Trailer Park : Too good for Sci-Fi channel.

[Flangepart]

Remember Trailer Park, hosted by Tom Davis?
Remember when the Sci-Fi channel had Genre related shows, like Sci-Fi Vortex, with its ever roudy "War Room?" Sci-Fi Buzz, where Mike Jerrick (Currently on Fox News), let us know about comming goodies?
Remember when they had MST3K?
Well, so do i. And the nostalgia is galling me.
The best part of "Buzz" , "Trailer park", and "Vortex", was the good honest, and often loud, opinions expressed. Even when you disagreed with the speakers, it was at least thought provoking.
Can't get that now! What, an opinion that slams a sponsers product? Egad! Must...stiffel...ideas....
Now, the only good thing is "Tremors: the series"...and they will screw with that, i don't doubt it.....
(Sigh)....am i the only one nostalgic for the "Good ol' days?"

[yaddo42]

I miss "Trailer Park" because of the weird theme shows they had like: sequels, robots, giant monsters, etc. I really loved when they mixed in trailers for old and obscure stuff rather than just trailers for blockbusters we all remember. That was my favorite part of USA's "Reel Wild Cinema" as well.

"Sci-Fi Buzz" turned me on to Terry Prachett books, I used to bypass them at the bookstores because I read very little in the way of fantasy or sword & socery these days. But the man was so funny in the brief segment they had on him I went and bought the first book of his I could find the next day, never looked back. Plus that show also had those Harlan Ellison commentaries where he would step on people's toes and spout off. That stupid show they replaced it with had Chase Masterson in various metallic skimpy outfits and bodysuits, which was nice, but I would have traded the eyecandy for the chance to see Ellison insult people who needed to be insulted on a weekly basis.

I miss "Farscape", and hate the way it went from being treated as the jewel in the crown of SciFi to the poor stepchild that the channel was doing a favor to its fans by letting it stay on for four seasons.

MST3K was better when it was still on Comedy Central and was great when Joel ws still there. I never liked Mike Nelson as much, and skimmed his book at the store, just made me think less of the guy.

I hate the new "reality" series which have all sucked: "Dream Team", that John Edward huckster, "Scare Tactics" (prank shows are all s**t to me). I know they're cheap to make, and easier to make a profit off of but they still are terrible and I won't watch them.

I loathe UFO/Roswell/gray aliens/Area 51/abduction stories, movies, psuedo-documentaries, etc.. It's all as bad and boring as listening to endless JFK conspiracy buffs. So "Taken" was 20 hrs. that I knew I would never watch. The "X-Files" only rarely interested me and to have it running on TNT,  SciFi, and weekend syndication on the two Fox affiliates we get locally is just a waste to me.

"Tremors" - the movies were better, and Burt is a supporting character not a lead.

"Stargate" - I've tried to get into this series, just can't do it.

Those straight-to-video elsewise "SciFi Pictures Originals" are mostly a joke. I figure that if SciFi gets to show a movie before anybody else on TV it's because no one else wanted it.

Every time I hear what they have in the pipeline like that "reimagining" of "Battlestar Galactica" or more of "their original movies" I get disgusted. When I read they are making movies and miniseries out of some respectable scifi books and novels I get my hopes up, then I remember what a mess they made of "Riverworld".

[Chopper]

I LOVE TRAILER PARK! that show had some of the coolest vintage trailers & it even got me exposed to a lot of cult films i new nothing about. take for example Roman Polanski's: Fearless Vampire Killers and Demon Seed.
darn those were the days. and i dearly miss MST 3000, it pains me in the heart almost. that was a great show!

[Dunners]

they canned MST3K they canned farscape and they can half of their shows every season, they practacly make a living off showing nothing but bad scifi movies now.

They totally blow. Mike sucks? I strongley disagree sir, you cant compare Mike to Joel. They're both funny and they're both unique to watch. Its unfair to both of them for us to compare them to eachother, they spent a good portion of their lives to make us all laugh.

Try reading mikes books as opposed to glancing at them, he's a funny guy. Oh wait you're anti mike...wait a minute if you're anti mike then why're you glancing thru his books? Don't tell me you did all that just to complain here on the Badmovies forum.

[Feathertop]

Yaddo42,
I whole-heartedly agree with much of what you say about MST3K. I felt it absolutely SUCKED during the Sci-Fi Channel years. To me the problem with the show wasn't so much Mike as it was the departure of all the other talented people: Joel Hodgson, Frank Coniff, Trace Beaulieu, even Josh Weinstein (On top of his work in the show's first nationwide season buy some of the local KTMA episodes on the 'net like CITY ON FIRE, HANGAR 18, COSMIC PRINCESS etc and it will make you wish Josh had hung around).
To me  the MAIN problem was the Godawful Pearl and the fact that the Host Segments(always the most uneven part of the show) became so terrible by the Sci-Fi Channel years that they BEGGED the question: "If THIS is the best these people can do for a two or three minute comedy sketch then where the HELL do they get off ridiculing OTHER PEOPLE'S creative efforts?" )
I had to put up with endless abuse from friends of mine who never got Comedy Central on their cable provider and only saw MST3K during the Sci-Fi Channel years. They remembered me mentioning the show over the years and checked it out on Sci Fi only to feel the appropriate level of contempt for it. They would often needle me with questions about how I could POSSIBLY find "That piece of sh*t" amusing. One friend even accurately opined "Finally - a comedy show that even Gallagher can look down his nose at!"
Worst of all, of course was the anti-comic "Pearl" and the smug "I'm being incredibly funny right now" look she always had on her face no matter how lame she was being. (Plus by then the Host Segments seemed like just an excuse for everyone to try to get their faces on camera.)  
Is there something about the Sci-Fi Channel that can suck the entertainment value out of ANYTHING?

P.S. Another souring part of the whole MST3K experience is how deranged many of the fans grew toward the end of the show's run on Comedy Central. Sorry, folks but NO station has to listen to a show's fans regarding when it should air and whether or not programming announcements should air during the "love theme".
I started shying away from admitting that I liked the show in public around  that time for fear of being identified with the notoriously unhinged fan-boys/girls of the show.

[Feathertop]

My skeptical friends would immediately admit to seeing what I liked about the show once I showed them some tapes of the program's early, quality years.

[kriegerg69]

The Trailer Park section of SciFi.com appears to be gone, but they've kept this directory up for a long time with a bunch of nifty trailers:

http://www.scifi.com/freezone/trailerpark/

[Brother Ragnarok]

I remember seeing all these shows when we first got our satellite dish installed about five years ago.  There was another show, the first original Sci Fi show, and I can't remember the name of it.  Four college co-ed looking people, hot black-haired chick who's now in the Dead Zone series...I dunno.  That, and I remember an AMAZINGLY bad American rip-off of Red Dwarf that was so blatant in its stealing it even used some of the Dwarf jokes damn near verbatim.  Only aired one ep, if anyone can refresh me as to the names of these shows I'd be grateful.
I remember even before that watching it at my grandma's house (she had one of those archaic six-foot wide ground-mounted dishes).  I used to see Dark Shadows (original and revival series), Space Nineteen and Nine Pence (or Space: 1999 as a few people called it...), and even Killdozer (which I remember rocking really hard) along with a bunch of other cool stuff.  And they used to have the greatest production logo, with that complicated clock thingy that had an eyeball and a pendulum that looked like a pirate ship and whatnot.
But I think the Sci Fi episodes of MST are actually better than the older ones.  Not that I don't love all of them, but the Sci Fi ones seemed a bit...meaner and more sarcastic.  Joel always kept things mellow, but Mike is more inclined to vicious attacks on things that pretty much need vicious attacking.

Brother R

[TC]

The only show that I can comment on is MST3K....I enjoy the movie riffing portion of the show from the Sci-Fi Channel era as much as the Comedy Central episodes.  However, I really dislike the segments with Pearl and ect, so I tend to fast forward through them, if I'm watching them on tape.   Contrary, I can watch the entire episodes from the Comedy Central era since they still crack me up.

[jmc]

I liked Professor Bobo, but you're right about some of those bits being hard to get through.

[SkullNinja]

Sci-Fi got cold feet with some of their early talk format programming like the "War Room" because they were getting twitchy about the guests bashing bad sci-fi, which come to find out, Sci-Fi seems to like to air. I don't think they the powers that be at the channel ever grasped the concept that most of their base audience (not the fanboys/dorks/nerds/geeks/whatever you want to call them, let's just say the non-rabid members of the community), love bashing what is bad. Harlan Ellison was fricking hilarious when he'd say it like it is, without pulling any punches.

The current management at Sci-Fi is incredibly clueless about what the audience wants. The channel has become a showcase for direct-to-video bad movies and assorted nonsense. I don't want to see John Edward, the fraud (I sense you had a relative with a name starting with a J or a K or an M or possibly a G). If I wanted a sideshow, I'd go to the circus.

What I would've like to have seen Sci-Fi do is take those crap movies they show and give them to Best Brains for the MSTie treatment and then show something like Habitat on their premiere night and then on Saturday have Mike and the Bots demolish it. And from everything not good I'm hearing about the Battlestar Gallactica mini-series, they need to get them in on the action for that, too.

It seems that anything with the slightest bit of edge or that might make you think is ripped off of the line up and relaced with more pureed mush. Sci-Fi Vortex is too intellectual for our fan base, lets air a sceening of Kazaam, instead.

There are certain programs that they need to shelf indefinitely that they seem to have a hard on for showing. Knight Rider for instance. It may have had science fiction roots to it, but it wasn't sci-fi. It was really sucky "men's adventure". (Techinically, it was crap.).

If they are going to continue with their current crap, I think they should change their name to the Dork & Geek Channel. It's be far more accurate.

[yaddo42]

Dunners, I saw Mike Nelson's book, "Movie Megacheese" on the shelf while browsing at a bookstore, I was curious what his humor would be like away from the MST3K format. I was trying to give his humor another shot. If the book didn't catch my fancy after several minutes of reading bits and pieces, why would I buy and read the whole thing?

Why should I give any performer a break because they spent a good portion of their life to make us laugh. For example, "Super Dave" Osborne has spent a good portion of his life to make people laugh, but he's never been funny to me, I'm not going to stop saying that I hate his humor just because he has been doing it for a while. And why not compare Joel and Mike? They were on the same show, although it had a different feel during the time each one was on the show. That would be like saying you can't compare how much you liked or disliked a show like "M*A*S*H" as the cast changed over the years. I like the Mike Nelson Comedy Central era better than the Mike Nelson SciFi era, but that has to do more with the loss of Dr. Forester and the addition of his mom as well as the narrowing of the scope of the kind of movies they watched from all kinds of b-movies and genre films to mostly scifi and fantasy flicks. I can understand the reasoning for the change, I just think it helped hurt the show.

Besides I am still curious what the various people from the show are doing now that it's over, outside of just checking the IMDB. I've seen Frank Conniff's name attached to cool stuff like "Invader ZIM" as well as lame crap like "Sabrina, The Teenage Witch". As much as I prefer Joel's humor to Mike's, I was surprised and a little disappointed to see Joel's name listed as a writer for Jimmy Kimmel's ABC crapfest. Hey, a man's got to make a living, but I couldn't believe that even with his talent on the show that it's still that bad and stupid.

[Flangepart]

Glad to know i'm not alone, guys.
Harlin Ellison may be pretentious, acerbic, opinionated and sometimes a snob...but he was NEVER boreing! John Carpenter and other writers got the chance to have a chat with the audience, and it was intresting to see interviews with people who had thought provoking things to say.
Any wonder we miss Vortex and the buzz?
As Feathertop knows, i'm primarily a "Joel" type. Mike Nelson's MST years were more "Frat boy" with the bots, while, Joel was Crow and Tom's "Dad", and that marked the style of the relationship. I still like many of the film riffs of the Sci-Fi years, but, yeah TC, the host stuff is not realy as good.
Some of the best host gags...when, dureing "Godzilla Vs. Megalon", Crow and Tom did a killer parody of Orvell reddenbacker. Thats a Joel year goodie.
Still....i do like to sing along with the "Werewolf medely" at the end of "Werewolf"...Tusks!
Sci-Fi....thou dost vaccume.

[Dunners]

but I think yer being way to critical on this, " Just repeat to yoruself its just a show I should really just relax"

[Flangepart]

Think Andrew might use that as the offical motto of Badmovies.org? At least a good second...