As promised, now that the WGA strike is over preparations are beginning for Season 14. In addition to new episodes and shorts they’re planning to remaster older episodes.
They won’t start filming until SAG has a contract, but they’re getting the ball rolling. Help spread the word!
If anyone is interested in the math of this, meaning, what you get out of it for what you put in, here’s my way of thinking.
I look at new MST3K in the vein of RiffTrax. Not beholden to a network and therefore not getting production funding either, so they have to directly charge for their output.
In the case of RiffTrax, they charge about $12 for a full-length HD VOD release and about $2 for a short. Carting those numbers over to this campaign, let’s see what we get.
If the lowest goal is reached … That’s 6 episodes and 6 shorts for a total of $84. (There’s also the “enhanced” older episodes, but as those won’t be available for download, I’m ignoring them for the moment.)
If the middle goal is reached … That’s 9 episodes and 9 shorts; a total of $126.
If the top goal is reached … 12 episodes, 12 shorts; $168.
Which goal will be reached? Who can say? The season 13 Kickstarter finished with $6.5 million. That’s over the middle goal but shy of the top goal by almost a million. I think reaching the middle goal is very likely with the top being a bit of squeaker. (Just my thoughts.)
Conclusion? Donating at the $85 level is simply a bargain. You get each of the episodes and shorts as a download, PLUS access to the Gizmoplex which – I’m hoping – will include a ton of livestreaming events and those were a highlight of season 13 for me. (Oh yeah, and all those “surgically enhanced” episodes, too.)
And anyone who (like me) backs the annual RiffTrax kickstarter is probably helping to subsidize those Rifftrax prices a bit, since they always raise over the goal.