Recap / Futurama S 1 E 5 "Fear of a Bot Planet"

Featuring Gratuitous Alien Nudity

Bender goes on a tirade about humans' mistreating robots, not helped by the latest mission: Delivering a box of lug nuts to a planet controlled by radical robot seperatists. Since the robots hate humans, Bender has to be the one to make the delivery. However, things quickly go awry once he's on the planet's surface, and now Fry and Leela must infiltrate a city of robots.

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Tropes

• Amusing Injuries: At the very end of the episode, Bender attacks Fry with a bottle.
• Believing Their Own Lies: When Fry threatens to breathe fire, a power applied to humans in a propaganda film, the Robot Elders are distracted figuring out whether or not humans can actually do that.
  Robot Elder: Can they really breathe fire, or did we make that up?
  Robot Elder 2: Gee, I can't remember anymore. Though it might just be from that stupid movie.
  Robot Elder 3: Was that the original or the remake?
• Body Horror: Parodied with the robots' B-movie, when the human opens his chest like a metallic armor to show his (poorly reproduced) organs. Robot spectators probably don't realize that a human wouldn't be able to do this, and even if they could they would either quickly die, or would genuinely be a Humanoid Abomination but in no way an actual human.
• Bread and Circuses: This is what the human hunts and anti-human propaganda turn out to be, a distraction from Chapek-9's many troubles, including the Robot Elders' own admitted incompetence and their crippling lugnut shortage.
• By the Lights of Their Eyes: After their trial, Fry and Leela are dropped through a trap door into a dark room. Only their eyes are visible.
• Calvinball: Blernsball makes its first appearance, and even after watching a whole game, Fry still has no idea what's happening.
• Character Catchphrase: The Robot Elders have "SILENCE!"
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • The anti-human propaganda movie Fry and Leela watch claims that humans can breathe fire. When Fry and Leela are cornered by the Robot Elders, Fry threatens to do exactly that, causing the Robot Elders to pause for long enough that he and Leela are able to escape.
    Robot Elder: ...can they actually do that or did we just make that up?
  • The Robot Elders briefly mention a crippling lugnut shortage as being one of the many problems that their anti-human propaganda is a distraction from. Guess what turns out to be in the package?
• Coconut Effect: Aluminum Blernsball bats make a wooden crack, instead of a metallic ping.
• Coincidental Accidental Disguise: While Leela and Fry are sneaking around the robot city.
  Leela: Try to stay with the crowd so no one notices how crummy you look!
  Crummy-Looking Robot: Aww, that was uncalled for.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Fry hears Bender declaring "death to humans", he just remarks that it's good to hear his voice again.
• Compressed Vice: Fry and Leela become noticeably more prejudiced against robots in the early parts of the episode, to make Bender leaving them more convincing. The most obvious example is probably Fry comparing a planet being inhabited by robots to a warehouse being inhabited by boxes.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: The judge of Fry and Leela's trial sentences them to live like Earth robots, performing tedious menial tasks until they become obsolete, whereupon they will be given to an inner-city middle school.
• Demonization: Humans are given this treatment. The Robot Elders use the threat and hatred of humans to distract the robots of Chapek-9 from their real problems, like the crippling lugnut shortage, and a government of corrupt, incompetent Robot Elders.
• Distracted by the Sexy: While human-hunting, Bender gets completely sidetracked by an old porno shop.
• Everyone Has Standards: Despite his frustration with humans and his enjoyment of his new life, when Bender is explicitly told to kill Fry and Leela, he refuses, acknowledging that they have never mistreated robots and he genuinely sees them as his friends.
• Foreshadowing: The robots assume Leela is human. When she insists she's an alien, they ignore her. Word of God states this was intentional, as the series bible established she was a human mutant from the very start.
• Fictional Holiday: Robanukah.
  Bender: You do know I made Robanukah up to get out of work right?
  Leela: Of course.
• Format-Specific Joke: Forced to come up with a plan on the spot, Leela says, "If only I had two or three minutes to think about it!", cuing the first ad break. The next act opens with her putting a plan in motion.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: An in-universe example. At the end of the robot movie, a character warns that humans could be lurking anywhere... including movie theaters!
  Fry: God help us!
• Happy Dance: The Robot is the official dance of Robanukah.
  Bender: (watching Leela and Fry, amazed) Hey, you guys are good. How the hell do you do that?!
• Hoist by His Own Petard: The Robot Elders have disseminated so much propaganda about humans that not even they know what they've made up and what's actually real. Fry is able to use this as a distraction by threatening to breathe fire on them.
• Irony: Bender, a robot, has trouble doing The Robot.
• Kangaroo Court: Fry and Leela's trial, where the prosecutor rests his case (that Fry and Leela are guilty of being humans) within seconds of speaking.
• Kill All Humans: Bender becomes popular among the robots for preaching this viewpoint, as well as killing "some of the more cunning monkeys".
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: After learning Bender's been captured, Leela panics, stating she has no idea what to do, unless she has two or three minutes to think about it. Cue ad break.
• Make-Out Point: One appears in the robots' movie.
• The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: The Robot Elders, the true rulers of Chapek-9, though they also turn out to be a Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering, something they freely admit to.
  Dumb robot elder: Durr, that's for sure.
  Robot elder: Quiet, Jimmy.
• Only Flesh Is Safe: Parodied with this line from a robot in a Show Within a Show: "Incredible. The human was impervious to our most powerful magnetic field, yet he was destroyed by a harmless pointed stick."
  • Though that's more likely a parody of B-Movie monsters being Immune to Bullets while having a Weaksauce Weakness.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: Fry and Leela spend part of the episode rather poorly disguised as robots, but for the most part they get away with it.
• Poor Communication Kills: While Bender is sent to Chapek-9, he got so caught up with his "kill all humans" shtick that he forgot to deliver the package, a fact which is brought up as he, Fry and Leela are climbing to their ship to escape. And when Bender does deliver the package:
  Robot #1: Lugnuts! Precious lugnuts!
  Robot #2: Hooray for the humans!
• Reaching Between the Lines: When Hermes calls the crew through a holographic phone, a pigeon pecks at and carries off the hologram Hermes. When he next shows up, he's badly injured, apparently from the bird.
• Real Men Wear Pink: As a test of their robot-ity, Fry and Leela are asked which option they would prefer; a puppy, a flower from their sweetheart, or a large properly-formatted data file. After giving the correct answer (the data-file), one guard notes that the flower was also a valid option.
• Robot Republic: The planet Chapek-9 was colonized by "radical robot separatists."
• "Second Law" My Ass!: Provides the page quote.
  Bender: Admit it, you all think robots are just machines built by humans to make their lives easier.
  Fry: Well, aren't they?
  Bender: I've never made anyone's life easier, and you know it!
• Sex Signals Death: The episode parodies the B-Movie tradition by having a robot couple making out in a car say things like "It's okay to let our guard down, even for a moment!" before being attacked by a "scary human".
• Shaped Like Itself: The prosecution at Fry and Leela's trial declares Fry and Leela, as humans "are guilty of the crime of being humans", before announcing he rests his case.
• Shout-Out:
  • The first robot to realize Fry and Leela aren't robots roars a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).
  • The judge is quite blatantly a Macintosh 128k.
  • The "Robots At Work" segment is an obvious parody of Tetris.
  • When Leela sneezes and outs herself and Fry as non-robots, the robot who just congratulated them on their hot date night turns and screams in an obvious homage to Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).
  • The sound effects for the Anti-Human Patrol robots are taken straight from Berzerk.
  • The planet's name, Chapek-9, is a reference to playwright Karel Čapek, author of R.U.R., which coined the word "robot".
  • The episode title references the Public Enemy album Fear of a Black Planet.
  • The ending of the robot movie spoofs the Twist Ending of War of the Worlds.
  • Fry and Leela go on trial at the Hall of Justice.
  • When Fry, Leela and Bender escape the town together, the way the robots are chasing them in a perfect identic line reproduces a Kirikou and the Sorceress scene, where the fetishes are out of the Sorceress' hut to chase Kirikou the exact same way.
• Show Within a Show: The robot movie playing in the theater that Fry and Leela hide in is a parody of 1950's B-movies.
• Silence, You Fool!: Silence! The Robot Elders deploy this trope constantly, even to the point of it being a Verbal Tic. "Silence! I concur."
• Special Effects Failure: In-universe. The "human" in the movie is a robot in a bad human suit.
• Sure, Let's Go with That: When Bender is describing humans to the other robots.
  Robot: Is it true that they bite you on the neck when you sleep to drain your transmission fluid, and then you become human yourself?
  Bender: Sure, why not?
• Sustained Misunderstanding: Fry thinks Chapek-9 is uninhabited, even after Bender points out it's inhabited by robots. Fry assumes this is like how a warehouse is inhabited by boxes.
• Take That!: Baseball is described as boring. Fry tries defending it, before pausing.
  Fry: So they finally jazzed it up, huh?
• Tempting Fate: In the Show Within a Show, the robot teenager says "it's perfectly safe to let our guard down, even for a second." Cue the "human" appearing and eating his head.
• Terror at Make-Out Point: The robot movie has the two teenagers parked in a car, listening to a sound file when they hear a non-metallic being has been sighted near Make-Out Point.
• 3-D Movie: Fry and Leela hide in a movie theater and attend a 3-D movie. Leela, having only one eye, is unable to use the 3-D glasses properly.
• Turing Test: Inverted when the guards test Fry and Leela disguised as robots.
  Guard 2: Administer the test.
  Guard 1: Which of the following would you prefer: A — a puppy, B — a pretty flower from your sweetie, or C — a large, properly formatted data file? Choose!
  [Fry and Leela whisper about their options.]
  Fry: Uh, is the puppy mechanical in any way?
  Guard 1: No! It is the bad kind of puppy!
  Leela: Then we'll go with that data file.
  Guard 1: Correct.
  Guard 2: The flower would have also been acceptable.
• Urine Trouble: While disguised as a robot in Chapek-9, Fry has to pee and goes in a corner. A robot passes by and thinks Fry is leaking coolant. It takes several seconds (and even more false tries) before Fry's "leak" solves itself.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Parodied in the robot movie, where the human, who was invulnerable to the robots' magnetic-field weapons, is killed by "a harmless pointed stick."

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