CB'S POV: Back to the Futur(ama) (“Futurama”)

Let’s face it, the future is generally not a very cheery place, especially on film. Talk about something set in the future and invariably the words grim, dystopian, post-apocalyptic or some other downer adjective is in the description. If somebody's not at war with someone else, they're being persecuted, hunted, exploited or oppressed. Sure, there are occasional light moments—somebody bumps their head on a low bulkhead (Scotty in Star Trek VI, Kirk in Star Trek)—but for the most part, not a lot of chuckles. As near as I can recall, there were only four movies set in the future that were comedies* and only two of them were actually funny: Sleeper, Death Race 2000, The Adventures of Pluto Nash and Idiotcracy. On the small screen there was, of course, The Jetsons... and Homeboys from Outer Space. (Would you believe, among the people who appeared on that show, were John Lithgow and Sir Anthony Hopkins?)

But there was/is one look at the future that was intentionally (and consistently) funny. Futurama was originally on Fox and abruptly canceled after four seasons. But like another gone-too-soon animated series (The Family Guy), Futurama gained its own cult following, spawned four direct-to-video features and now returns to the small screen on Comedy Central (Thursdays, 10 pm EST).

Created by Matt Groening (The Simpsons) and developed by Groening and longtime Simpsons writer David X. Cohen, the series follows the adventures of Phillip J. Fry, a slacker pizza delivery guy who gets frozen in 1999 and awakens 3000 years in the future. He eventually lands a job with Planetary Express, an interplanetary delivery service run by the eccentric inventor Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, his 160-year-old great-grandnephew. He best friends are Bender, an amoral robot and Leela, a cyclopean mutant and ship’s captain.

Like its older sibling Futurama always featured a healthy dose of social commentary. (A recent episode featured “eyePhones,” “Twitcher,” the problems of e-waste and social networking and a singing boil named Susan. And it all worked.) But it was/is also full of SF references: sound effects from Star Trek (Original Series) abound (especially whenever a door opens or closes), Morbo, the belligerent newscaster, bears more than a passing resemblance to the Metaluna Mutant from This Island Earth, and genre references in dialog is frequent. Two of my favorites:

When Professor Farnsworth accidentally destroys an entire civilization living in a Petri dish, he remarks, "Boy, the Jedi are gonna feel that one!" And when Fry muses on how great it would be if there were a soft drink that was individually tailored to whoever drank it, Leela tells him there is one, Soylent Cola.

Fry: What does it taste like?
Leela: It varies from person to person.

So far, Comedy Central has ordered 26 episodes. Let’s hope they won’t be the last.

*Mel Brooks’ Star Wars—SF spoof Spaceballs doesn’t count, technically, because it was set in the past.

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CB'S POV: Back to the Futur(ama) (“Futurama”)

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