MST3K is 1337

I just had a little shock when consulting the Wikipedia article on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3k) when I realized that the show originally starting airing in 1988… before many of my students had even been born. Like most of America, I didn’t actually get to watch MST3k until after they made the transition from local TV to Comedy Central in 1989. But when I finally did catch an episode, I was hooked. For those who have never watched an episode, the gist of the show is having really, really smart, funny people (and robots, actually) make fun of really, really bad movies in real time. The show also involved other space-station related hilarity, skits, and songs, but they were merely appetizers for the main show. For those wanting to get a flavor of the show, the easiest way would probably be to rent Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. As with almost all of the other items on this list, MST3k’s writing was amazingly sharp. The quantity and quality of jokes during the show was almost literally breathtaking, and the hosts (especially the robots: Crow and Tom) had layered and nuanced personalities that further boosted the humor. I gather the post-1994 host Mike Nelson (the show’s head writer) is now pursuing a similar project called http://rifftrax.com/ in which viewers can download MST3k-like running commentaries of many current movies and play them synced to the videos at home. When I get tenure and actually have a chance to watch a movie again, I’ll probably take advantage of the service. As another interesting aside, both MST3k and Star Trek had very popular online usenet communities that predated the Web by a few years. Students doing an assignment for my CS151 class often find one of my earliest Usenet posts, suggesting a movie to be mystified (they didn’t take my suggestion). Good times.