What Is MST3K?  Good question.

      Mystery Science Theater 3000 (fondly known as MST3K) is a wonderful two-hour TV show on the Sci-Fi Channel (Saturday, 9 AM E, 8C!).  Yes, it is cancelled.  Sad.  It lasted for ten seasons, though, and I figure that's pretty darn good for a TV show.
       The plot (plot? there's a plot?) tells of the adventures of a man and his 'bots on a satellite orbiting Earth, being forced to watch horrid films by a mad scientist and his assistant.  This man is Joel Robinson, a drowsy, good-natured janitor.  As the theme song says, he worked at Gizmonics Institute until his bosses, Dr. Clayton Forrester and Dr. Lawrence Erhardt (lovingly known as The Mads), got an idea for an experiment and needed a test subject.  They picked Joel.  The good doctors shot him onto the Satellite of Love (which looks like a dog bone) and proceeded with their evil scheme:  showing Joel terrible movies that would easily drive anyone insane.  As it also says in the theme song, Joel can't start or stop the movies because he used those special parts to build his robot friends, Gypsy, Cambot, Crow, and Tom Servo, so now the poor guy has company.  After some time, the Mads were kicked out of Gizmonics Institute, and so were forced to move into a sublevel below Gizmonics, Deep 13.
       After season One, Dr. Erhardt "mysteriously disappeared," and so Dr. Forrester was forced to search for a new assistant.  He had to look no farther than the nearest Arby's.  There he found TV's Frank, a bumbling guy with a spitcurl.

      Sometime in the middle of the fifth season, the Mads got audited, so they hired a temp by the name of Mike Nelson to help them out.  Gypsy overheard the Mads plotting Mike's death, and thought they were talking about Joel.  She decided that she had to save Joel somehow, but she needed help.  She got absolutely none from Crow or Tom, so, she asked Mike the temp for help.  He was sympathetic and tricked Frank into handing over the keys to the control panel.  They figured out that there was a one-man escape pod in a box of hamdingers ("No wonder we didn't look there!  Noboby likes hamdingers!").  After the movie (which is the excruciating "Mitchell"), Joel hopped in the pod, said farewell via the Hexfield Viewscreen, and jettisoned off to land safely in the Australian Outback.  Meanwhile, the Mads figured out what happened, and decided to send Mike up to the Satellite of Love to take Joel's place.
       Mike Nelson turned out to be a really nice guy; soft-spoken, Midwestern, that sort of thing.  He's also quite inept, so the 'bots take advantage of him many a time.  For example, in episode 513, Mike speaks of a childhood memory involving an ice cream cone, a locked gas station bathroom, and a very long walk home.  It was poignant.  I almost felt sorry for him.  Naturally, Tom and Crow make fun of him.
       Around the beginning of season Six, Dr. Forrester holds a press conference to introduce the Umbilicus.  It's for sending things back and forth from Deep 13 to the SOL.  Gypsy is ticked because it is connected to her.  It is soon forgotten.
       Exit TV's Frank.  A character (if it can be called that) from a season Five episode (Manos:  Hands of Fate) named Torgo takes Frank away to a better place.  Mike and the 'bots write and read tributes dedicated to Frank.
       Enter Mrs. Pearl Forrester, Dr. Forrester's loving mother.  She came to visit after Frank left, discovered her son in a bit of a fix, and decided to stay and support her dear offspring.  About this time (season Seven), Dr. Forrester loses his funding and must convert himself and the crew of the SOL into pure energy (which can be done by merely concentrating!  Amazing!).  Then a huge monolithic 2001-ish videotape looms before the Doctor and his mother, and Forrester becomes a StarBaby.
       Which is when the show got picked up by the Sci-Fi Channel.  Season Eight begins with Pearl returning everyone to their original forms, except now it's the year 2525.  (No, I will not sing.)  They try to communicate with Earth and find that Mike's ancestors mated with a bunch of apes and now the human race is extinct.  <sigh>  Well, Pearl's not about to let her son's experiment go for naught so she keeps right on sending horrible movies to the SOL.  Oh, by the way, Mike also blows up the Earth.  Pearl, of course, manages to escape in a VW bus.  Surprise:  she has a stowaway.  Professor Bobo, an ape from Earth.  On Pearl's travels, we meet many interesting characters, such as the Nanites, who infest the SOL and fix things (when they're not on strike); the Observer, affectionately known as Brain Guy, who can communicate telepathically (but talks anyway), and can produce weird things like fruit leather out of thin air.  A bunch of stuff happens to Mike and the 'bots (no, I haven't forgotten about them), for example, they accidentally fall into a wormhole which takes them and Pearl & Co. to ancient Rome.  Somehow they get back to present day Earth.  Pearl lands on our good ol' planet somewhere in the vicinity of...Castle Forrester!!!  Pearl's ancestral home, complete with spooky pipe organ.  The giddy days of seasons Nine and Ten are spent in or thousands of miles over the Castle.
       A particular moment in season Ten that I think is really worth talking about is when Mike coerces Pearl into playing Three Card Monty.  If she wins, the SOL crew must watch two movies instead of one.  But if Mike wins, he gets to pick the movie!  Of course Mike wins, so he picks Hamlet--a classic.  But yet again the poor sap is undermined.  Pearl sends him an old, dubbed from German, TV version.  Oh well.
       One day in Castle Forrester, Pearl decides to shake up the SOL crew a little with her new joystick(a good one, from Radio Shack).  She tosses them about, but then breaks the joystick.  Bobo can't do anything about it because he's a monkey.  Observer can't fix it because Pearl poured Mountain Dew into his brain pan the other day.  So it looks like the SOL is finally returning to Earth.  Pearl still send them a movie though.  At the end of the episode, the SOL crashes.  Mike, Tom, and Crow are settled in a tiny apartment in Milwaukee.  They notice that the stocks for Gypsy's company, ConGypsCo, are waaaaay up.  They then settle in to watch an afternoon movie on WTMJ:  The Crawling Eye.

Ho-kayyy, now that you know all that, let's get on
to meeting the characters, shall we?

The 'Bots

First, we have Cambot.  He films the show.  He isn't often seen, except in the Robot Roll Call in the opening when he looks in a mirror.  Occasionally, he will do something un-Cambot-like, though.

Next, there is Gypsy.  She's the token female, and also the brains on the SOL.  She runs the satellite.  In fact, the reason she talks a bit funny is that so much of her brain is taken up with the Satellite.  Joel once shut down the ship so Gypsy could speak normally.  Oh, and one more thing:  She's in love with Richard Basehart.

Tom Servo is the "sophisticated" 'bot.  He has an admirable singing voice, and he knows it.  He breaks into song when and wherever possible.  He also has an expansive underwear collection, and many, many clones.  Who gets Tom?  "Nobody does!  I'm the wind, baby!"

And last but most certainly not least is Crow T. Robot.  The "T" stands for "The."  (duh.)  Crow does have legs, although they are almost never seen.  He every so often, during a host segment, will make a little film.  They are more often than not insulting, but still entertaining.  (Maltese men, Women:  Do They Exist?, etc.)

The Humans

This here is Joel Robinson, just another face in a red jumpsuit.  He is something of an inventor, and quite a good one at that.  He built all four 'bots himself, and as long as he was on the show, there was an Invention Exchange between him and the Mads.

This is Mike Nelson.  He's from Hayward, Wisconsin, and he has no idea of what's going on, poor fool.  He can't fix the 'bots, he can't pilot the SOL, but he can throw a mean crack at the big screen.  He's also accomplished at Three Card Monte.

The Mads

This scary-looking man is Dr. Clayton Forrester, maddest of the Mads.  It was his evil mind that thought up the MST3K experiment (i.e. sending an unwitting human up to a satellite to watch horrible movies).  He sports a white streak in his Einsteinian shock of hair and in his mustache from a bolt of lightning.  All in the name of "science," no doubt.

The disturbing little man here with Dr. F is Dr. Lawrence Erhardt, seen only in Season One.  After that, no one really knows....

This guy here is TV's Frank, so named because of his illustrious television career.  He is Dr. F's all-purpose stress reliever, sidekick, and guinea pig.  Poor guy.

Mrs. Pearl Forrester, Dr. F's mom.  See the resemblance?  Yeah, I sure don't.  Pearl is crass and extremely rude, not just to Mike and the 'bots, but to Observer and Professor Bobo, too.  She's also a board certified Mad Scientist.

Obviously not Hamlet, although the skull is about his intellectual equal.  Professor Bobo, a culturally advanced ape from Earth's future, stowed away in Pearl's VW mini-bus when Mike destroyed the planet. He's an idiot with hygenic habits no one wants to know about.

This is the Observer.  He is an Observer. Pearl calls him Brain Guy, which I think fits him better because all he does is hang around the castle with his brain in a Tupperware dish.  He says he has no body and that he can communicate through thoughts alone.  Personally, I don't believe him.

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