u/Bronyficent

With the Gizmoplex shutting down this year, one question I had was with regards to preservation.

The Season 13 episodes have been gradually added to the MST3K YouTube channel this year, while the physical Blu-Ray and DVD release preserves the Gizmoblips (new host segments featuring Jonah, Emily and the bots that were interspersed across the rotating selection of Synthia Selects episodes), the Tom & Crow's Unsupervised Year-End Review Revue special in it's entirety, excerpts from the premiere streams of Robot Wars, Doctor Mordrid, Demon Squad & The Christmas Dragon and all the Madvertisments for Joey Drew Studios, BearManor Media and Onyx Path Publishing, as well as utilizing those cute little paper and cardboard screensavers from the intermissions as the menu design. The unique intros and outros to the Synthia Selects were never rereleased anywhere, but some nice chap uploaded them to Youtube here. And finally, the MST3K YouTube channel has all the Surgically Enhanced MST3K episodes they ended up doing, except for Catalina Caper and The Pumaman.

But that still leaves hours of unique material from more than 30 streams they did, as well as other material on the website that was never released elsewhere. Compounding this issue is that all of this material was never made available to download - you could only stream it off their website/app. Would they start uploading them on YouTube or elsewhere, or would they just become lost media?

Well, now we have an answer. By popular request of members of the Mystery Science Discourse 3000 forum, they've basically made everything that was stream-only before available to download DRM-free!

Note that individual tickets to streams have only ever been rent-only. You can't buy them and that is still the case now. But if you got a Gizmoplex Pass, either for the full year or one of the piecemeal ones, you got permanent streaming access to some or all of the streams. If this applies to you, you can now download them. (I'm also told that some or all of the piecemeal Gizmoplex Passes didn't offer downloads of the episodes themselves, but for all I know, that may have changed now).

In case you need a refresher, both the episode premieres and classic episode tributes had full-length post-episode discussions. The classic episode tributes also had new host segments with Jonah, Emily and Joel (distinct from the aforementioned Gizmoblips), that have never been made available elsewhere. Several of the classic episode tributes featured bonus features from the MST3K DVD releases. They also did Jackbox Showdown streams as well. Even the 2022 Turkey Day Marathon in its entirety is available to download, if you have the space for it.

Highlights include:

• The premiere of Santo in the Treasure of Dracula, which features a tour of the now-defunct Gizmoplex Virtual Theater. Notably, this is not the same stream that was made available to stream early for Kickstarter backers, the one that introduced us to everybody's favourite MST3K character, The White Dot. That one is lost media currently.
• The premiere of Robot Wars, which features an interview with actress Barbera Crampton.
• A Tribute to... MANOS!, which features a new interview with Jackey Neyman Jones, who played Debbie in Manos: The Hands of Fate. Mary Jo Pehl is also part of the interview.
• A Tribute to... HOBGOBLINS, which features an interview with Kenneth J. Hall, the fabricator who had designed and built the original hobgoblin props. Bill Corbett and Mary Jo Pehl are also part of the interview.
• The premiere of Doctor Mordrid, which features an interview with the film's screenwriter, C. Courtney Joyner, where he notably debunks that the film was originally written as an official Doctor Strange adaptation (although Charlie Band did definitely attempt to get the rights years earlier).
• The premiere of Demon Squad, which features an interview with the film's director/co-writer Thomas Smith and his wife & co-writer/actress Erin Lilley Smith. J. Elvis Weinstein is also part of this interview.
• A Tribute to... GAMERA vs. GUIRON!, which features the DVD bonus feature So Happy Together: A Look Back at MST3K and Gamera, which is not one of the handful of MST3K DVD bonus features that has been uploaded to the MST3K YouTube channel.
• Jackbox Showdown... CROW vs SERVO, which features Bill Corbett, Hampton Yount, Kelsey Ann Brady, Baron Vaughn, Conor McGiffin and Tim Ryder.
• A Tribute to... THE PUMAMAN!, which features the Surgically Enhanced version of the episode, as well as the DVD bonus feature Walter George Alton on Pumaman, which is in fact one of the bonus features on the MST3K YouTube channel.
• The premiere of The Million Eyes of Sumuru, which features a rare clip from the KTMA episode of this film.
• A Tribute to... SECRET AGENT SUPER DRAGON, which features a unique version of the episode with borders for widescreen displays (which they continued with for the rest of the classic episode tributes), an original music video and Emily's crew playing a game called DIY Spy. Penn Jillette, the voice of Comedy Central in the 90's, also started to serve as the Gizmoplex's announcer starting with this stream.
• A Tribute to... DEVIL DOLL!, which features another Jackbox game and the DVD bonus feature Puppetmaster: Richard Gordon on "Devil Doll", which is not one of the handful of MST3K DVD bonus features that has been uploaded to the MST3K YouTube channel.
• The premiere of The Mask (available in both 2D and 3D), which showcases the winners of that year's Mystery Science Theater 3000 Costume Contest.
• The MST3K Turkey Day Marathon 2022 in its entirety, which features new host segments and the Surgically Enhanced versions of The Sword and the Dragon, The Starfighters, Catalina Caper, The Horror of Party Beach, Warrior of the Lost World, City Limits, Parts: The Clonus Horror and Mitchell.
• Jackbox Showdown... HOSTS vs MADS!, which features Joel Hodgson, Jonah Ray, Emily Marsh, Felicia Day, Patton Oswalt (in his only appearance in these streams to my knowledge) and Mary Jo Pehl.
• A Tribute to... SANTA CLAUS CONQUERS THE MARTIANS!, which features a special post-show feature, filmed in front of an audience at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, called Memories Roasting on an Open Fire, in which crew members showed off family photos of past christmases and the audience was encouraged to roast them.
• A Tribute to... SANTA CLAUS!, which features a special post-show feature, filmed in front of an audience at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania: a sing-along of various MST3K songs from both the original series and the 2017 revival.
• A Tribute to... THE XMAS THAT ALMOST WASN'T!, which features a live panel, filmed in front of an audience at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.
• The premiere of The Christmas Dragon, which is a unique version of the episode. One of the Kickstarter rewards was to see a live screening of the season finale, which took place at the Colonial Theater in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. We get an intro in which we see people in line, at the lobby/concession stand and getting into their seat, followed by Joel and company regarding the audience, including the announcement of Season 14 (heh heh, awkward... although, I guess that actually worked out in the end). Then we get to hear the audience reaction throughout the episode (which I hope is what the Fathom Events screening of the first RiffTrax Experiments episode turns out to be) and cap things off with a post-episode Q&A session with the Colonial Theater audience.
• A Tribute to... OVERDRAWN AT THE MEMORY BANK, which is available in two versions. The riffalong version has Jonah Ray, Hampton Yount, Rebecca Hanson and Baron Vaughn watching the episode live and commentating on it.
• A Tribute to... I ACCUSE MY PARENTS, which is available in two versions. The riffalong version has Emily Marsh, Kelsey Ann Brady, Tim Ryder, and Yvonne Freese watching the episode live and commentating on it.
• RiffTrax Goes to the Gizmoplex, which RiffTrax offered to do if the Kickstarter reached $5.5 million, which it did. This was the first and only involvement Mike Nelson had with the 2017 revival and the only time he and Kevin Murphy did any riffing for the 2017 revival (Bill Corbett had done two shorts with Joel Hodgson and J. Elvis Weinstein for charity during its run). The event features the RiffTrax of Gumby: The Movie in its entirety, followed by Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett doing a live-riff of the short Safety in Offices, which was never released elsewhere. Finally, we get a Q&A session, which is the only recorded interaction (that I know of) between Emily Marsh & Mike, Bill and/or Kevin.

In addition to the above, the Gizmoplex website also housed the #MakeMoreMST3K: Virtual Set Visits and three classes hosted by Joel: CLASS: Intro to Movie Riffing, CLASS: Intro to Inventions & Magic and CLASS: Intro to Robot Puppeteering. These were done as Kickstarter rewards, though are still available to purchase. These were also stream-only, but are now able to be downloaded. Backers of the 2015 Kickstarter who got a screener copy of Reptilicus or the entirety of Season 11 also got a backer exclusive Post-Screening Q&A with Joel and the Cast. I don't own it, but I presume that it is also able to be downloaded. For those who missed out on it the first time, some nice chap posted it on YouTube here. And the first two KTMA episodes, Invaders From The Deep and Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars, were made available as part of The #BroughtBackMST3K BACKER Collection. These were always able to be downloaded, but since they will likely never be released elsewhere, this is your reminder to pick them up if you haven't already (this collection was originally listed with an incredibly high dollar amount, in order to prevent non-backers from buying it, but it was brought down at some point later on).

I'd still like to see all of this material released officially somewhere outside the Gizmoplex at some point, but this is still a VERY pro-consumer decision they've made that must be applauded.