Turanga Leela

Species: Human (Mutant)

Planet of Origin: Earth Age: 25 Voiced By: Katey Sagal First Appearance: Space Pilot 3000 (1ACV01)

General Information
Turanga Leela is one of the most important employees of Planet Express. She occupies the position of the ship's captain and pilot and therefore is the head of the regular delivery crew consisting of her, Fry and Bender. Her most noticable feature is the fact that she is a cyclops and possesses only one eye, plus her natural hair coulour is a violent purple. Apart from that, she is looking very good and can almost pass for normal.

Leela is by far the most competent and responsible crew member of Planet Express. As captain and pilot of the Planet Express Ship, she frequently has a leading role in the developments, and as she is a very well trained fighter and does not hesitate to use force if necessary, she is useful in a tight corner. It is usually her job to rescue her other crew members from distress, especially Fry. A major feature with her is the Wristlojackimator or, as she usually calls it, "that thing I wear on my wrist", which seems to be a device of multiple uses around the house. She wears a contact lens and a monocle.

Leela lives alone in an appartment somewhere in the city of New New York. She only shares her lonelyness with her alien pet, Nibbler.

Biography
Turanga Leela was born as a mutant in the sewers of New New York, her parents are Turanga Morris and Munda. As Leela is probably the least mutated mutant ever born and looked almost like a normal child, they decided that she should not share the fate of her people living in the sewers. They instead chose to give her a life as normal as possible, a "real" life, by giving her up to the Cookieville Minimum Security Orphanarium. Attached to her basket was a note in an alien language written by her mother Turanga Munda who has a degree in exo-linguistics, meant to convince the finder of her daughter that she was an alien and thus accepting her into the orphanarium.

Leela grew up in the orphanarium ignorant of her true roots believing that she was indeed an alien.She had a hard time there, as she got relentlessly picked on because of her weird looks and was always a lonely outsider. She then wore a monocle and, later, braces. Nevertheless, she managed to develop a strong personality and tends to be self-reliant and smart. As an outlet for her frustration, she let herself be trained in Arcturan Kung Fu to the level of a black-belt by a master of this martial art, Fnog, despite the fact she was suffering from his obvious sexism.

After leaving the orphanarium, she began a carreer as Fate Assignment Officer at Applied Cryogenics who assigned defrostees to their permanent carreers and provided them with the proper carreer chips. Then one day a defrostee named Philip J. Fry came along (Space Pilot 3000) and inspired her to quit her job. Ultimately she ended up being hired by Fry's many-times-great-nephew Hubert Farnsworth as the new captain for his interstellar delivery service, Planet Express. In that position, she also aquired her beloved pet Nibbler who is still with her. After a lifetime of searching, she learned of her true heritage as a mutant and found her parents in Leelas Homeworld.

As a cyclops, Leela has always had difficulty in relationships with others, especially men. All of her romantic engagements so far prooved to be short lived. On the list of her past love affairs are: Shawn, Doug, Zapp Brannigan, Adlai Atkins, Chas and Alcazar. The most persistant admirer to date has been Fry who was even briefly married to her in Time keeps on slipping and is frequently rejected by her, yet he does not give up and his patience seems to be rewarded - it seems as if in time Leela might cave in to his attempts to win her heart.

Family

 * Turanga Morris, Father
 * Turanga Munda, Mother
 * Leela 1, Alternate self from the Parabox universe.

Trivia

 * The designers kept trying to make Leela's nose smaller, because it was larger than they thought appropriate for a female character, but Matt Groening insisted it stay the larger size.

Two-Eyed Leela
Leela has been seen with two eyes several times:


 * When Aliens Attack &mdash; To portray the role of Jenny MacNeil, a plastic eye is taped to the side of her face (which Zoidberg later eats).
 * Amazon Women in the Mood &mdash; When the Amazonians are approaching, a puddle ripples, causing Leela's reflection to distort, showing her briefly with two eyes.
 * The Cyber House Rules &mdash; A second eye is grafted onto Leela's face. She later realizes she's better off being different, and has it removed.