Looking Back on ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000,’ the Show That Turned the Mockery Into the Message - NYTimes.com

DVD - Looking Back on ‘Mystery Science Theater 3000,’ the Show That Turned the Mockery Into the Message - NYTimes.com: "It was more than two decades ago that Mr. Hodgson walked away from a thriving stand-up comedy career, retreating to Minnesota to build sculptures of robots. There Mr. Hodgson, now 48, discovered that his eccentric hobby of building automatons, and especially his aptitude for finding the flaws in mass media, could be combined into something greater.

“There was kind of an invitation there,” he said, “that if you can see the seams in this, you can figure out how to make a TV show.” The show Mr. Hodgson and a cadre of like-minded Midwesterners came up with in 1988 was “Mystery Science Theater 3000” (“MST3K” for short), surely the only comedy series about an outer-space castaway and his robots, who provide a steady stream of quips and comebacks while watching low-budget films."