Recap / Mystery Science Theater 3000 S12 E03: Lords of the Deep

"Y'know, some people see these opening credits in white and gold."

Kinga: That's it, you goobers! We were thinking about going easy on you, but instead it's back to the cinematic salt mines we call... The Gauntlet!
Max: Oh, and is this one bad! It's like if James Cameron made The Abyss over a weekend with stuff from the 99-cent store for one of those 48-hour film festivals!

Film watched: Lords of the Deep (1989)

Tropes pertaining to aforementioned film can be found here.

The Segments:

Prologue

• As Jonah works on the movie vault, Crow and Tom give him blueprints of the Moon 13 facility they found, which he hides from the Skeleton Crew.

Segment 1

• Jonah seems to have found some confidence in The Gauntlet as he unveils the Hand-Dryer Air-Hockey Table and reveals the fatal design flaw in Kinga's Drone Probes.

Segment 2

• The Bots are curious about the jelly-like creature they found in Jonah's shower, and how it seems able to make him blurt out embarrassing secrets.

Segment 3

• Crow and Tom get into an argument, while Kinga and Max shoot a commercial.

Segment 4

• As Jonah and the Bots debate the pros and cons of living in a world of psychic energy, the Mads launch their new daytime talk show. Their first special guest, B-Movie wildlife expert Dr. Donna St. Phibes, brings with her a miniature sea creature.

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation of Lords of the Deep provides examples of:

• Artistic License – Gun Safety:
  Claire: [stepping out suddenly in front of a loaded gun] It's me, don't shoot!
  Jonah: BANG!
  Crow: [as Claire, giggling] You should see your face! You got Claired!
• Canon Immigrant: Dr. Donna St. Phibes (played by Jonah's real-life wife Deanna Rooney) made her debut in the MST3K 2018 Live Show. This episode is her first appearance in the main series.
• Disney Acid Sequence: Claire's incomprehensible future visions are treated like the guys are actually experiencing them. Jonah pulls out a sitar for a trippy psychedelic number.
• "El Niño" Is Spanish for "The Niño": "Ooh, Concorde! That's Spanish for 'with corde'."
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Discussed In-Universe. Crow and Tom are quick to point out how the crew presumably being stuck in a "stinky Muppet brain" with each other for the rest of their lives isn't a very happy ending. They'd still take it over the Gauntlet, though.
• Establishing Shot: The movie is full of them, despite almost all of it taking place in the same underwater base, which gives it a distinct made-for-TV vibe the crew picks up on.
  Crow: Lords of the Deep is filmed in front of a live TV audience.
• Even Nerds Have Standards: A trippy tunnelvision sequence prompts this exchange:
  Tom: So, Jonah, which Doctor Who opening is this? Tom Baker or late Pertwee, perhaps?
  Jonah: Ahh, I dunno. I'm more of a Chris Eccleston guy.
  Tom: WHAT?!
• Evil Puppeteer: Kinga invents Drone Probes — drones with marionettes of Kinga and Max attached — so she can personally harass Jonah and the bots from afar. But Jonah immediately neutralizes them by just cutting the strings.
• Fluffy Tamer: Monster conservationist Dr. Donna St. Phibes, for a given value of "tamed". She appears as the animal segment on Max and Kinga's fake morning show.
  Donna St. Phibes: Actually, last week I accidentally broke a couple of her eggs, so this little rascal keeps sending me visions of my own death! [teasingly, as if this is the cutest thing in the world] She shows me how, but not when!
• Forgettable Character: With almost all of the Lords of the Deep cast being bland identically-dressed white guys, Jonah and the Bots have a very hard time keeping track of who's who. And then they all show up again at the end.
• Hand Puppet: Behind the scenes, the Lady of the Deep from the final host segment. The illusion consists of the puppet perched on a fake falconer's glove while Deanna's actual arm operates the puppet's body and mouth.
• I Hate Past Me: Almost word for word. Not actual time travel, though, just a riff on Yes-Man Engel kind of looking like Big Bad Dobler:
  Crow: [as Dobler] I hate younger me.
• I Resemble That Remark!: During O'Neill's big struggle with Dobler:
  Jonah: [as O'Neill] Hey, I'm no idiot! Just because I got this stupid, wispy poodle haircut and this crap Tom of Finland mustache, and because I misread all of my lines in what could be construed as a Canadian accent... doesn't give you the right to call me... an... idiot!
  • ...and then Dobler knocks him out anyway.
• Kissing In A Tree: Jonah makes Kinga and Max's auto-anima-marionations (read: dolls) kiss and declare their undying love for each other.
• Mind Rape: Donna accidentally destroyed some of the female Lord-of-the-Deep's eggs and it started showing her visions of her own death, then Kinga and Max get Donna to remove the creature's hood (against Donna's advice) and it quickly psychically assaults the entire base.
• Mockbuster: Kinga calls the film a lousy ripoff of The Abyss. Max corrects her that it's actually the end of a whole chain of ripoffs from that film (others were DeepStar Six and Leviathan (1989)), with diminishing returns all the way down.
• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: "Your Urethra and You 2: Dark Territory."
• Overly Long Gag:
  • Tom and Crow's Rock-Paper-Scissors match, using a cutesy childhood rhyme like two of the guys in the film. It gives Jonah enough time to bake a pizza from scratch.
  • As Claire pilots the mini-sub out of dock veeerrrry slooooowly:
    Tom: Ramming SPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE — [screen finally cuts away a full 12 seconds later]
• Playground Song: Jonah suggests the bots settle their argument over whether James Earl Jones is a Capricorn or a Leo by playing a kids' rhyming game (like eeny meeny miny moe, ip-dip, tinker-tailor, etc.) like in the movie. It turns into a barrage of references.
  Apple, peaches, pumpkin pie
  Cherry cobbler, loaf of rye
  Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Zeppo
  Krypto, Streaky, Comet, Beppo^note The Legion of Super-Pets: Superman's dog, Supergirl's cat and horse, and Superman's boyhood monkey, respectively
  Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon
  Studebaker, television^note Lyrics from the Billy Joel song "We Didn't Start the Fire"; Studebaker was a prominent American car manufacturer which folded in 1967
  Emmett Kelly, Bozo Clown
  Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown
  Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire
  Ginger Rogers, dance on air^note Lyrics from the Madonna song "Vogue"
  And afraid of a disaster
  Miss Clavel ran fast and faster^note Comes up about Once an Episode in the Madeline books — kindly nun Miss Clavel is the children's teacher.
  • And of course their Rock–Paper–Scissors game inevitably ties on paper since their hands don't really work, so they go again from "Apple, Peaches..." best two out of three.^note Incidentally, Tom is way off — Jones' birthdate is January 17, 1931, while Leos are born between July 23 - August 22. Maybe he was basing it on James Earl's personality... or something else.
• Pun:
  • Discussed.
    Crow: No thanks. I don't think puns are funny, yet the way they're constructed makes you feel like they should be.
  • ...and then, of course, immediately dropped a few minutes later.
    Crow: [on an awkwardly long held shot of a kitchen sink] Hey, I got it! Let that sink in. Yeah, I'm a pun guy! I like myself and I'm saying puns.
  • "If it weren't for these blinds, it'd be curtains for me."
• Running Gag:
  • The Bots make up plenty of fictional shows while mocking the movie. This episode is notable because their creations lean toward silly reboots on streaming video services:
    • "The comedy stylings of White Guy & White Guy — on Quattro!"
    • "The Kate and Allie reboot! Streaming on Spritely!"
    • "Tommyknockers. Tommyknockers! Tommyknockers: The Seriesinvoked, on Fitzblow."
  • "The kombucha!" "The Tetris!" "The baby elephant sub!" [hums "Baby Elephant Walk"]
  • Giving Claire a high-pitched nasal voice and having her whine during various shots of her with her eyes unfocused and her mouth half-open.
    Jonah: [as Claire] Ehhhh. I don't wanna be captain anymore, ehhh...
• Simpleton Voice: Crow feigns being high and also manages to sound a bit like a backmasked recording for his part of "Trippy Blob".
  Crow: I liike cheeese!
• Shout-Out:
  • The psychedelic tunnel effect at the beginning looks like the zoom-in to Raven-Symoné's eye from her Disney Channel show.
    All: [chanting] That's so Raven, that's so Raven, that's so Raven...
    Crow: [as Claire] ...Whoa, that was so Raven.
  • A few to The Shape of Water.
    Jonah: [as O'Neill] You're not gonna, um, Shape of Water with it, are you?
  • And later:
    Crow: If I told you about her, what would I say? That they lived happily ever after? I believe they did. That they were in love? That they remained in love?
  • When the Boneheads crash into each other while chasing the 'bots: "MySpace!" (as in personal space) "Friendster!"
  • "Jim Henson's The Hunt for Red October Babies." Also a Call-Back to one of the show's longest-Running Gags.
  • "Did Scott Bakula just leap into this guy's body?"
  • Fernandez in the mini-sub:
    Fernandez: I've got an angry fish knocking at my door!
    Crow: [to the tune of the Three's Company theme song] He's been waiting for yoouuu~^note Coincidentally, the lead actress in the movie, Priscilla Barnes, played Terri, the blonde roommate in the final three seasons of that sitcom.
  • "Twenty Thousand Leagues of Their Own Under the Sea."
  • "But there were promises made across this desk! You can't eat the orange and throw the peel away! A man's not a piece of fruit!"
  • "So does it still fail The Bechdel Test if the man they're talking about has turned into a blob?"
  • As Claire comes out of the round submarine hatch/porthole:
    Tom: The Lion, the Witch, and the Dryer Cycle.
  • "Next stop, John Malkovich!"
  • "There's no hair, there's no bone, there's no blood vessels... there's no blood!" "Not a single luxur-y!"
  • The drowning Chadwick drops an ill-explained cylinder on the ocean floor: "Oh, my Horcrux!"
  • "Atreyuuuu!"
  • The rhyme the bots use to settle their argument is chock full of references.
  • Fernandez kind of looks like Ryan Stiles.
    • "RyanStiles DSV."
    • "Knock it off, Fernandez." "This isn't Whose Line."
  • Seinfeld references:
    • The guys do the theme song during one of the movie's many Establishing Shots.
    • "...Hello, Newman."
    • "You're killing independent George!"
    • "They're real, and they're spectacular."
  • Star Wars references:
    • "Finally, a sarlacc pit that's strong enough for a man but pH-balanced for a woman."
    • Gungan Land! "Wesa people gonna have a good time!"
  • Donna St. Phibes's surname is likely reference to Vincent Price's Mad Scientist character in The Abominable Dr. Phibes.
• Show Within a Show: Fake morning Talk Show Good Morning with KINGA and MAX! For the final segment, they even have an animal guest!
• That Reminds Me of a Song: During one of Claire's future visions, Jonah whips out a sitar and plays a George Harrison-esque psychedelic raga.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Sandwich: Movie sign hits before Jonah can finish one bite of the pizza he bakes during segment 3.
• Visual Innuendo: As the decidedly phallic sub slowly goes through the viscous pink membrane of the alien cavern:
  Tom: Whoa! What is this movie rated? I thought it was supposed to be PG, but this is like... PG-13 all of a sudden!

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The sea creature gives the unconscious Claire a hug.