I’ll be the killjoy who points out that Servo was going to have a First Communion even though he’s established as being Jewish in Santa Claus. Darn that 31st Century spacefarers’ melting pot-- it’s gone TOO FAR THIS TIME!! 
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Maybe his mother is Jewish and his father is a Catholic.
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That was how I sorted through it in the Club MST3K days. Joel Robinson had a platonic woman friend at Gizmonics who used to offer suggestions on his various robot schematics when they were killing time in the cafeteria. She was Jewish, so she was Servo’s “Mom.” Problem solved. 
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I like Brain Guy and Bobo, but now I will never forgive you for putting that awesome but never to be idea into my head.
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Wouldn’t Krankor run out of material to say? He’s potentially so one-note I’m not positive once the laughter and threats of conquest die down if he wouldn’t stop talking and run away like in Neptune Men (1961).
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@Dr_Phantom Hey, that’s what fanfic is for. 
@BruceLeePullen Eh, it’s possible. But henchmen always have the possibility of evolving as they go. Half the fun of that gag is the surprise of Krankor going all Sensitive New Age Guy upon seeing his beloved Mike again.
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As mentioned above, the Host Segments are fantastic here. To me: The “wormhole” subplot is one of the most creative concepts in the show’s entire history (which is really saying something).
I have probably seen this episodes dozens of times and the Time Warp sketch still marvels me. It must’ve been so difficult to get that in correctly. An all-timer for sure!
And the Sylvan Glen is amazing for being the only outdoor scene ever!
This experiment is the total package! So good. 
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Talk about your uncanny valley there…
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One of my top 20 episodes. Funny all the way through.
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The chicken puppet sketch always reminds me of this bit in Red Dwarf, which is another display of perfect timing and must have been difficult to get right.
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Keep it clean, there, Rowdy Yates!
But however many times I’ve seen Prince/Space, I now must watch it again today to recall the host segments.
And resist the imp of the perverse to follow it up with the dire neptune…blahblah.
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Neptune Men is such a slog, it desperately needed a Phantom of Krankor or something
Has anybody seen my record?
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Mid to late season 8. Where, for me, the host segments outweigh the film choices. A tail wagging the dog, as it were.
This is a weird one to me. Some days I think it’s quite funny, and other days I want nothing to do with it.
Then, of course, I’m reminded of how much of a good thing we had with Krankor during Invasion of the Neptune Men.
But by and large, I avoid this era of MST3K. There’s just something detached from the rest of the series about it, and it serves as the opposite of comfort episodes for me.
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Inversely there are those who love it to death. The greatness of MST is it is numerous things to a multitude of people. I too wrestled with Season 8 in the 90s and today I’m far more keen. Where our heart is often dictates what we prefer. Season 7 of MST is a chore for my mileage. I’m intending to rewatch them soon.
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That line always bugs me.
Johnny says (quite reasonably) that it’s dangerous to be there, in front of the alien death ray. Mickey replies, “I’m not afraid; if you are, go home.” Which makes perfect sense. “I’m staying here to watch, but if you think it’s so dangerous, you can leave.” And yet the bots spend the next 5 minutes pretending it was a non-sequitur word salad.
The non-sequitur riffs are still kind of funny, mocking the stilted dubbing, but it just really loses something when the basis of the joke is the bots being confused by something that really seems to me to be pretty straightforward.
Reading further, I see @CLANG_Potroast concurs. As @AdamSmith says, the dubbing is stilted. But the non-sequitur riffs specifically start with Tom saying “Those are two completely separate ideas,” which just isn’t true, and then they go around mocking a mistake that just isn’t there.
As for security clearance: These movies are made for kids. There’s a very old tradition of kid sidekicks being allowed to get wrapped up in incredibly dangerous situations because the writers felt that the audience would be more interested and involved if there was a kid like them in the middle of the story. Goes back to at least the introduction of Robin the Boy Wonder in the 1940s. It was the whole basis of Johnny Quest. We’re used to it that context. We’re just not used to watching Gamera or Prince of Space as children’s movies. The riffs about it are still fun, but let’s not pretend that it’s just a Japanese thing.
Thing is, he’s not invulnerable. Though it’s not clear in the dub, what he’s saying is “Your weapons are useless against me because I’m fast and skilled enough to dodge them.” That’s why he always has to be jumping, rolling, or running out of the way. And there are some close calls. Even a couple of times where his having to dodge means he’s pinned down, giving them time to get away. So it makes sense to keep shooting. They just need to score one hit. Honestly, they’d be better off shooting more. Catch him in a crossfire and he’ll have less room to dodge and more angles to watch.
So, no. They’re not hitting. It’s a series of near misses as he jumps clear at the last second, every time. Except when he uses his radio wand to reflect some lasers, at which point you definitely want to stop shooting lasers at him.
But as for Star Wars… The stormtroopers were ordered to let the rebels escape because they’d planted a tracker on the Millennium Falcon and needed to follow it back to Yavin Base. Vader wasn’t getting the intel from Leia, even after blowing up Alderaan. So what we saw was them very carefully carrying out their orders: Keep them on their toes, but make sure they get away. They’re intentionally missing every time, and that arguably takes more precision than scoring a hit.
Anyway…
I have to agree with this. He’s delightful. It is a kids’ movie, so just gotta love a villain who just lets go and hams it up.
Also, Krankor makes a little more sense when you encounter references to Tengu (bird-like demons in Japanese folklore) elsewhere and start to realize what they were going for in this movie.
Also have to agree the chicken puppet wormhole sketch is fantastic. And I absolutely love that Robot Puppet Mike has a visible headset boom mic in the theater.
What’s worse than the terrible dubbing in this film is the terrible aspect ratio cropping. Over and over, people who are clearly supposed to be in frame in the original widescreen movie are cropped out of the TV version. So we’re left staring at trees while the kids approach from out of frame, people are introduced who are standing just out of frame, Phantom is waving his fist around while he delivers his speech with the rest of his body out of frame, Phantom has a conversation with a scientist who is entirely out frame (while there’s an entire empty table behind him that could have been cropped out instead)…
Am I the only one who spends the whole movie waiting for an Underdog riff, given that our superhero’s secret identity is as a humble and loveable shoeshine boy?
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Fair point! Never really thought about that specific riff in isolation before.
All for kids having security clearance. But THESE kids? I just don’t think they display the competence to warrant it
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That is correct. Except, if I may offer a correction to your correction (or, rather, an amendment to it might perhaps be more accurate…):
The character in Prince of Space is Phantom, from the planet Krankor. The character based on Phantom played by Bill Corbett on MST3K, however, is canonically named Krankor.
Mostly? But I could see him playing off some of the other recurring guest villains, like Torgo (who is also… well, I guess he’s got two notes).
Oh, and here’s Puppet Mike’s headset boom mic. I just love that they added that detail.
That is clearly an Ewok.
As opposed to any of the Kennys in the Gamera movies, all of whom simply wander into and out of high-security military bases dealing with imminent urgent crises of kaiju proportions, offer insight into what the adults missed, and then run off to play?
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No, these are clearly Ewoks
I would suggest that these two points alone are greater contributions to the national security of Japan than anything the kids in PoS had to offer, justifying Level 5 security clearance for all relevant Kennys
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This is an unfortunately common failure mode of their jokes (for me at least) on Japanese movies. If you know much about Japanese culture or history (or language with some of the opening credits riffs, e.g. the original Gamera), you notice riffs that are just them being unfamiliar with anything Japanese. Which, you know, on some level is fair; they’re from the Upper Midwest and not everybody is going to be a weeb/otaku/whatever. And in the case of this movie, you can still laugh at the bad birdman/Tengu makeup and scenery devouring overacting of a kids’ movie.
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