K03-Star Force: Fugitive Alien II (lost episode)

Film Year:  1987 (compiled from a 1978 TV series)

Genre:  Science Fiction, Adventure
Director:  Kiyosumi Kukazawa, Minoru Kanaya
Starring:  Jou Shishido, Tatsuya Azuma, Miyuki Tanigawa, Choei Takahashi, Tsutomu Yukawa, Hiro Tateyama
MST Season:  KTMA

The Movie

Because who gives a shit about proper story context, Mystery Science Theater offers up the sequel before they touched the original.  Granted this episode is not available to fans in any form other than what little we've pieced together, so it's possible we can just ignore it entirely and say Star Force:  Fugitive Alien II wasn't seen on the series until season three.

But getting up to speed, when we last saw the crew of the Bacchus 3, they had adopted the former alien warrior Star Wolf known as Ken into their crew (with only Captain Joe knowing of his past).  Now they must survive an exploding star, then destroy a diabolical weapon, and face down the leader of the Star Wolves.

There's not a lot to say about Star Force that you can't say about the first Fugitive Alien.  If you want my two cents about the series in general, one might find it in those reviews.  What can I say about Star Force that I can't about the first?  It's a bit more inane (which is saying something).  The first three quarters of the film have a reasonable plot thread that connects before it compiles the conclusive episode of the series in an out of nowhere final act.  Given that this film isn't really the way the Star Wolf series is intended to be seen I can be somewhat forgiving of it however

I love these Japanese effects shows, and I'd hate to disappoint anybody who clicks these reviews expecting me to tear them a new one.  I don't have that anger within me.  They're fun escapism, and I give this Fugitive Alien saga a pass.

The Episode (or what we know about it)

For years the first three KTMA episodes of Mystery Science Theater's run were considered lost.  Technically copies existed, but the fans didn't have access to them, making them highly sought after.  In 2016, as a reward for the revival Kickstarter Joel shared the first two episodes with the fans, but the curious omission was Star Force.  This leads to speculation that the master tape is lost, damaged, or destroyed, or it could possibly be that Star Force had more complicated rights issues to sort out (the third season episode was cleared for DVD release, but this might have been a separate contract altogether).  Joel or Shout Factory have both not commented on what the case might be.

If we were only to get two out of the three missing episodes, I'm glad we received Invaders from the Deep and Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars instead.  While I have some curiosity on Star Force due to the third season episode being a beloved favorite of mine, the reality is that we already have this movie in our line-up, and it's most likely in a superior form.  I'd have rather had the films we didn't already have as remade episodes.

That said, having any episode missing from our roster really sucks.

We have about four minutes of footage of the episode, from various snippets we've gathered from compilations.  Three of the host segments survive, none of which are really all that funny.  The first is Joel demonstrating inventions, which are really props from his stand-up, including the Chiropractic Helmet that we saw in the Green Slime pilot.  In the second, Crow explains Thanksgiving to Gypsy in his own mischievous way.  The third has Joel explaining drugs to Gypsy.  The only surviving riff of the episode is "They must have spent tens of dollars on this."  I'll admit, it made me laugh.

As for what we know about it that isn't in the footage, we know for certain Josh changed his voice for Servo in this episode.  The previous episode found him speaking in a deep almost dimwitted drawl, while the following episode (as well as the riffing clip) has him speaking in a higher squawking voice.  While he isn't done finding Servo's voice, this choice is definitely a change for the better.  We also all should be familiar with the movie, which was reriffed in season three.  For this curiosity piece I viewed the movie segments of the third season episode.  The riffing for this episode would obviously be sparser and improvised in the KTMA style.  But I'm just pointing out "No shit, Sherlock" deductions at this point.

Will we ever see the KTMA version of Star Force in its entirety?  I'm sure the only people who know the answer to that question are the people who work at Shout Factory and have access to it's master copy.  I'd of course would love to see the episode.  I guess I'll have to settle for what we can get though.  After all, one hole in my collection is better than three.