1103-The Time Travelers

Film Year:  1964
Genre:  Science Fiction, Adventure
Director:  Ib Melchior
Starring:  Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders, John Hoyt
MST Season:  11

The Movie

We hold this title to be self evident that The Time Travelers is about (dun-duh-duh-daaaaaaah) TIME TRAVELERS!  20th century scientists create a portal to the distant future, and because of reasons they jump right in.  In the future they discover a dystopia where savage mutants roam the surface and what's left of humanity has retreated underground and seek to relocate themselves to a planet in the Alpha Century star system.  Our heroes then seek to return to their normal time.

Watching Time Travelers is a nostalgic experience even though I had never seen the movie outside of the series (yet).  I found myself reminded of weekday mornings before school in which I used to watch old Irwin Allen sci-fi programming, such as Lost in Space and The Time Tunnel.  In researching this film I discovered these shows are actually accused of plagiarizing The Time Travelers.  It's weird to discover this in retrospect, because I had regarded those shows as classics for so long yet I had never heard of this film before MST3K.  And yet, even if one has to admit those shows took their ideas from this film, one also has to admit that The Time Travelers has quite a few similar beats to H.G. Wells classic novel The Time Machine, which had just turned into a motion picture at the time itself.

Maybe its this bizarre nostalgia fueling me, but I quite enjoyed this movie.  However the film starts better than it finishes, as the more we find out about this future society the sillier it becomes.  But I can't totally fault the film for constantly trying to create new visuals in each scene to differentiate itself from the last.  Even if the second half of the film seems weaker than the first, the movie is always fun to look at.

The final conclusion to the film is a bit dour, but fulfilling, almost like The Incredible Shrinking Man.  I find it stays with you a bit after watching it, though the rest of the movie might not.  But even if I do remember it I'll remember enjoying it.

The Episode

Nearly a quarter of a century after its 100th episode, Mystery Science Theater 3000 finally hits it's landmark 200th episode.  Was the wait worth it?

On the surface The Time Travelers is a movie that offers the makings of a pretty great episode:  It's fun, campy as hell, has a quirky high-concept premise, wild aesthetic, silly looking robots, and even plenty of silence to fit comedy in.  Unfortunately this episode winds up frustrating, and it epitomizes some of the weaker aspects of the relaunch season.  This movie should have been a slam dunk, and the new riffing crew of the Satellite of Love take it on with eagerness in their lighting quick riff approach.  And yet there is the unfortunate feeling of desperation with the riffing, because the film's lengthy scenes of quiet are so crammed that it feels as if they want you to laugh at something so they push as many options upon you as possible.  While it's not out of the ordinary for them to riff this fast in this particular season it's entirely unsuited to the film they're watching.  The Time Travelers would have benefited from the more causal riffing speed of the mid-Comedy Central era, because the movie is doing half of the work by being entertaining enough.  What it needs is precision riffs, not every joke you can think of.  And in all honesty, even with the high riff quota of season eleven, there just aren't that many winners in this one as it is.

At least the host segments work well, including a funny cameo for head writer Elliott Kalan and series creator Joel Hodgson as a pair of party-loving futurians inviting Jonah and the bots to come over to their wild ways.  On the simpler side we see Jonah creating robots of his own (out of Power Rangers Megazord toys, no less) only to have Crow and Servo destroy each out of jealousy, which is a swell idea for a segment that kind of dwindles in it's payoff.  One of my favorites has Gypsy teaching everyone the dangers of time travel, of which Servo and Crow of course try to destroy time the best they can.  The Invention Exchange involves some goodies in edible Silica Packets and AfterLife Alert, both of which got some hearty laughs from me.

But the host segments don't quite save the day on this one.  With a movie this perfect for the show the riffing really should be better than it is.  Maybe I can recommend it on the basis of having found the movie enjoyable, but hearing Jonah and the Bots throwing so haphazardly at it becomes a chore.  Unfortunately MST just celebrates its 200th episode by offering it's weakest relaunch season episode yet.

Average

The DVD and Blu-Ray

Along with the rest of season eleven, The Time Travelers is gathered up on Shout Factory's Season 11 DVD and blu-ray sets.  Certain Kickstarter backers however were rewarded with the #WeBroughtBackMST3K Collector's Edition box set, which is my personal copy.  Audio and video were excellent, but there were no disc exclusive bonus features.  The episode shared a disc with the following episode, Avalanche.