"The time has come for us to stop sticking our bayonets into each other, and start sticking our bayonets into space!"
A TV broadcast warns Americans of the threat posed by extraterrestrial aliens.
This episode provides examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Population: The aliens' only physical difference from humans is their cyan skin.
- Alien Abduction: The aliens steal Micky's clothes and leave them in a trail to lead him to the beam up point, and when he gets there they abduct him into their ship. They then create a robotic replica of him to spy on the human race.
- Alien Among Us: The aliens have been observing Earth from their spaceship and planting robot clones to more closely spy on the humans.
- Aliens Are Bastards: The aliens kidnap and replace humans for no discernible reason other than collection of information.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Pat Paulsen plays an American broadcaster who is extremely paranoid about the possibility of infiltration by aliens from a planet with the vaguely eastern European sounding name "Zladnik".
- Informed Attribute: Played for Laughs. The broadcaster informs the audience that the robot duplicates are almost imposible to distinguish from the humans they're modelled after and the characters act accordingly, even though robot Micky speaks in a robotic voice, hits on random appliances, has backwards feet, and often speaks through a small microphone to the alien headquarters.
- Insane Troll Logic: Quite a few of the broadcaster's arguments:
- "Take the war, for example. Whose fault is it? Certainly not our fault; we're not fighting. It must be those crazy kids; they're the ones doing all the fighting. But is it the kids' fault? Not entirely. Mostly, it's the aliens."
- An invasion of robot spies with backward feet would be extremely dangerous for America because, as the phrase "Put your best foot foward" indicates, a backwards-footed society would be moving into the past instead of the future. "Doctors trying valiently to get to their patients will find themselves stuck against their back wall while trying to race out the door. Plague and famine will spread over the land. All chiropodists will be enlisted into the CIA."
- Mistaken for Aliens: When Davy and Peter seek help from the government, they notice the back of a general's shoes sticking out from under his desk. Convinced he is an alien, they tie him up and run away. Unbeknownst to them, the general had simply taken his shoes off under his desk.
- Otherworldly Communication Failure: Micky calls the aliens' spaceship a "groovy pad". One of them whispers to the other "'Groovy pad': term meaning alien spaceship, no doubt marked for destruction."
- Patriotic Fervor: Played for Laughs. In the final scene, an American flag comes down from the ceiling and the broadcaster stands between two men in military uniforms holding muskets with flags sticking out of them. The Battle Hymn of the Republic plays in the background as he announces, "The time has come for us to stop sticking our bayonets into each other, and start sticking our bayonets into space!".
- Phony Newscast: The entire episode is presented as a hyper-patriotic broadcast which blames all problems in American society on the influence of aliens and urges Americans to take up the fight against them.
- Robo Romance: Robot Micky flirts with the Monkees' refridgerator on Earth, but rejects her because she "wears too much make-up". At the end of the episode, he tells the guys he has a "little blender waiting for [him] on Zladnik".
- Rotten Robotic Replacement: The aliens replace Micky with a robotic duplicate who speaks in a monotone voice and treats all machines as sentient beings.
- Shout-Out: When Micky is walking down the beach, the broadcaster sings a line of a Simon & Garfunkel song: "...feelin' groovy".
