Futurama - Episode 1 - Space Pilot 3000

Futurama is a science fiction cartoon sitcom from the creators of The Simpsons. Futurama tells the story of a boy named Fry, who happens to be a pizza delivery boy around the year 2000s (The series begins at December 31^st of the year 1999).

The pilot episode shows us the life of Fry, working at a job he hates, getting dumped by his girlfriend, and getting his bike stolen. Basically, his life sucks, and he feels stuck and hopeless as the clock strikes to midnight, signifying the dawn of a new millennium.

Fry gets his second chance at life when he accidentally falls in a cryogenic machine, freezing him for 1000 years, and later reviving him at the year 2999. Here we are shown a view of the future (from the imagination of the writers).

Earth is repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt after numerous alien invasions (This happens while Fry is in cryogenic sleep). The future in 2999, however, shows that the earth sustaining different kinds of life: The aliens now walk among us. Advance technologies are shown, such as transport tubes, DNA “Probulators” and suicide booths. Robots are also existent, and in fact, one of the main characters of the series is a robot (Bender).

After being awaken from cryogenic stasis, Fry meets Leela, a “beautiful” alien Cyclopes, whose job is to reintegrate him to “modern society”. One thing to note though, it seems that the even though the future shows us a world of complex technologies, there some aspects of human life that remain the same (at least in the pilot episode). Language has not evolved, as well as mannerisms and interactions. There are drastic changes however, such as Fry’s main conflict in the episode: being branded with a chip that will permanently assign a career to a person. In Fry’s case, he was doomed to become a delivery boy. In the future, a career is assigned to a person, and the person has no say, and has no chance of changing careers. The future for our future people, are set to stone.

Leela is charged to implant the mentioned career chip to Fry, who of course, refuses to go back to a job he hates so much. A chase ensues, where Fry got away, and Leela ends up in cryogenic sleep – for 5 minutes (Thanks to Fry).

The thing that hits me the most about this episode, is that albeit all the wonders that the future has in store for the main characters: Fry, Leela, Bender, there still seems to be a level of frustration, sadness and anger existent. It’s as if these new conveniences have done nothing to increase human happiness in general.

The “happiness” was achieved, when they managed to get out of the “system”. Leela, deciding not to implant to chip in Fry, and removing her own chip, decides to quit her career. Together, they join Fry’s only relative in the future, Professor Farnsworth, and they head off to space. Farnsworth gives them new career chips, and new jobs, and Fry, ironically, ends up being the delivery boy that he wants, but this time, he accepts it with glee. (Maybe it’s not the job, but Fry’s control over his life that is keeping him from a satisfying life.)

I have been a fan of the Simpsons, and to be frank, I expected Futurama to be something similar. Turns out, it was far from it. Futurama is a fish-out-of-water story, with a protagonist set in a world he can barely comprehend, and yet survives. Science and technology can take us far beyond the reach of our own imagination, but the human spirit, though it may evolve, will always be.