By Monday marks the 20th anniversary of the first broadcast of one of the best, cult sci-fi shows of all time; Mystery Science Theater 3000. MST3K ran for 198 epsiodes over 11 seasons and also spawned a movie, based on This Island Earth, in 1996. The premise of the show was that a man and his robot sidekicks are trapped on a satellite in space by an evil scientist and forced to watch a selection of terrible movies. The man and his robots provide a running commentary to the film, making fun of its flaws and wisecracking their way through the film.
The initial run of the show, referred to as Season 0, ran on KTMA-TV Channel 23 Minneapolis from November 24th 1988 to May 28th 1989 after which the show was picked up by Comedy Central and ran for 7 seasons. When Comedy Central dropped the show, MST3K's Internet fan-base staged a write-in campaign to keep the show alive which resulted in the Sci Fi Channel picking up the series, where it ran for another 3 seasons. The final episode aired on Sci-Fi on 8th August 1999.
Unfortunately, problems with movie rights have led to problems releasing the series on DVD. There are some available and there is a list on Wikipedia. However, these are all Region 1, NTSC releases. We can only hope that something good happens in the future and Region 2 PAL releases finally see the light of day.
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