For fans of Doctor Who, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and RiffTrax, there will be no bigger day than August 17, 2017, when the RiffTrax team – Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett – take on the classic 20th anniversary Doctor Who story “The Five Doctors” for a live event carried to theaters across the country via Fathom Events.
The show will also be rebroadcast to theaters on August 24. And while the story has been riffed a few times by the Doctor Who-specific convention-based Mysterious Theatre 337 (now where could they have gotten that name), it’s time for five incarnations of the Doctor, as well as assorted Daleks, Cybermen, Yeti, companions, and a somewhat embarrassing leotard-wearing robot, to get the full RiffTrax treatment! (The team previously riffed the two ’60s Peter Cushing Dr. Who films.) But rest assured, fans, it’s not going to get too nasty; that’s not the RiffTrax way, as we certainly clarified in this fun chat with two-thirds of the team, Mike Nelson and Bill Corbett...
IGN: How did the live events become part of your RiffTrax catalog, and how did this Doctor Who show happen?
Bill Corbett: We had seen Fathom Events shows like everyone else when they did the opera and the NPR show, “This American Life.” The only question was how to approach our show visually, and when we got in touch with the production company in Nashville, they said it’s an easy fix. We just do these Brady Bunch opening credits boxes occasionally, but mostly we stay on the movie. We never toyed with the idea of doing silhouettes because that’s an MST3K trademark.
Mike Nelson: For years, we’d wanted to do [Doctor Who] because we obviously thought there would be a good crossover with it. Some of the people within RiffTrax are fans, and we had a lot of requests for it.
IGN: The first date is actually live and simulcast across the country?
BC: Absolutely, and that was one of the daunting aspects of it. It’s not even delayed, so the first time it was a little bit terrifying. Not just with what could go wrong technically, but nerve-wracking unless you’ve been doing The Tonight Show for years. But we got used to it and gained a lot of confidence in our producing partners. They’d done a lot of live award shows with many more moving parts than we do.
IGN: Is there room for ad-libbing in that environment or do you just stick to the script?
BC: You read the crowd a little bit, and [if] something is working better than other things. Some of the wordier jokes get compressed or thrown out on the fly, and we’ll indulge with some other bit of nonsense. That’s one of my favorite parts, the interactivity of it and the feedback we get from the live audience in Nashville. It’s also a lot of fun and gratifying after spending all the time creating the thing. Until we started doing these in 2009, we just went into a studio and recorded; it was nice to reconnect with live people again.
IGN: How did the process of preparing the Doctor Who show begin?
BC: When we first talked with the BBC America guys, they were surprisingly receptive to it. They’re not particularly precious about the older ones especially, but they don’t want to mess up their brand.
MN: Obviously they’re experts on their own product. They knew what we did, and that [“The Five Doctors”] would be one that would fit, especially for a test case for this. They don’t know us through and through, and they want to keep their show pristine... They were very gracious and understood that we’ve done a lot of properties we really like; this is not about dumping on stuff we hate. That would be a completely different product that we just don’t do. We’ve riffed on Casablanca and Lord of the Rings, things that we absolutely adore, so this is just another example of that.
IGN: There’s definitely a lack of mean-spiritedness to your style, which is something the diehard Doctor Who fans would be reassured to know.
MN: Right, we always say that’s how comedy works. If you’re trying to come after this thing with a bazooka when it doesn’t deserve that, people will go, "What was that about? There are funny things about it, but you guys just pounded it into the ground." That wouldn’t work as comedy, even if we wanted to do that, which is not in our temperament either. In order for it to be funny, it has to fit people’s notions of what’s actually happening. People have a lot of fondness for a lot of the stuff that we do, and so our comedy fits that. "Here are the things we’ve noticed as well about this." We note them with the same affection and humor that you guys note them, and that’s why it works. Otherwise, who would want to see a bunch of mean idiots dumping on something? That’s not entertaining.
IGN: That’s what the internet is for!
MN: [Laughs] Exactly, I could go read a YouTube comment post or something.
BC: And it’s from our point of view that we don’t get too rough. Anyone’s mileage may vary. A real fan of Doctor Who may see what we do and be outraged by how we make fun of the Second Doctor’s haircut or something. Luckily for us, our fans at least tend to appreciate the sense of humor.
IGN: Were you both already fans of Doctor Who, or was it more a sort of general awareness?
MN: I was aware of it, and friends were aware of it. I’ll be honest, I was not a big fan. I was a fan of all the BBC things that started to come over when I was a kid in the late ’70s and early ’80s, like Monty Python and Fawlty Towers, so I was aware of it, but only knew of Tom Baker on. So it was also fun to dig into the history as we wrote the script for it.
BC: I had seen the show, but was not a super-fan. It just never happened for me, and I saw the Tom Baker ones on PBS. I usually brushed past it looking for Monty Python. My wife is more of a fan of it now, and my 12-year-old daughter is a super-fan, starting with cutie pie David Tennant, of course! She hasn’t quite dipped into classic Doctor Who, more than anything because of a certain expectation of production values. I did get into it a little bit when Peter Capaldi took over, because I’m such a fan of his. My family went to a local convention and met Capaldi, and he was the sweetest guy in the world.
IGN: How much work was it to get yourself acquainted with the material and riff in a way that would click with fans so well-versed in Who history?
MN: There was a little more specialized stuff, because you’re dealing with something that is loved by others and that know more about it than you do; by the end of it, you better know as much as they do. In the story, as they bring the Doctors together, you have to learn what they’re saying to one another. That was a deep dive: "Who’s this? But he was a different actor?" Getting all of that straight in your own head was important, and we didn’t want to blunder on that.
IGN: And you also had input from the folks at the show itself in terms of continuity and so on?
MN: Like any show, there’s a person who controls the core tone and makes sure it’s represented as it should be...
IGN: RiffTrax recently celebrated its tenth anniversary, and of course Mystery Science Theater 3000 itself has triumphantly returned with a new cast. Do you guys have any thoughts on why we’re experiencing such a renaissance in riffing?
BC: The old episodes never went out of circulation. They kept being released in a pretty nice way by Shout! Factory. And there’s the general trend of bringing stuff back, with the ’80s and ’90s being replayed show by show. It’s a testament to MST3K that people remember it fondly.
MN: I hate to use such banal language, but it’s really cool. When I first went to MST3K and met everyone there, I said to myself, "I know this doesn’t make any sense, but I’m convinced these are some of the funniest people in the world." How they would all be together in that room by sheer coincidence doing that show, I don’t know, but I enjoyed it. The reason it lasts is that everyone is really funny and talented. We were blessed to have them all. So to see them all spread out and continue to do it does not surprise me at all, and I’m delighted that people still like it. That’s my long-winded answer of why I think it still resonates with people.
IGN: What’s in your immediate future, and do you see a long future ahead for RiffTrax and riffing pop culture in general?
BC: If this works out well, we’d love to do another old Doctor Who, because it’s been great fun. Outside of that, we’re looking to see how playing in other places affects us, like being on Comet TV and Amazon Prime. We own our own stuff, so it’s not a complicated chain of command, so we feel pretty excited about just doing what we want to do. I’d love to keep doing the occasional blockbuster movie punctuated with weirder, more MST3K-like movies, and they seem to be endless.
MN: We work so hard at it, and I’m not saying that to be self-aggrandizing. I’m just saying we’re digging tunnels all the time, and when it comes out well and works, it doesn’t surprise me. I’m delighted to be able to do it, I love my work. Sometimes people will ask me, "Don’t you ever get sick of doing this?" Why would I get sick of not actually having to have a real job, even though we work very hard at it, but you know what I mean? Getting every joke right still delights me. We have a lot of talented people working very hard, and that makes it a joy every day.
IGN: One last question for you, Mike. I just happened to be watching Mitchell earlier today…
MN: Oh my God! And you’re still coherent and able to function? You’re made of hearty stock, I congratulate you.
IGN: Thanks! Do you still feel you have to avoid Joe Don Baker?
MN: [Laughs] Even moreso now! We just redid Final Justice as a RiffTrax, so yeah, I think so. I would hope that maybe we could just sit down and have a cigar together and go, "What was this all about?" But I’m still scared, I’ll admit that.
RiffTrax Live: Doctor Who “The Five Doctors” arrives in participating theaters on August 17 and 24 courtesy of Fathom Events. For more information, head over to the Fathom page now.
Find Arnold T. Blumberg on Twitter at @DoctoroftheDead.
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