Mystery Science Theater 3000/Recap/S06/E12 The Starfighters

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


"So basically, according to themselves, the Air Force is a bunch of leather-faced, not-so-bright, heavy-drinking dull-witted speed freaks who poop in their pants and can't make it with women. Right? Am I right?"
Tom Servo

Film watched: The Starfighters

The MST3K presentation provides examples of:

  • Bawdy Song: The United Servo Academy Mens' Chorus begin an impromptu round of Mademoiselle from Armentières. For those who don't know the song, it's the tale of a French innkeeper's daughter and two German soldiers.
  • Big No: Crow, when tech support hangs up on him.
  • Broken Aesop:

Servo: So basically, according to themselves, the Air Force is a bunch of leather-faced, not-so-bright, heavy-drinking dull-witted speed freaks who poop in their pants and can't make it with women. Right? Am I right?

Crow: Bob Dornan? The Congressman?
Servo: They couldn't get Rush Limbaugh?

  • Hilarious in Hindsight: The crew had used the term "poopie" for years, so it was a delightful coincidence Starfighters employed it as well.
  • Large Ham: Mike and the 'bots pull out all the stops while advertising COWBOY MIKE'S OWN ORIGINAL RED HOT RIC-O-CHET (BANG!) BBQ SAUCE!! IT'S BOLD!!!

Mike: C'mon, steak, you want some?!

Mike: "Just Lie Back and Think of England's airspace."

Mike: I think there's more nothing in this film than any we've ever seen.

  • Running Gag: The ongoing Double Entendre concerning the numerous "refueling" sequences. At one point they even joke about the fact that they've done every joke they can think of about them. (And then Crow comes up with a new riff anyway.)
    • Riffs about how ugly many of the faces are.

Mike: Is your face odd, misshapen? Join the Air Force!

    • Once, the "poopie suit" gets mentioned, Mike and Bots run with the gag. Bonus points for the theme song: "Flying high in the blue, free to do, number two, poop-oop-ee-doo!"
      • Bonus points for the fact that MST3K had been using "Poopie!" as an Unusual Euphemism before the film was riffed.
  • Sophisticated As Hell: When rescuing a pilot who screwed up and had to eject over the desert:

Mike: Yes, we have a visual ID on Numbnuts...
Crow: At ease, Lieutenant Loser!

Crow: We're gonna bomb 'em back to the Jazz Age!

  • Technology Marches On: Rather inevitable with Crow boasting about his 90mhz Pentium PC, with 32 MB RAM, 4x CD-ROM, Soundblaster 16 sound card with a 28800 baud modem.
    • And having to assign COM ports. MS-DOS sucked.

Tom: "Looking for UART at Fx1050", what does that mean?
Crow: I don't know! I must have configured my COM ports incorrectly!

    • Also a nice reminder of the days before we hadn't quite settled on what the Internet should be called given the massive array of protocols back then (HTTP not being as big as it is now) and a few (i.e. a lot of) people latched onto the clumsy term of the "information superhighway". It's buzzwordy!
    • And when Crow finally does get online, his running commentary is said to indicate that he has logged onto Prodigy (the self-contained online service, not the ISP it later converted to).