About that: Kinga’s ambitions have progressed from merely conquering ratings to conquering the universe.
Needless to say, I am… intrigued.
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It’s a good thing they picked a lovely autumn day to film their science fiction movie. At any given moment, I expected them to say, “We’ll storm the citadel, after we have a nice excursion to the apple orchard, grab some cider.”
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Isn’t conquering the ratings her path to conquering the universe?
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Also, I’m guessing Jack Palance did his entire role in a day or two. He never leaves the set he’s on.
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I was hoping for readings of further excerpts from Palance’s diary during one of the host segments.
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“Oh, I can… do most… of my scenes… sitting down or… leaning on… something? That’s… absolutely… wonderful.”
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Jack Palance was popular as an actor because he was able to greatly increase a film’s running time if the script was a little too short.
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Kinga was in it for the money, but maybe she thinks she can buy the universe. Thing is, Pearl and the Synthias may have the same idea. Thus, guaranteed 78-car pileup, and Emily and Jonah leave in the confusion…maybe.
But Kinga claiming she’s not human because “I’m a whole other deal”, and then wondering what she meant by that?
I sense she was made by Clonus
And I bet Growler and Waverly find Kabahl at the dome, and it’s a Gizmonics scam.
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I just realized that this thread title doesn’t work because you can’t spoil a movie THAT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE!
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Heh, fair enough!
[Jerry Lewis voice]
But the THINGS that were to come with the SHAPES and the JACK PALANCE and the LADY!
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Riff of the episode?
I’m torn between Servo’s robotic “C’mon - baby - don’t - be - like - that - I - said - I - was - sorry" as the robot follows after Jack Palance with its arms held open…
… or Crow’s "Oh no, someone fed Daft Punk after midnight!”
My favorite reference, though? A reaction to trash bag-esque visuals:
Crow: “wimpy wimpy wimpy”
[perfect amount of time passes]
Servo: “HEFTY HEFTY HEFTY!”
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As I said in the other thread, the final sketch was really reminiscent of my favorite Bob and Ray sketch-
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Excellent episode. Season 13 continues to be really strong. So many riffs that hit just right. I was a little worried about this one because I’ve seen the Rifftrax version several times, but they kept it fresh. Minimal overlap that I can recall, and I think that much was unavoidable.
I was surprised that the cast seemed so confused by the movie’s plot. It seemed simple and clear enough to me. Although they did cut out the expository opening crawl and the consequences of the time dilation.
Plot Summary
A generation ago, Earth was made uninhabitable by the Robot Holocaust. (No, not that one. I don’t think.) Which they refer to as the Robot Wars. (Again, not like that. I don’t think.) Now it’s a radioactive wasteland. The remains of humanity live in a domed Moon colony, but they are dependant on RADAC Q-2, a wonder drug which can treat (among other things) radiation sickness, but which can only be made on the distant mining colony Delta 3.
The evil scientist Omus has, apparently having learned nothing from the aforementioned Robot Wars, built an army of robot miners, which he then reprogrammed to back him in a coup d’etat, throwing out the colony’s governor and all the other humans working there to install himself as “Emperor.”
As a warning shot, he programs a robot to crash a cargo ship into the Moon colony. When they try to call the governor to ask what happened, he informs them that he wants them to surrender. They can’t live without RQ2, and he has the only supply. (Why he felt the kamikaze cargo ship was necessary to make this point is beyond me.)
Dr. Caball, Omus’s old teacher, has designed and built an advanced new space ship, the Starstreak. He intends to use it (and its obvious resemblance to the starship Enterprise) on a mission of space exploration. (To seek out new life and… never mind.) The government disagrees. The ship hasn’t been completed and they want to cut the funding.
Faced with Omus’s threat, the government is seriously considering surrender. Caball is determined to fly to Delta 3 to… attempt to reason with the guy who just sent a kamikaze ship directly into a populated city? Instead of calling him on the video phone? Knowing that everyone else would stop him if they could, he sneaks off to the Starstreak and prepares it for launch. Unfortunately, this means activating its nuclear reactor, and doing the job alone means being in the reactor room long enough to absorb a more than lethal dose of radiation. There’s no time to get treatment and the ship that was supposed to deliver the RQ2 he’d have needed just crashed into the city dome. So he accepts his fate.
He’s joined on the trip by his son Jason, his student Niki, and Sparks (Caball’s robot which Niki and her engineering team have repaired and reprogrammed). For reasons that are never explained (other than sparing the actor who has to walk around in that bulky costume) Sparks is able to teleport. None of the other robots can do this, no one asks him how it’s possible or whether he can replicate the technology, and he never uses it to do anything actually useful.
They launch the Starstreak just in time before the authorities manage to lock down the launch platform, but because it’s unfinished and untested the ship is prone to malfunction. This forces them to make an emergency landing on Earth, where they discover a tribe of children with radiation burns and a healthy fear of robots. They’re living near a communications outpost, and the man who was left to run the place tried to help them. But he died of radiation poisoning and was never able to radio for help because his communications tower collapsed. (Presumably he was too ill to repair it. And apparently no one on the Moon noticed that he wasn’t checking in.)
It’s never shown, but presumably they get the parts they need to repair the ship. They reluctantly leave the kids. They can’t go back to the Moon, they can’t bring the kids on the dangerous journey to Delta 3 (which the supercomputer that actually runs the Moon colony predicted would end in disaster due to the unfinished ship’s malfunctions), and the kids’ only hope of survival is to get the RQ2 from Delta 3.
Over on Delta 3, the governor and her surviving crew have been fighting Omus’s robots using improvised weapons that are basically cattle prods. Luckily for them, the robots have no weapons and are slow and clumsy. Unlucky for them, the robots can be rebuilt or replaced and weak squishy little humans can’t. They manage to sneak the governor into the Citadel, but she’s forced to flee before she can fully call for help.
There’s a bit of drama as Caball hides his failing health from the other two. I think it’s supposed to be noble. The ship passes through some Weird Space Weather 
which causes “time dilation,” but it arrives within days of Cabal’s original threat, so apparently the time dilation isn’t an issue. (The sequence, as noted above, is hilarious for using slow-motion twirling as an attempt to replace zero-g special effects.)
They lock on to the communications signal from the governor’s cobbled-together last-ditch call for help, and are quickly captured by Omus’s robots. Fortunately, Cabal’s entire plan from the get-go was to try to talk the power-mad dictator with the robot army (who already crashed a ship into a populated city) and politely ask him to please reconsider. So he’s perfectly okay with being taken prisoner if it means a face-to-face with his old student. (Besides, he’s dying of radiation sickness, so it’s no big risk.) Omus displays his technological superiority by killing Cabal with a machine that makes a sound so unpleasant that it ruptures your eardrums and causes you to have a splitting headache. (Oh look. He invented dubstep.) Only the special blender helmet can protect you from this sonic warfare.
Omus’s plan now is to blow up the colony, claim the Starstreak as his new flagship, and fly to the Moon with an armada carrying the last supplies of RQ2 that will ever be made. They’ll be forced to surrender because they can’t survive without it.
Omus’s robots kill everyone except for Jason, Niki, and the governor, but Sparks reprograms the robots as soon as he gets within range. This allows our heroes to escape, leaving Omus to die from the explosive he himself had triggered. They can now return to Earth with the RQ2 cargo ships and save everyone. (At least until the supply on the ships runs out.)
Unfortunately, in a scene cut from the MST3K version, they discover that the aforementioned time dilation has delayed their return by a decade or so. (Unless I’m mixing this up with a different movie? Been a while since I watched the Rifftrax cut.) But the consequences of that are not shown.
There’s also apparently a subplot involving a cargo ship loaded with explosives set to destroy the Moon colony, but I’ve never seen how that plays out, either. That doesn’t really seem to fit into Omus’s plan, and Cabal says the Starstreak in its current condition is unable to stop it.
There’s also a thing where Starstreak used up all its fuel going through the space warp, but I think they reload it from Delta 3 at some point?
It’s not the best plot ever. But it makes sense to me.
Loved the host segments here. And the bots’ reactions to Sparks. And the Power Rangers Alpha 5 “Ay-yai-yai” exclamation. It’s hard to pick favorite riffs, really. OptiMSTie picked out some of my favorites. But there are so many good ones. GPC2 as a drunken roaster who is just pure mean was fantastic. But the conspiracy crime podcast was the stand-out for me.
Small note: In the livestream aftershow, Emily asked if anyone had seen the original Thunderbirds show. As I understand it, Joel was a fan, too. Which is why Season zero features Revenge of the Mysterons From Mars, a “movie” made from a couple of episodes of another “supermarionation” show by the same people who did Thunderbirds.
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Those are both in the episode.
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Yes. The setup to those things are both in the episode. But not the resolution to either. I think the Rifftrax cut explains how they got the fuel to get home? But the MST3K cut just says that they’ll be lucky to have enough fuel to lift off… and then doesn’t show them refueling or even mention it again. Likewise, the episode shows the ship full of explosives (which I don’t recall from the Rifftrax cut offhand) but doesn’t explain why Omus would be sending it when he’s already got a plan to force their surrender and also never shows it again. So we don’t know whether it was stopped or what.
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This is how I learned that chanting “RO-BOT WARS! RO-BOT WARS!” á la Crow and Servo at the end of 1302 has become a reflex for me.
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Another thing that confused me and it’s not about the movie. Crow and Servo keep talking like they have been on the simulator for a while. They even talk about people before Emily. But Emily was there to complete work on the simulator, so how long was it sitting around unfinished with Crow and Servo just hanging around?
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I think they have partial copies of the memories of earlier versions of themselves. They were built to be realistic simulations of the originals. They have their own memories and personalities, but they do remember things from the Joel and Mike days, and they’re right that no host has made it 7 years on the ship. (Not counting Mike’s time travel over the course of the latter seasons.)
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Got another one- Dr. Cabal’s radiation sickness had no connection to the plot and no consequences.
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The sad part? The really sad part? My husband and I were ahead of Servo by about two seconds with the hefty, hefty, hefty. Ahh back when advertising was memorable.
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