So, a bit of backstory. I've become quite interested in planes in recent years, only as an adult. Never got to experience them as a kid, so I was never that interested.
Anyway, this flight was conducted to test weird stall characteristics that computer modelling was giving, when the MD-95 was being FAA certified. I'm not sure why they didn't pick this up during DC-9 development, maybe because computer modelling was not that sophisticated yet. EDIT: it's also possible that the MD-95 was pretty decently stretched from the DC-9 and may have had a larger or different tail, but I don't know these aircraft well enough to say one way or the other, but I can do some reading later if you want.
What's going on here is something called deep stall or super stall. It's a characteristic of T-tail aircraft that typically have engines at the rear, like the MD-95/717. In as best of a nutshell as I can, given I'm hardly an expert, basically the tail is in the aerodynamic shadow behind the wings, which causes a stall that is almost impossible to recover from. Not without a shitload of altitude.
Watch the numbers flying by in that video. They were losing something like 1000ft *a second*, unless I'm reading it wrong, which I may well be because I'm not a pilot. They also oversped the aircraft to all buggery doing that stall escape. In fact, the aircraft involved was actually permanently damaged, having been structurally deformed, during this test. As of writing this, it's the only MD-95 to have been written off.
But it verified the unusual computer modelling that was predicted, and it was a necessary test to certify the aircraft. The fix was basically a software one. A lot of T-tail aircraft have a stick pusher, which will force the nose down before the aircraft ever gets into a deep stall. If you're wondering what happens if the stick pusher activates near ground, well the fact is that you have to unstall the wing otherwise you will hit that ground.
Take everything I've said with a grain of salt. I'm not a pilot, and I may never be due to health concerns, but it doesn't make it any less fascinating to me.