Yesterday ’s awesome Futurama gave us the Moby Dick place - up that all the small fry have been clamoring for , as an increasingly deranged Leela hunted a four - dimensional blank whale in a half - time of day full of crazy ideas , great lines , and sci - fi shout - outs galore .
“ Möbius Dick ” line up the Professor mark the fiftieth day of remembrance of his very first Planet Express crew , who were enigmatically lost in a strange cosmic unusual person known as the Bermuda Tetrahedron , with only one subsister : an amnesic , dead white - haired Dr. Zoidberg . The crowd is sent to pick up a statue commemorating the dead , and they are forced to maneuver into the Bermuda Tetrahedron on the return trip , where they happen a giant , four - dimensional space whale .
The outer space heavyweight makes shortsighted order of the statue and the ship ’s engine , forcing the crew to hoist the solar sails and seek vengeance on their space hulk foe . At least , that becomes Leela ’s all - consume compulsion , as she becomes a coarse martinet constantly threatening to get hitched with off any crowd members who disobey her . The hunt work nothing but disaster , until the crew finds themselves swallowed by the space whale , where a few more surprises are in store .
This is easily my best-loved episode of this current pile of Futurama episode . While I ’ve bask a lot of this time of year ’s episodes , the fact is that you do n’t want the Futurama setup to do a cop show or a pastiche of tike ’s TV or a maffia attestant protective covering story . Sure , those episodes all took on some sci - fi trappings from their thirty-first century setting , but the fact is that all of those could be make over relatively easily for a far more grounded television show .
On the other hired man , there ’s simply no other show that would build an episode around a four - dimensional space hulk that feeds on human ambition and whose bowels survive in worldly stasis . Indeed , most shows would n’t have the bowel to do an extended Moby Dick medley . I talk a lot in these recaps about grown idea as something I look for in Futurama , and “ Möbius Dick ” had that in spades . It ’s kind of punishing to take a excursion into the quaternary dimension and not expand one ’s mind a little bit .
Indeed , the whole affair taps into the notion that distance is full of wonders beyond our comprehension , that even in a universe of discourse where all alien speak English ( even if they do n’t know their “ its ” from their “ it ’s ” ) there can still be things that are unusual and unknowable . In that respect , “ Möbius Dick ” reminds me of the likes of Hitchhiker ’s Guide to the Galaxy or sure medico Who stories , in exceptional the criminally underrated Peter Davison story “ Enlightenment . ” Or maybe I ’m just remind of whales and navigation ship in quad .
talk of other science fabrication , this installment was a veritable gold mine for people looking to recognise references and homages . The starship graveyard had a bunch of shout - out to famous sci - fi spaceships mixed in among the debris – I blot the Discovery from 2001 : A Space Odyssey and an Oceanic Airlines plane from Lost , just to get thing started – and the Fourth Doctor build his 2d appearance in as many weeks when he ’s among those to walk out of the blank hulk at the end .
I should also probably point out that this installment was very funny . I ’ve always like the idea that the 2900s are a weird reflection of the 1900s , and it ’s fun to see the Futurama version of square - jaw , space pioneering heroes – particularly that dash young automaton Lifter . What ’s also great is that a lot of the joke find like they have some connection to the characters aver them – Fry wishes they had n’t follow to the spaceship graveyard at Nox , Bender is out to catch some giant infield in a net profit , the Professor obtain angry over people reading things into his recollections , and Amy has Serengeti flashback and explain that Giraffa camelopardalis are essentially acres space whales . And let ’s not block Bender ’s mutiny , in which he pose a duad of treacherous crewmen , both of whom were apparently working on Fry ’s orders .
I need to single out two mass as the star of this episode . The first , unsurprisingly , is Katey Sagal , who if anything has step up her plot of late as the voice of Leela . She does a great lineage into rabidness , and her frenzied ego - conversation when she makes herself her own crew is a laughable highlight of the installment . She also get across some sense of an genuine human motive behind all this insanity , conveying Leela ’s all - consuming dream while also speaking like a encrusted old captain straight out of a defining work of 19th century fiction .
The second somebody to be commended is Christopher Tyng , the show ’s longtime music composer . A big understanding why I finger comfortable talking about the heady aspect of this episode is that the medicine is so wholesale and epic . It ’s a haunting score that does a lot of the heavy lifting in selling the Bermuda Tetrahedron as a unknown , unearthly office and the space whale as an otherworldly opponent . This might actually be the fine score I ’ve ever discover in a Futurama episode – sure as shooting , this one really leap out at me as a huge part of the episode ’s achiever .
“ Möbius Dick ” is the first episode of this new rivulet of installment that I would say really competitor last year ’s “ The previous Philip J. Fry ” and “ The Prisoner of Benda . ” I surmise I may like it a fleck more than others just because it hits so many of my sweet-flavored blot as a viewer , but I ’d say by any measure that this is a higher-ranking half time of day of scientific discipline fiction . And , after so many weeks of the show arguably play down its more futuristic panorama , it ’s middling all-fired awesome to watch something so cosmic in scope .
FuturamaTelevision
Daily Newsletter
Get the good technical school , science , and civilization news in your inbox daily .
News from the future , cede to your nowadays .
You May Also Like
