Space Pilot 3000

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Futurama episode
"Space Pilot 3000"
Promotional Artwork for this episode.
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 Leonard Nimoy as himself
Season 1 March 1999 – June 1999
Space Pilot 3000 The Series Has Landed I, Roommate Love's Labours Lost in Space Fear of a Bot Planet A Fishful of Dollars My Three Suns A Big Piece of Garbage Hell Is Other Robots A Flight to Remember Mars University When Aliens Attack Fry and the Slurm Factory
List of all Futurama episodes...

"Space Pilot 3000" is the pilot episode of Futurama, which originally aired in North America on March 28, 1999 on FOX.^[1] The episode focuses on how the series protagonist, Philip J. Fry, was frozen then awoke in the future and introduces some of the other series regulars. It sets the stage for many of the events to follow in the series including foreshadowing plot points that would not be revealed until later in the show’s run and introducing viewers to the futuristic setting inspired by a variety of classic science fiction series from The Jetsons to Star Trek. It was written by David X. Cohen and Matt Groening,^[1] and directed by Rich Moore and Gregg Vanzo. Dick Clark and Leonard Nimoy guest starred as themselves.^[2] In general the episode received good reviews, often contrasting it to Groening’s other series, The Simpsons.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Continuity 3 Production 4 Broadcast and reception 5 Cultural references 6 References 7 External links

[edit] Plot

On December 31, 1999 a depressed pizza delivery boy, Philip J. Fry, delivers a pizza to a cryogenics lab in New York City. The delivery order was a prank. At the turn of midnight, Fry falls into an open cryonics tube and is "accidentally" frozen.

Fry is defrosted in what is now New New York City one thousand years later, on December 31, 2999. He is brought to fate assignment officer 1BDI, Turanga Leela, who assigns him the computer-determined permanent career of delivery boy. Refusing to accept his "career chip", Fry flees "Applied Cryogenics" into the city with Leela in pursuit. While trying to track down his only living relative, Professor Hubert Farnsworth, Fry befriends a suicidal robot named Bender. After a talk with Bender at a bar, Fry and his new best friend evade Leela and hide in the New New York Head Museum, where they encounter the preserved heads of many historical figures. Fry and Bender eventually find themselves underground, in the ruins of Old New York.

Leela finally catches him and Fry gives up, sad that everyone that he knew and loved is dead. Fry tells Leela that he must accept his fate of being a delivery boy and abandon his dream of traveling in outer space. Leela unexpectedly sympathizes with Fry, instead of implanting his career chip she removes her own and joins Fry and Bender as job deserters. The three track down Professor Farnsworth, founder of Planet Express, an intergalactic delivery company. All four evade the police by launching the Planet Express Ship at the stroke of midnight amid the New Year’s fireworks. As the year 3000 begins, Farnsworth hires the three as replacements for his recently deceased crew. Fry cheers at his acquisition of a new job: delivery boy.

[edit] Continuity

While the plot of the episode stands on its own it also sets up much of the continuing plot of the series by including Easter eggs for events which would not occur until much later.^[1]

As 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 to save Earth from the Brainspawn in the future. Executive producer David X. Cohen claims that from the very beginning the creators had plans to show a larger conspiracy behind Fry's journey to the future.^[3]

At the end of the episode, Professor Farnsworth offers Fry, Leela, and Bender the Planet Express delivery crew positions. The professor produces the previous crew's career chips from an envelope labeled "Contents of Space Wasp's Stomach". In the later episode "The Sting" the crew encounters the ship of the previous crew in a space bee hive. When discussing this discontinuity in the episode commentary, writer of “The Sting” Patric Verrone states "we made liars out of the pilot".^[4]

This episode introduces the fictional technology which allows preserved heads to be kept alive in jars. This technology makes it possible for the characters to interact with celebrities from the then distant past, and is used by the writers to comment on the 20th and 21st centuries in a satirical manner.^[2]

In the movie Futurama: Bender's Big Score it is revealed that the spacecraft seen destroying the city while Fry is frozen are piloted by Bender and those chasing him after he steals the Nobel Peace Prize.^[5]

[edit] Production

In the DVD commentary Matt Groening notes that beginning any television series is difficult, but he found particular difficulty starting one taking place so far in the future on account of the amount of setup they had to do. As a trade off they included a lot of Easter eggs in the episode which would pay off later. They point these out throughout the episode.^[6] The scene where Fry emerges from the cryonic tube and has his first view of New New York was the first 3D scene which the animation team worked on. It was considered to be a defining point for whether the technique would work or not.^[7] Originally, the first person entering the tube network declared "J.F.K., Jr. Airport" as his destination. 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". The original version was heard only during the pilot broadcast and the first rerun a few months later.^[7] 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 pushbutton gadgets in a Museum of the Future.^[6]

[edit] Broadcast and reception

In a review by Patrick Lee in Science Fiction Weekly based on a viewing of this episode alone, it was noted that Futurama was not as funny as The Simpsons, particularly as "the satire is leavened with treacly sentimental bits about free will and loneliness". The episode was rated as an "A- pick" and found to "warrant further viewing" despite these concerns.^[8] Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted that although the episode contained the same skewed humor as The Simpsons, it was not as smart and funny and he attributed this to the large amount of exposition and character introduction required of a television series pilot, noting that the show was "off to a good start".^[9] In its initial airing the episode had "unprecedented strong numbers" with a Nielsen rating of 11.2/17 in homes and 9.6/23 in adults 18-49.^[10] Futurama was watched by more people than either its lead-in show (The Simpsons) or the show following it (The X-Files) and it was the number one show among men aged 18-49 and teenagers for the week.^[11][12] The episode was ranked in 2006 by IGN.com as number 14 in their list of the top 25 Futurama episodes.^[1]

[edit] Cultural references

In their original pitch to FOX, Groening and Cohen stated that they wanted the futuristic setting for the show to be neither "dark and drippy" like Blade Runner nor "bland and boring" like The Jetsons.^[6] They felt that they could not make the future either a utopia or a dystopia because either option would eventually become boring.^[7] The creators gave careful consideration to the setting and the influence of classic science fiction are evident in this episode as a series of references to, and parodies of, easily recognizable films, books and television programs. In the earliest glimpse of the future while Fry is frozen in the cryonic chamber, time is seen passing outside the window until reaching the year 3000. This is a parody of a similar scene in the film The Time Machine based on H.G. Wells' novel.^[6] When Fry awakens in the year 3000 he is greeted with Terry's catchphrase "Welcome to the world of tomorrow", the scene is a joke at the expense of Futurama's namesake, the Futurama ride at the 1939 World's Fair whose tag line was "The World of Tomorrow".^[13]

In addition to the setting, part of the original concept for the show was that there would be a lot of advanced technology similar to that seen in Star Trek; but it would be constantly malfunctioning.^[7] The automatic doors at Applied Cryogenics resemble those in Star Trek: The Original Series; however, they malfunction when Fry remarks on this.^[8] In another twist, the two policemen who try to arrest Fry at the head museum use weapons which are visually similar to lightsabers used in the Star Wars film series; however, they are functionally more similar to nightsticks.^[8] The interaction between the characters was not overlooked. The relationship formed between Fry and Bender in this episode has been compared to the relationship between Will Robinson and the robot in Lost in Space.^[14]

Although both Futurama and The Simpsons were created by Matt Groening, overt references to the latter are mostly avoided in Futurama. One of the few exceptions to this rule is the appearance of Blinky as Fry is going through the tube.^[6] Another inside joke of the series is Bender's fondness for "olde fortran malt liquor".^[8]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Space Pilot 3000 at TV.com
• Space Pilot 3000 at the Internet Movie Database

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