Mystery Science Theater 3000 - Premise

Premise

Sometime in the future, two mad scientists, Dr. Clayton Forrester, played by Trace Beaulieu, and his sidekick Dr. Laurence Erhardt, played by Josh Weinstein, launch Joel Robinson (Hodgson), a janitor working for Gizmonic Institute, into space and force him to watch truly horrible B-movies in order to measure how much bad movie watching it takes to drive a person crazy, and to pinpoint the perfect B-movie to use as a weapon in Dr. Forrester's scheme of world domination. The sycophantic TV's Frank, played by Frank Conniff, replaced Dr. Erhardt in the second season premiere on the Comedy Channel (third season overall), following Weinstein's departure from the series. Trapped on board the ship, named the Satellite of Love, Joel builds four sentient robots: Tom Servo (voiced first by J. Elvis Weinstein, then by Kevin Murphy beginning in Season 2 on Comedy Channel, Season 3 overall), Crow T. Robot (voiced first by Trace Beaulieu, then by Bill Corbett beginning in Season 8 ), Gypsy (voiced first by Weinstein, inhaling as he spoke, then by Jim Mallon and later by Patrick Brantseg, both using a falsetto voice), who steers the ship, and Cambot, the recorder of the experiments who is visible only in a mirror during the opening credits and occasionally interacts with the others (for example, when Cambot is asked a yes-or-no question, the onscreen image will shift up and down or left and right, as if Cambot were nodding or shaking itself in a "yes" or "no" gesture). Also making intermittent "appearances" in the show's early years is Magic Voice (eventually voiced by Mary Jo Pehl, who later played Pearl Forrester), a disembodied female voice whose primary role is to announce the start of the first commercial break in each episode (such as "Commercial Sign in 15 seconds"; "Commercial Sign in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1").

Joel has no control over when the movies start, because—as the original theme song stated -- "he used those special parts to make his robot friends" (those "robot friends" being Cambot, Gypsy, Crow, and Tom Servo). The opening theme-song lyrics were changed repeatedly in later seasons to accommodate plot changes, like when Mike Nelson replaced Joel Robinson. He must enter the theater when "Movie Sign" flashes, because Dr. Clayton Forrester (and in later seasons, his evil would-be tyrant mother Pearl) has numerous ways to punish Joel/Mike for non-compliance, including shutting off the oxygen supply to the rest of the ship, and electric shocks. As the movies play, the silhouettes of Joel/Mike, Tom, and Crow are visible at the bottom of the screen, wisecracking and mocking the movie (a practice they often referred to as "riffing") in order to prevent themselves from going mad.

Several times during each movie (about every half-hour when shown with commercials), Joel (and later Mike) and the bots perform skits, songs, or other short sketch pieces (called "host segments") that are usually related to the movie they are watching. These segments sometimes even feature "visits" by prominent characters from a shown movie, such as Torgo from Manos: The Hands of Fate, "Jan in the Pan" from The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Ortega from The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies, "Mega-Weapon" from "Warrior of the Lost World", and Mothra from Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. Mike Nelson also played many of these guest characters when Joel was still hosting the show, including memorables like Torgo, Gamera and a Michael Feinstein-esque lounge singer.

Many episodes without movies long enough to fill the show's runtime also include screenings of unintentionally humorous short films or "shorts," including educational films from the 1940s through the 1960s, a training film for Chevrolet sales managers, movie serials including Radar Men from the Moon, Undersea Kingdom, and The Phantom Creeps, films intended to teach children about posture or personal hygiene, and segments from 1960s episodes of the soap opera General Hospital. Shorts became less frequent in later episodes, and were virtually nonexistent by the first Sci-Fi Channel season since the channel's executives required that every film be science-fiction, fantasy, or horror in nature. The restriction was lifted for the final two seasons, which featured three shorts (including a Gumby cartoon).