YMMV / Mystery Science Theater 3000 S08 E20: Space Mutiny

• Funny Moments: Really, the entire damn episode is nothing but funny moments and little wonder it's one of the most loved installments of the series.
  • This little bit:
  Kalgon: Is this the man?
  Mike: Why no sir, you da man.
  • The attempt by Big McLargehuge to give an excited "WHOO!" that comes across as a girly shriek instead.
    Mike: Who took my purse!?
    • Surprisingly, no Michael Jackson jokes. Big McLargeHuge definitely made a Michael Jackson-noise there.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Using the whole film as riffing material, given that it was made in South Africa during The Apartheid Era. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 crew only found out about it after they'd completed the episode (the fact is never mentioned in the credits), with one of Servo's lines indicating that, prior to this, they may have mistakenly assumed the film to be Canadian.
  • Others have pointed out that Native Africans have already suffered enough under Apartheid, and being in a movie like this will only make their lives worse.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The sketches about encyclopedias were remarkably accurate predictions of Wikipedia. Especially the part about numerous Gwen Stefani articles.
  • "Big McLargeHuge" became one of many Fan Nicknames for Bulk Biceps.
  • Pearl promises that Space Mutiny will be the SOL crew's last ever movie, which she reneges on in the following episode. In that episode, a spare Crow gets left behind in 1985, which means he never gets to finish watching Time Chasers. So from the spare Crow's perspective, Space Mutiny was technically the last movie he had to watch in its entirety.
• Hype Backlash: It's often regarded as one of the series' finest episodes, so it's subjected to this by both longtime fans who think other episodes are superior, as well as new viewers who don't see what the big deal is.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • After Rifftrax announced it would be riffing the movie live, fans immediately started taking the image of Ryder from The Stinger of the episode and placing his screaming face everywhere.
  • The Many Names of David Ryder eventually got it's own dance mix "We Put Our Faith in Blast Hardcheese".
• Shrug of God: As far as the puzzling lack of references to the recognizable, possibly plagiarized use of Battlestar Galactica (1978) footage, fans have offered up their own explanations. Some simply assume that the show's staff was simply unaware of the fact which is plausible as the show was a footnote by 1988 when the film was made, let alone by the time the MST3K episode was made in 1997. Other's speculate this was just too easy a target and wanted to avoid this as a Running Gag at the expense of the other riffs they could make on everything else. When asked about this, their cryptic answer was "Guilty as charged"!. In the Rifftrax version years later, they do finally make a mention of it with a snarky aside to the fans who have been asking about it all these years.
  Mike: Yes, we know it's the "Battlestar Galactica" ship, you nerds.^note It has been pointed out that Mike and the rest of the MST3K cast don't claim to be science fiction fans. This is why it was considered quite plausible that they may not have been familiar with the original Galactica series. Like everyone else, however, they most certainly would have been familiar with the franchise at least, by the time of the Rifftrax remake of Space Mutiny.
• Values Resonance: The host segment where Crow believes himself to be a Bellarian only to realize he's ultimately just a "gullible freak". While played for laughs, the entire thing becomes especially nuanced in The New '10s and The New Twenties where questioning your gender identity became more commonplace and accepted. Crow concluding that he isn't a Bellarian can also serve as An Aesop: it's okay to experiment with your identity and still end up where you started, since it just means understanding yourself more.