stop joking and to turn back to the camera, to review it properly. But they didn't. This guy and his puppet ccohorts kept going. I put in the nearest VHS tape and hit "REC". 

The episode was Hercules Against the Moon Men. The show was Mystery Science Theater 3000. Or, to be more accurate, The Mystery Science Theater Hour, an MST episode cut into a broadcast-friendly and shown late at night, with actor and writer Mike Nelson in makeup as a Jack Perkins-esque host. 

But it didn't matter. I was more alive at 4 am than I was the rest of that day. I don't remember what the first actually riff I heard was, but the first one I remember was Servo, upon seeing a column of soldiers banging against a door, screaming, "WILMAAA!". I was hooked. My only fear was that this show was too funny, too special, to cool to last. I figured I'd caught it maybe a few episodes in, since it was running at an ungodly hour in the morning on a local channel, and there were maybe a dozen or so shows for me to watch before it was cancelled, if It would even rerun at all.

Hercules Against the Moon Men was episode ten of season 4. There were 59 episodes preceding it, it was well into its 6th season at the tiime, and there were four more seasons to come. I had just become rich and didn't know it. What I did know was, I was addicted.

And as anyone who knows me can attest, they know I love MST3K. (More than them, but don't let them find out!) For years, there used to be times when my VCR and DVD player ALWAYS had an MST3K ep in them. It's mellowed a bit since, but you can bet my iPad and then m iPhone have episodes on them.

MST3K was a huge influence on my sense of humor. Already a weird spaz who, thanks to his even stronger, almost religious, love of Godzilla, had a taste for scifi, horror, and B movies, the show seemed almost custom made for me. It taught me comedic timing, cultural references, some high (Ingmar Bergmen films), some low (Benny Hill), some so obscure I'm just now getting on re-visiting old episodes, and, seriously, to not feel so alone. I drove my family and friends crazy with re-watching, quoting, and talking about the show, but there were, and still are, plenty of times when I felt like I didn't belong with other people. Times when I had trouble interacting with them, missed social cues, or was just lost in my world (in fact, where am I?) And there were more than a few times when I wanted to retreat from all human contact, save for fiction. And while plenty of books and movies sated me, MST3K was almost like another example of something I got from Calvin & Hobbes, which had just ended its 10 year run: safe, introverted socialization. I got a slightly-more active group of imaginary friends with Joel, Mike and the Bots. Yes, that is very, very sad and weird. And thank God I've grown quite a bit in the decades since, and am, for the most part, socially capable, despite being weird as all hell. But I, just as I needed Calvin & Hobbes and Godzilla to get me through some lonely and hard times, I needed MST. They helped get me here, and MST helped me laugh all the way, and learn to be a smart ass as well (well, I got that from my Dad, too.)

And sometimes, I still need those times alone. And when I do, there's a guy, two puppets, and a cheesy movie ready to riff waiting for me.