The Satellite of Love will continue its orbit, at least for another season, as Variety reports that Netflix has renewed the cult classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 for another year on its streaming service. Series creator Joel Hodgson, along with cast members Felicia Day and Jonah Ray, made the announcement during the recent Mystery Science Theater 3000 Thanksgiving marathon on YouTube.
The show, which began on a Minneapolis UHF station in 1988, was brought back to life last year after a 17-year hiatus. Affectionately known as MST3K, it appeared on Comedy Central and the Sci-Fi Channel for 10 seasons, spanning 197 episodes, before being cancelled in 1999.
Hodgson and Shout! Factory launched a Kickstarter campaign in November 2015 to revive the series. The campaign broke records with a $6.3 million haul, surpassing the previous mark set for the Veronica Mars film. The 14-episode run on Netflix even included a Christmas special.
Hodgson may have spilled some of the beans about the new season in an interview with the Phoenix New Times back in July, when he was asked about (spoiler alert!) a major character being killed off at the end of the first Netflix season. “Well, I don’t think I should really talk about that right now, you know?” he responded. “I don’t think I can really go into it, ’cause I think there’s going to be a lot of things revealed in the second season that kind of tie it all together and I don’t want to burn all those ideas off.”
At this point, there’s been no announcement of when the new season will debut or how many episodes are planned.
The series follows the adventures of a hapless astronaut (Ray) trapped on a satellite and forced to watch the worst movies imaginable in a never-ending series. His robot companions help keep him sane as Tom Servo (voice of Baron Vaughn) and Crow (voice of Hampton Yount) add their hilarious commentary during the movie. Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt round out the cast, which is executive produced by Hodgson.
Ray was a big fan of the series as a kid, as he revealed to Paste. “I hope this won’t sound too pretentious, but the show was, in a lot of moments of my life, my closest group of friends,” he said.
And now he gets to pilot the Satellite of Love into a brand-new season. “We’ve got movie sign!”
