Basil's Blog: MST3K: Episode K10

Saturday, December 17, 2011

MST3K: Episode K10 - Cosmic Princess

I'm watching all of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes. More about this project can be found here and here.

Episode K10: Cosmic Princess

First aired: KTMA on 22 January 1989
Availability: MST3KVideos.com

Once upon a time, there was a TV show called Space: 1999. Or so I'm told. I never watched an episode. It ran from 1975-1977 in syndication on U.S. TV. I got my TV programming from Savannah and Jacksonville during those years, and don't remember what station carried it. For whatever reason, I never watched it. I know it was made by the same people that made The Muppet Show, and starred Rollin and Cinnamon from Mission: Impossible.

Joel & the Bots watch the movie

What all that has to do with anything is that episode K10 of MST3K, Cosmic Princess, isn't really a movie, but two related episodes of Space: 1999 that were jammed together and called a movie. The Mads mention this, so it's not exactly like I was smart enough to figure it out, though I'd like to think I was.

The riffing is good. They play off each other pretty well, though they do step on each other's lines at times. I noticed that the cast really like the Dairy Queen.

During one of the host segments, Crow gives Joel a haircut. They redid this bit in a later (nationally-broadcast) season.

Maya is introduced

It was pretty obvious when the change from the first episode to the second episode. The one threat was resolve and they went straight to the second threat. The new character, introduced in the first hour, had some more introductory storyline playing in the second hour, which was the thread that wove the two hours together.

However, the episodes were 13 episodes apart. The first hour ended with the new character, Maya, being checked out. In the 14th episode, Maya was hospitalized with a virus. When the episodes were put together, they edited it as if the timelines were back-to-back.

Some of my favorite riffs:

Mr. French!

The Spaceship Gillespie

It's the gorilla his dreams

We have visual

Actually, the dialogue in the movie said "We have visual" right before it showed the moon buggy was four feet behind the space creature. The riff was simply repeating the movie dialogue in that context. Makes it easy when the movie riffs itself, I suppose.

Since there are no flying turtles, there are no hot Japanese she-villains. There is a hot Hungarian she-villain (who turns out not to be a villain), but her character isn't all that hot (thought the actress is). The space-makeup helps make her look alien, but lowers the hotness factor. The character, Maya, is a shape-shifter. Maya should have shifted her shape to something that looked more like Catherine Schell.