Ranking the Top Ten Best Episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000

It really cannot be stressed enough how influential Mystery Science Theater 3000 was, and how it presaged so much of modern popular entertainment that still persists to this day. Despite all the ways in which distribution models, technology, and generational sensibilities have changed over the last thirty-five years, the notion of just parasocially “hanging out” with semi-fictionalized versions of improvisational comedians as they riff on entertainment they’re “ironically” enjoying is still going strong, thanks to New Media content creators of the present like Red Letter Media and Cinemassacre via a kind of humor that Judd Apatow later turned into a successful Hollywood formula.

For those too young to remember, there was a time when media consumers had very limited control over when and what they could watch. There were no streaming services with the entire library of your favorite sitcoms or Disney musicals that you could load up whenever you wanted for a monthly fee. The best you could do was pay extra for premium cable channels like HBO and hope they would put a movie you want to watch in their rotation. A lot of Generation X’s cultural tastes and perceptions of what defines a “cult classic” came from small numbers of people lucky enough to have access to unusual niche cable channels or low-rent theaters willing to play something like Basket Case, and as a result of that, the youngest of Generation X and the oldest Millennials found ways to provide their own entertainment value to found media that was otherwise… lacking, in mainstream respectability, artistic merit, or even straightforward watchability. It was only a matter of time until someone asked if it was possible to “professionalize” this kind of informal ritual among nerd social circles. But who?

Repurposing existing media into comedies wasn’t a wholly novel idea – What’s Up, Tiger Lily? was Woody Allen’s feature directorial debut and it’s literally just ninety minutes of an old Japanese spy film re-edited and redubbed into a parody of itself – but the then-unknown prop comedian Joel Hodgson was able to tap into the appeal of ribbing indisputably bad movies as a communal act bringing people together way back in 1988.

The rest, as they say, is history.

If that sounds sentimental… well, guilty as charged, but can anyone here say they don’t have any fond memories of enjoying Cats or Fifty Shades Freed with your friends, constantly cracking yourselves up so much you both turn red over the sight of Judi Dench’s human hands? Heck, the suggestion that doing such a thing is hurtful and mean-spirited no longer applies in a media environment where the challenge of a creator is just getting any attention on their work at all. This show was easily the best thing that ever happened to Harold P. Warren’s misbegotten magnum opus, and Manos: The Hands of Fate is not even among my top ten favorite episodes of the show!

These are the episodes I look back on most fondly:

Honorable Mentions: Cave Dwellers, Teenagers from Outer Space, The Day the Earth Froze, Santa Claus, Prince of Space, Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, Werewolf, and Jack Frost

10) Track of the Moon Beast

9) Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell

8) Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders

7) Mitchell

6) Hobgoblins

5) Time Chasers

4) Space Mutiny

3) The Final Sacrifice

2) I Accuse My Parents

1) Pod People

I discovered the series during the Michael J. Nelson era, so that probably explains why this top ten list is dominated by episodes he hosted. But there is a lot to love about series creator Joel Hodgson’s time on the show, including my favorite and second-favorite MST3k episodes of all time. The new episodes with Jonah Ray have been pretty good. I do not mean that as damning with faint praise, either. I love how the revival turned out and am amazed at how it continued to find good bad movies to riff on (without lazily just hopping on bandwagons, like, say, The Room, when I am sure they had incentives to do so), but none were able to compete with the best of the classic era, in my opinion. And sadly, there may not be an opportunity for that to happen in the future; it has been a year since Joel made the disappointing announcement that the crowdfunding effort for a fourteenth season was unsuccessful, and though some related content has been produced since then, no full season has come out yet. Still, if this truly is the end of this iconic comedy series, it had an amazing run and has proven its longevity and influence on what has become a staple of comedy these days. Cheers!

Or, as the poacher from Pod People would say, HUZZAH!