Mystery Science Theater 3000 Review: The Time Travelers, S11E3

Mystery Science Theater 3000 review: The Time Travelers explained

Few movies in the MST3K catalog look as sincere as this one. The Time Travelers, released by American International Pictures in October 1964, follows a team of scientists who test a time-viewing device that overloads and turns into a portal. A lab technician named Danny steps through, his colleagues follow to bring him back, and they end up stranded in the year 2071 in an underground city that survived a nuclear war. Mutants are attacking, androids are being assembled and taken apart, and the survivors need a way home.

The cast is a roll call of dependable B-movie names. Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders and John Hoyt play the scientists and the future’s residents, with Steve Franken as the dopey assistant Danny. The man behind the camera is the real surprise: cinematography is credited to William Zsigmond, better known as Vilmos Zsigmond, who went on to win an Oscar for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. His camera operator on the film was László Kovács.

Ib Melchior wrote and directed. Melchior had also written the screenplay for Reptilicus, which is the first film of this same revival season, so the episode is a small reunion for anyone who watched in order. He is a more capable director than that history suggests. The sets are inventive, the future city has a coherent look, and the film’s mood recalls other science fiction experiments the show has riffed, such as This Island Earth, which the series covered in its 1996 feature film.

For anyone new to the format, the premise is simple. A man and his robot companions are trapped aboard a ship in orbit and forced to watch bad movies, so they talk over them. In the revival, that job belongs to Jonah Ray and the bots, while Felicia Day’s Kinga Forrester and Patton Oswalt’s Max run the experiments from below. The revival itself was crowdfunded and led by Joel Hodgson, who created the original series, and its first season of 14 episodes reached Netflix on April 14, 2017.

That quality creates the episode’s central problem. A film this earnest and this watchable gives the riffers less to push against. Jonah Heston and the bots have to work harder, and the jokes depend on the movie’s long, slow stretches, including the extended sequences where androids are disassembled and put back together while cave dwellers play futuristic instruments.

The riffing: solid from start to finish

Jonah Ray, Hampton Yount as Crow, and Baron Vaughn as Tom Servo keep the pace steady, and the episode never goes quiet for long. The best material comes at the expense of Danny. The riffers treat him as the lab’s most overlooked person, and the running gag about the scientists pretending not to see him is the sort of bit that fans of the original series will recognize at once.

Elsewhere the laughs are smaller. There are jokes about the analog time machine, the cave setting, the jumpsuits and a future where only one lounge-music artist survived the apocalypse. They land, but they land softly. By the final act the riffing recovers and delivers a set of stronger lines, which is where the episode earns its good reputation.

Compared with the previous episode, “Cry Wilderness,” the difference is easy to hear. That one produced the kind of laughter that leaves a viewer short of breath. This one is a steady chuckle, which suits a movie that does not collapse under its own weight.

The host segments and the 200th episode

Host segments are the weaker half. Some run long, including a safety briefing about rogue time portals aboard the Satellite of Love, and one mean-spirited bit has Jonah building new robots just to see them smashed with baseball bats. The invention exchanges are the usual soft spot: Crow and Servo market a snack made from the little desiccant packets found in jerky and electronics boxes, while Kinga and Max promote an afterlife service for souls stuck in purgatory. The ideas are clever and underdeveloped.

The best sketch brings Dr. Varno and Larry to the ship, with Joel Hodgson, the show’s creator and original host, appearing as Larry. The visitors invite the crew to a party, and the explanation of why they have been thrown out of every club in the galaxy is the sketch’s highlight. It is a neat piece of casting, and it gives the episode a sense of occasion.

That occasion has a numbered side. Overall, this is the 200th episode of the franchise, and Felicia Day’s Kinga and Patton Oswalt’s Max make a joke of it, with Max pointing out that the revival’s crew had nothing to do with the older episodes. The Kinga and Max scenes are short, but the banter has an edge that fans of the earlier seasons will like, particularly Kinga’s sharper reactions to her henchman.

The film’s best and worst ideas

Where the episode sits in the season matters as well. It follows “Reptilicus” and “Cry Wilderness,” two films that were easier targets, so a viewer coming straight from those episodes feels the drop in intensity more than a first-time viewer would. Watched on its own, “The Time Travelers” plays as a relaxed, confident entry. Watched in order, it plays as a breather before the season picks up again.

The movie’s ideas are better than its execution. A time portal that runs the travelers’ clock at an accelerated rate, a city under threat from mutants and a final loop that ends with a shot of the Andromeda Galaxy are all more interesting than the budget can support. The pacing sags whenever the film pauses to show off a gadget.

For a riffing episode, though, that sag is useful. The slow parts are exactly where the crew finds its best material.

Quick facts on the episode

• Episode: season 11, episode 3, the 200th episode of the franchise overall.
• Release: April 14, 2017, on Netflix.
• Film: The Time Travelers (1964), 82 minutes, directed and written by Ib Melchior.
• Hosts and bots: Jonah Ray, Hampton Yount, Baron Vaughn and Rebecca Hanson, with Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt in the Deep 13 segments.
• Guest appearances: Elliott Kalan and Joel Hodgson.

Verdict: where The Time Travelers ranks among the revival’s first episodes

This Mystery Science Theater 3000 review comes down to a balanced position. “The Time Travelers” is competent, funny and a little less sharp than the episodes around it. Taken as a whole, it is the weakest of the three episodes that opened the season, but only because the first two set an unusually high bar.

The writing on the episode is better than most network sitcoms manage in a season, and the crew’s chemistry carries it. The riffs are rarely bad, even when they are only decent. The host segments need trimming, and the invention exchange needs a sharper hook.

A fair Mystery Science Theater 3000 review also has to account for what the episode attempts. It sharpens the Kinga and Max segments, gives Joel Hodgson a place in the story instead of a bare walk-on, and plays with the franchise’s own numbering for a joke about the 200th episode. Not every attempt works, but each one is aimed at a clear target.

One more point deserves a mention. The episode shows how well the revival handled its own history. A joke about whether episodes from the earlier run count toward the total could have been smug, and instead it reads as affectionate, because the people making it clearly know the older series. That ease with the material is a large part of why the first season worked.

Who should watch it? Fans of the original run will find a lot to enjoy, particularly the Joel Hodgson cameo. Newcomers are better off starting with “Reptilicus” or “Cry Wilderness” and returning here once they know the characters. The episode is amusing and watchable, and it rewards a second viewing mostly for completists. Anyone looking for a Mystery Science Theater 3000 review that calls it a classic will not find one here, and anyone expecting a failure will not find that either.

Sources

• Mystery Science Theater 3000, Wikipedia — cast, season 11 episode list and release dates