Mystery Science Theater 3000: THE PROJECTED MAN

November 2, 2017 2:04 AM - Season 9, Episode 1

"Born a man... turned into a living laser beam by science's most gruesome experiment!" "A Billion Volts of Death in Every Finger!" Another dang fool scientist is inventing a teleporter, and again he's impatient for results so he tests it on himself and becomes a monster. Isn't it weird when a movie's hubristic Tampering In God's Domain amounts to moving somewhere? Hey here's a thought, why not just walk a few steps across the room and maybe not turn into a deformed horror? Lembeck is staying! The movie's okay but the thing about this episode is that the "endless chase" subplot is finally over, although it takes a season for the opening theme to catch up with this fact. Pearl and henchies finally arrive at and settle into ancestral family home Castle Forrester, the show's site until the end of the classic era. Pearl discovers a family history in which she finds out her family has been forcing bad art on hapless subjects for ages. In this, we find out that the female half of her family basically have the same first-naming conventions as the Crystal Gems, which could make for some really odd fanfiction if anyone wants to write it. (Kinga breaks that trend though.) YouTube (1h32m) Premiered November 22, 1997. 25 episodes left.

Episode 901 THE PROJECTED MAN
Satellite News - Mighty Jack's Episode Review - War of the Colossal Fan Guide - Annotated MST3K - TVTropes

Paul Chaplin's recollections in the ACEG:

Paul, played by Bryant Haliday, is of course familiar to MST viewers as the guy who played "The Great Vorelli" in last year's Devil Doll. I guess Haliday was considered to be someone who could carry a film. I don't know much about movies, but in mid-1960s England they must have been about three million years behind the music.
I believe this is the first movie we've ever done in which the monster's name was Paul. And believe it or not, it won't be the last.

Movie
Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt
Rotten Tomatoes (Critics N/A, Viewers 0%!) - Wikipedia - TVTropes
IMDB (1967, 3.2 stars)
Directed by Ian Curteis and John Croydon. Croydon also wrote with Peter Bryan and Frank Quattrocchi. Starring Mary Peach, Bryant Holiday and Norman Wooland.

posted by JHarris (7 comments total)

At times I got the feeling they were running out of steam this season, particularly with some of the castle sketches.

On a different note, are you guys re-watching the new MST3K episodes as much as the old ones?
posted by wittgenstein at 9:08 AM on November 2, 2017

This is the one that premiered with the sound totally screwed up, and then SciFi took a considerable amount of time fixing it.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:45 AM on November 2, 2017 [2 favorites]

On a different note, are you guys re-watching the new MST3K episodes as much as the old ones?

I just re-watched all of season 11 (I often find I enjoy them more on re-watch). I'd say overall it was "good not great"...maybe like season 2. A couple of them I think were first rate though - Yongarry, for example.
posted by Chrysostom at 10:47 AM on November 2, 2017

Ack, I got the premiere date wrong (because Satellite News was down when I made the post). This episode premiered March 14, 1998.

The first season of the new series suffers a bit from being the first MST for a long while and having a mostly-different writing staff. Cry Wilderness, Yongary, Wizards I, Carnival Magic and Beast of Hollow Mountain stick out in my mind, 5 in 14 isn't a bad ratio of classic episodes I think.

Here's the usual announcement:
Every week, we in MST Club get together and watch that week's episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. You should... JOIN US. Time is Thursday at 9 PM Eastern time, 6 PM Pacific, fill in other time zones yerself. Place is https://cytu.be/r/Metafilter_MST3KClub.
posted by JHarris at 11:37 AM on November 2, 2017

Here's the next episodes coming up:
11/9: 902 THE PHANTOM PLANET
11/16: 903 THE PUMAMAN
11/23: Off for Turkey Day 2017
11/30: 904 WEREWOLF
12/7: 905 THE SPACE CHILDREN
12/17: 906 THE DEADLY BEES
12/21: Off to prepare for Christmas 2017 marathon
12/28: 907 HOBGOBLINS
posted by JHarris at 11:02 PM on November 2, 2017

12/17 should be 12/14, sorry.
posted by JHarris at 11:02 PM on November 2, 2017

Additional announcement:
We are going to start showing, before the main episode, a second, earlier episode each week. All these episodes will come from YouTube, and will be Joel episodes at first, then move on to general Comedy Central episodes. These won't be named, at least at first. I'm aiming to show things that we've not seen in a long while, so probably seasons 2-4 at the moment, with an emphasis on classic episodes.

These will probably start at 7 PM Eastern. Overall that is:

4 PM Pacific - 5 PM Mountain - 6 PM Central - 7 PM Eastern

I think the UK is 11 PM or 12 PM from there? I'll remind of this again in the post for the next episode.
posted by JHarris at 4:26 AM on November 4, 2017