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(The title screen displays the title backwards)

Eht Numah Srotacilpud?

- Crow


The Movie[]

Main article: The Human Duplicators (film)

Synopsis[]

A secret agent investigates a mysterious visitor who is creating android duplicates of prominent scientists to prepare Earth to be invaded by hostile aliens.

The Episode[]

Host Segments[]

Human2

William Conrad Fridge Alert

Prologue: The Bots make suggestions to Joel about ways they could be improved. Gypsy wants a cab forward design, Crow wants more capacity to love, and Tom has a few grandiose suggestions for himself.

Segment One (Invention Exchange): The Mads have the sillies because of their ridiculous invention, the William Conrad Fridge Alert. Joel demonstrates his awesome-looking beanie chopper, which unfortunately doesn't live up to expectations.

Human3

Tom addresses his duplicates

Segment Two: Joel asked the Bots to make model spaceships from ordinary household items. Gypsy's shows her resourcefulness, Tom's shows a lack of initiative, and Crow's shows his workmanship. Joel makes one too, and Crow derides his choice of materials.

Segment Three: Tom Servo takes a cue from the movie and duplicates himself many times over. Things don't work out as planned when his duplicates refuse to do his bidding. Joel takes Tom away for a time-out and the duplicate Toms suddenly turn on a defenseless Crow.

420-beaumont

Hugh Beaumont's suburban spaceship.

Segment Four: A grumpy "Hugh Beaumont" makes a return visit via the Hexfield Viewscreen.

Segment Five: Crow and Tom come out of the robot closet after reading through an issue of the magazine Robot Nation. Joel is not surprised. A letter is read and "William Conrad" actually shows up in Deep 13.

Stinger: Two doppelgangers are laughing as they choke each other.

MST3K Cast[]

Regular Cast

Guest Cast

Trivia[]

  • Gypsy's model in Host Segment Two includes a leg from a Kenner Star Wars Imperial AT-AT Walker toy from The Empire Strikes Back. The same toy was used to construct version 3 of Cambot.
  • This episode aired twelfth during Turkey Day '93.

Callbacks[]

Running Jokes[]

  • References to Hugh Beaumont's role as Ward Cleaver on Leave it to Beaver.
    • Crow:"The boys did what!? They duplicated Lumpy?"
    • Tom: "Yes June... I'm still at work...."
  • The bots snickering at Professor Dornheimer's name.
  • Joel and the bots imitating Richard's Keil's line deliveries.
  • Joel and the bots imitating Gail's nasally voice.
  • The occasional "blind joke" when Lisa sometimes appears.

Obscure References[]

MST3K_420_Promo

MST3K 420 Promo

  • The William Conrad Fridge Alert.
William Conrad was a heavyset actor best known as the star of the TV series Cannon and Jake and the Fatman.
  • "Aleani 'Bambi' Hamilton? She's a wrestler! I know it!"
Joel is focusing on the name "Bambi" which was the stage name of female professional wrestler Selina Majors. The actress Aleani "Bambi" Hamilton herself was never a wrestler.
  • "You rang? Oh wait... I'm NOT Ted Cassidy."
Ted Cassidy was an equally tall actor to Richard Keil (at 6 ft 9 in.) who was best known for playing Lurch on The Addams Family TV show. Dr. Clayton Forrester used both actors' names to introduce Joel to the previous experiment, The Amazing Colossal Man.
  • "Marilyn, you've got another date!"
A reference to The Munsters. Marilyn was the blonde bombshell niece of Herman and Lily whom the family (including Marilyn herself) thought was odd-looking.
  • "Oh, Dream Weaver! Oh, Dennis Weaver!"
"Dream Weaver" is a pop song by Gary Wright, released in 1975. Dennis Weaver was an actor best known for the Steven Spielberg film Duel and the TV series McCloud.
  • "The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox are calling."
The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox is a comedy western from 1976.
  • "Oh, George Nader... he's untalented at any speed."
Unsafe at Any Speed is a 1965 book written by Ralph Nader documenting automotive companies' reluctance to research or incorporate basic safety features and certain fatal design flaws in a number of popular specific car models.
  • "He must have read Getting to Yes..."
Getting to Yes is a best selling guide to business negotiation techniques.
  • "Calling Scott Tracy."
Episodes of the 1961-62 The Dick Tracy Show typically begin with a police dispatcher saying "Calling Dick Tracy..." Scott Tracy is a member of the team from the Gerry and Sylvia Anderson puppet TV show Thunderbirds.
  • "Kevin McHale, no!"
Kevin McHale is a retired professional basketball player who spent most of his career with the Boston Celtics. At 6'10" tall, he was almost as big as Richard Kiel.
  • "Hey, it's the Maytag Repairman!"
The Maytag Repairman is the center of a long-running advertising campaign for Maytag appliances. The premise is that Maytag appliances were so well-made that the Repairman never receives service calls, and is therefore often bored and lonely.
  • "I'm here for the Mr. Drysdale audition."
Mr. Drysdale was the often-exasperated banker played by Raymond Bailey on The Beverly Hillbillies.
  • "It's the office of Daniel Ellsberg's electrician."
Daniel Ellsberg was a RAND corporation military analyst who leaked documents from the Pentagon (known as the "Pentagon Papers") in 1971 which proved that the Johnson administration's true estimates of the casualties, cost and length of the Vietnam War were several times greater than those released to the public. An effort was made to discredit Ellsberg, including an attempt to gain access to confidential records in his psychological therapist's office.
  • "Stop in the name of Tom Bodett!"
Tom Bodett was the spokesman for the Motel 6 motel chain. He repeated their slogan "We'll leave the light on for ya" in every commercial.
  • "Doctor Munson Honeydew!"
Dr. Bunsen Honeydew is a scientist/inventor character from The Muppets.
  • "Knew your father, I did!"
Referencing the MST3K mainstay Mr. B. Natural and the line spoken by Yoda to Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back about Luke's father before Luke discovers his father was Darth Vader.
  • Mr. Martin, Glenn Martin. Crow: "...Glen Ross"
A pun on the title of Glengarry Glen Ross, a 1984 drama by playwright David Mamet.
  • "I deny them my essence."
A quote from Gen. Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove. General Ripper is paranoid delusional, believing Russians have tainted his "essence" with fluoridated water and that women wish to steal his essence from him.
  • "Uh... I gotta go to the bathroom and get a gun out of the toilet."
A reference to the assassination plot in The Godfather.
  • "Heads we do, tails we don't." It's an Etruscan penny.
Some Etruscan coins had blank backs, so the options when flipping one are literally "heads or nothing." (Had he spun such a coin as we see in the movie, the weight distribution would have almost guaranteed it would fall heads down.)
  • "Timothy, Timothy, Hungry as hell, no food to eat."
Taken from the lyrics to "Timothy" by The Bouys. The song is about three men trapped in a collapsed mine who resort to cannibalism (though Joel would claim in Episode #421 that Timothy was a duck).
  • "I Sing the Body Pathetic."
A pun on the title "I Sing the Body Electric", which is both the title of a poem by Walt Whitman and a famous episode of The Twilight Zone (which featured Judee Morton).
  • "Tube power? Must be McIntosh."
Not a reference to the MacIntosh computers made by Apple, but to the tube-powered amplifiers by McIntosh Laboratories (which pre-dated the MacIntosh computer, which is why Apple had to add the "a" to avoid trademark problems).
  • "If you don't look good we don't look good."
This is the old slogan of Vidal Sassoon hair care products.
  • "To think like a hu-man, to be the hu-man."
Quoted from Episode #107's movie Robot Monster.
  • "...and when I say there was no cannibalism in the Navy, I mean there was some."
Quoted from a Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch in the episode "The War Against Pornography".
  • "Fresh from Kent State."
The Kent State shootings was a 1970 incident in which several members of the National Guard killed four unarmed civilians during an anti-war protest.
  • "It's the Android Sisters. It's true."
A reference to The Andrews Sisters, a popular vocal jazz trio in the 30's and 40's, their most famous song was "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy".
  • "We serve fun at Shakey's!" "Also pizza!"
The Shakey's Pizza chain was popular in the United States during the 1960s and '70s, but its restaurants are now found mainly in Southern California and Asia.

Video Releases[]

Humanduplicatorsdvd

MST3K DVD Cover

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