Lost in space -- and loving every moment

It came from Minneapolis. By way of the Gizmonic Institute and the Satellite of Love, it blasted onto Earthlings’ living-room screens with a mission: not to save us from bad movies but to share our pain. Because if misery loves company, schlock-induced agony craves it.

Over 11 years and 198 episodes, “Mystery Science Theater 3000” provided the perfect company for a community of fans. Channeling movie watchers’ delirious disbelief before what might charitably be called B movies, a good-natured working guy and his wiseass robot friends brought a new layer of meaning to “so bad it’s good,” building a cult around a cult.

With their silhouettes in the lower right-hand corner of the screen and their pop-culture mash-up of Groucho Marxian wordplay, literate backtalk and goofy sound effects, sci-fi clunkers became communal comedy treasures. Our heroes were stranded in outer space, subjected to a cruel experiment by their demented bosses (something most anyone can relate to), and TV audiences joined them eagerly.

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Oral history

It’s been nine years since “MST3K” went off the air, and filling the gap have been somewhat haphazard releases of DVD sets of episodes. But with Shout! Factory’s “Mystery Science Theater 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition,” fans get a more substantial artifact. In addition to four previously unreleased episodes of the show and a collectible, if silent, figurine of know-it-all Crow T. Robot, new interviews with all the show’s principals provide a comprehensive oral history of the little DIY engine that could. It’s a story not only of creative ingenuity but of right place, right time.

Minneapolis prop comic Joel Hodgson -- inspired by the post-apocalyptic 1971 film “The Omega Man,” in which Charlton Heston’s character sat in an abandoned theater watching “Woodstock” -- parlayed his junk-shop robot sculptures and a local TV station’s library of awful movies into an improvised show.

After a year on KTMA, Hodgson’s “cow-town puppet show,” as longtime producer-director Jim Mallon lovingly refers to it, graduated to a national audience with a slot on the nascent Comedy Channel before it morphed into Comedy Central.

Expanded budgets meant time to write scripts, and no longer did the “MST3K” cast and crew have to vacate the studio by 5 to make way for a wrestling show. But through seven seasons on Comedy Central and another three on the Sci Fi Channel, the show never lost its endearing handmade, low-tech quality.

You don’t have to be a card-carrying Mystie to welcome the anniversary release. Amid the year-end avalanche of Serious Filmmaking, not to mention imploding economic, political and environmental galaxies, it’s good -- very good -- to laugh out loud. The risible plotlines of “First Spaceship on Venus,” “Future War,” “Laserblast” and “Werewolf” provide ample fodder for the riffs of Crow, Tom Servo and their human buddy.

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Joel versus Mike

Both the sleepy-eyed Hodgson, a.k.a. Joel Robinson, and his eventual replacement, the slightly edgier Mike Nelson, are represented in the package and, in the tradition of the two Darrins, dueling Mysties will no doubt continue to debate the relative merits of the Joel and Mike eras well into the new millennium.

Smart alecks can be wearying, but the “MST3K” trio pace themselves, ratcheting up the commentary as the stories grow more ludicrous. Nothing gets past them in the way of meta-calamities: bad acting, cheesy f/x, flabby editing, murky lighting, cheap sets, lapses in continuity. From such radiation-deadened soil blooms a tangled profusion of unlikely references. Watching “Laserblast,” they invoke, among many others, Trent Reznor, Yertle the Turtle, Andrew Wyeth and Gertrude Stein.

The jokes provide a kind of time capsule too, beyond references to Pia Zadora, Vanilla Ice and 2 Live Crew. During the shot-in-Totalvision wonder of “First Spaceship on Venus,” a crack about Bush being elected provokes a strange sense of dislocation until you realize that the episode aired in 1990, after the other President Bush took office. “Look at those high gas prices,” one commentator says at the sight of a Los Angeles gas station’s $1.56-a-gallon sign in the 1996 travesty “Werewolf.” Some jokes, perhaps, aren’t so funny anymore.

But whether Tom Servo’s sarcasm sequencer is on constant or random, the humor is never about snark for snark’s sake. As writer/voice-of-Servo Kevin Murphy notes, the series became a kind of “pajama show” -- a comforting Saturday ritual. Its therapeutic effects extended beyond the sofa, too: When watching “Mystery Science”-era Hollywood hokum like “Outbreak,” just thinking of those three wisecracking silhouettes could be a source of comfort.

Anyone can laugh at junky movies, but the otherwise humble Midwesterners behind “MSTK3” didn’t call their production company Best Brains for nothing. If that’s a kind of elitism, so be it. In a world where, at any turn, you might encounter “The Brute Man” or “The Leech Woman,” it’s good -- very good -- to know there are other travelers who get the cosmic joke.

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