2.1 “A flight to remember”
(Tagline: “Filmed on location”) Um, yeah… slow start guys…
In an uncharacteristic gesture of goodwill and generosity, Professor Farnsworth has booked his entire crew a holiday aboard the mighty starship … Titanic! It’s on, wait for it, its maiden voyage, but Leela is less than pleased when she learns who is to captain the ship! As she is going to be trapped with Zapp for the entire trip Leela has to think fast as they board and he greets her with the usual sexual innuendo, and she tells him she has a fiance, and that fiance (after some agonised choosing between he, Farnsworth and Zoidberg!) is Fry! Branigan is not impressed. Neither are the crew when they realise that though the Professor, Zoidberg and Hermes get to travel first-class, they are on “The Fiesta Deck”, which is below Steerage and deep in the bowels of the ship. Bender’s attention is drawn by a lovely lady robot, but by the time he retrieves his eyes, which have literally popped out, she is gone. He meets her again though when he visits the casino, and they strike up a friendship. She tells him her name is the Countess de la Roca.
Branigan decides the course plotted for the Titanic is “a course for schoolgirls” and works out a new one, one which will take them right through a field of comets. Amy is distraught to find that her parents are also on the ship, and immediately try their usual matchmaking tricks, so Amy too decides to pretend Fry is her boyfriend. This could get ugly! Meanwhile Hermes is reminded of the big tragedy in his life, when he was competing in the 2980 Limbo Olympics and unintentionally encouraged a young kid to limbo like him. Unlike the practiced Hermes, the child’s back was not strong enough and it broke. Hermes has never limboed since. Fry and Leela are invited to the Captain’s Table, which is not great as it puts Leela in close contact with Zapp and she must maintain the pretence of being in love with Fry. Things get worse though when it turns out that Branigan has also invited the Wong family, who expect to see Fry cozying up to Amy!
Luckily (or not) he’s saved from choosing who to kiss when the ship hits something and Branigan reluctantly leaves the table. Kiff shows the captain that the comets are getting increasingly close and more haphazard as they move further into the field, but Branigan sniiffs and turns the ship towards what he takes to be a calm section of space, little realising it is in fact a Black Hole! Leela meanwhile is jealous despite herself that Fry, to please Amy’s parents, is pretending to be her boyfriend. Just then the ship gets pulled into the gravitational embrace of the black hole, and Branigan abandons ship, leaving Kiff in charge.
With nobody to guide them the passengers start to make their way to the life pods, and Bender goes back to save the Countess. Luckily she can float, and manages to take them both to safety as the lower decks fill up. As the crew rush to the lifepods an emergency airlock door shuts, but Zoidberg manages to jam it with his claw, preventing it from shutting, but there is only an inch or so of a gap left. The space is way too narrow for anyone to get in and operate the release from the other side: anyone that is other than an Olympic Limbo champion! And so Hermes confronts the ghosts of his past and reconciles with his demons, saving them all. As they make it to the liefpods Amy’s parents appear and introduce her to the latest prospect for her love life, a captain no less. When she sees Kiff though it’s love at first sight. Fry, Leela and the Professor want to wait for Bender --- “The higher gravity must be slowing down his looting”, Leela opines --- but there is no time. He gets there with the Countess just as the pod shoots off, and manages to grab onto the rail, getting dragged along, but the extra weight is slowing down the pod. They begin to fall back towards the black hole.
Then the Countess slips, loses her grip and falls into the maelstrom. The pod begins to move out of the gravitational pull of the black hole and away to safety, but Bender has lost his love.
QUOTES
Mayor: “As Mayor of New New York it’s my pleasure to introduce the honorary captain for the Titanic’s maiden voyage. A man who singlehandedly defeated the Retiree People of the Assisted Living Nebula, Zapp Branigan!”
Bender: “Well I’m tired of this room and everyone in it! If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go over to the casino for the next one hundred and thirty-five hours.”
Bender: “Wait! My cheating unit malfunctioned!”
Countess de la Roca: “I’m surprised to see another robot in First Class. Most of the robots I meet are labourers.”
Bender: “I assure you, I barely know the meaning of the word labour!”
Zapp: “Kiff, I am feeling the captain’s itch!”
Kiff; “I’ll get the powder, Sir.”
Zapp: “No, the itch for adventure!”
Kiff: “But Sir! That course will take us right through a swarm of comets!”
Zapp: “Ah yes, comets: the icebergs of the sky!”
Amy: “Mom! Dad! What are you doing here?”
Mr Wong: “We were planning on enjoying a relaxing vacation, but since you’re here we’ll have to do some meddling.”
Mrs Wong: “We met the nicest boy in the cabin next to ours.”
Mr Wong: “He’s not
very ugly!”
Mrs Wong: “You should marry him, or at least use him to conceive a grandchild for us!”
Countess de la Roca (indicating the jewel Bender had been about to rob): “Lovely, isn’t it?”
Bender: “Yeah, but only ninety-three percent as lovely as you.”
Countess: “Oh Bender! Either that was a computing error or you’re the most romantic robot I ever met!”
Zapp: “Your attention please. As captain of this vessel the terrible burden of naming a limbo champion is mine and mine alone.”
Kiff: “Shouldn’t you be steering between the comets?”
Kiff: “Captain, may I have a word with you?”
Zapp: “No. Go away!”
Kiff: “It’s an emergency Sir.”
Zapp: “Come back when it’s a catastrophe!”
Zapp: “We’ll simply set a new course, for that empty region over there, neat that blackish, hole-ish thing…”
Zapp: “Don’t blame yourself Kiff: we were doomed from the start. Nothing remains now but for the captain to go down with his ship.”
Kiff: “That’s surprisingly noble of you Sir.”
Zapp: “No, it’s noble of you, Kiff. As of now you’re in command. Congratulations, Captain!”
Fry: “You’re going back for the Countess, aren’t you?”
Bender: “All right I am. But I don’t want the others to know. So if I don’t make it back say I died robbing some old man.”
Fry: “I’ll tell them you went out prying the wedding ring off his cold, dead finger.”
Bender: “I love you, buddy!”
Countess: “Bender! You risked your life to save me!”
Bender: “And I’d do it again! And maybe a third time. But that would be it.”
Countess: “One day you’ll meet someone and you’ll share your love again. After all, it’s shareware!”
PCRs
In the time-honoured tradition of launching ships, Branigan smashes a bottle against the side of the Titanic. Only they don’t have a bottle, so he take the Head of Leonardo DiCaprio in its jar and smashes that against it instead! The head of the surprised star of the “Titanic” movie rolls away, forgotten about.
Bender grins, as he rolls the dice, “Baby needs a new pair of feet!” Usually people say shoes, but Bender doesn’t wear shoes.
Of course, it’s very loosely based on the movie so you can expect a lot of parodies, and the first is when Bender emulates DiCaprio painting his lover in the nude, though Bender creates a robotic schematic of the Countess, of course.
Next is the “king of the world!” scene, but the Countess being a robot Bender is unable to hold her up and his arms fall off and she drops through the deck.
A ROBOT CALLED BENDER
Ah, Bender! You can take the robot out of the thief but you can’t take the thief out of the robot. Unless you reprogramme him, I guess. Even though Bender is attracted to the Countess, he can’t resist picking her pocket when they first meet, and when she goes to “freshen up” in her cabin, he rifles through her drawers until he spots a jewel he can steal. However he does change his mind, fixing the gem instead around her wrist. Ah, true love! Bender is also prepared to risk his safety to rescue her as the ship goes down, and we all know that if there’s one person Bender loves above all else, it’s Bender!
This is the first time Bender has a romantic relationship, but it will not be the last. The various assignations will change him in subtle ways, though never completely or even that noticeably. After all, this is Bender we’re talking about here!
Interesting note: Just realised that the associate producer’s name is Claudia de la Roca, surely where they got the Countess’s name from? J. Michael Straczynski does much the same in Babylon 5, naming people, things and even battles after famous people, or people he admires.
Thoughts from the Suicide Booth (with apologies to Exoskeletal)
A new section I'm introducing in which anything I want to say which does not fit into any of the usual categories I use for Futurama (or, possibly, other series: I may expand this. I may not) can be put.
In this first edition I'd just like to point out that this episode marks the first of several parodies that would characterise much of the show in later seasons. Up until now, the writers had not actually taken a premise and lampooned it, other than references to the movie and TV series "The Odd Couple" in season one's "I. roommate". But here they take on Cameron's blockbuster, updating it for space and the 31st century. It's a great effort but does make me wonder could they already have been a little short on ideas as they moved into their second season?
Later they would parody "Willie Wonka", "The Shining", "The day the Earth stood still" and "One flew over the cuckoo's nest", to name but a few. Of course, in between they had some incredibly well-written and hilarious original episodes, so they certainly had the talent and the imagination. I just wonder if they were beginning to fall into a dangerous "Family Guy" type cycle of homage-turned-ripoff that could have damaged their reputation?
Towards the end of the first run (first cancellation) they seem to have pulled away from this idea, perhaps realising that what the audience wanted was not more parodies and in-jokes, but more original episodes. Don't get me wrong: this is a great episode, but so much of it is taken up with mocking the film that it's sort of hard to concentrate on the, for want of a better phrase,
Futuramaness of it...