I’m really enjoying the short skits from Synthia’s Selects. I hope they end up on the Season 13 DVD/Blu-Ray when those get released. At the very least it would be nice to see them on the MST3K Youtube page
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Synthia is rapidly becoming my favorite “new” character, and the Synthia Selects sketches are great.
Absolutely agree that these bits need to be archived and made available somewhere.
Edit: Skittered on back to call them sketches instead
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I love how Synthia calls her fans “Synners”. 
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100% agree. This was a great idea!
I’d actually posed the thought of bringing back a version of “the mst hour”, and this does just that.
Repurposes the old episodes with some new content!
If there was ever a way to get Mike Nelson’s Jack Perkins to cameo with Synthia… That would be magic
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I believe I heard them say in a live stream that the extra content from the Vault Pics is deliberately fleeting. It’s a bonus for having a Gizmoplex Pass this month, and only the people who have a current active Pass can see it. Once the month is over, those segments are gone forever. So enjoy them while you can.
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We’ll see. Don’t think the files will be deleted or anything.
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I’m hoping the blu-ray has quite a bit of archival stuff we’ve been getting. A lot of these bonus skits have been fabulous, especially the one from the Munchie stream where Emily and Servo find Crow’s lifeless husk and just break down.
“He was the best of all of us!”
“Debatable!”
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The Synthia Selects segments are gold, as I said in another thread. It compels me to watch 'em all.
That said, the Munchie livestream segments with Emily are actually important intro stuff for her and def should be repurposed for something people won’t miss IMO.
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True. I’m sure the files still exist. But here’s the situation as I understand it. I’m a complete outsider with no affiliation or connections that could get me more information than you have. But, from what they’ve said in backer updates and livestreams and my best guess to fill in the blanks:
Click the arrow for full context. It got long.
This is a business. They love making the show, but it only succeeds if it makes money. Making the show, hosting the site, paying for streaming video… it’s expensive. So they need the maximum amount of people to pay the maximum comfortable amount of money. “Comfortable” is an important word there because some fans have more disposable income than others. Pricing people out who would buy in if they can afford it means losing money. But so does having people who could afford more choose not to buy in at a higher tier.
What we have now is basically a two (or two and a half) tier system. Tier 1 is buying stuff a la carte. (1.5 is buying bundles/collections.) Tier 2 is the Member Pass.
A backer survey a while back floated the possibility of a tier 0 option, where the site might at some point down the road offer the ability to watch at a discounted rate if they agree to watch with ads. (Real ads, not the “Madvertisements” we have now.) There’s been no word on if or when that will happen. Much will depend on building up enough of a viewer base to attract sponsors to pay for ad placement.
There’s also the option to buy a day pass, but I’m not sure what that includes.
So: They need to offer good enough perks to get people to want to pay for the full Member Pass, and to keep up that subscription on an ongoing basis.
Season 13 is being released with two versions of every episode: The episode alone, and the episode as a premiere livestream event. If you did not pay for the livestream event when it aired, you will never get to watch it. But if you did pay for it, it will stay in your video archive.
Right now, seasons 1-10 are available free to anyone, as an incentive to check out the site, get into the show, and consider purchasing season 13. But next year, that goes away. You have to purchase an old episode to see it. (Many of us as backers got some limited bundles of classic episodes, so we’ll always have access to those.)
Going forward, then:
You can buy each episode a la carte. You can buy the full season as a bundle. You can buy a ticket to the livestream premiere (and get to keep the livestream VOD in your library). Or you can get a Member Pass. The Member Pass includes special incentives to encourage you to stay subscribed. While you’re an active Member, you get:
- Every episode released while your Pass is active.
- Access to the live premieres (and the VODs of those premieres). These include live chat with fellow MSTies, live Q&A with cast members, papermation fun, and other bonus content.
- Member-only livestream events. Re-watch classic episodes live with fellow MSTies, have a live Q&A with cast members and special guests, and watch new shorts not included with the new episodes.
- Vault Picks. Access to a rotating monthly selection of classic episodes (which, remember, will otherwise be paywalled after this year) with exclusive bonus material only available to active members.
They’ve said in the livestreams that the Vault Picks exclusive content is only available that month. Joel said he liked the idea of having some non-permanent content, where you just had to be there at the time. But it’s also been promised to us as being exclusive to active members. Again, they need to give us something so we’ll want to keep subscribing every month. Or, if you prefer, they want to give us a special treat as a thank you for being active subscribers when we could have just bought the individual episodes.
I’m not even sure where they’d put the Vault Picks bonus content. Synthia’s intro and outro makes no sense without the episode they frame. So you’d need to buy that. Likewise, the extra host segment in the middle only makes sense in the context of the theme of the month. And I don’t know that they’d want to give away those extra scenes to someone who purchased the classic episode without a Member Pass. On the other hand, if they made Vault Picks from previous months accessible to Members, it would defeat the purpose. We’re meant to buy the classic episodes if we want them, not gradually collect them all in an ever-expanding Vault.
But even if you did take out just the new segments in a special bonus archive somewhere, it would kind of be breaking the promise we were given that those segments would only be available for a limited time to people who had active Passes during that period. The only way to overcome that is to assure the Gizmoplex producers both that (1) the majority of current Members would prefer to keep those segments archived even if it means allowing new Members to view content they didn’t pay for at the time and that (2) doing so would ultimately result in more people choosing to purchase ongoing subscriptions rather than, say, buying a one-month Member Pass once a year and then binging everything they’re interested in.
I do love the new segments. And I’d be happy to have a way to keep them. But, looking at things from the Gizmoplex POV, I can see good reason why they’d want to keep the system as it is.
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Idea: Charge extra for access to the “Deep Vault”, where all fleeting content is preserved in context. That would make some feel good simply knowing it is preserved (even if they never go to where it is stored), and some folks would feel good reliving the experience or filling the gaps in their experience.
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Yes! Rebecca is amazing in those! I LOVE how she introduces Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell!
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Thank you. I wrote that intro/outro. I also often thank Rebecca for being one of the easiest people in the world to write for.
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Nice! Good work! I don’t actually laugh out loud very often, but I did then. Thank you!
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Also, as many of these as I wrote, I did not write the jokes in the lower corner, that was all Rebecca and @timryder .
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Also, “as many” does not mean all. To be clear.
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Your argument is very well thought-out and well-reasoned. And I don’t have any inside info on what will happen with this material, but just one small correction:
It’s my understanding that the classic episodes will remain free to stream for the foreseeable future! They are AD-free for the rest of 2022. That might be what changes next year, with an added option to watch ad-free for a small fee.
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Also, I’m changing the topic of this post. We’re officially retiring the word “skit.”
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I do have insider info on what will happen to this material. It will appear briefly every hundred years. Which is why I wanted to call them Brigadoon Bites but NOOOOO said Tim. That’s actionable said Tim.
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Oh my God, thank you.
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Is “sketch” still okay?
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