Space Pilot 3000
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| Futurama episode | |
| "Space Pilot 3000" | |
 |
|
|---|---|
| Episode no. | 1 |
| Prod. code | 1ACV01 |
| Airdate | March 28, 1999 |
| Writer(s) | David X. Cohen Matt Groening |
| Director | Rich Moore Gregg Vanzo |
| Opening subtitle | In Color |
| Opening cartoon | Little Buck Cheeser by MGM (1937) |
| Guest star(s) | Dick Clark as himself and Leonard Nimoy as himself |
| List of all Futurama episodes... | |
"Space Pilot 3000" is the first episode of Futurama's first season. It originally aired in North America on March 28, 1999.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Just after midnight on January 1st, 2000, New York pizza delivery boy Philip J. Fry is accidentally cryonically frozen when he falls inside a cryogenic chamber while delivering a pizza to a prank call at a Cryonics Lab in New York City. It is discovered he hates his job, hates his life and was recently cheated on by his girlfriend, Michelle. He is defrosted in New New York City one thousand years later, on December 31, 2999. After defrosting, he is brought to Fate Assignment Officer 1BDI (One Beady Eye), Turanga Leela.
Unhappy with his permanently assigned career of a delivery boy via a "career chip", Fry flees the cryonics facility into the city, with Leela in pursuit. While trying to track down his extremely-great-nephew, Professor Hubert Farnsworth, Fry befriends a suicidal robot named Bender when he attempts to use a suicide booth which he believes to be a phone booth. After a talk with Bender at a restaurant, Fry and his now best friend escape and hides in the New York Head Museum where they meet many people with disembodied heads. Fry and Bender find themselves in the ruins of Old New York. Fry feels sad that everyone that he know and love are gone but his sadness calms down after Leela caught the two friends and prepares to put the career chip on Fry's hand.
Leela abandons her job in the cryonics facility, and joins Fry and Bender as job deserters instead of putting the career chip on Fry. The three find the elderly mad scientist founder of Planet Express, Professor Farnsworth, and after the four launch into space in the Planet Express ship as New Years begins, he hires them as the new space ship crew for his package delivery service by giving them his last crew's career chips. The chips have been recovered from the belly of a space wasp after one of his earlier suicidal missions.
[edit] Characters
Characters who first appear in this episode are:
- Philip J. Fry
- Mr. Panucci
- Michelle
- Turanga Leela
- Terry
- Bender
- URL
- Smitty
- Richard Nixon's Head
- Professor Hubert Farnsworth
- Leonard Nimoy's Head
[edit] Professor Farnsworth's inventions
Professor Farnsworth's inventions in this episode are:
- The Relative Box
[edit] Future products
Future products which appear in this episode are:
[edit] Future gadgets
Future gadgets which appear in this episode are:
- The Probulator
- Suicide Booth
- Career Chips
- Police 'Lightsaber' Batons
[edit] Foreshadowing
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
- Before Fry falls into the freezer, a scene shows a strange shadow cast on the wall behind him. It is revealed in "The Why of Fry" that the shadow belongs to Nibbler, who intentionally pushes Fry into the freezer as part of a complex plan. This is proof that the creators of the series always had the idea of Nibbler's importance from the very beginning. However, "Jurassic Bark" shows in the same scene Fry's own shadow alongside Nibbler's indicating a subtle yet ultimately-profound change in the timeline. Also Nibbler's eye can be seen popping out of the bin.
- During the countdown scene at the end of the episode, France is shown, yet the inhabitants there use the English language instead of French. It is assumed that French in the future is a dead language; this idea is supported in a later episode where Professor Farnsworth invents a Universal translator that only translates into "an incomprehensible dead language", which is revealed to be French.
- Fry's full name can just be seen on the computer screen when Leela is assigning his career, but his first name is not spoken in dialogue until "The Problem with Popplers".
- At the very end of the episode, Professor Farnsworth offers Fry, Leela, and Bender the Planet Express delivery crew position. When prompted about the last crew, the Professor says "Oh those poor sons of B...B-But thats not important. The point is I need a new crew!". The Professor then produces an envelope labeled "Contents of Space Wasps Stomach" which contains the necessary career chips. This alludes to "The Sting" where the crew visit the hive of a swarm of space bees to collect honey, and the fate of the previous crew is revealed when the original Planet Express Ship was found with the black box intact.
- You can see Leela's parents in Old New York, but there are subtle differences from where they are introduced as her parents in the fourth season.
[edit] Goofs
- Although Fry entered the freezer at midnight on January 1, 2000, he wakes up early on December 31, 2999. There are many different explanations for this, the simplest being that the freezer clock is not accurate enough to accommodate a thousand years. A more complex argument involves the difference between a Gregorian year and a tropical year, leading to a discrepancy of 0.3 days or 7.2 hours... placing Fry's "awakening" at 4:36pm, December 31, 2999. Another possible solution is that the company that is used to orient the newly awakened people would choose the time in the same day to be awakened that best fit their schedule.
- All of the countries shown should not have had the New Year's countdown at the same time.
- When Leela pulls up her sleeve on her left arm, her futuristic arm band is on her left arm. However, when she takes off her jacket to drive the Planet Express ship, it's on her right arm.
- After Bender tears the bars off the wall when trying to escape the Head Museum, during one of the closeups although Bender's arms are holding a pair of bars, the original bars can still be seen attached to the wall.
- In the middle of the episode Fry and Bender enter the Head Museum and talk to Leonard Nimoy and Fry makes a comment about "Star Trek" which Nimoy accepts, however Star Trek is outlawed and in "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" Nimoy begins denying ever being Spock or knowing anything about the show and subsequent religion.
[edit] Cultural references
- The entire plot of the episode is loosely based on the satirical novel Immortality, Inc..
- Fry is playing a video game called "Monkey Fracas Jr." at the pizza place, narrating it as he plays. The game starts out as a space shooter similar to Asteroids and/or Defender, then approaches a Saturn-like planet at the end of the level. At that point, the planet breaks in half, and an ape resembling Donkey Kong emerges. The ape throws barrels at the spaceship and destroys it. The game's name itself is a parody of Donkey Kong, Jr.
- Fry's narration is a parody of the opening narration that appeared in both Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation. "Space; The Final Frontier..." becomes "Space; It seems to go on and on forever...". Fry's narration is preceded by the Star Trek theme song.
- Fry's attire is based on James Dean's attire in the film "Rebel Without a Cause".
- When Fry is frozen in the cryonic chamber, time is seen passing outside the window until the year 3000. New York City is leveled by aliens, rebuilt as a medieval city, leveled again by aliens and rebuilt as New New York. This is a parody of the scenes in the film The Time Machine based on H.G Wells' novel when the inventor pushes the lever forward on his Time Machine and sees the world, and time, moving forward very rapidly.
- The sounds of the doors opening and closing in the cryonics facility are the same sound effects used in "Star Trek: The Original Series". Fry even says "Cool! Just like in Star Trek."
- When Fry walks out of the lab, an ad on a taxi behind him reads "Got protoplasm?", a reference to the series of "Got Milk?" advertising slogans.
- Above streets of New New York, when Fry steps out of the cryonics facility, there is a billboard for Angelyne, who is essentially famous for having billboards of herself along Hollywood Blvd. since the 1980's. In the Futurama billboard, Angelyne still looks the same, but is breathing through a mask hooked up to an oxygen tank.
- In the bar, Bender drinks "olde fortran malt liquor".
- The woman feeding what appears to be fish food to the head of Leonard Nimoy is wearing the typical uniform of an employee of Hot Dog on a Stick.
- When Fry knocks over Nixon's head, he says "You just made my list", a reference to his Enemies List.
- On the shelf behind which Fry and Bender attempt to hide in the Head Museum are the heads of Johnny Carson, Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, Elizabeth Taylor, Dennis Rodman, Futurama creator Matt Groening and Barbra Streisand.
- The two policemen who try to arrest Fry at the head museum are using weapons which visually are similar to lightsabers used in the Star Wars film series, however they are functionally more similar to nightsticks, rather than a Jedi's weapon. Also, when Leela tells them there's no need to use force, she makes another Star Wars reference in reference to the fact that the only people that can carry the lightsabers use a hidden power called "The Force".
- When the police pound on the door of Planet Express, a brick drops out of Bender. This is a reference to the colorful colloquialism "shitting bricks." Bender "shits bricks" yet again in the episode "Bendin' in the Wind" after eating some potato chips made with Olestra. The FOX Censors were not pleased with this visual joke - but they continued to use it in the promos for the series premiere anyway.
- Starting in this episode, the globe shape on the top of the Planet Express building looks distinctly like that of the planet on top of The Daily Planet building in which Clark Kent, Superman's alias, works.
- The Planet Express Ship's dogged launch is reminiscent of the Millennium Falcon's from the Star Wars film series.
- About thirty seconds into the episode, a sign for a bar in the town is labeled "Akbar", a reference to Akbar and Jeff from Matt Groening's comic strip Life In Hell.
- As Fry is going through the tube, Blinky of The Simpsons makes a cameo only green this time.
- In one sequence, the moon is shown to be decorated with the numbers "3000", an allusion to the logo of Mystery Science Theater 3000, of which Groening is a long-time fan.
- The Dianoga creature from Star Wars appears.
- According to Matt Groening, the inspiration for the suicide booth was the 1937 Donald Duck cartoon, "Modern Inventions," in which the Duck is faced with - and nearly killed several times by - various push button gadgets in a Museum of the Future.
[edit] The passage of time
- Originally, the first person entering the tube network declared "J.F.K., Jr. Airport" as his destination, a pun continuing the idea that in the future, New New York would have similar landmarks that were in old New York City. This was inspired by the flurry of streets and institutions across the United States being named and renamed after his father, the Former and Late President John F. Kennedy, shortly after his famed assassination in 1963, in particular New York City's JFK International Airport. After John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s death in the crash of his private airplane, the line has since been redubbed on all subsequent broadcasts and the DVD release to "Radio City Mutant Hall", a line which is inconsistent with the series' describing mutants as underground. The original version was heard only during the pilot broadcast and the first rerun a few months later. The line "JFK Jr. Airport" can still be heard on the original Animatic on the DVD Special Features and during airings outside the USA.
- The building Fry slams into at the end of his ride on the tubes is all that is left of the Empire State Building. On the DVD special features, this scene's earlier animatic shows that all that is left of the Empire State Building is the top five or six floors and its iconic tower.
- Posted on the wall behind Fry as he gets up from being shot out of the tube is a correct 1999 map of the New York Subway.
[edit] Alien language messages
- As Bender and Fry escape from the head museum, shortly before entering the remains of Old New York a scrawling on the wall reads "Venusians Go Home" in Alien Language 1.
- In the opening title sequence there is a sign in Alien Language 1, which translates "3D RULEZ!"
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