Happy holidays, MST3K fans.

Did you know there was a Kickstarter-financed 13th season of MST3K? I certainly didn't, but while scrolling through Prime's streaming
contents I saw an MST3K movie called "The Bubble" that didn't look at
all familiar, so I queued it up...and Joel is the host!?!? Awesome.

Apparently they decided to have rotating hosts for season 13 - I've
watched five and a half episodes so far and have seen three different
hosts (Jonah, Joel and a woman named Emily). Crow and Servo also have different voice actors depending on the epside - I have to admit that
for the host segments, one of the Crows sounds so different that it
bothered me, but once the movie riffing started I didn't really notice
it any more.

For those who don't have Prime, the episodes are also on the free
FreeVee streaming service.

I did some Googling and discovered that I actually kind of came in
near the end of the season. Many of the host segments are designed to
explain the new multi-host format and are best watched in the correct
order to make sense, so I did some more Googling and found the episode
order:

Santo in the Treasure of Dracula - the masked Mexican wrestler returns
in what seems to be a film where someone took an old Dracula movie and bookended it with scenes of Santo watching the action via a time
machine TV or something like that. To be honest, I didn't think this
was a very good episode, especially as the kick-off for a new season.

Robot Wars - cheesy 80s movie that's basically a Transformers rip-off.
The acting is bad and the dialog is worse, but the riffing was great
and some of the robot fighting special effects were almost passable.

Munchie - another cheesy 80s movie that's basically an ET rip-off. Dom
DeLuise voices the wisecracking alien/monster/whatever it's supposed
to be. Loni Anderson plays the main character's mother. A very young
Jennifer Love Hewitt plays his school crush. Probably the most "name"
stars that have ever been in an MST3K movie. The riffing was
excellent. My favorite of the episodes I've watched so far, even
though the movie itself was terrible.

Doctor Mordrid - I'm only half-way through this one but it appears to
be a Doctor Strange rip-off. A guy with superpowers has to save the
Earth from a super villian who steals platinum and diamonds as part of
his evil plan. The riffing so far has been OK - lots of Marvel and
Lord of the Rings references.

Demon Squad - haven't watched it yet

Gamera vs Jiger - haven't watched it yet

The Batwoman - haven't watched it yet

Million Eyes of Sumuru - haven't watched it yet

The Shape of Things to Come - haven't watched it yet

The Mask - haven't watched it yet

The Bubble - a man and his pregnant wife are flying to the hospital in
a small plane and are forced by a strange storm to land in a town
where everyone acts like robots who just repeat the same line of
dialog over and over. Then they learn there's an invisible bubble over
the entire town and need to find a way to escape. I actually thought
the movie itself wasn't that bad, although the ending was crap.

The Christmas Dragon - haven't watched it yet


I'm going to try to watch the rest of the season via streaming, and
if/when the blu-ray version that Kickstarters got becomes available to
the general public, I'll almost certainly buy it.

-- Bob

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

so I did some more Googling and found the episode order:

Santo in the Treasure of Dracula

Robot Wars

Munchie

Jeeze, I completely forgot Beyond Atlantis, which comes between Robot
Wars and Munchie. A 70s movie in which John Wayne's son plays a pearl
diver who gets a tip about a mysterious island with really valuable
pearls. When his group gets there, they find that the natives all
have huge fish eyes and are apparently decended from the people of
Atlantis. Truly goofy movie combined with pretty good riffing.

-- Bob

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

Bice <eichlertwothedigitnotspelled@comcast.net> wrote:

so I did some more Googling and found the episode order:

Santo in the Treasure of Dracula

Robot Wars

Munchie

Jeeze, I completely forgot Beyond Atlantis, which comes between Robot
Wars and Munchie. A 70s movie in which John Wayne's son plays a pearl
diver who gets a tip about a mysterious island with really valuable
pearls. When his group gets there, they find that the natives all
have huge fish eyes and are apparently decended from the people of
Atlantis. Truly goofy movie combined with pretty good riffing.

-- Bob

Yeah, Joel set up something called the "GizmoPlex" which is basically a
web and mobile app where you can watch these new episodes and a lot
(maybe all?) of the old episodes.

I was part of the kickstarter but haven't even logged in yet or watched
these episodes. Thanks for the reminder!

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)