Mystery Science Theater 3000 Is Returning?

Man, oh man.  I just had some flashbacks to my college days where I’d sit around with my buddies in the dorm, drinking beer and laughing our butts off while watching these guys make fun of the most horrible movies imaginable.  Let’s face it, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or MST3K for the lazy writers out there) was freakin’ brilliant TV.  I’m kinda disappointed that SyFy opts to play a bajillion reruns of Ghost Hunters as opposed to the occasional episode of this masterpiece of television wonderment.  From what I understand, the reason the show doesn’t run in syndication has to do with the licensing of the movies that were used, or something to that effect.  I really have no idea.  I just know that, sadly, it isn’t on anymore.

But all that is about to change.

According to an interview with Wired magazine, MST3K’s original creator Joel Hodgson says that he plans to bring the show back as a web-based series, with a new cast, but featuring cameos from alumni of the original show.  For those of you unfamiliar with the MST3K lore, the show was about a man trapped on a space station and subjected to psychological experiments by a mad scientist; the man (initially Joel Hodgson, later Michael J. Nelson) keeps himself sane by building robot buddies and making snarky comments about the horrible movies they’re forced to endure. That’s the setup, anyway. The real joy of the show was watching really clever people make amazing wisecracks about some of the worst movies ever made.  In a strange way, it make the bad movies a joy to watch.

Since MST3K went off the air, the cast and writers have been busy with other endeavors of similar natures, such as Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic.  However, neither of these ever captured the magic that MST3K did, mostly because they were separate audio you had to synch up with a movie you were watching.  This got around the licensing issue of the film that was being commented on, freeing up the crew to do actual big-budget Hollywood fare for a change, but it also made it more difficult to enjoy in my opinion.  If the crew could bring MST3K back (MST4K?) in some incarnation, I think it would be very welcome indeed.

What do you guys think?  Would you like to see Mystery Science Theater 3000 return, even if it was internet based?  I think if they did something with Roku or Amazon Fire TV it could probably work.  Heck, even getting Youtube to back them would be huge!  All I know is, I’d like to see Hodgson and the guys get back to doing what they do best – make terrible movies awesome by making fun of how awful they are.

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