A fitting premiere date has been announced for the highly anticipated 12th season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. The new season of the cult classic comedy will once again be airing exclusively on Netflix, which picked up the distribution rights to the show for its 11th season in 2016.
Known as MST3K for short among its fans (i.e. MSTies), Mystery Science Theater 3000 has one of the most devout followings in all of fandom. The brainchild of comedian Joel Hodgson, the show centers upon a series of "average Joes" and their robot friends, who are kidnapped by mad scientists and forced to watch the worst movies ever made as part of an experiment to find a movie so awful it will break the brains of the populace and allow the scientists to take over the world. However, this plot is just dressing for the core idea of the show - funny people making fun of schlock cinema. The 2016 revival, which broke crowd-funding records on Kickstarter as MSTies raised over 6.3 million dollars to bring back the show, cast Jonah Ray of The Nerdist podcast as test subject Jonah Heston, with Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt as the next generation of mad scientists, who have turned the experiment into a means of gaining viral fame.
Related: Mystery Science Theater 3000 Launches Crowd-Funding Efforts For Season 12
AV Club reported on the 12th season's premiere date and why it is so significant. The new season will be available for streaming on Thursday, November 22, which is the date that Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving this year. It is also the spiritual 30th anniversary of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
MST3K originally premiered on local Minneapolis station KTMA on Thanksgiving Eve 1988. The show was later picked up by The Comedy Channel (the original name of cable network Comedy Central), which hosted a number of regular all-day marathons of MST3K on Thanksgiving. These "Turkey Day Marathons" became a fondly-remembered event for fans of the show and the watching of MST3K is as traditional as football in some American households. It seems fitting then that the show should return in a medium that lends itself well to marathon viewings just in time for its 30th anniversary.
Even ignoring the premiere of the new season and the anniversary, 2018 is still a big year for Mystery Science Theater 3000. The revival series has also kicked off a live tour, which will be traveling around the country starting on October 9. Joel Hodgson himself is coming out of retirement and donning his familiar red jumpsuit for the tour, joining Ray and The Bots in riffing on the 1980s "classics" The Brain and Deathstalker 2. That gives MSTies one more thing to look forward to this fall.
More: Mystery Science Theater 3000's Best Episodes
Source: AV Club