I got MST3K Vol. 10 on DVD for Xmas and while watching it, a question occured to me:

Did they ever explain in any episode why the Satellite of Love (which seems to be more ship than satellite) is shaped like a dog bone? Is there some significance to that shape, or was it done just for wackiness' sake? Was Dr. Forrester planning on building another ship shaped like a dog?

I figured it was a reference to the celebrated graphic edit in 2001:A Space Odyssey, where a shot of thrown-in-the-air bone cuts to a shot of a spaceship.

Hmm... hadn't thought of the bone/weapon connection. Could be!

By the way, in 2001 the bone doesn't cut to a spaceship--according to Kubrick himself it's an orbiting nuclear platform, which he said was the ultimate weapon.

It's just a show, you should really just relax.

Jesus Christ man, the dude was just asking a question! If somebody wants to know why a spaceship was designed a certain way, or what a TV character's street address is supposed to be, or whatever, just let them enjoy the damn show!

What a blatant

However, this should probably be somewhere else besides DVDTalk. Is there a forum for general discussion of TV shows?

It's a quote from the theme song.

Oops, sorry. I'm a moron.

My apologies, caiman. It was a good joke and I crapped on it. My bad.

Also, Satellite of Love is a reference to the Lou Reed album, according to the MST3K creators.

That was my bad. I could have sworn I was asking this in TV Talk.

^ I'm not aware of an album called Satellite of Love, but the song is one of my favorite Lou Reed songs!

I have every single episode of MST3K on either DVD, VHS or VCD, so I'm going to try to find the episode where the SOL is changed into a bone shape. When I watched it on KTMA (the local station it was on in my home state of Minnesota), it had a much different shape.

Anyhow, the reason it was bone shaped was to trick some demon dogs back in the first Comedy Central season. I need to look into which episode it was.

It's bone shaped because there's a round shaped room at one end, where the skits take place, a looong hallway that they go down when it's movie sign, and a big movie theatre at the other end. Bone shaped.

Yeah, I've heard that too, but in the film there's nothing we hear or see that denotes it as a nuclear weapon anything. It looks like something orbiting, alright. I always took it from the film that it was man's first tool graphic-matched with man's most recent tool.

Sorry, but if he has to explain it outside of the film, it either isn't that important or it's shoddy filmmaking.