EXTENDED Turkey Day Marathon 2022!

The Turkey Day marathon will start on Thanksgiving morning, and show eight episodes throughout the day.
But back in the day, Turkey Day was 30 hours, a full fifteen episodes! It would start on Wednesday evening, and end late Thursday night.
Here’s my proposal:
We’ve had showings on off weeks so the group would have a watch together on Fridays. Perhaps this could be extended to Turkey Day…
What we do is, say for example, if:
the Turkey Day stream starts at 6am on Thanksgiving.
We pick five episodes to show in the Gizmoplex, starting Wednesday evening at 8pm, 10pm, midnight, 2am and 4am. Then following the main stream, two more episodes to get to 30 hours. Like an extra bonus for us crazy night-owl fans here in the Gizmoplex.
We could marathon November’s Synthia Selects to make it easy, replaying the first one as the last.
What do you think, sirs?

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I love this idea. The particularly great thing about Turkey Day was you could have it on in the background during family functions (which may have a lot of tension) or while you’re cooking. Back when I was a kid, it gave me an excuse to do things other than with family, and I will always appreciate Mystery Science Theater 3000 for providing that.

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I won’t pull an “all nighter” but I’m in on the rest of it! I love having MST3K on while I’m prepping the feast! Also while eating the feast, cleaning up after the feast, taking a post feast nap…lol!

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And look at that, we got ten episodes! That’s great, looking forward to it!

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Wow, ten episodes! That’s certainly an improvement over the last few marathons. Although to be honest… (Spoilers for this year’s Turkey Day marathon) I’m not a fan of “surgically enhancing” the old episodes. It’s a fun experiment, but I don’t think this is how episodes should be presented. There is a charm to those old crusty film prints, and editing in cleaner prints just rubs me the wrong way. It’s misrepresentation of what they would have looked like back in the 80’s or 90’s, and I’d rather they just leave the episodes as is.

For the past couple years, I’ve done a YouTube playlist of 16 episodes for Turkey Day. And I’ll do an updated one this year, as there are some new favorites that I want to include. And more MST3K is always a good thing, even if it’s an unofficial Turkey Day marathon.

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No need to add spoilers since enhancements have been officially announced.

Also, to clarify, they are not editing in cleaner prints. What they are doing is closer to HD Upscaling, the show, and the print is the same, just enhanced.

In addition, the originals still remain, those are still around to watch… and it’s not like MST hasn’t fiddled with prints in the past (the blue tinting on Daddy-O)

After watching the Mask, and soaking in the clear, pretty looking image in glorious B&W, and then recalling how much enjoyment I derived out of seeing a better print of The Magic Sword from Rifftrax, or how much the restoration of Manos, shown on the Mad livestream, made it a more enjoyable experience… I think I’ve lost any romantic notions I had about the appeal of ‘crusty old film prints’.

Bring on the enhancements, I’m looking forward to them, if anything the news has upped my excitement for this round of turkeys.

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I didn’t know if the announcement was made official to everyone yet. I knew it was announced during the aftershow for The Mask, but not everyone saw that. So, I just marked it as a spoiler to be safe.

I actually didn’t know they were upscales. I thought they were adding a cleaner print underneath the shadowrama (they are “surgically” enhanced, and doing that would require performing some “surgery” on the episode). But I guess I prefer them being upscaled over the alternative. It’s all a matter of preference. In the end, the episodes themselves are no different. And as long as they’re preserving the originals, that’s all that matters. If there was someone tuning in to Turkey Day that was completely new to MST3K, I wouldn’t want their first exposure to be edited versions with prettier copies of the movies. It’s not an accurate representation of the show. But if they’re just being upscaled, then I can deal with it.

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I’m just hoping for a Season 14 announcement. I said last year that Turkey Day was the most likely time for them to tell us where things stand, and, while I have absolutely no inside knowledge, that’s still where my imaginary money is.

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This. Yes Please.

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I don’t know… When I watch an episode like Swamp Diamonds which is so grainy, blurry, and downright fuzzy that it looks like I’m watching it through a sheet of wax paper? I’m 100% in favor of enhancing that crap. There are more than a few movies in the MST library that are really bad in terms of film quality and I for one am not particularly a fan of low-res blur. Is there a ‘charm’ to it? Meh - there’s a fine line between ‘charm’ and ‘lousy’. In most cases I would err on the side of improving the film quality rather than having a movie that’s so smeared and grimy that it’s hard to see any details.

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Give me the upscaling any day of the week. I’d much rather watch a movie that is watchable, especially if the option and technology exist to fix it. As for the occasional riff that jokes about the quality, 'eh, that doesn’t bother me that it might now be a bit of a non sequitur. I’ll take that over a movie that literally gives me a headache to try and watch.

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Where does it say this year’s Turkey Day is “enhanced”?

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This came up in the aftershow for The Mask 3D.

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Ah, surgical enhancement. AFAIK, there were a few older episodes of Japanese shows I grew up watching that got the same treatment in recent years.
Anyway, oh boy. This year’s Turkey Day’s gonna be long. When the time comes, I’m gonna get prepared (mostly for the extra host segments and all. I think those are the best parts. As much as I love the episodes, can’t seem to stay awake watching the movies)!

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Huh, I watched it intently listening for that info, never heard it

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Do we have a final list of official turkey day episodes?

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Not yet.

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Well, THAT would by why I can’t find it…lol!

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I rewatched The Mask aftershow again. Matt said the Turkey Day marathon would be overstuffed, and more details would be available as we get closer to the event, but nothing about enhancements.

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