MST3K

In the "not-too-distant future", two mad scientists, Dr. Clayton Forrester (named after the main character of The War of the Worlds), 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 B-movies in order to measure how much bad movie watching it takes to drive a person crazy in order 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, following Weinstein's departure from the series.

Trapped on 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), Crow T. Robot (voiced first by Trace Beaulieu, then by Bill Corbett beginning in Season 8), Gypsy (voiced first by Weinstein, 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 primarily in a mirror during the opening credits and occasionally interacts with the others.

Also making intermittent "appearances" in the show's early years is Magic Voice, a disembodied female voice whose primary role is to announce the start of the first commercial break in each episode.

Joel and Mike have no control over when the movies start, because Joel utilized the parts that would've allowed him to do so to build the robots.

He must enter the theater when the movie is sent up, because Dr. Forrester (and in later seasons, his evil 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 movie plays, 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/Mike and the robots perform skits, songs, or other short sketch pieces (called "host segments") that are usually related to the movie they are watching.

Many episodes without movies long enough to fill the show's runtime include screenings of unintentionally humorous short films or "shorts", including educational films and training videos.

Shorts became less common as the series progressed and were nonexistent in the first Sci-Fi Channel season, due to a combination of longer films and host segments, and shorts requiring a science fiction element.

The restriction was lifted for the final two seasons, which featured three shorts.

Links
Wikipedia> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MST3K
MST3K Wiki> mst3k.wikia.com/wiki/MST3K
Jeff Bots.com> www.jeffbots.com/mst.html

Copyright Owner
SyFy> www.syfy.com/

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