The Head Writer of 'MST3K' Talks About the Cult Classic's Return

To call Mystery Science Theater 3000 unique among classic comedy series is to undersell it. With its low-key format—primarily a man (either Joel Robinson or Mike Nelson) and two robots (Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot) riffing on B-movies with a few surreal sketches thrown in—and a rapid rate of goofs-per-minute, MST3K is still completely different from anything else we've seen on TV.

Fully deserving of its cult status, it comes as no surprise that the series' return was sparked by an enormously successful Kickstarter in 2015, and that performers like Patton Oswalt, Felicia Day, and host Jonah Ray—who looks very comfortable in his yellow Gizmonics jumpsuit—joined up for season 11. Another new addition to the Satellite of Love crew is head writer Elliott Kalan, who previously led the writing staff of The Daily Show and currently co-hosts bad movie podcast The Flop House.

"I've been a fan of MST3K since even before I actually saw the show," said Kalan, who noticed references to an obscure sci-fi/comedy program in TV Guide ("Back then, that was still one of the best places for information about TV shows you haven't seen") and scoured his family's cable package until he found a midnight rerun of season two's King Dinosaur. "The next day I told my family all about it and they couldn't figure out what the hell I was talking about." That's not shocking, as the series format was and remains entirely original among TV comedies. Though there's some character development and the relationships between hosts and bots can be downright touching, the show is—more than anything else—a repository for lightning-fast jokes and a place to indulge one's fondness for bad movies.

Given Kalan's deep knowledge of cinema, quick wit, and status as longtime fan of the series, he seemed a natural choice to fill the role of head writer. Watching the show informed both his sense of humor and his creative process. "It definitely helped shape my thinking about comedy and the tone and voice that I gravitate towards in my own work," he said, citing references, an announcer-style tone, and "a general sense of what [he] call[s] 'surreal nice.'" Those, he said, "are just a few of the elements I've taken from the show and ingested and allowed to colonize my brain."

A key takeaway from his time on The Daily Show—where he began as a PA and gradually worked his way up to head writer—was the ability to generate a lot of comic material, and quickly. "Jon Stewart taught me a lot about being very active and focused in your work so that you're not working off of assumptions or losing sight of opportunities to make work better." Though the material may differ, said Kalan, "Writing a joke for a Mitch McConnell sound bite and writing a joke to cover a long sequence of a monster knocking a building down aren't that different in the broad strokes."

For Kalan and his colleagues, it was crucial that the show retain its classic feel. This was made easier given the active role series creator Joel Hodgson took in the production, as well as Kalan's respect for how the first ten seasons of the show looked. "I was doing my best to bring Joel's vision of the show to the screen," said Kalan. "It was very important to me that the show not change that much because I'm a fan of the show and I didn't want it to change too much! The original format of the show is so brilliant and so perfectly shaped that it didn't make sense to me to futz with it too much."

To that end, Kalan spent his time in the writers' room brainstorming ideas for host segments, overseeing those who were contributing jokes, and helping Hodgson keep watch of the season's arc, making sure they "didn't do too much or little of any one thing." Unsurprisingly, writing the riffs themselves—a staggering 700 per episode, by Kalan's calculations—was a lengthy process. Kalan, along with Hodgson and Ray, described it as "literally crawling through the movies second-by-second." (Kalan also credits fellow writer Leslie Kinzel for being instrumental in the riff assembly process.)

Watch a classic episode of MST3K, and you'll notice nary a line of dialogue goes by without improvised song lyrics, a crack about plot holes, or a reference to a long-forgotten C-list actor. Those types of callouts were retained for season 11, reflecting both current pop culture and the environment Kalan, Ray, and Baron Vaughn and Hampton Yount (the new voices of Servo and Crow respectively) grew up in.

"If aliens saw the new season, they would get a very skewed understanding of the importance of the baby from the show Dinosaurs," Kalan noted. Given the intricacy and sheer volume of jokes in previous seasons, it helped to have a cast of veteran comedians and writers on board. As the season came together, the writers had a shortlist of earlier episodes that Kalan described as "particularly excellent examples that we would want to strive for."

"In my mind, Mitchell, Space Mutiny, Manos, and Time Chasers are just a few faces on that particular Mount Rushmore," he said. "Which, now that I think about it, would be kind of a frightening Mount Rushmore. Let's not build one of those."

Given early reception, though, this return to the Satellite of Love may be just as monument-worthy. "When I attended the New York screening of the first episode for Kickstarter backers and saw how much the people who, I cannot overemphasize this enough, paid for the show really enjoyed it and felt good about it, that was the best feeling," said Kalan.

In reflecting on what it was like to work with the original crew and create something he himself would be a fan of, Kalan's excitement was palpable. "13-year-old me would have been very happy," he said. "And emotionally I'm still roughly 13, so I was very happy, too."

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