Season 1, Episode 1, "Space Pilot 3000" (B+)
Jun 23, 2014 17:34:52 GMT -5
Douay-Rheims-Challoner, 🐍 huss 🐍, and 20 more like this
Post by Deleted on Jun 23, 2014 17:34:52 GMT -5
I gotta do what I gotta do.
It’s just over 15 years since Futurama debuted, going on to become one of the most beloved, quoted, and merchandised animated series in television history. So I’ve unilaterally decided it’s time to go back through the history of the series, episode by episode, so that we can not only luxuriate in the velour fog of endless quote threads, but also examine how and why the show achieved such success in quality. It’ll be fun on a bun, babies!
Back in the early days of The Simpsons’ headiest success, creator Matt Groening explained that part of what makes Homer so enjoyable to watch is that, while the universe constantly kicks him in the ass, he’s usually too dumb to realize it. Homer lives in the present, and even when his stupidity doesn’t lead him to some accidental triumph, any humiliation or loss is neatly washed out by the love and constancy of his family.
If Homer is too dumb to realize the universe is constantly kicking him in the ass, Futurama’s Philip J. Fry isn’t dumb enough. When we first meet him, he’s losing an arcade game and being mocked by a snot-nosed little kid. Less than a minute into the first episode, he’s pedaling away on a pizza delivery, chanting, “I hate my life, I hate my life, I hate my life” - a remarkably dark sentiment for the introduction to a comedy everyone expected to play out like “The Simpsons in the Year 3000”.
But there’s a melancholy current that runs through Futurama that helped it find depth and resonance beyond that of most sitcoms, animated or not. If The Simpsons occasionally reached for emotional depth by threatening Homer with the loss of the familial love that sustains him, Futurama’s premise leaves Fry without a net, trying to build, in a strange new world, the relationships and identity that eluded him in his own time.
“Space Pilot 3000” is a remarkable first episode, not only for still looking and sounding remarkably consistent with episodes produced a decade later, but for how much set-up and development it manages to pack into its 23 minute runtime. By the end of the first act, we’ve met Philip J. Fry, pizza delivery boy and newly single loser in the year 1999, cryogenically frozen him by accident, caught a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hint for a plotline that wouldn’t develop until the third season, seen aliens level civilization to the ground (twice), and dropped Fry back into the world on New Year’s Eve, 2999, in a New New York that’s half-Jetsons, half-Rube Goldberg fantasy.
The pilot faces not only the usual challenges of a premiere episode, such as introducing us to the characters and themes, and hopefully entertaining us enough to get us to tune in the next week, this one also has to introduce us to a fantastical world with new rules, technologies, and species -- with two of the main characters being, respectively, a new technology, and a new species. That it manages to do all this, and fit in a concise narrative arc, and do it all with a minimum of things that would later drive nerds nuts with “continuity errors”, speaks highly to the level of talent and experience working on the show at its start, as well as to the three years of preparatory work put into it by Groening and co-creator/showrunner David X. Cohen.
One of the only two things that would later drive nerds nuts also happens to be central to bringing our core characters together, namely, “Career Chips”. Though they’d be forgotten from the show’s universe after this episode (with one exception in a later season), Career Chips and the 30th Century’s guiding principle, “You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do” serve as more than just expedients to get our core cast together and in place. They also allow the show to find the heart of its humanity, the redeeming spirit that makes Fry’s failures, Suicide Booths, and jokes about police brutality go down easier: choosing, of one's own free will, to pursue and make one's own happiness. By the end of the episode, all three of our leads have made a conscious choice to reject an assigned fate, and choose one of their own.
Of course, free will brings up the one other notable flub in this first episode: it takes an accidental electrocution to bring Bender around to the idea of using his bending powers for “non-constructive purposes”. Even at this early point it seems a little odd, considering we’ve already seen him quit his job, steal, attempt to kill himself, indulge in alcoholism, and angrily deny said alcoholism. The degree of autonomy granted to robots in the Futurama universe is explored in depth in episodes down the line (and it seems to be a matter of complex systems that, regardless of their core programming, develop unique and unpredictable characteristics), but here it feels like the writers were worried either about answering a question no one was asking, or contriving a moment of tension as Fry and Bender try to escape the Head Museum.
The Head Museum is just one of the inventions the chase sequence quickly introduces us to -- Suicide Booths, a human-sized Habitrail transit system, lightsaber-like batons that are, basically, just sticks, and the show’s first alien language. The Head Museum lands us a Leonard Nimoy cameo, a handy narrative device for bringing in characters from the “past”, and the rabid, arm-chewing head of Richard Nixon, ensuring that we - or at least Matt Groening - will always have him to kick around. It also, somewhat darkly, hints that immortality might not be all it’s cracked up to be, Nimoy’s rhapsodizing of the “Life of quiet dignity” (and being fed fish food by the lady from Hot Dog On A Stick) notwithstanding.
Down in the ruins of Old New York, the full implications of leaving behind his own life hit Fry hard enough that the giddy thrill of the future, and the chance to make a new life, evaporate, and he surrenders to Leela’s pursuit. It’s the second time in the pilot that we delve into pathos, and it’s even more telling than Fry’s misery in the set-up, which could have been left behind with his move into the future. Fry may be free of that misery, but he’s alone, disconnected not only from all that was bad in his life, but also everything that was familiar, and everything that ever gave him fleeting moments of joy.
While Bender leans in during Fry’s monologue to remind him of his friendlessness, Leela, sympathetic to other orphans and outcasts, not only relents in her pursuit, but opts to join Fry by removing her own career chip. It takes barely a minute, but the scene is intensely effective in establishing the character of the three leads, and the connection between them.
Of course, the show needs to close the loop, getting our characters out of peril and into the series’s set-up. So we come to Fry’s great-great-etc-grand nephew, the doddering (and not yet clearly mad) Professor, who has an interstellar spaceship, and several lengths of wire. Some fireworks, some Nixon, some incompetent policing, and the professor bequeathing the career chips of his late, (apparently) wasp-eaten crew upon our protagonists, and all is well. The conflict that drove the plot is dispensed with (only heard of once again much later in the series), and the principals are are in place for their adventures as the crew of Planet Express.
The pilot ends with Fry’s triumphant declaration, “I’m a delivery boy!” It’s the same fate that made him miserable in the past, and that he tried to escape at all costs when foisted upon him in the future -- but now he embraces it. Is this Fry being “too dumb” to realize the universe is kicking him in the ass? Far from it. Though Fry still winds up as a delivery boy, just as the computer ordered, it’s of his own volition, and he exults in it. Given the choice of succumbing to loneliness, fate, and whatever recent darkness the universe has concocted, Fry and Futurama choose to grab on to some new friends, and take a hopeful leap into the unknown.
GRADE: B+
Stray Observations:
-Arguably, the two voices that changed the most over the series’s run, and hence sound the strangest back in this pilot, are Bender and The Professor. Bender’s voice (John DiMaggio) would eventually become more dynamic and brash - and closer to the natural voice of the actor. The Professor, one of the many characters voiced by Billy West, would eventually sound less like aged and feeble, and more deranged and senile. I’d still argue they changed less than, say, Homer on The Simpsons.
-Leela’s officer identification code is “1BD-I”. The old me would have laughed at that!
-The passage of time during Fry’s cryogenic freeze is modeled on the 1960 sci-fi classic The Time Machine. The alien spaceships that twice raze civilization to the ground are copies of those in the 1953 film version of War of the Worlds.
-President Grover Cleveland has two non-consecutive heads at the Head Museum.
-The first alien language introduced in the show appears only twice in this episode, yet fans managed to decode it within a matter of hours online. There’s an advertisement for Slurm (“DRINK”), and graffiti in an alleyway reading “VENUSIANS GO HOME”.
-In the countdown to the year 3000, it appears that French is a dead language, as will be alluded to in the Season 2 episode “A Clone of My Own”.
It’s just over 15 years since Futurama debuted, going on to become one of the most beloved, quoted, and merchandised animated series in television history. So I’ve unilaterally decided it’s time to go back through the history of the series, episode by episode, so that we can not only luxuriate in the velour fog of endless quote threads, but also examine how and why the show achieved such success in quality. It’ll be fun on a bun, babies!
Back in the early days of The Simpsons’ headiest success, creator Matt Groening explained that part of what makes Homer so enjoyable to watch is that, while the universe constantly kicks him in the ass, he’s usually too dumb to realize it. Homer lives in the present, and even when his stupidity doesn’t lead him to some accidental triumph, any humiliation or loss is neatly washed out by the love and constancy of his family.
If Homer is too dumb to realize the universe is constantly kicking him in the ass, Futurama’s Philip J. Fry isn’t dumb enough. When we first meet him, he’s losing an arcade game and being mocked by a snot-nosed little kid. Less than a minute into the first episode, he’s pedaling away on a pizza delivery, chanting, “I hate my life, I hate my life, I hate my life” - a remarkably dark sentiment for the introduction to a comedy everyone expected to play out like “The Simpsons in the Year 3000”.
But there’s a melancholy current that runs through Futurama that helped it find depth and resonance beyond that of most sitcoms, animated or not. If The Simpsons occasionally reached for emotional depth by threatening Homer with the loss of the familial love that sustains him, Futurama’s premise leaves Fry without a net, trying to build, in a strange new world, the relationships and identity that eluded him in his own time.
“Space Pilot 3000” is a remarkable first episode, not only for still looking and sounding remarkably consistent with episodes produced a decade later, but for how much set-up and development it manages to pack into its 23 minute runtime. By the end of the first act, we’ve met Philip J. Fry, pizza delivery boy and newly single loser in the year 1999, cryogenically frozen him by accident, caught a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hint for a plotline that wouldn’t develop until the third season, seen aliens level civilization to the ground (twice), and dropped Fry back into the world on New Year’s Eve, 2999, in a New New York that’s half-Jetsons, half-Rube Goldberg fantasy.
The pilot faces not only the usual challenges of a premiere episode, such as introducing us to the characters and themes, and hopefully entertaining us enough to get us to tune in the next week, this one also has to introduce us to a fantastical world with new rules, technologies, and species -- with two of the main characters being, respectively, a new technology, and a new species. That it manages to do all this, and fit in a concise narrative arc, and do it all with a minimum of things that would later drive nerds nuts with “continuity errors”, speaks highly to the level of talent and experience working on the show at its start, as well as to the three years of preparatory work put into it by Groening and co-creator/showrunner David X. Cohen.
One of the only two things that would later drive nerds nuts also happens to be central to bringing our core characters together, namely, “Career Chips”. Though they’d be forgotten from the show’s universe after this episode (with one exception in a later season), Career Chips and the 30th Century’s guiding principle, “You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do” serve as more than just expedients to get our core cast together and in place. They also allow the show to find the heart of its humanity, the redeeming spirit that makes Fry’s failures, Suicide Booths, and jokes about police brutality go down easier: choosing, of one's own free will, to pursue and make one's own happiness. By the end of the episode, all three of our leads have made a conscious choice to reject an assigned fate, and choose one of their own.
Of course, free will brings up the one other notable flub in this first episode: it takes an accidental electrocution to bring Bender around to the idea of using his bending powers for “non-constructive purposes”. Even at this early point it seems a little odd, considering we’ve already seen him quit his job, steal, attempt to kill himself, indulge in alcoholism, and angrily deny said alcoholism. The degree of autonomy granted to robots in the Futurama universe is explored in depth in episodes down the line (and it seems to be a matter of complex systems that, regardless of their core programming, develop unique and unpredictable characteristics), but here it feels like the writers were worried either about answering a question no one was asking, or contriving a moment of tension as Fry and Bender try to escape the Head Museum.
The Head Museum is just one of the inventions the chase sequence quickly introduces us to -- Suicide Booths, a human-sized Habitrail transit system, lightsaber-like batons that are, basically, just sticks, and the show’s first alien language. The Head Museum lands us a Leonard Nimoy cameo, a handy narrative device for bringing in characters from the “past”, and the rabid, arm-chewing head of Richard Nixon, ensuring that we - or at least Matt Groening - will always have him to kick around. It also, somewhat darkly, hints that immortality might not be all it’s cracked up to be, Nimoy’s rhapsodizing of the “Life of quiet dignity” (and being fed fish food by the lady from Hot Dog On A Stick) notwithstanding.
Down in the ruins of Old New York, the full implications of leaving behind his own life hit Fry hard enough that the giddy thrill of the future, and the chance to make a new life, evaporate, and he surrenders to Leela’s pursuit. It’s the second time in the pilot that we delve into pathos, and it’s even more telling than Fry’s misery in the set-up, which could have been left behind with his move into the future. Fry may be free of that misery, but he’s alone, disconnected not only from all that was bad in his life, but also everything that was familiar, and everything that ever gave him fleeting moments of joy.
While Bender leans in during Fry’s monologue to remind him of his friendlessness, Leela, sympathetic to other orphans and outcasts, not only relents in her pursuit, but opts to join Fry by removing her own career chip. It takes barely a minute, but the scene is intensely effective in establishing the character of the three leads, and the connection between them.
Of course, the show needs to close the loop, getting our characters out of peril and into the series’s set-up. So we come to Fry’s great-great-etc-grand nephew, the doddering (and not yet clearly mad) Professor, who has an interstellar spaceship, and several lengths of wire. Some fireworks, some Nixon, some incompetent policing, and the professor bequeathing the career chips of his late, (apparently) wasp-eaten crew upon our protagonists, and all is well. The conflict that drove the plot is dispensed with (only heard of once again much later in the series), and the principals are are in place for their adventures as the crew of Planet Express.
The pilot ends with Fry’s triumphant declaration, “I’m a delivery boy!” It’s the same fate that made him miserable in the past, and that he tried to escape at all costs when foisted upon him in the future -- but now he embraces it. Is this Fry being “too dumb” to realize the universe is kicking him in the ass? Far from it. Though Fry still winds up as a delivery boy, just as the computer ordered, it’s of his own volition, and he exults in it. Given the choice of succumbing to loneliness, fate, and whatever recent darkness the universe has concocted, Fry and Futurama choose to grab on to some new friends, and take a hopeful leap into the unknown.
GRADE: B+
Stray Observations:
-Arguably, the two voices that changed the most over the series’s run, and hence sound the strangest back in this pilot, are Bender and The Professor. Bender’s voice (John DiMaggio) would eventually become more dynamic and brash - and closer to the natural voice of the actor. The Professor, one of the many characters voiced by Billy West, would eventually sound less like aged and feeble, and more deranged and senile. I’d still argue they changed less than, say, Homer on The Simpsons.
-Leela’s officer identification code is “1BD-I”. The old me would have laughed at that!
-The passage of time during Fry’s cryogenic freeze is modeled on the 1960 sci-fi classic The Time Machine. The alien spaceships that twice raze civilization to the ground are copies of those in the 1953 film version of War of the Worlds.
-President Grover Cleveland has two non-consecutive heads at the Head Museum.
-The first alien language introduced in the show appears only twice in this episode, yet fans managed to decode it within a matter of hours online. There’s an advertisement for Slurm (“DRINK”), and graffiti in an alleyway reading “VENUSIANS GO HOME”.
-In the countdown to the year 3000, it appears that French is a dead language, as will be alluded to in the Season 2 episode “A Clone of My Own”.
