Small Screen Surfin'
Created | Updated Oct 4, 2003
I had planned this specially for you all as what I wanted this week was a sci-fi triple bill. But having, and I mean this, just read Awix's 24 Lies A Second I see that he got there before me by two years
Now I could send him another death threat - but I won't. Instead I've decided that I will build a fully working time machine and send someone else back in time to diddle with the fourth dimension and break Awix's wrists in 2001 so he can't type so that he can't do a sci-fi triple-bill and thus my column will be incredibly inciteful and interesting. Unless of course Pepe the Chimp gets fried travelling back in time meaning my column this week will look like a blatant rip-off and leaving open a nice big bag of paradoxes which I'll leave to you to figure out.
As Awix has to wotchit1, I'll be catching the Surf on a few sci-fi shows making this more of a rant, I'm afraid, than a 'professional' reviews2.
First up, Mystery Science Theater 3000. Having seen the TV movie last week, it reminded me of how much I loved the TV show in the first place. Basically the plot is that a professor has trapped 'average man' Mike Nelson on an orbiting satellite with three robots. He then forces him to watch crappy 1950s B-Movies to see which movie will make him insane. Then the professor plans to release it onto an unsuspecting human race to make them insane (as Nelson is 'average' the majority of the planet's people will be affected) thus he can take over. Got all that? No, didn't think so.
But it isn't the plot that's important. What you're basically doing is watching whatever 50's B-Movie, Nelson and two of his robot companions (the female one drives the satellite) do, as they are sat at the bottom of the screen as if sitting in a cinema seat aisle.
But that isn't important either as it's Mike and Co making comments about the film they're watching, nitpicking and making fun of it, which is what we all do when watching terrible movies because we're AVERAGE! The comments are funny. They have to be, to make it cult viewing. It is funny hearing the two robots and Nelson adding their own lines and making sound-effects.
For example, in the movie version (which is the show but longer) a girl escapes her plastic tube (yep that bad a B-Movie) to get away from the attacking mutant, quite aptly named Mutant while her boyfriend just stands in the tube and watches along with a guy with a LARGE forehead. The Mutant eventually collapses for sci-fi reasons and the man then rushes over from his tube to the girl to help her up. Then one of the robots (whose names I can't remember) will say over it: 'Thank God I saved you'. Sounds dull from this typed version but I assure you it is great and sarcastic.
Right now on to what you've heard of... possibly. Futurama, which has, for some perverse reason, been axed after only three seasons and is another creation from The Simpsons creator Matt Groening. It is about a man from the past, a one-eyed woman and a drunken robot.
By way of plot, Fry (the man from the past obviously) has been thrown 1000 years into the future after getting stuck in a stasis booth (a time-fridge basically) on New Year's Eve 1999. Thus Fry awakens in 'The wooooorld of tomorrooow!' - 3000 - which leads him into becoming a delivery boy for his great, great, etc nephew Professor Farnsworth at Planet Express.
I cannot urge people enough to watch this show, especially since it has Steve Oderkirk (writer of Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls and co-writer of Bruce Almighty' as one of the producers, showing that this show has great comedy which, in my opinion, makes it a lot more funny than The Simpsons, especially on slapstick terms.
What makes Futurama great is the fact that it manages to do what The Simpsons does: perceive our reality in a different way. 'New' New York is just our present made to look futuristic which makes it more absorbable than creating an entirely different reality etc.
But back to Oderkirk and the third in this trilogy of sci-fi, Thumb Wars. A Star Wars spoof made with 'thumbs' that is Episode IV with the important bits of Episode V. Namely Yoda and 'I am your father'.
Plot? Well, Princess Bun-Head, leader of the Thumbellion resistance has been caught with secret plans by Black Helmet, Man of the Thumpire. The very limp-wristed droid Digit escapes with Beep-Beep and head toward a desert planet which happens to be the home of Luke Groundrunnner, farmboy. Luke meets up with Thumb Master Obidoobi Baloobi which leads to a trip with Hand Duel and Crunchie to destroy the Death Thumb; a spacecraft with enough power to 'blow stuff up'. This is the best parody of Star Wars I've seen. Even more so than Spaceballs because you don't actually need to know anything about Lucas' epic to appreciate Oderkirk's slapstick style. Knowledge of the trilogies obviously helps some jokes - such as in the Death Thumb trench run - but the only actual joke which non Star Wars fans won't get is the 'Weird Little Hooded Creatures' reference but it's not important. Great stuff which I also implore people to watch.
