The Daily Populous Saturday March 21st, 2026 day edition
Authored by pastemagazine.com and submitted by holyfruits

Great Job, Internet!: Intrepid Mystery Science Theater fan finds and uploads lost episode “K03” We got movie sign! A YouTuber has uncovered a VHS copy of the lost episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, Star Force: Fugitive Alien II.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 has managed to keep a lot of crappy movies in the public consciousness by sheer mocking will. By torturing Joel (or Mike or Jonah), and their robot friends, Crow and Tom Servo, with bad movies, the Mads have helped cinematic sadists keep bad-movie classics like Manos: The Hands Of Fate and The Final Sacrifice in circulation. But given its public access roots, MST3K has had to work to keep its episodes available to said sadists. One, in particular, has become the Holy Grail of Mystery Science Theater ephemera, a lost episode from 1988 made during the show’s KTMA years. But seemingly out of the ether, a YouTuber named Arthur Putie has found a VHS copy of episode 3, ‌Star Force: Fugitive Alien II, also known as “K03,” and uploaded it to YouTube. On Reddit, they wrote that the tape was “found in a garage sale around Minneapolis & finally digitized.”

The movie in question is a compilation film made of episodes of the Japanese series Star Wolf. However, the Mads would again use the movie against the Satellite of Love a few years later in season three.

Though the creators of Mystery Science Theater have always encouraged fans to “keep circulating the tapes,” that hasn’t always been so easy. In 2021, Ivan Askwith, a producer on the Netflix-era MST3K episodes, wrote on Kickstarter that the episode’s whereabouts were still unknown. “If we had KTMA Episode 3, we’d have made it available by now,” he wrote. “But we don’t have it either, so we’ve been wanting to get our hands on copy as badly as everyone else. As far as we know, there isn’t a known copy ANYWHERE.” It was sitting in a Minneapolis garage sale all this time.

“K03” is now more widely available to anyone who wants to check it out.

Darrone on March 21st, 2026 at 12:46 UTC »

The 10 year old me that showed MST3K to his entire summer camp is beaming right now

brandvegn on March 21st, 2026 at 09:37 UTC »

Why does this make me feel so complete inside and out.

zebragrrl on March 21st, 2026 at 08:25 UTC »

This is right up there with the sudden appearance of K01 on archive.org a few years back, and the sizzle reel for "K00" that was shown at a convention.

Do we really have.. all.. of MST3k now, finally?

This really is uplifting news.