"In the not-too-distant future,
Next Sunday A.D.,
There was a guy named Joel,
Not too different from you or me.
He worked at Gizmonics Institute,
Just another face in red jumpsuit,
He did a good job cleaning up the place,
But his bosses didn't like him
So they shot him into space!
"We'll send him cheesy movies,
The worst we can find (la la la).
He'll have to sit and watch them all,
And we'll monitor his mind! (la la la).
Now keep in mind Joel can't control
Where the movies begin or end, (la la la)
Because he used those special parts
To make his robot friends!
(ROBOT ROLL CALL!)
CAMBOT! (Extreme close-up!)
GYPSY! (Richard Basehart?)
TOM SERVO! (You KNOW you want me, baby!)
CROOOOOOWW! (No autographs, please!)
If you're wondering how he eats and breathes,
And other science facts, (la la la)
Repeat to yourself, 'It's just a show,
I should really just relax!'
For Mystery Science Theater, 3000!
(bwang!)
(We open on the bridge of the Satellite of Love. Tom and Crow are playing badminton with a net stretched across the set from the front counter to the back door. Gypsy is keeping score off to the side. Joel is nowhere to be seen.)
TOM: Ha! Gotcha that time, Crow!
CROW: Oh, yeah?! Well, eat THIS! (He serves the birdie INCREDIBLY hard. It zooms straight over the net, Tom's head, Gypsy's head, and is finally stopped by coming into contact with Joel's eye.)
GYPSY: FOUL!
JOEL: (Walking onto bridge from the left) Ow! You guys, what have I told you about playing sports on the bridge? (He rubs at his sore eye socket.)
CROW and TOM: (looking shamefacedly down at the floor) That we shouldn't do it.
JOEL: Right. Somebody could get HU-URT! (Due to the fact that he is squinting his sore eye, he can't see very well and walks straight into the badminton net--ripping it down, tangling it around his body, and falling quite cartoonishly flat on his nose.)
TOM: Geez, Joel, have a little dignity! This is turning into the most clichéd slapstick sequence I've ever seen!
JOEL: (from floor) Uuuhhhhhh...
GYPSY: I'll go get the icepack and painkillers. (Leaves)
CROW: Ah, he'll be all right in a minute. (Notices flashing lights.) Whoops, the Mads are calling. (Pushes button with his beak.)
(Deep 13--Frank is attempting to play and sing "Manic Monday" by the Bangles on a piano, but can never get past the first few notes without messing up. Dr. Forrester has earmuffs on and an extremely sour expression.)
FORRESTER: (takes earmuffs off) Where's your human, my metallic insects? I want to talk to him.
CROW: Joel is...indisposed.
JOEL: (from floor) UUUUHHHHH...
GYPSY: (rushes in with an icepack in her mouth.) Sorry I couldn't find the painkillers, Joel.
JOEL: (standing up slowly) That's okay, thanks Gyps. (He puts the icepack on over both his hurt eye and his nose, so it ends up covering a good bit of his face.)
FORRESTER: (looks at Joel with a malevolently gleeful grin.) Ah, I see you're already in pain, monkey-boy! Good, 'cos I am having a MISERABLE day. And nothing cheers me up like making someone else's day worse! BWAHAHAH!!
(Frank continues to butcher the song. His attempts at singing in a woman's voice make it even MORE hideous.)
FORRESTER: Frank, for the last time, STOP THAT!! Ahem. (Calmer) It's time for the invention exchange, parasite! Since I'm so generous, I thought I'd let you go first this week.
TOM: Well, Joel isn't feeling well at the moment, so Crow and I will show you our latest invention. (They drag out a strange object--it looks like an automatic popcorn popper but seems to be crossed with a vacuum cleaner and other, less identifiable things.) If you please, Crow?
CROW: Thank you, Tom. (Clears throat). Here we have the "Robinson-Servo-Robot Inc. Automatic Popcorn UN-Popper" (Patent Pending). Ever made popcorn, but not been able to eat all you made? Say you planned for a party, but not enough guests showed up to eat it, or you got a stomach-ache. (Tom starts pouring fluffy popcorn into the device's glass dispenser bowl.) You know you can't store it--popcorn goes stale too fast. And it would be a shame to just throw such a delicious treat away. So we invented the Un-Popper. Tom, if you would?
TOM: (pushes a red lever on the side of the device down. All the popcorn kernels are sucked up into the vacuum-looking part. When they are spit back out, they are small, hard, unpopped kernels.)
CROW: Back in their original form and ready to be stored and popped again when you DO need them! And UNpopped popcorn can store for months at least before it goes stale. Economical and safe for the whole family to use!
JOEL: (From behind icepack) Whaddya think, sirs?
FRANK and FORRESTER: (Give the "OK" sign, then, in unison:) IT STINKS!
FORRESTER: Now, OUR invention is much cooler than yours. You may have noticed Frank attempting to play a song on that piano earlier--
FRANK: (singing, way off-key and in a hideous falsetto) It's just another Manic Monday...
FORRESTER: Frank...
FRANK: Wish it was a Sunday...
FORRESTER: Frank!
FRANK: 'Cuz that's my fun-day!
FORRESTER: FRANK!!
FRANK: (finally snaps out of it) Oh, yeah, the invention. Sorry, boss. (He stands up and gestures at the piano as the camera centers on it, and we can now see, for the first time, that it is hooked up to a rather unsafe-looking mass of wires and so forth.)
FORRESTER: If you've ever been to a bar, you have probably heard some really drippy, annoying music from their in-house piano player. Well, with this baby, you don't have to put up with songs you don't like anymore! Demonstrate, Frank. Play...hmmm...oh, anything by Barry Manilow will do.
FRANK: (plays about two chords of "I Write the Songs" and...ZOT! He is thrown back across the room by a massive jolt of electricity.)
JOEL and THE BOTS: (Shudder) Ouuuuch....
FORRESTER: As you can see, it's designed to deliver a rather nasty shock to any would-be Liberace who offends your musical tastes. Of course, it only works once, so far (gestures to the piano, which is a smoking wreck), but it's a prototype. Anyway, onto the experiment. I can't send you a movie this week, because my V.C.R. broke down.
JOEL and THE BOTS: WHOOOO!!! YEAH!! PARTY-TIME!! EXCELLENT!! (Cambot goes crazy with weird angles as they all throw confetti and Joel pops the cork of a champagne bottle that came from nowhere. General hoopla ensues.)
FORRESTER: But I DO have a smelly Internet fanfic to send you.
JOEL and THE BOTS: Awww. (The confetti stops flying, and Crow starts to put the champagne away. Joel grabs it and pours himself a glass...then thinks better of it and starts swigging directly from the bottle)
FORRESTER: It's a fanfic based off the "Sonic the Hedgehog" games, and you're in for DEEEEP HURTING, Tommy James and the Shondells! Send them the story, Frank.
FRANK: (stumbles back on-screen with his hair totally singed black, his face covered with soot, etc., but otherwise seems fine. He pushes a button.)
(Satellite of Love: General chaos and flashing lights and whatnot.)
ALL: WE GOT MOVIE SIIIIGGGNNN!!
(Season 2-5.5 door sequence)
(They all pile into the theater and take their usual places: Tom on the left, Joel in the middle, Crow on the right.)
Public Access Weasel:
CROW: Access his WHAT, exactly?
TOM and JOEL: EEEEWW!
TOM: Thank you so much for that lovely image, Crow.
JOEL: Yeah, like I don't have enough health problems right now, without getting nauseous as well...
by Julie Greta Fallner
TOM: The FALL-Girl!
JOEL: Not quite.
"Sonic?" "Tails?" " Bunnie?" " Antoine?" "Rotor?" "Amy?" Sally called out
CROW: Chief? McCloud?
JOEL: What's with all the quotation marks? Is it several different people talking in sequence?
TOM: Or Sally has multiple personalities...
as she was searching everywhere in the Great Forest and Knothole.
TOM: How exactly does one search inside a knothole?
JOEL: My guess is that Sally is very, very small.
CROW: No, no, you guys, in the Saturday morning cartoon version, "Knothole" was the name of Sonic's village.
TOM: (snorts derisively) Oh, you WOULD know something like that, wouldn't you?
She couldn't find them anywhere. She picked up her Nicole computer. "Nicole, locate Knothole Freedom Fighters," she told Nicole.
JOEL: Ya think she's using the name "Nicole" often enough? I mean, we might have forgotten the computer's name after those crucial two seconds.
CROW: "Crow sat Crow's self down into the theater and started reading Crow's crappy story from Crow's usual seat."
TOM: "Tom Servo breaks Crow's head open and shoves it under Tom Servo's usual seat where Tom Servo won't have to deal with Crow for a while."
JOEL: Oi. Behave, you two.
Nicole was searching. "Nowhere to be seen, Sally." She put Nicole back in the pocket of her vest. She was very worried about what might've happened to her friends.
TOM: Her imaginary friends.
CROW: I'd like to be that Nicole right now. WHOOO-EEE! Hubba-hubba!
JOEL: Sally immediately gave up on finding the Knothole Freedom Fighters and started looking for the Leaves and Branches Freedom Fighters instead.
Just then a hoverbike landed next to her. Out came Julie-Su.
JOEL: She came OUT of the hoverbike? Who the heck rides in the trunk of something while driving it?
TOM: "Julie-Su". Huh. I hate that cutesy hyphenated-names trend from the '90s.
CROW: Actually, Julie-Su is a real character; she's from the Knuckles comic series and is his girl-friend.
TOM: Oi. Can I go get the champagne again, Joel?
JOEL: You're not gettin' out of here THAT easy, little buddy.
"Sally, I know what happened to your friends. I think you ought to come with me."
"Okay, I will." Sally said as she climbed aboard the hoverbike.
JOEL: Or into its trunk, as the case may be.
TOM: I still think she is only imagining having friends.
Julie-Su has taken Sally to Floating Island. While they were there,
ALL: WHOAHH!! TENSE CHANGE ALERT!
they got off the hoverbike and parked it. "You're going to find this very interesting, Princess," said Julie-Su as she lead Sally to a
CROW: Male strip club with disco music playing.
TOM: Bomp-chicka-wow-chicka-chicka-wow-wow...
JOEL: Knock it offf, you guyssh...(starts to sound a bit slurry)
huge, theater sized moniter which looked like a television.
TOM: You dragged me all the way up to some Floating Island just to show me a big-screen T.V.? SHEESH!
CROW: It's the biggest T.V. set in Minnesota!
JOEL: Heyy, we'rre in Minnesshota. (hic.) Whoopsh, I mean, in sshpace.
"What's going on? What happened?" asked Sally.
CROW: Bell-bottoms came back in style.
TOM: Oh, no, the horror, the horror!!
"You ain't seen nothing yet, sister!" answered Julie-Su as she turned on
CROW: (leaning forward eagerly.) Yeeeeessssss???
the moniter.
CROW: Darn.
TOM: And in so doing, turned off the spellchecker.
The moniter showed Nack the Weasel on a stage and a
bunch of Robotnik's robots in the audience cheering him on.
"Nack! Nack! Nack! Nack! Nack!" all the robots cheered.
TOM: What do you mean, ALL the robots? We're not cheering for him!
CROW: (ala the Simpsons) PLUMM-ET! PLUMM-ET! PLUMM-ET!
JOEL: Who made the room sshtart sshpinning like thissh...?
Meanwhile somewhere in Robotropolis, there was Nack on the stage.
TOM: Well, duh. No, we thought it was Evil Knievel on the stage!
CROW: Ah, Robotropolis. A vacation spot sure to remain forever lodged in your mind, no matter how many drugs you take.
"Thanks a bunch, badniks! Ya, know Robotnik said he's paying me big bucks for this show!
TOM: "Badniks"? What, are they Russian or something?
CROW: (very phony Russian accent) Da, Comrade Servo!
JOEL: ....
This is my Public Access show, and it's seen
CROW: In a theater near you.
everywhere in Mobius!" exclaimed Nack. Nack walked right up to a blanket with something covered inside. He pulled off the blanket and there was a capsule that was shaped like a rocket.
TOM and CROW: GAMERA!! He's come back to save us from this story!! YAYY!! (Start singing the theme song) Gamera is really neat, Gamera is filled with meat...
JOEL: ...
Inside were Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Bunnie, and in the background, Antoine and Amy Rose were confined in cages.
TOM: And a lot of other names were there, too.
CROW: Wait, practically all of those characters have special powers, skills, or weapons. How did a relatively wussy villian like Nack DO this?
TOM: Just smile and nod, Crow.
JOEL: ...
"Yep, that's right, robots! On live television, I'm going to push a
little button
TOM and CROW: PUSH THE BUTTON, FRANK!
JOEL: (snore...)
that will send these losers up into the sky!!! And when it reaches there, it's going to explode!" shouted Nack evilly! And all robots in the audience cheered!
CROW: Except for these robots.
TOM: (leaning over Joel with a worried expression--if you can say such a thing about a gumball-machine-headed gizmo with no eyes). CROW! You broke the human!
CROW: What? I did no such thing! It isn't my fault!
(Joel is completely unconscious and has been for some time now.)
TOM: Well, let's haul him back to the bridge and let Gypsy work on him. You'll have to carry him the last part of the way, I can't go over that air-vent in the floor.
CROW: Okay, okay...
(Both robots start dragging Joel bodily out of the theater while the story "pauses" on the screen. Don't ask me HOW they're doing it with their wimpy/inneffectual arms, but they are. They drag Joel out of the theater, then Crow comes back for Tom.)
