The Making of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K Special)

It wasn't abnormal for channels to produce little half-hour "making of" specials to help promote a series.  If I'm remembering correctly, Sci-Fi Channel used to do quite a few of them back in the late-90's which always gave the impression to me that they were really pushing a series to succeed.  Mystery Science Theater 3000 was one of the shows they made a special for and in comparison to Comedy Central's attempt at making one with This is MST3K, The Making of Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a much more satisfying experience.

Instead of handing the special to a host that threatens to take over the entire special with his personality like Penn Jillette, this special has a narrator (uncredited, but I'm assuming it's writer/director Anthony Caleca) who provides context when necessary and periodically hands it off to interviews with the cast and crew explaining how the show comes to be.  We also get to hear the premise explained through the crew's own words as opposed to a host talking to the audience under the presumption that they wouldn't understand.

But what truly sets this special apart from the previous one is the wealth of behind the scenes footage, which is abundant.  We don't just see clips from the show, we see footage of Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett performing Tom Servo and Crow under the stage as a comparison to each clip.  We see much more footage of Mike Nelson and his robot friends filming the theater segments.  We even see them talking about the sets and all the cheap crap that's on the walls.  There are so many neat little details that this special dives into and it's a pure joy.

The main issue of the special is that since it was aired in the middle of season eight, it's a little restrictive of what it can discuss.  A lot of the footage seen is of the same group of episodes from the first half of the first Sci-Fi Channel season.  However credit where credit is due, they do offer up footage of Comedy Central episodes, which is something I didn't expect them to do.  It's not a lot of footage and it's mostly host segments, but they do give us small clips from "Manos" The Hands of Fate, Attack of the The Eye Creatures, and The Crawling Eye (which is actually overdubbed for some reason).  It's a bit more effort than I would have expected from this as Sci-Fi's promotional material usually tended to not show anything from Comedy Central at all.

The cherry on top of this is that instead of Penn Jillette shouting nonsense at the screen, this special actually has Mike and the Bots watching some of the footage in their theater seats and throwing jokes that are exclusive to this special at it.  And they aren't half-hearted either, a lot of them are legitimately funny and true to the spirit of the show.  Also thrown in is some rare footage of some undercelebrated behind-the-scenes crew members at work such as prop diva Beez McKeever, cinematographer Jeff Stonehouse, make-up and hair stylist Andrea Ducane, and production manager Jill Roozenboom.  The Making of Mystery Science Theater 3000 has definitely aged better than the previous making of special on Comedy Central and is still worth a look today and not even just as a curiosity or a novelty.  There is stuff here that you genuinely won't get anywhere else and even a few laughs you might miss out on if you haven't seen it.