Mystery Trekkie Theater 3000

Collaboration
Name:	Mystery Trekkie Theater 3000 (also "Mystery Trekkie Theater")
Members:	Howard Weinstein, Bob Greenberger, Michael Jan Friedman
Date(s):	1992-2017
Focus:	skits
Fandoms:	Star Trek, other fandoms
External Links:
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Mystery Trekkie Theater 3000 was a series of 24 skits presented at Shore Leave between 1992-2017 where it became a Sunday night event at the convention's end.

flyer from the 1996 Shore Leave program book

They were originally created by Howard Weinstein, Bob Greenberger, Michael Jan Friedman, but included cameos by Peter David, Bob Pinaha, Brad Ferguson, and T.A. Chafin.

This activity was inspired by Mystery Science Theater 3000.

While the skits were performed live only at "Shore Leave," a fan reported seeing this presentation in video form at the 1997 Dragon*Con.

What Is It?

In a nut shell, what is Mystery Trekkie Theater 3000?

PAD: It’s Mystery Science Theater but with Trek.

BG: We lovingly skewer the weaker episodes from across the Star Trek franchise, pointing out story flaws, bad acting, bad scene continuity, and have developed a recurring set of responses that audiences have come to expect and even join in on (such as fart sounds every time someone sits down). We replicate the MST format complete with puppets, opening skit, mad scientist, and “Movie Sign!”.

Why Shore Leave?

Why Shore Leave?

MJF: It was the biggest forum where we were all likely to show up together. And as Peter will tell you, it was a way to ensure that we were always invited.

BG: It was the one show of the year that we were all guaranteed to be at. Additionally, there was a cadre of performers under the umbrella name Cheap Treks that would mount musical parodies of whatever genre material was in vogue. Peter even wrote one and I appeared in another. When they chose to retire, we were asked to shift from a Sunday morning slot to the closing event, cementing our place in Shore Leave.

PAD: In the old days, Shore Leave didn’t always invite me as a guest. So I came up with MTT3K as an idea that would prove so popular they would have to invite me back year after year just to get the show. I took pains to make it clear that we would never do it anywhere else, so Shore Leave would have an exclusive thing. And believe me, we’ve been asked.

Why Only Star Trek?

Why Star Trek only?

BG: Shore Leave started out as a Star Trek con in the early 1980s when they were largely the only game in town. When the original syndicated series boom came, followed by the explosion of basic cable offerings, I suppose we could have added other shows, but with five iterations of Trek, we never thought about it. Of course, Peter suggested we use the William Shatner pilot for Alexander the Great as a surprise and it remains one of the best received shows we did.

PAD: Well, it IS called “Trekkie Theater.” But we haven’t done only Star Trek. One year in the opening sketch, Mike complained about how he was sick of trashing Star Trek, and the Mad Scientist suggested “Alexander,” which startled people because the Brad Pitt “Alexander” film was still in the theaters. And we started running this old black and white TV program, and the audience had zero idea why we were watching it…until Alexander came riding up, and it was a pre-Trek William Shatner. The fans went nuts. They were finally going to see something on Mystery Trekkie that they’d never seen before.

MJF: Trek is the best known of the sci fi screen products and it offers the most possibilities. Plus our attention spans don’t go any longer than 45 minutes, so movies weren’t an option.

Fan Comments

Unknown Date

Mystery Trekkie Theater has been performed at the Shore Leave convention in Baltimore, Maryland every year since 1992 (except for 1995 and 1999). It’s a take-off on Mystery Science Theater 3000 (aka MST3K) in which Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, and Bob Greenberger, and others mock and skewer various Star Trek episodes (except for one year when they MST-ed an unaired William Shatner/Adam West TV pilot from the 1960’s). Each performance starts with a comedy sketch before the episode-mocking begins, per the original MST3K. Other celebrities and writers occasionally guest-star in the opening sketch, and T. Alan Chafin traditionally plays the mad scientist.

1994

2 events that "MAKE" a fan-run con for me: Mystery Trekkie Theater (MTT)" and "Cheap Treks (CT)". ... CT is a fan-written, fan-produced, fan-scored, fan-choreographed... well you get the idea... parody of a Trek episode, or original trek-like story. It has credits that roll at the beginning and end, music, singing, dancing, everything you'd expect from a fan show and a lot, lot more.

2017

Peter David, Bob Greenberger, and Michael Jan Friedman have been writing and performing Mystery Trekkie Theater 3000, their Mystery Science Theater 3000 Alive!-style live-show featuring Star Trek universe experiments nearly every year at the Shore Leave scienty fiction convention in Baltimore, Maryland for neigh on 25 years.

The doors opened on their first performance, featuring the Star Trek original series episode Turnabout Intruder, the morning of Sunday, July 12th, 1992. Ever since, they’ve been wrangling their friends, an innocent bystander or two, and usually a cameo from a celebrity, onto the stage. In the early days, noted letterer of comic books Bob Pinaha and scienty fiction writer Brad Ferguson served time as the opening-skit mad-scientists who forced them to watch bad Star Trek episodes. After a while Shore Leave regular T.A. Chafin came aboard and he’s been playing the mad scientist ever since. Eventually, the Sunday evening slot came open and MTT3K turned into a regular Sunday night thing that closed out the con.

MTT3K is arguably the first ever homage to Mystery Science Theater 3000; beating Ryan K. Johnson’s fanvid by a few months. (Interestingly, both featured experiments from Star Trek.) And, it was nearly the first ever live MST3K-style show! When MTT3K first started, MST3K had been going on television for five years, and Mystery Science Theater 3000 Alive! was nearly not even yet a thing. But, two days before P, B, and Jan (and pals) performed their first live-version homage of MST3K, Best Brains (the folks that produced the original show) performed their own live version of MST3K in Minneapolis, Minnesota — at the first Conventioconexpofestarama, which shared a weekend with Shore Leave.

Individual Skits

1992

• Opening sketch: unknown
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “Turnabout Intruder”

1993

• Opening sketch: unknown
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “The Apple”

Comments About 1993

This time they cored "The Apple". The Rock 'em Sock 'em Captains (with functional arms and pop-up heads -- used to determine who is better: Kirk or Picard) was the better invention (btw, Kirk got his block knocked off). 44 minutes of rolling in the aisles. --

1994

• Opening sketch: unknown
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “Shore Leave”

1995

There was no Mystery Trekkie Theater this year.

1996

• Opening sketch: cyborgs and Terminators; guest-starred J. Michael Straczynski
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “The Gamesters of Triskelion”

1997

• Opening sketch: “Riverborg”
• Episode MST-ed: TNG: “Justice”

1998

• Opening sketch: “South Trek”
• Episode MST-ed: DS9: “Move Along Home”

Comments About "1998

Mystery Trekkie Theater was hysterical, but most of it doesn't make sense without seeing the episode. They were MSTing the episode with the game players, who put the command crew into a game as live pieces. During the opening credits, when the comet first flies by, one person yells out "ICEBERG! RIGHT AHEAD!" Then they started singing the Comet song ("Comet, it makes you vomit, so get your Comet, and vomit, today"). They were also joking about the names of the cast. "Avery? That's a girl's name! Rene??? Terry... ah, there's a person who will last... Siddig????? Cirroc??????? Armin??????? Like Armin Hammer??? Nana? (singing) Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, good bye!") When the titles came up, they said, "Our score: Deep Space 9, Babylon 5"). A character cried out "Julian!" and the MSTers replied, "FRIES!" And the running gag: every time an actor had to say or do something stupid, they would say, "I went to Julliard for this? --

1999

There was no Mystery Trekkie Theater this year.

2000

• Opening sketch: “The Sith Sense”
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “The Paradise Syndrome”

Comments About 2000

Finally, Mystery Trekkie Theater started. Of course, I had already seen half

of the opening sketch. Oops. Well, anyway, there is creepy music and a scared kid. They show scenes from Star Wars on screen, with characters dying, and as each one dies, somebody in costume as that character shows up on stage (also, a puppet of Yoda was floating in back). Finally, Peter comes out and asks the kid, "What do you see?" He says, "I see dead Jedi!" And a logo appears on screen for "The Si th Sense." Everybody groan with me now. Then the people on stage start complaining about how this whole sketch is just a setup for one bad pun. Peter says he thought it was timely, but these are last year's movies. In fact, one of the cast says, this is last year's sketch! Peter didn't show up for Shore Leave last year, so there was no sketch! Then they start making fun of Peter's previous sketches: "South Trek only worked because of a guest appearance by Bill Mumy!" says Peter's sister Beth (she promptly gets a pie in the face). The other cast members want to re-do their classic sketch River Borg. Then Boris (from Bullwinkle) appears, saying that the sketch is off to a Rocky start. <groan> Hmn... well, it's always a dangerous thing to do self-referential humor about how bad your own humor is. There's a fine line between saying you're bad and actually being bad. I think Peter managed to stay on the right side of the line with this sketch, but just barely.

The episode that the MSTed was The Paradise Syndrome from the original series. That's the episode with the American Indian culture on a planet that's about to get nailed by an asteroid. Lots of good stuff in here. At the beginning, they show a scenic river shot. "New Jersey and You! Perfect Together." Peter starts reciting the moose business from the opening credits of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When they find the obelisk, Kirk asks Spock what it is. "It's a large metal thing; what part of that didn't you understand?"

I think the biggest laugh came at a scene where they show Kirk, Spock and McCoy at the edge of a lake. The shot is taken from behind, over their shoulders, looking onto the lake. One of the MSTers comments that they are peeing in the lake. The second biggest laugh, I think, came when Kirk's Indian girlfriend asks how Kirk's shirt is removed, since it has no lacings. "Usually, it's ripped off in a fight." Another big laugh: Kirk's Indian girlfriend says, I bear your child. "Yeah, you and half the other women in the quadrant. You're not getting a penny out of me!" Some running gags: every time somebody puled a communicator out of his back pocket, the MSTers commented that he had to scratch his butt. Kirk loses his memory in this one, and every time he says "try to remember" or "I can't remember," they sing "... the kind of September..."

They also had a lot of gags about Shatner's priceline.com commercials: when the Indians bring him some food, someone says, "look how much we saved when we named our own price on groceries!" Kirk's girlfriend says she knew that Kirk would save her people... "money on airline tickets." Kirk asks McCoy to help his girlfriend, who has been injured. "Dammit Jim, I'm a doctor, not a... oh, right." --

2001

• Opening sketch: unknown
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “Plato’s Stepchildren”

2002

• Opening sketch: “Beat the Klingon Geeks” (the script is in "But I Digress," Peter David's column, Comics Buyer’s Guide #1499)
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “Wolf in the Fold”

2003

• Opening sketch: unknown; guest-starred Andrea Thompson
• Episode MST-ed: TNG: “Captain’s Holiday”

2004

• Opening sketch: Buffy sketch: Spike & Harmony
• Episode MST-ed: VGR: “Threshold”

2005

• Opening sketch: (unknown)
• Episode MST-ed: Alexander the Great—William Shatner/Adam West TV pilot

Comments About 2005

The masterminds of Mystery Trekkie Theater guarantee us that this year, the evil of our Mad Scientist knows no bounds. Frustrated with his inability over the past decade to break the will of Bob, Mike, and Peter, this year he has unearthed something so horrific ... so mindbogglingly Trekkish... so bizarre, that we can personally assure you: If you have never seen any MTT3K before, this is the one you must see. If you've seen every single one, this one will be unlike any that have come before. We promise greatness.

2006

• Opening sketch: “A Faerie Home Companion”
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “A Private Little War”

2007

• Opening sketch: unknown
• Episode MST-ed: TNG: “Conspiracy”

2008

• Opening sketch: George Takei sings country (2008 video, features George Takei singing a country song, Peter David, Keith RA DeCandido, and Robert Greenbereger dancing in the background)
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “Catspaw”

2009

• Opening sketch: Star Trek: The Return of James Kirk — The Musical
• Episode MST-ed: VGR: “Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy”

Comments About 2009

This year's skit was a takeoff on Sunset Boulevard, with a "dead" body floating in the hotel pool (and being unceremoniously shoved aside by swimmers), and a deluded Captain Kirk in the Gloria Swanson role, convinced he is to star in the new Star Trek film ("I played Chris Pine -- was I good in the role?"). -- The Wright Stuff, newsletter for U.S.S. Kitty Hawk </ref>

2010

• Opening sketch: Lost the Movie: Hugo Nuts
• Episode MST-ed: ENT: “Unexpected”

2011

• Opening sketch: “Red Shirt Riot”
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “The Way to Eden”
• 2011 video

2012

• Opening sketch:
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “The Cage”

Comments About 2012

The last panel of the night was the Mystery Trekkie Theater 3000, where Peter David, Bob Greenberger, and Michael Jan Friedman sit behind a screen and make fun of a classic trek episode. Trust me, it’s funnier than it looks on paper.

2013

• Opening sketch: unknown
• Episode MST-ed: TOS: “And the Children Shall Lead”