|“||Your weapons are useless against me!||”|
|— The Prince's oft-repeated catchphrase|
|816 - Prince of Space|
|Air Date||August 16, 1997|
|AKA|| Yusei oji|
Invaders from the Spaceship
The Star Prince
|Movie Director||Eijiro Wakabayashi|
|Cast|| Tatsuo Umemiya|
(as Tatsuya Umemiya)
|Preceded by||815 - Agent for H.A.R.M.|
|Followed by||817 - The Horror of Party Beach|
A group of space men from the planet Krankor are led by their leader, Phantom, to invade Earth. But a superhero named Prince of Space (actually a bootblack in disguise) arrives to defeat the spacemen. Although the weapons of the aliens cannot harm the Prince of Space, the Phantom continues to fight, and many plot twists (including capturing a group of elderly scientists) ensue. 
Segment Two: Due to the effects of the wormhole, each member of the SOL is moving at a different temporal speed, which makes convesation problematic, but provides ample chances for the theft of Crow's chicken puppet.
Segment Three: Due to the effects of the wormhole, our Mike is replaced with version from alternate universe where he is also a robot. What little respect Crow and Tom have for Mike is lost as they can't take the ventriloquist dummy styled robot seriously.
Segment Four: Due to the effects of the wormhole, Mike and the Bots are transported to a lovely sylvan glen. Tired of all the wackiness, Mike just goes for a walk.
Closing (Segment Five): Everything appears to be back to normal, complete with a visit from Krankor, and they're even back around the Earth, but Pearl and Brain Guy have reason to suspect they've traveled back in time to Ancient Rome...
Stinger: The Phantom of Krankor's trademark laugh.
- "So is this going to be a super violent porn cartoon?"
Crow's riff plays off the fallacy that most Japanese animation (Anime) is full of scenes heavy with gratuitous sex and violence; particularlly those from the late 80's and early 90's. Do keep in mind, this was a little before Anime became more mainstream to American audiences.
- "OK...two Italian guys dodge mushroooms thrown by a monkey."
Most likely a reference to both Donkey Kong and The Super Mario Bros. (Though Donkey Kong threw barrels.) Mike's ad lib pitch could also be a reference to their creator; Shigeru Miyamoto.
- ("I'm Prince... of Space!") "Ah, hoo-hoo!"
Crow is singing in the style of the singer Prince.
- "Hey! HO-Scale Japan!"
HO scale is the most popular of model railway scales.
- "Hey look! Up there!" "It's Cheap Trick!"
- "We were supposed to meet those Heaven's Gate people here."
Heaven's Gate was a small cult of people that believed that there was a spaceship carrying Jesus following right behind the Hale Bopp Comet. When Hale Bopp passed, they killed themselves.
- Great Hall designed by The LEGO Corporation.
Reference to a toy company that makes interchangeable brick toys.
- "The Gabe Kaplan brigade"
Known for his work on the TV sitcom "Welcome Back Kotter".
- "Paging Mr. Herman"
Deep voice sounds similar to one in the movie Pee Wee's Big Adventure.
- "There goes a narwhal (Servo goes "Neee!")
Reference to the B-52's song Rock Lobster.
- A police car's loudspeaker makes repeated announcements, Servo contributes theme music.
The music accompanies a bus' loudspeaker announcement at the beginning of "We're All Bozos on This Bus" by The Firesign Theatre .
- "Truman Capote sent to fight Krankor!"
Truman Capote, author of "In True Blood", "Breakfast at Tiffany's", and other novels, was..well, how shall I put this, not exactly known to be the rugged type.
- "The aliens have a Young Ones spaceship."
The Young Ones was a British sitcom about a group of students and their bizarre adventures. The remark refers to Vyvyan, the punk rocker of the group, and how the fins on Krankor's ship look kind of like his hair.
- Commerically released on DVD by Rhino in April 2005 as part of The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection: Volume 7, a 4-DVD set with Hercules Unchained, Hercules Against the Moon Men, and The Killer Shrews.
|preceded by: Season 7||MST3K Season 8||followed by: Season 9|
|801||Revenge of the Creature||1997-02-01||809||I Was a Teenage Werewolf||1997-04-19||817||The Horror of Party Beach||1997-08-16|
|802||The Leech Woman||1997-02-08||810||The Giant Spider Invasion||1997-05-31||818||Devil Doll||1997-10-04|
|803||The Mole People||1997-02-15||811||Parts: The Clonus Horror||1997-06-07||819||Invasion of the Neptune Men||1997-10-11|
|804||The Deadly Mantis||1997-02-22||812||The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies||1997-06-14||820||Space Mutiny||1997-11-07|
|805||The Thing That Couldn't Die||1997-03-01||813||Jack Frost||1997-07-12||821||Time Chasers||1997-11-22|
|806||The Undead||1997-03-08||814||Riding with Death||1997-07-19||822||Overdrawn at the Memory Bank||1997-12-06|
|807||Terror from the Year 5000||1997-03-15||815||Agent for H.A.R.M.||1997-08-02|
|808||The She-Creature||1997-04-05||816||Prince of Space||1997-08-16|