Where No Fan Has Gone Before

"Where No Fan Has Gone Before" is the sixty-fifth episode of Futurama, the eleventh of the fourth production season and the twelfth and last of the fourth broadcast season. It aired 2 April, 2002 on FOX. It guest stars William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Walter Koenig, George Takei and Nichelle Nichols as themselves, as well as Jonathan Frakes as himself in a jar. Fry is an avid Star Trek fan, but when he discovers that it has been banned, Fry seeks out the forgotten tapes.

Act I: "Those words are forbidden!"
The opening scene puts us right into court martial held by Zapp Brannigan in the hold of the Planet Express Ship. Accused of setting foot on the forbidden planet Omega 3 are: Fry, Bender and Leela, wittnesses are the heads of the cast of the original Star Trek: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, Walter Koenig, Nichelle Nichols and George Takei. The accused recount the events of the last few days...

While renting some videos, Fry finds out that Star Trek is banned in the 31st century. Farnsworth explains that it was once a major religion, but was banished. The tapes of the episodes and movies were deposited on the forbidden planet Omega 3. Fry visits Leonard Nimoy's head in the Head Museum and convinces him to join the search for the rest of the cast, whose heads-in-jars have been lost for 300 years. The Planet Express Ship heads toward Omega 3 to retrieve the tapes, with Leela, Fry, Bender and Nimoy's head on board, and crash-lands on the planet.

The surface is littered with set pieces from the original Star Trek series, and among them, the rest of the cast is assembled - no longer heads-in-jars, but complete. It is revealed that behind all this is a gaseous energy being named Melllvar (looking susipciously like a bad special effect from the original series), who demonstrates his power by randomly murdering Welshie, the replacement for.

Act II: "I am Melllvar, Seer of the Tapes! Knower of the Episodes!"
Now that Melllvar, the self-declared ultimate Trek fan, has the entire original cast complete (Nimoy is provided with a fresh body), he can open the eternal Star Trek Convention, complete with everything: quiz show, autographs, singing contest, fan fiction - all for Melllvar. It turns out that his encyclopaedic knowledge of Star Trek is second to only one - Fry.

In the meantime, the Planet Express crew leave the planet, but decide to return and rescue the actors by trying to destroy Melllvar in a way truly worthy of Star Trek. However, they fail and are dragged to the planet and the Planet Express Ship's drives are disabled. Now Melllvar is not sure who is worthy of his fanatical devotion: the actors or the Planet Express crew, who really are a motley crew of spacefaring adventurers. He chooses the traditional method of all energy beings in Star Trek: a fight to the death.

Act III: "You can't let a TV show be your whole life!"
Just as things are heating up however, Melllvar is called to dinner by his mother and the two crews cooperate to escape. The Trek cast install their own ship's drive on the Planet Express Ship, but find they are slightly too heavy and leave the actors' bodies behind - they are once more reduced to heads-in-jars. Fortunately for Fry, they are still light enough to carry all the episodes.

Melllvar is pursueing them in a mint-condition spaceship when they encounter the Nimbus, and Zapp Brannigan installs his court martial. When he asks what happened to Melllvar, Leela notes out that nothing happened to him, and they are still under attack. Melllvar decides that if he can't have the original Star Trek crew, he won't let anyone else have them either, and continues to try to destroy the ship. Fry persuades him to let them go and get a life instead of letting a TV show be the center of his existence.

Production
The writer of the episode, David A. Goodman, made an effort for this particular episode to include as many references to the original Star Trek series as possible. And his references ranged from obvious ones, such as "Shatner's log", a play on the Captain's log from Star Trek, while there were more subtle ones, such as Shatner's immediate comment about "the impossible has happened" being a reference to the first episode, "", which is the immediate line following the opening.

In addition to writing, much of the animation for this episode was styled after Star Trek, such as the opening where the Planet Express ship flies across the screen like in the original series' openings. As well as the credits sequence's music was replaced with the original Star Trek theme, and using recaps from the episode, something Star Trek did, but Futurama does not. This was also the first Futurama episode to utilize all synthesized music instead of the usual full orchestra. This would become the permanent ordeal due to budget cuts beginning with the first movie.

Trivia

 * This episode is one of two Futurama episodes that do not feature Professor Farnsworth, the other being "The Why of Fry", which is the preceding episode in production order.
 * The opening sequence begins with a flyby of the Planet Express Ship fitted with Enterprise nacelles, and a William Shatner Shatner's Log, a play on the "captain's log" that opens nearly every episode of every Star Trek series.
 * In the Church of Trek, worshippers are shown wearing Starfleet uniforms, and two have the appearance of the black-and-white aliens from Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.
 * One of the Trekkies that is thrown into the volcano wears a shirt reading, "Beam me up Scotty, there's no intelligent life on this planet," a popular bumper sticker slogan.
 * In the Head Museum, one of the heads appears to be that of Apu Nahasapeemapetilon from The Simpsons.
 * All the tapes of Star Trek are fired out of an from UK Science Fiction show "" in a torpedo, and land on a nearby planet, just as Spock's body was at the end of .
 * The estabishing shot of Omega 3 shows props from the Star Trek episodes "Spectre of the Gun," "Who Mourns for Adonais?," "The Gamesters of Triskelion," "The Ultimate Computer," and "The City on the Edge of Forever."
 * The Planet Express Ship fires down on Melllvar, and as in the original series, the beams are shown leaving the ship in diverging directions, but somewhere in between they converge so that both strike the target at the same time, in the same spot - plus they look like the bad special effect in the original series.
 * Shatner rips his shirt, a frequent occurrence on the show that was joked about by the cast. During the fight scene with Leela, he also uses the "clasped fist punch" used many times by Kirk which would be startlingly ineffective in a real fight. Leela raising the stone above her head is reminiscent of Kirk's fight scene with Gary Mitchell in "Where No Man Has Gone Before."
 * Nichelle Nichols distracts Fry, Leela, and Bender with her famous fan dance as seen in .
 * Nimoy attempts to nerve-pinch Bender.
 * Melllvar's ship looks like a Romulan Bird of Prey.
 * The ending credits feature the Star Trek Fanfare, and play back images from the episode, as well as a picture of Kif in a parody of the famous "Balok's puppet" alien seen on some of the Original Series ending credits.
 * The wheelchair equipped with the Morse lamp in which the witnesses are placed is a spoof of the wheelchair used by the disabled ex-Enterprise captain Christopher Pike in the original Star Trek episode "The Menagerie".
 * Nichelle Nichols had her second appearance on the show here, as did Leonard Nimoy.
 * Although DeForest Kelley appears in this episode, and is specifically identified by Leonard Nimoy, he never speaks. This is because Kelley had sadly already passed away prior to this episode's conception.
 * An ongoing joke in the Star Trek series, if someone was to die on an away mission it was a non-permanent character in a red uniform, or a redshirt. Thus Welshie, the non-permanent character in a red uniform, was killed and re-killed by Melllvar.
 * Movies at the Rent-a-Wreck Video include:
 * "Human Cop"
 * "Pippi Longtentacles"
 * "Moon Men From Mars"
 * "Galaxy Wars"
 * "Planet of the Clams"
 * "The Bellyachers"
 * "The Yawning'
 * "Werewolf Dog"
 * 6 unnamed Jim Carrey movies


 * This episode was named #10 on IGN's list of Top 25 Futurama Episodes.
 * James Doohan, known for playing Scotty in the Star Trek franchise, refused to appear on this episode.

Continuity

 * The title caption for "Less than Hero" says that Futurama is "soon to be a major religion". Star Trek, which is referenced in nearly every episode, is revealed to have become a religion centuries ago in this episode.

Goofs

 * Although it is revealed here that the use of the words "Star" and "Trek" together in the same sentence is forbidden, no one reacted that way whenever those words were mentioned in previous episodes; "Space Pilot 3000", "Brannigan, Begin Again" and "That's Lobstertainment!".


 * While Melllvar should have 86 tapes- 79 episodes, 6 movies and "that blooper reel where the door doesn't close all the way," the cart is holding only 85 tapes.
 * The blooper reel could be an extra on one of the episode or movie tapes.


 * When Fry is telling Melllvar to rethink his life, he is clearly holding Shatner's head is his arms. However, after Melllvar flies off, Shatner is suddenly on the table with the rest of his cast members.

Characters

 * Bender
 * Debut: DeForest Kelley
 * Dick Clark's head (cameo)
 * Fry
 * Debut: George Takei
 * Debut: Jonathan Frakes
 * Kif
 * Leela
 * Leonard Nimoy
 * Nichelle Nichols
 * Debut: Melllvar
 * Debut: Melllvar's Mom
 * Mike D's head (cameo)
 * Pamela Anderson's head (cameo)
 * Debut: William Shatner
 * Smitty and Url
 * Debut: Video Store Clerk
 * Debut: Walter Koenig
 * Debut: Welshie
 * Zapp Brannigan
 * Zoidberg

Episode Credits

 * Writer
 * David A. Goodman
 * Director
 * Pat Shinagawa
 * Voice Actors
 * Billy West
 * Katey Sagal
 * John DiMaggio
 * DVD Commentary
 * Matt Groening
 * David X. Cohen
 * David Goodman
 * Pat Shinagawa
 * Billy West
 * Maurice LaMarche
 * Special Guests
 * William Shatner
 * Leonard Nimoy
 * Walter Koenig
 * George Takei
 * Nichelle Nichols
 * Jonathan Frakes