Decision 3012

"Decision 3012" is the one hundred and seventeenth episode of Futurama, the third of the seventh production season and the ninth broadcast season. It aired on 27 June 2012 on Comedy Central. Leela becomes a campaign manager for a presidential candidate whose birth certificate is missing.

Act I: "I'm going to get involved in the political process and make my voice heard!"
Richard Nixon's head runs for a third term as president of Earth. The crew, with the exception of Leela, are set on voting for Nixon, especially Bender, who has been swayed by the free beer given by Nixon to citizens for his campaign. They point out that they would rather stick to a candidate they have already experienced rather than face the possibilities of a new candidate. Leela decides to become a campaign manager for one of Nixon's opponents, Senator Chris Travers, whose good-hearted views are disliked by the general public. She helps him reinvigorate Travers' faltering campaign by making promotional stops to help him socialize with the people. Travers is eventually named a nominee against Nixon. The crew decide to help Leela in Travers' campaign, with the exception of Bender, who collaborates with Nixon in helping sabotage Travers' campaign.

Act II: "We voters demand you release your Earth certificate!"
At Travers' presidential headquarters, Bender attempts to find some incriminating info about Travers, but only succeeds in finding positive information about him. When he reads out Travers' middle name, "Zaxxar", Nixon points out how the name sounds like that of an alien and how voters hate aliens. Despite the fact that Travers is a human, Bender and Nixon decide to spread a rumor that Travers is an alien. At one of Travers' campaign stops, Bender questions whether Travers was actually born on Earth and demands his "Earth certificate". Leela plans to release the certificate to prove he was born on Earth, but Travers dismisses the rumors as distractions from the real issues and tells Leela not to look for the certificate. Nonetheless, Leela, Bender and Fry travel to Our Lady of Patriotism Hospital in Kenya, where Travers claims he was born, to find the certificate. They find a file labelled "Travers", but fails to find an Earth certificate. Travers then arrives at the scene. Leela examines the file more, and finds that Travers' mother was admitted to the hospital that morning. Travers then reveals that while he was in fact born on Earth, he will only be born tomorrow, for he is actually from the future.

Act III: "It really doesn't matter who you vote for!"
Travers explains that he was sent back from the year 3028 to prevent Nixon from getting elected. He goes on to explain the series of events that follows after Nixon's election. Nixon's promise to build an alien-proof fence around the solar system eliminated cheap alien labor from Earth. Without the aliens to perform these jobs, the economy collapsed. Starvation and civil unrest became widespread around Earth. Nixon then eliminated working-class humans, turning them into a food product named Soylent Majority. With the working class gone, robots were forced to do all of Earth's labor, and they eventually rose into revolt, led by Bender. The last remnants of humanity hid underground and sent Travers back in time to oppose Nixon and prevent him from getting elected. As he has not yet been born, he has no certificate. Leela then comes up with the plan of broadcasting his birth on live television. His mother eventually gives birth and his certificate is printed. The election results are announced, and Travers is declared the winner. When Amy asks Bender why he is not upset over Nixon's loss, he replies that he does not really care. Travers starts to fade away as Bender points out that since Nixon never won the election, the robot uprising never occured and Travers was never sent back in time to begin with. All mentions of Travers are erased as he disappears, and Morbo announces that Nixon has won the election. Back at the Planet Express headquarters, the crew realize that it does not really matter who one votes for. Leela points out that they at least tried to make a difference, but forgets Travers' name. Hermes points out that they never even left the building.

Production
In 2012, two revelations concerning the episode were made. On 29 February, CGEF revealed the episode's title, its writer to be Patric M. Verrone and its director to be Dwayne Carey-Hill. On 25 April, revealed the episode's plot and air date.

In May, Countdown to Futurama began releasing promotional material for the episode. It has so far released five items: a character design of Bender dressed as on 13 May, a character design of Senator Chris Travers on 14 May, a video clip featuring Morbo as the host of a political debate and suggesting that the presidential candidate mentioned in the MSN TV plot was Travers on 15 May, a promotional picture featuring a Robot army consisting of Bender dressed as Napoleon, Destructor, four Killbots and several other machines on 16 May and part of the storyboard showing both Bender break into a cave full of Humans and the portion of the video clip where Morbo addresses Travers for the last time and the announcement of the second Futurama podcast - which confirmed that the presidential candidate mentioned in the MSN TV plot was Travers - on 17 May. A preview of the episode aired on 20 June during the credits of the episode "A Farewell to Arms".

Allusions

 * The episode's title is a reference to "Decision 2012", a media nickname for the, commonly used by the Daily Show).
 * The music that begins Nixon's head's speech is "The Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Phillip Sousa, considered to be the official march of the United States of America.
 * Chris Travers is a reference to U.S. president Barack Obama - in that he is a senator and  from Hawaii with  and there are.
 * Also, Travers is born in Kenya, which is where many 'birthers' claim Obama is really from.
 * The female candidate - who says "We have a saying up in Alaska..." - is likely a reference to former Governor of Alaska.
 * One of the candidates says, "Enviro-mite!" A clear parody of J.J. Walker from Good Times, whose catchphrase was "Dy-no-mite!"
 * The music heard during the news montage of Travers is a parody of Louis Prima's composition "Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)" as made famous by Benny Goodman and His Orchestra.
 * At the convention, one sign reads "Skyrim", the shortened version of the name of the 2011 action role-playing open world video game .
 * Another sign says "Panem". This is a reference to a nation in .
 * Scoop Chang now works for Fox "News". This is a reference to the infamous conservative bias and high amount of editorial and opinion-based shows on the network.
 * Hedonismbot's role as "Big Throat" is an obvious parody of Mark Felt's role as "Deep Throat".

Continuity

 * Bender wore a Napoleon hat and briefly joked with the others that he believed he was Napoleon in the HAL Institute during "Insane in the Mainframe". He was also seen dressed up as Napoleon in a portrait in "Godfellas".
 * Bender's sunglasses were last seen in Bender's Big Score.
 * Travers travelled back in time to 3012 thanks to the Machine language time code, thought destroyed in Bender's Big Score, but which survived on a photocopy of Fry's rear end.
 * Although, here it seems to appear without its regular paradox correcting functionality, as Travers did not explode as he was supposed to.
 * However, he did disappear shortly after his infant duplicate was born. This may be because in Bender's Big Score none of the paradoxes stopped them from getting the time code in the first place. However in this episode the paradox prevented Travers from getting the time code in the first place.
 * A presidential election was last featured in "A Head in the Polls".
 * In the Bender's Big Score and "The Late Philip J. Fry", time paradox duplicates were destined to die, but in this episode the Travers duplicate merely disappears.

Trivia

 * This is the first episode in which the opening sequence continues directly into the episode itself.
 * This marks the first time the full opening sequence was used in season seven and also the third time the opening sequence did not end with the Planet Express Ship crashing into the Jumbotron.

Characters

 * Amy
 * Mrs. Astor
 * Bender
 * Calculon
 * Censored couple (woman only)
 * Scoop Chang
 * Cowardman
 * Debut: Chris Travers
 * Debut: Chris Travers' mother
 * Destructor
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Fry
 * Hattie
 * Headless clone of Agnew
 * Hermes
 * Hedonismbot
 * Hoschel
 * Hydroponic farmer
 * Hypnotoad
 * iZac
 * Killbots
 * Leela
 * Linda
 * Morbo
 * Mayor Poopenmeyer
 * Richard Nixon's head
 * Nixon's campaign manager
 * Petunia
 * Queen of Yonkers
 * Ruth Bader Ginsburg's head
 * Sal
 * Debut: Septic tank
 * Judge Whitey
 * Zoidberg