It’s my birthday, so instead of sitting at my desk, I’ve scheduled a post about something that made me happy last week while I go to get a much-needed shoulder massage.

One of my favorite shows of time is Mystery Science Theater 3000, which popularized “riffing” over terrible movies and featured iconic Midwestern comedians such as Joel Hodgson, Mike Nelson, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett, J. Elvis Weinstein, and Mary Jo Pehl. Though the show has become a worldwide cult classic, with crowdfunded new episodes on Netflix featuring folks like Felicia Day, it started with humble beginnings on a Minnesota public access cable channel, KTMA Channel 23.

During the public access era, MST3K aired 21 episodes, most of which saw the show’s evolution to the comedy powerhouse it would eventually become for Comedy Central and then the Sci-Fi Channel. While many of these early episodes were available on VHS tapes, the first three – Invaders From The Deep, Revenge of the Mysterons from Mars, and Star Force: Fugitive Alien II – only had clips available through the official MST3K website.

Over the past few years, tapes of the first two episodes turned up, leaving Star Force as the only episode thought lost to time. And while the Satellite of Love crew would review the film in Season 3 on Comedy Central, fans would always wonder how the show treated it in its public access era. But on March 20th – just a few days ago – all curiosities were put to rest, as a tape of the Star Force episode turned up at a garage sale, thanks to Reddit user u/arthurputie:

The tape has the official KTMA labeling, meaning it’s legit. Arthur ripped the episode to YouTube and the Internet Archive for posterity, meaning that as of last week, every MST3K episode from the classic era is now available online for fans to watch whenever they want.

MST3K, like most shows with cult followings, has always depended on fans to “keep circulating the tapes” in order to survive, both during and after its heyday. The spirit stays alive with the finding of the Star Force episode, making it one of the most important lost media discoveries of the past year. (It’s up there with the discoveries of “The Most Mysterious Song” a.k.a. FEX’s “Subways Of Your Mind”, episodes 1 and 3 of the early Doctor Who serial “The Daleks’ Master Plan”, and Margaret Hamilton’s appearance on a 1976 episode of Sesame Street.)

Anyway, seeing this once-lost MST3K episode finally see the light made me happy, and while it’s about as rough as any of the show’s earlier fare, it’s enjoyable as a piece of television history once thought lost forever. But just because it’s on YouTube doesn’t mean it’ll last forever. For that reason, I have downloaded it to a USB stick along with all my other episodes of MST3K, just in case a catastrophic Internet outage threatens to make this episode to lost media again.