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The premise of the show was that Joel Robinson (played by Hodgson), a janitor working for the Gizmonics Institute, had been shot into space by two mad scientists, Dr. Clayton Forrester and his sidekick Dr. Erhardt as an experimental test subject. The experiment was meant to test how many awful B-movies a human could endure before going mad, and to find the perfect B-movie to use as a weapon in Dr. Forrester's scheme of world domination. (Dr Erhardt was soon replaced by the sycophantic TV's Frank.)
Trapped on board The Satellite of Love (S.O.L.)—a Lou ReedLou Reed (born Lewis Allen Reed on March 2, 1942), the rock'n'roll singer-songwriter, has had a lasting musical influence on punk rock and alternative rock. Reed has toured and recorded almost continuously since 1965. He lives in New York City. Reed was b reference—Joel built the robotFor the 2005 computer-animated movie see " Robots (movie) Definitions In practical usage, a robot is a mechanical device which performs automated tasks, either according to direct human supervision, a pre-defined program or, a set of general guidelines, u beings that populated the ship (ostensibly because he was lonely, and as an homage to the 70's film Silent RunningSilent Running is a science fiction movie of 1972, directed by Douglas Trumbull and starring Bruce Dern as the main character Freeman Lowell. It was made with a very limited budget and has since achieved something of a cult film following. The movie depic). The robots were Tom ServoTom Servo is one of the two wise-cracking robot main characters of the show Mystery Science Theater 3000. He was built by Joel Robinson to act as a companion and help stave off madness as he was forced to watch terrible movies. He is somewhat more mature, Crow T. RobotRobot is one of the two wise-cracking robots from the Peabody Award-winning series Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K). Crow is somewhat more adolescent than Tom Servo. Robot stands for "The". Crow is a gold colored puppet composed of, among other things, Gypsy, who handled the "higher functions" of the S.O.L., and Cambot, who recorded the experiments. Gypsy didn't appear in every episode and Cambot was only seen during the robot roll call portion of the opening credits, though the characters would occasionally interact with it in a BrechtianBertolt Brecht ( February 10, 1898 August 14, 1956) was an influential German dramatist, stage director, and poet of the 20th century. His life and career Brecht was born in Augsburg, Bavaria, studied medicine and worked briefly as an orderly in a hospita sort of way. Also, occasionally making an 'appearance', is Magic Voice, a disembodied female voice that, for the most part, in the earlier years of the show, announced that the first commercial of each episode was about to start.
Since Joel had built Tom and Crow out of parts of the space ship, he had no control over when the movies start. As the movies would play, Joel, Tom, and Crow could be seen in silhouette at the bottom of the screen, endlessly mocking the movie with wisecracks in order not to be driven mad (a practice they sometimes referred to as "riffing".) Often, just before or after a commercial break, they would leave the theater to perform skits, songs or other short comic material during the show's "host segments", which were often inspired by the movie they had been watching. Sometimes this involved interaction with the characters from the movies, with characters such as TorgoTorgo is one of the main characters in the 1966 movie "Manos" The Hands of Fate played by John Reynolds. Torgo, though he appeared human, was actually meant to be a satyr half goat and half human. He was the servant of " The Master", apparently charged wi from returning many times in future episodes of the show. Inevitably, though, the "movie sign" light would flash, and they would be forced to run back into the theater to continue watching the movie.
When Joel Hodgson decided to leave the series, halfway through season five, an episode was written in which his character escaped from the S.O.L. with the help of Gypsy after finding an escape pod (named the Deus ex Machina) in a box marked " Hamdingers". Mike Nelson, a temp worker hired by Dr. Forrester to clean up Deep 13, was sent up to the Satellite to replace Joel. Mike was played by series head writer Michael J. Nelson, and appeared from 1993 until the series's end.
Among the movies deconstructed on the series were Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, , five Japanese Gamera monster movies, and the Ed Wood film Bride of the Monster. It should be pointed out that most of the movies had to be edited to make room for the sketches surrounding them, and for commercials. This practice often made the movie more riffable because continuity would not always be respected. Altogether, nearly 200 episodes of MST3K were produced.
Most of the early episodes also included screenings of unintentionally hilarious short films, mostly propaganda films from the 1950s—such as a training film for Chevrolet sales managers, and films intended to teach children about posture or personal hygiene.