Futurama Episode #40: Space Pilot 3000
Production #1ACV01
Date: Sunday, March 28 1999 at 7PM
Intro Caption: "IN COLOR"

Fry, a pizza delivery boy, is directed to a cryogenics lab by a crank call and accidentally freezes himself for 1000 years. When he awakens, the future society immediately assesses his skills and assigns him the job of delivery boy: this is the one job he will have for the rest of his life, encoded in the job chip that Leela, his cryonic revival caseworker, wants to implant in his flesh. She's a one-eyed alien abandoned on Earth by her parents, but tries to do the best she can, in keeping with the motto of the future Earth, "You gotta do what you gotta do."

Fry bolts, and Leela is assigned to capture and implant him. Out on the street, Fry ducks into a booth, which turns out to be a coin-operated suicide booth. He shares it with an alcoholic robot named Bender, who is designed to bend girders but hates his life and wants to die. Unfortunately, they fail.

Fry teaches Bender that he can rise above his narrow programming and bend anything he wants, not just girders. For Bender, this is akin to an epiphany, and he helps Fry elude Leela for a while. Now Fry and Bender are on the run from Leela and the cops, who are lower-class sadistic thugs, (some things never change); however, when she sees the cops beating up on them, Leela suffers a change of heart, and helps Fry escape again. They all hide at the home of Fry's great-great-great-etc.-grand-nephew, Dr. Farnsworth. The police are closing in, but it happens that Dr. Farnsworth has invented an intergalactic spaceship, on which they escape.

Exiled from Earth, Dr. Farnsworth decides to go into business delivering cargoes to all five quadrants of the universe. Fry gets to be part of the crew, which makes him ... a delivery boy. You gotta do what you gotta do. But he's a delivery boy in SPACE, which to a kid from the 20th century, is all he ever wanted.

Notes:
Leela's badge number is 1B-DI ... think about it
Leonard Nemoy guest stars as himself...as a head.

Gizmos:
Suicide booth
Heads in jars
The Planet Express ship

Go back to: Futurama Episode Guide

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