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Movie Summary  Short: Commando Cody: Radar Men From The Moon: Chapter 5  Cody and his sidekick Ted exchange marriage vows, and there is a strange noise from the Moon. I think. The end.  Movie: Robot Monster:  Okay. Try and follow. A boy gets struck by lightning, and the world ends. Two lizards with dinosaur makeup glued on toss each other around. Cut to sometime after this damned annoying apocalypse, when a robot monster lives in a cave guarded by a bubble machine. He's named Ro-man and he wears a big gorilla suit and a space helmet he probably stole from First Men in the Moon. He spends most of his time gaily ambling through Griffith Park in Los Angeles, and talking on his shortwave. He falls in love with a half-dressed woman who lives in some ruins on the edge of the park with her family, which includes the boy who got hit by lightning and caused the world to end. You gettin' all this? Good. The woman is a brilliant scientist, but turns into a blubbering imbecile at the sight of her boyfriend, who is an even more brilliant scientist. The woman constantly gets carried around by her father, her boyfriend, and ultimately Ro-man. Remember Ro-man? He has a vague sort of sexual fixation on the woman, though he threatens to kill her and her family a jillion times. Finally, Ro-man takes the lady back to his cave (incidentally, I believe it's the same cave we see in today's Commando Cody episode) and tries to rip her clothes off. He delivers a strange soliloquy about wanting to be hu-man, kills his new girlfriend's little brother, and dies when lightning hits him. Then the world ends again, fer cryin' out loud, and the same couple of lizards tear at each other on a miniature set. The end. Oh! I almost forgot, the whole movie's a dream. Ta-da. — Kevin Murphy Host Segments  Prologue:  Joel explains the premise of the show.  Invention:  The bots demonstrate the flaming whoopie cushion, a self-explanatory invention. Joel livens it up with the cumber-bubble-bund, a sort of waistcoat or sash that produces bubbles and livens up the universe.  Segment 2:  Joel questions Servo and Crow on the paradox of Cody's flying skills, relating it to the old bromide that bumblebees defy the laws of physics by flying at all. This causes both robots to explode in a logic loop, in a very Star Trekkian turn of events.   Segment 3:  Crow, playing Ro-man's boss, orders Tom, playing Ro-man, to kill Joel, playing Joel. Joel responds to Tom's advances by braining him with a prop chair not once but twice.  Segment 4:  Joel and the 'Bots attempt to reduce the concept of surrealism down to a sort of non-sequitur-free-association fest.  Segment 5:  Joel, Crow, and Tom stage a bizarre little pageant in which they try to understand the paradoxes inherent in today s movie, while wearing tunics made of garbage bags. Dr. Forrester responds appropriately: "Could we have sent a stranger man into space?"  Stinger:  None. Reflections Ever since Oppenheimer and his crew irradiated the New Mexico high desert, there's been an obsessive fixation with post-apocalyptic sorts of stories. It's easy. You start with a clean slate, add a culture stolen from ancient mythology make all the women young and sexy and dress them scantily, in furs or leather with a lot of buckles, insert ripply tanned sullenly stupid men, a wizened old codger, and a robotic sidekick named Kluutak or Pago or some damn thing, face them off against a dark power run by Frank Langella, give them all laser rifles but no cars or telephones, and have a big old battle for survival in the desert near Bakersfield. Bingo. No, I say, try a pre-apocalyptic story, now, there's a toughie. How the world's going to end seems to be much less interesting to science fiction writers. Except maybe Anthony Burgess. So here's your homework, kids. Try basing your science fiction stories on something that's "possible" instead of "unlikely" or "damn ridiculous" or "just plain goofy." — Kevin Murphy