Best of Mystery Science Theater 3000

Some of my favorite MST3K episodes, sketches, riffs, and moments generally

(a highly subjective list, and liable to change frequently as I remember more things)

... in no particular order

  1. Catalina Caper (204) — the whole episode: riffs, host segments, invention exchange, the Creepy Girl song, the lot.

  2. The short "Johnny at the Fair" (419s) — especially this riff, when Johnny tries to watch a baseball game: Narrator (Lorne Greene): But he finds a five year old can't get close enough to see anything. Tom Servo: Besides, the Mariners are playing, so who cares?

    (Honorable mention, from Girls Town [601]: Nun: That's St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. Tom Servo: Used to play for the Mariners. Tom slammed on the Ms a lot, I've noticed.)

  3. The United Servo Academy Men's Chorus Hymn, performed by the United Servo Academy Men's Chorus, under the direction of United Servo Academy Men's Chorus Director Vice Brigadier Sir Thomas "Bullhead" Servo, in The Starfighters (612).

  4. The sidehacking play-by-play in The Sidehackers (202).
  5. Similarly, the "winter sports cavalcade" riff on the short "Snow Thrills" (311s).

  6. Crow T. Robot's inspired performance in The Skydivers (609).

  7. Crow's riff in "The Phantom Creeps," the episode that aired with Jungle Goddess (203): Burn the file on the electric dance belt and pick up my manhood. It's under the chair. (You'd have to see it in context, but it's really funny.) If any single riff made me a MSTie, this one is it.

  8. J&TB discussing their funeral plans in The Gunslinger (511): I'll lie in state at the Corn Palace while "Hooked on a Feelin'" is sung by a choir of castrati.

  9. Tom Servo's riffing on an entire auditorium of weirdoes in Warrior of the Lost World (501).

  10. The host segments cataloging all the continuity errors and other ways the filmmakers "just didn't care" — specificially, those in Cave Dwellers (301) and Attack of the Eye Creatures (418).

  11. Crow's "Killer Peck" in Space Travelers (401).

  12. The heavily-valiumed woman's laconic declaraton, "Hail to Hestia, Queen of Atlantis," in Fire Maidens of Outer Space (416).

  13. Whenever Tom Servo's head exploded (various shows).


  14. The chasing-a-fake-priest-through-the-railyard scene in The Rebel Set (419).


  15. The Chicken Men of Krankor (816 et seq.).


  16. Joel's return to the SOL in Soultaker (1001).


  17. And any time they cried out, We've got movie sign!