As thousands of adoring nerds will be happy to tell you, Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) is coming back. The long-running cult TV show recently launched a Kickstarter campaign, and its fans were quick to support it; with 17 days to go, the campaign has raised more than $2.6 million and ensured a new three-episode season.
With funding secured, fans began to wonder about the cast of the upcoming MST3K season. As creator Joel Hodgson explained, most of the show’s original cast decided not to reprise their roles. That left a lot of open positions, and in filling them, Hodgson has delivered an exciting bit of casting news: Felicia Day, known for her roles in web programs like The Guild and Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, will play the mad scientist who serves as MST3K’s primary antagonist.
The plot of MST3K, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is explained in the show’s theme song: A mad scientist kidnaps a janitor and shoots him into space, where he must watch and comment on terrible movies while accompanied by his snarky robot sidekicks. The janitor, played by Hodgson in the original version of the show, will now be portrayed by Jonah Ray of the Nerdist network. Both Nerdist and Day’s Geek & Sundry network are owned by Legendary, and in a tweet, Day said she “will terrorize the hell out of Jonah Ray.”
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Day’s character will replace the one portrayed by Trace Beaulieu in MST3K’s original run. “I…knew, from the start, that the next Mad should be a woman,” said Hodgson in a Kickstarter update he posted on November 23rd. He then appeared alongside Day in a video posted on the Geek & Sundry website.
The decision to cast Day has generated a considerable amount of excitement on the Internet. There are still more than two weeks left in the MST3K Kickstarter campaign and plenty of stretch goals it can hit before it ends.
