Pipeline to the Clouds - the 1st Season 13 Short

-As someone who loves the shorts and has wanted to see Jonah and the bots cover one, this is amazing!
-Perfect choice for an MST3K Short
-I did not expect Crow and Servo to be quite this horny, but I’m not opposed to it.
-Also didn’t expect a Lake Pontchartrain Shoutout, but hey, I’m always happy to hear my college’s big lake get a mention (Go Privateers!)
-Servo’s Count joke was so good I almost cried, especially with the reactions from Jonah.
-If this was filmed remotely, I couldn’t tell, the whole thing flowed so naturally between the three.
-If this trend continues into possible Season 14 and beyond, I’d like for the shorts to maybe get a wrap-around host segment with the host and the bots, kind of like how the older shorts would sometimes be referenced in a host segment. We kind of get that with Synthia in this short, but some more Jonah/Emily/Joel and the bots would be appreciated.

Overall, a great start to these new shorts, gonna be nice to have extra monthly MST3K in my life.

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I’m fine with this delivery system, since it looks like we are only going to be getting one episode a month, having a short in the off-weeks will help to make those gaps feel less daunting. Although I would rather have make the shorts into almost mini-episodes, host segment, short, closing host segment, end.

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Ok… I’m missing something?

Why?

There’s no broadcast window defined by any network overlords? I mean… We are the network overlords? Right?

They could have a full unedited movie, two shorts, and a 15min musical segment if they wanted… can’t they?

Hmmm.

I guess I have my next live Q&A question?

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IIRC, I think that the edited down movies are mostly to keep the pacing up and edit some for content. Yes, they could easily riff the whole film, but they make selective choices to remove scenes that don’t make great riffing material and tighten up the pacing.

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Amusing, yes. [adjusts pince nez] Even… droll, in places.

However, I’m unable to award the full four stars because there was no Droppy The Water Droplet cameo.

[exits haughtily]

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We’ve already been warned that this season’s Gamera movie will not be edited, and we should be prepared.

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Damn, forgot this existed.
Droppy The Water Droplet

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I may have misinterpreted the initial reply? I understand that movies get edited for content and pacing (in addition to length) but what confused me was the implication (that I may have misread/understood?) that if they put the short in front of the the movie, the movie would need to be shorter still?

There may be too much blood in my caffeine stream?

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Probably, a carryover assumption from the tv era

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It has become a bigger issue with climate change.

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While I enjoyed seeing the occasional short in front of a movie in the classic episodes, I understand why they’re now separate.

I think it’s important to consider how the shorts were originally deployed and what their purpose was: as filler for when the movie ran short. This could’ve been either because the movie itself was shot (The Corpse Vanishes is 64 minutes unedited), or they had to edit the film down in some way to work in the show, either for content (see Sidehackers) or just pacing concerns. I think also they often started with a syndication edit of a film that may have already been cut down, so further editing likely meant they’d come up short in runtime. However, even during the classic era, the use of shorts dimished over time. After the switch to Sci-Fi, they didn’t include a short at all in season 8, only twice in season 9, and once in season 10. And of course, they weren’t used at all in the Netflix seasons.

I think nowadays they’re most often starting with the full cut of a film, so it’s very unlikely they’ll come up short on an episode runtime. In fact, they still edited down at least Reptilicus for the Netflix episode. If they do come up short, they’re probably more likely to use a longer host segment to get the runtime up. So they’re not really needed as filler for a full episode anymore.

Rights issues could also be a factor. I’m sure Shout Factory didn’t appreciate having to get licensing for not just the main feature, but also a short, to get a particular episode released. It looks like Rhino avoided all the episodes with the “Radar Men from the Moon” shorts included. Keeping the features and shorts separate means that if there’s ever a rights issue with one, it doesn’t affect the other.

Also, I think audience expectations are different, and the difference in delivery method allows for more variability. Back when the show was on the air, the show was in 2 hour blocks, and the only way to do a short was to squeeze it into a standard episode. Likewise, as fans we were often just sitting down at a particular day/time to watch 2 hours of MST3K, with no choice whether it’d be a new episode or rerun. Nowadays people can watch on demand whatever episode they want, when they want, so can be choosier about content, and if they’re going to sit down to watch a particular movie riffed, they likely want to jump straight into that film getting riffed, not sit through an unrelated short beforehand (although, of course, fast forward exists).

Additionally, separating the shorts also adds visibility to them. Now, if I want to watch a particular short, I don’t have to recall the particular feature film is was attached to, or feel bad about bailing on the rest of the episode. It also maybe switches up expectations when someone is sitting down debating what to watch. Maybe they have just 15-20 minutes, and wouldn’t consider watching just part of a full episode, but having the shorts available separately means they’ll opt to watch one of those.

Let’s note that Rifftrax also keeps shorts and features as separate releases, excepting for their live shows. They’re likely using a number of the reasons above for their decision.

Finally, in the specific context of the Gizmoplex, it makes sense they’d have the shorts separate. Keep in mind it’s largely a subscription service as an ongoing concern, and they want people subscribed year-round to help fund new productions. At the moment, they can premiere the features and shorts separate, meaning subscribers are getting new content every 2 weeks. If they paired the new shorts with the new features, it’d mean that either there’d only be totally new content once every 4 weeks, which may cause people to question the monthly value they’re getting, or they’d run both a new short and new feature every 2 weeks, putting additional production burden on them, and meaning they’d run out of new content in half the time, about 6 months, meaning many people would unsubscribe for half the year until a new season started. The rewatches also wouldn’t be as compelling, since there’d only be the new bumpers and any post-show discussion. Right now, it’s “come for the new short, stay for the classic episode,” which is more interesting.

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I thought the reason might be as simple as the fact that the movies featured this season will all be in color and 16x9 aspect ratio, while the shorts will likely be older films, many/all in black & white and in the older 4x3 aspect ratio.

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It went well with my glass of citizen juice.

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The only thing that I hope the team changes going forward with shorts going forward is that, if you’re going to make shorts their own separate releases, to treat them as Mini-MST3K Episodes. Give them their own wrap-around host segments to intro the shorts and one at the end to wrap up the episode. They don’t have to do a full invention exchange or theme song, but some way of tying the entire product together as a complete package would be nice to make these stand out as their own releases.

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I was ok with the MIGIZI shorts they did in 2020 that had a quick “we got movie sign!” intro and door sequence.

I’m not sure anything is needed at the end aside from them getting up and leaving the theater.

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I’d still love an episode that was nothing but shorts, though.

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Would be amusing to have at least one special, like the awards one from the old run.

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For the most part (Gamera vs Jiger notwithstanding) they try to stick to a format that would still fit into a 2 hour slot on linear tv channel because it makes sense to make these episodes available at a later date to those channels like IFC as a secondary revenue stream. So it needs to be a certain length and that window has gotten smaller since 1989 as ad loads have increased per hour which means that shorts became less and less needed as time went on.

Also as the show has chosen movies of a more recent vintage, those films also tend to be longer than an old black and white B movie which would have been on a bill with an A film, a news reel and a cartoon.

I’m so happy shorts are back. I think they’re the most accessible form of riffing because of the bite sized nature of them and the subject matter and serious nature lending themselves well to being poked fun at.

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Great riff but i still think there is an issue with the sound of the riffs being too overpowering for the film audio. Crow seems to be a bit louder than the rest as well.

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For the record, they riffed half the film because it could get tedious over what kind of improvements we need for better water supplies.
Best comment aside from Jonah’s sarcasm about people willing to be inconvenienced was Crow’s comment about Nestle (who’s more connected to water than chocolate these days).

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