What lore have you overthought (even if it's just a show so we should really just relax)?

Even though the show is absurdist, it’s easy to get lost pondering the internal logic. What little details have you overthought in the MST3K universe?

For me, the line “now keep in mind Joel can’t control when the movie begins or ends / because he used those special parts to make his robot friends” makes me ponder. So before he made the bots could he start and stop the movie whenever he wanted? Didn’t that make the job of the Mads a lot harder? Were there months and months where they’d try to start a bad movie and Joel would just hit “stop” and they’d shake their fists? Also, that implies the bots are made, at least in part, out of VCR controls. What would the pause button do to Tom Servo? What would fast forward do to Crow?

Also, the mind reels at how Kim Cattrall and Clayton Forrester got together to have Kinga.

These are the questions philosophers will ponder for ages.

27 Likes

She’s into green.

12 Likes

I thought it had something to do with control of the breathable air in the bridge (non-theater) section of the SOL, which is why there is a panic when the Movie Sign light comes on.

15 Likes

Indeed, that is part of the lore:
https://mst3k.fandom.com/wiki/Movie_sign

7 Likes

I admit I have wondered this as well. One assumes, perhaps incorrectly, that the whole SOL was designed for this experiment (or should at the very least have been modified for the needs of the experiment). So why have any movie start/stop parts on board at all? Was whether and when Joel stopped a movie part of the original metrics? Did the Mads just seize a random ship with a movie screening room and send him up when the opportunity arose? Also, why was a man capable of building startlingly advanced robotics out of spare projector parts working as a janitor?

I should just relax.

7 Likes

I wonder about the Umbilicus (which occasionally changes names). They went for years without it and the SOL was fine up in space in a geosynchronous orbit. Then, suddenly, in season 7 when Dr. F. disconnects it, it somehow is going to lead to the SOL crashing to Earth. Why? Why would that lead to the orbit decaying?

Connected to that, Crow claims that Dr. F. had promised to let them come back to Earth. When did that ever happen?

Oh, and the Umbilicus was somehow connected through Gypsy originally, but that doesn’t seem to be the case later. So no to Gypsy being the connection? Or yes and they forgot?

8 Likes

That’s easy. Gizmonic Institute is so full of genius people that being smart isn’t enough. So the really smart guys are the janitors. :smiley:

16 Likes

That would also lead into the question, if Joel used those special parts to make his robot friends, what parts were the many hundred other Tom Servos and (to a lesser extent) Crows that occasionally pop up on the SOL built out of?

8 Likes

My own personal fan theory regarding the many different Toms, Crows, and GPCs that have appeared over the years… with completely different voices, is that they all comes assembled like flat-pack IKEA furniture (which also explains why Crow’s arms pull off so easily), and there’s one of those annoying little hex key tension bolts on the back of the neck that controls the bot’s bass register, which is really hard to get in exactly the right spot.

In fact, I think they missed a golden opportunity for a gag during the opening scenes of Season 11, where they could have started Tom out with Kevin’s regular Season 2-10 voice (since they had him around to film his Professor Bobo scenes and could have easily had him record few extra lines of ADR), then while Jonah’s going down the line showing off the modifications he’s made to the bots, he decides Tom’s voice doesn’t sound quite right, so he gives the tension bolt one extra turn with the Allen wrench, which switches his voice from Kevin’s familiar baritone to Baron.

15 Likes

There are a lot of special parts.

8 Likes

The second Crow in Time Chasers would have had to go back to when he left and riff the rest of the movie with unchanged-Mike. The other Crow’s timeline would have ceased to be, and there would be no extra Crow at the cheese factory.

8 Likes

My personal theory (based on no evidence whatsoever) is that Joel wasn’t actually a janitor, but rather an apprentice Mad Scientist (or maybe an intern). He showed great promise at invention, but displayed a great deal of compassion and empathy for his fellow human beings, so his bosses didn’t like him and they shot him into space.

11 Likes

Oh, I thought of another thing. Maybe Joel had been hiding his smarts. In the KTMA season, it says that he was working in the satellite loading bay, polishing switches to pay his way. So they didn’t realize that he was a really smart guy and that’s why he could get away with all the bot building. They didn’t know he had the ability to do it in the first place!

8 Likes

Dude.

4 Likes

They never actually say he’s a janitor, just that he did a good job cleaning up the place. Maybe it was a rotating system for the red jumpsuited Gizmonic employees.

10 Likes

Also, why was a man capable of building startlingly advanced robotics out of spare projector parts working as a janitor?

I assumed he was just a slacker. Didn’t really need the job, but it was something to do. Probably gave him lots of opportunities to steal parts from the trash and use equipment when no one was around.

8 Likes

Of course, he ends up running a hot fish shop, which isn’t exactly what you’d expect from someone of his talents either.

7 Likes

Couple of things - how could Dr. Erhardt steal Frank’s ashes when Frank was assumed into heaven?

Also, there are two Pearls in ‘our time’, one at Castle Forrester (assuming the ‘Mrs’ is just a courtesy title) and one raising Starchild Clayton. (This is what my fanfic is based on)

5 Likes

I spend a lot of time thinking about how Mike and Tom and Gypsy spent all that time at the edge of the Universe (and Crow just chillin on the SoL) and then because of the wormholes and everything eventually ended up back on earth in the correct time, kind of looping things around.

4 Likes

I like to think that Joel was just paying off student loans by working as a janitor after having studied robotics LOL

9 Likes