This is exciting to me! Look, “my” era of the show that I have the most feelings for and have the most rose-colored glasses on was the three-year run of the show on what was then called the Sci-Fi Channel.
I originally encountered MST3K During the Joel era, when it was airing on Comedy Central, but most of it went over my head – I liked the silly puppets and low-rent effects, but during the theater segments, I was mainly watching my dad watching the show so I could know when to laugh.
But eventually my father stopped watching, and a few years later, when I was old enough to discover it for myself, the sci-fi version was all I got. As I recall, Tom Cervo (Kevin Murphy) was the same one, and I watched the episodes hosted by Mike Nelson (Mike Nelson) despite my father’s clear preference for Joel. But there was a new Crow (Bill Corbett, replacing Trace Beaulieu), new mad scientists (Mary Jo Pahl, plus Murphy and Corbett again), a new Satellite of Love set, and a slightly more acidic humor that meshed well with my teenage sensibilities.
i held back MST3K Just as its 10th and final season was airing. And episodes like time chaser, werewolf, Overdrawn in memory bankAnd Merlin’s Shop of Mysterious Wonders Familiars became old friends to me, episodes I returned to again and again, even as I slowly expanded my library of old episodes through the tape-trading sites that were still active in the late 90s to early 2000s (to this day it is impossible to get a full run of the show without resorting to bootlegs).
Many of the people involved in the show’s sci-fi era contributed their talents to the revival version in some way, either in cameo roles or as writers on individual episodes. But it never seemed like Hodgson or anyone else was interested in doing a “get-the-band-back-together” version of the old show. rifftrax version is with effect A “bands-back-together” moment.
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