MST3K Upcoming Episodes & News

Last update: August 8, 1999 (1003 airdate & cheap plug)

This is a MSTie Ring site. If you don't like the look of it, you can move on to the next ring page, get the next 5 pages, or just skip it. Follow this link if you're interested in joining.

The Sci-Fi Channel has an "experiments" page with Amazing Colossal Episode Guide-like details and reminiscences about episodes already aired.

The Internet Movie Database has recently added a way for you to find any MSTed movie in the database: do a keyword search for "mst3k".

Cheap plug: On September 12, during and after the show, we'll be holding a wake at ElderMOO. Check out the MOO beforehand if you'd like to attend.

Save MST... again!

Yes, the reports you've heard are true... after the 13 seasons of season 10, the Sci-Fi Channel will not be ordering any new episodes. The Brains have expressed their resignation to this development.

But...

While BBI will be "developing other projects" for SFC, the Brains have not thrown in the towel completely on MST3K. If a network expresses interest, they will make more episodes! Check these sites to find out who to write to:

Fan pressure has saved MST3K before. Join the movement!

CD-ROM project cancelled

The MST3K CD-ROM that Voyager had long been planning to release has been officially cancelled, according to a posting by Brian Henry in rec.arts.tv.mst3k.announce. No further details are available; it's presumed that since the project was proposed when the show's future was uncertain, the Brains simply don't have time to complete it now.

Just in case the shorts that would have appeared on the CD will be released someday in some form, I have info on them here.


The story so far

In the year 2525, Mike and the 'bots have returned to coporeal form. The Satellite of Love is more or less unchanged except for a makeover by Crow, who has been living in it alone for 500 years. Also, it's now maintained by a horde of nanites who plan on eventually ruling the galaxy.

Upon reaching Earth, they discovered it was populated entirely by apes, with the exception of Mrs. Pearl Forrester, recently thawed from cryogenic suspension and appointed "The Lawgiver", who has sworn to continue her son's experiment.

As of episode 804, the Earth has been destroyed, the SoL is operational again, and Mrs. Forrester is chasing Our Heroes in a rocket-propelled VW bus, accompanied by her ape assistant, Professor Bobo.

The SoL was captured for several episodes (804-809) by super-powerful beings called the Observers. The Observers' planet was inadvertently destroyed due to a misunderstanding between Mike and the nanites; the one surviving Observer is currently helping Mrs. Forrester maintain her hold on the satellite.

In episodes 810-814, Mrs. Forrester and friends were camping out on an unnamed planet which was eventually destroyed by a giant firework that Mike built. In 815, Mike was tried by a mysterious intergalactic judge and found guilty of destroying the three planets. He was sentenced to 400 hours of community service.

An encounter with a wormhole in 816, sent everyone back to Rome in the year AD 64, where Mrs. Forrester and the Observer impersonated minor gods until Bobo wrecked their charade. At the end of episode 820, they escaped their imprisonment and incidentally set a fire.

After some more wandering, at the beginning of season 9, all and sundry fetched up on the Earth of the not-too-distant future, at Castle Forrester, the ancestral home of the Forresters. There matters have rested since.

(Continuity? Who'd'a' thunk it?)


Episodes and airtimes

(Skip to movie descriptions) 1003 | 1013 | More

Episodes air Saturdays at 5pm and 11pm Eastern Time presently, but will be changing to Sundays at 11pm with a rerun the following Saturday at 11am when the new season starts. Season 10 is expected to be at least 13 episodes long.

Images on this page are from Jamie Plummer's MST3K movie gallery (if you go there, wait for that huge picture to load-- it's worth it!), which also has larger-sized versions of the pictures. No infringement of copyrights is intended in the quotes on this page; all quoted material will be removed after the weekend in which the episode it pertains to first airs.

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Episode 1003

Airdate: September 12, 1999

Feature: Merlin's Shop of Magical Wonders
(listed in IMDb and by BBI as Merlin's Shop of Mystical Wonders)
IMDb entry
From Blockbuster Entertainment's Guide to Movies and Video
Mild tale of the famous sorcerer running a 20th-century magic shop, forced to risk exposure to retrieve one of his most powerful weapons. Framed by Borgnine telling story to his grandson-- a blatant ripoff of The Princess Bride.
From The Motion Picture Guide
Ernest Borgnine (Grandfather); Mark Hurtado (Grandson); George Milan (Merlin); John Terrance (Jonathan Cooper III); Patricia Sansone (Madeline Cooper); Bunny Summers (Zurella); Ben Mendelsohn (David Andrews); Struan Robinson (Michael Andrews); Bruce Perry (Pete); J. Renee Gilbert (Marie Andrews); Madelon Phillips (Adrienne); Ben Sussman (Jay Cosgrove)

An easy way for novices to break into features is to string together various short subjects, shot on the cheap at different times, into a crazy-quilt anthology picture. That seems a likely explanation for this straight-to-video hodgepodge.

A retired scriptwriter (Ernest Borgnine) tells his grandson bedtime stories about legendary wizard Merlin (George Milan) materializing in the present day to spread magic and wonder. How? By opening a grotto-like store in a northern California town.

First, Merlin gives a book of spells to skeptical newspaper columnist Jonathan Cooper III (John Terrence). The arrogant scribe is delighted that its dangerous incantations are genuine, but he rapidly ages every time he works sorcery. The book contains a rejuvenation formula, but it turns Cooper into an infant, granting the wish of his barren wife to have a baby.

Next, a mechanical monkey stolen from Merlin's shop is resold as a birthday gift for a little boy. His father, David (Ben Mendelsohn), notices that the monkey sometimes clashes its cymbals of its own volition, and a succession of housepets perish under mysterious circumstances. David tries to get rid of the infernal plaything before it can strike again and kill a person. But the monkey keeps reappearing, until Merlin finally retrieves it.

The Merlin footage in this second episode was clearly shot much later and inserted into an existing production. The quality of the film stock changes every time the old magician and his polyester-white fake beard enter the frame, and he never interacts with the principal cast.

That's not the only supernatural transformation wrought in Merlin's Shop of Magical Wonders. With occasional deaths, attempted shock endings, and mild gore effects, the tales come across as straightforward horror. Somewhere along the line, writer-producer-director Kenneth J. Burton reworked the material as kiddie fantasy, thanks to bookend scenes with guest star Borgnine.

Merlin's Shop of Magical Wonders isn't wholly unsuitable for youngsters, but it clearly isn't what it started out to be.

d, Kenneth J. Burton; p, Kenneth J. Burton; exec p, Rose Ciolino, Grace Beretta; w, Kenneth J. Burton; ph, Michael Gfelner, Tony Martin; m, Todd Hayen, Frank Macchia; prod d, Lee Sjostrum, Melodie Ennist; art d, Laura Chariton; makeup, Doug White, Howard Tsuruba

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Feature: Danger: Diabolik
Originally mentioned in this New York Daily News article; now officially confirmed.

IMDb entry

From The Motion Picture Guide
John Phillip Law (Diabolik), Marisa Mell (Eva Kant), Michel Piccoli (Inspector Ginko), Adolfo Celi (Ralph Valmont), Terry-Thomas (Minister of Finance), Mario Donen (Sergeant Danek), Claudio Gora (Police Chief), Edward Febo Kelleng (Sir Harold Clark), Caterina Boratto (Lady Clark), Giulio Donnini (Dr. Vernier), Annie Gorassini (Rose), Renzo Palmer (Minister's Assistant), Andrea Bosic (Bank Manager), Lucia Modugno (Prostitute), Giorgio Gennari (Rudy), Giorgio Sciolette (Morgue Doctor), Carlo Croccolo (Lorry Driver), Giuseppe Fazio (Tony), Lidia Biondi (Policewoman), Isarco Ravaioli, Federico Boito, Tiberio Mitri, Wolfgang Hillinger (Valmont's Henchmen).

Law delights the populace by destroying Italy's tax rcords, and then he steals a twenty-ton radioactive gold ingot. In a bizarre ending, he melts down the ingo in his hideout and it explodes and showers him with molten gold, turning him into a golden statue. If slight in content, the sets and set pieces introduced by one-time cinematographer Bava show his visual panache and are quite memorable.

p, Dino de Laurentiis; d, Mario Bava; w, Bava, Dino Maiuri, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates (based on a story by Angela and Luciana Guissani, Maiuri, Adriano Baracco); ph, Antonio Rinaldi (Tchnicolor); m, Ennio Morricone; ed, Romana Fortini; art d, Flavio Mogherini; cos, Luciana Marinucci, Piero Gherardi.

From Halliwell's Film Guide
International police bait a golden trap for a master criminal. Superior Batman-type adventures with a comic strip hero-villain.
[If Terry-Thomas sounds familiar, you probably remember him as the villain in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines.]

Possible future fodder

Watch this space... I hope.

CD shorts

The CD-ROM was to include two short films, Mylar: What is it to You? and Assignment: Venezuela. I haven't found anything about the former, but here's something on the latter:

From A Filmography of the Third World: An Annotated List of 16mm Films by Helen W. Cyr
Creole Petroleum, 1957. 25 min. b/w. UUT

A visit with an employee of the Creole Petroleum Corporation assigned to the Maracaibo oil fields in Venezuela. Shows major cities and the community integration project attempted by the corporation.


Petréa Mitchell
pravn@m5p.com
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