Möbius Dick

"Möbius Dick" is the one hundred and third episode of Futurama, the fifteenth of the sixth production season and the eighth of the eighth broadcast season. It aired 4 August, 2011 on Comedy Central. Leela becomes obsessed with hunting down a mysterious four-dimensional space whale.

Act I: "I remember it like it was interesting."
Farnsworth is mourning the loss of his first Planet Express crew, having it been exactly 50 years since they were lost. To commemorate the anniversary, Farnsworth order the current crew to pick up a memorial and fly it back to Earth. However, on the way back, there is the Bermuda Tetrahedron, which is thought to have killed the lives of many spaceships which have travelled through it. But Leela insists that they should fly through.

Act II: "Oh, and there was a giant killer space whale."
In the spaceship graveyard inside the Tetrahedron, the crew spots the old Planet Express ship, where they find the crew to have been gone. However, inside the old ship, the crew is attacked by a four-dimensional space whale (which Leela refers to as a 'Möbius Dick'), and the flee to their current ship. The whale re-attacks them, eating their cargo and engine, but leaves the ship afloat.

Act III: "Not to mention those single socks from the dryer."
Leela orders the crew to set the sun-wave sails to replace the spaceship engine. But instead of fleeing the Bermuda Tetrahedron, Leela decides to hunt down the whale. Her obsession with killing it, eventually means the crew is eaten by the whale, wherein the whale consumes her, as it feasts on obsession. But Leela manages to get the whale back to Earth, where she can re-introduce the crew and the first crew to their relatives.

Production
During June 2011, Countdown to Futurama released three items of promotional material for the episode: concept art of the Planet Express ship with sails on 1 June, part of the storyboard showing Zoidberg crash in the ship's escape pod on 2 June, and a video clip of the Planet Express crew hunting the whale down on 18 June.

Reception
In the original U.S. broadcast on 4 August, 2011, "Möbius Dick" scored a 0.8 among adults aged 18-49 and 1.459 million viewers, with total viewers down about 34,000 viewers from the previous week.

Trivia

 * The episode was for some time thought to be the broadcast season's second episode, but the announcement that "Benderama" would air on 23 June in its place proved otherwise.
 * This episode is among the Futurama media featuring its title within the story.
 * Maurice LaMarche does not voice any characters and, for the first time, was left out of the end credits.
 * This is the first episode where Dr. John A. Zoidberg is addressed informally as "Johnny", which is due to the respect for and liking of him that Professor Farnsworth had at the time.
 * Only Hermes' speech is actually reversed while in the fourth dimension. Amy's statement can be interpreted as a series of letters ("G I C C G I") and her "reversed" audio is just her saying the letters in reverse order ("I G C C I G"). Fry's speech is just a palindrome which should sound roughly the same in reverse (it doesn't), but his reversed speech is just the same audio clip with added pre-echo to give the impression that it's being played backwards.
 * When Bender is told that the spacebergs are giant diamonds, his pupils momentarily become diamond (lozenge) shaped.

Allusions

 * The title and the overall plot are a parody of the -penned novel ', which was previously referenced in "The Day the Earth Stood Stupid" and less critically in "Bendin' in the Wind" with the "Mobil Dick" whale oil. The title is a pun, combining ' and the.
 * Möbius Dick is also well known in the mathematics community as the answer to a pun-based math riddle: What's non-orientable and lives in the ocean?
 *  is the title of a 2000 novel by.
 * Captain Lando Tucker's name could refer to from Star Wars and Commander  from Star Trek: .
 * The Bermuda tetrahedron is a reference to the real-life, a region in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean where a number of aircraft and surface vessels allegedly disappeared under mysterious circumstances. It's appearance is an allusion to The Route of Ages, an interdimensional portal from the show Andromeda, which was a Tesseract(4D cube).
 * The members of Professor Farnsworth's first crew are all blatant equivalents to his current crew. Lando Tucker was not only the crew's captain, but also has the same initials as Turanga Leela ignoring mutant naming conventions.  Lifter is a robot whose name is its primary function.  Candy, while she is female, is a type of comfort food, just as French Fries are.
 * On the planet Xenotaph 3, one of the sculptures is of an open pod from, and another appears to refer to the movie.
 * The name of star system Xenotaph is a combination of "" (Greek for "alien" or "stranger") and "" (Greek for "empty tomb", a tomb or grave-like monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere). Actually, you can translate Xenotaph as "alien's tomb".
 * The path Leela charts around the Bermuda Tetrahedon looks similar to the Greek letter (Ω), which has many uses in science and mathematics.
 * Henson Tickle Me Elmo's fire parodies, an electrical weather phenomenon, and the doll based on the Sesame Street character.  As a space phenomena, Tickle Me Elmo's fire is a separate concept from St. Elmo's fire.
 * When Leela calls the crew "you space dogs", she is referring both to the expression "you dog", and to the of the 1950s and 1960s. It could also be the space version of the sailing expression "You sea dogs!"
 * When the crew spots the original Planet Express ship, Amy speculates that it may have been "flavor blasted". This is a reference to, which has a line of "" Goldfish Snack Crackers.
 * When the current crew explores the old ship, multiple allusions are made to the  episode "".
 * The state of the old Planet Express ship, completely deserted but with food still set at a table, is a reference to the real-life "ghost ship" the .
 * When the space whale exhales, his steam is in the form of a Julia set, a fractal.
 * Emerging from the 4th dimension, Bender says, "That was the greatest uncountably infinite bunch of guys I ever met." This refers to set theory, describing any set whose elements cannot be enumerated like the integers which are countably infinite.
 * Fry describes their predicament as "like that Bible guy who got swallowed by a whale...Pinocchio!". This refers to both the Biblical figure, who was swallowed by a beast sometimes described as a whale (Hebrew, dag gadol, great fish), and the Disney version of , in which the title character is swallowed by the whale Monstro.
 * The idea of solar sails was likely inspired by Disney's "".
 * When Amy, Fry and Bender get sucked into the space whale's infinity-shaped digestive tract they are facing Leela, but moments later when Leela bangs on the tract herself, they are inverted, facing away from her. This may be to demonstrate the non-orientability of the Mobius strip. When you trace around it, you come back to the same point but on the opposite side. Later Professor Farnsworth says that the whale has a Mobius colon.
 * Captain Lando Tucker melded with whale's flesh might be a reference to the second and third films in the ' series, where several crew members are shown united with the ship '.
 * While lamenting her daughter Amy, Inez Wong remarks "My days of joy and luck are over. Guess I gotta quit that club." This is a reference to the  novel/film , with the film version starring Inez's voice actress Lauren Tom.
 * The Fourth Doctor from the British television science fiction series  can be seen, amongst others, emerging from the body of the four-dimensional space whale.
 * The sequence where the people exit the space whale's mouth is similar to the scene where the abductees leave the alien ship in . The Professor even says "they haven't aged", a line said by a scientist during that sequence.
 * Earlier, when the crew discovered the whale's four-dimensional bowels, Amy said the line "Einstein was right", which was also spoken in the CEotTK scene.
 * Leela calls Amy  at one point.

Space ship graveyard
A number of spaceships, vehicles, and objects are identifiable in the Bermuda Tetrahedron.


 * from 2001: A Space Odyssey
 * A black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey
 * from 
 * The for the rock group
 * An Omicronian mothership or the Hubble Telescope as seen in "When Aliens Attack"
 * The from 
 * The spaceship from 
 * The Jupiter 2 from 
 * Stereotypical UFO
 * GPS satellite
 * GPS satellite
 * First Planet Express ship
 * An labelled ""
 * An
 * The used on album covers for the band.
 * The space station
 * The guitar spaceship used on album covers for the band



Continuity

 * Fry stated that he knew Professor Farnsworth had other crews, but not the first one. This is true, Fry was aware of the previous crew that died on duty since "Space Pilot 3000", as well as having met Captain Musky and seeing a previous ship's wreckage in the hive of Space Bees.
 * Leela's obsession with killing the whale greatly contradicts the intense pro-animal stance she has in the rest of the series.
 * Leela established her harpooning expertise in "The Deep South". Despite this she asks who can harpoon the whale and Amy volunteers.
 * When the Planet Express ship has sails, it looks similar to the model ship that Dean Vernon was working on during "Mars University".
 * Leela's parents are shown on the surface without any trouble, confirming their freedom in "The Mutants Are Revolting".

Goofs

 * Dr. Zoidberg is shown to have been working at Planet Express since at least 2961, but it was established in "Insane in the Mainframe" that he began work in at Planet Express during 2992. This may be the new precedent.
 * Zoidberg is drawn with teeth during the Professor's flashback.
 * This may be a reference to Zoidberg having teeth in the early episodes. Perhaps he used to have them and lost them due to dental problems?
 * During Farnsworth's flashback, before the rocket takes off, a hand with five fingers and nails turns the knobs.
 * When the whale is harpooned, the scar-like marking on its eye disappears.
 * It also disappears while the whale is pulling the ship.
 * When the crew returns from the 4th Dimension, Bender actually falls to the back of the ship first. The order Bender-Amy-Fry-Hermes-Leela-and then Bender again. You can see his arm for a moment behind Amy's, and then it disappears and he falls again moments later.
 * Bender's "arm" is actually the elbow pad on Amy's suit.
 * To further this goof, when they get up Leela is actually on the top of the crew pile.
 * Leela could have crawled to get in front of Bender off-screen, while the whale was pulling the ship.
 * Writer Eric Rogers stated on that Bender hitting the wall twice was intentional, but it is unknown if he is telling the truth or not.
 * When asked again, he confirmed it was 'a joke on a joke'.
 * Bender falling twice could be a 4th dimensional effect/phenomenon. Also applies to Skylab being in the whale, since it fell to Earth in 1979.
 * When the whale bites a hole into the planet express ship, Leela should have been blown out into space due to a decompression explosion.
 * When the crew is trying to get back to the more modern planet express ship, you will see them moving without the aid of the rope, because they were in space, the swimming action they were using would not work due to the vacuum of space there would be a net movement of zero, because as they pushed their hands to move forward, when they moved them back into their original position to repeat the step the would have simply moved backwards into their original position.
 * Before entering the 4th dimension, Amy is wearing her ion suit, however she is seen wearing her pink track suit while in the 4th dimension and afterwards.
 * Before the whale eats the front of the ship, Leela does not have yellow gloves on, however when she jumps out, she suddenly does. She is seen jumping from the ship without gloves to floating in space with them.
 * When the whale eats the ship, Leela should have died from the decompression without anything on other than a space helmet.
 * Not necessarily, a human body should be able to withstand brief exposure to space. One atmosphere pressure difference and the amount of heat the body radiates in vacuum would not be lethal in the amount of time Leela was exposed. Contrary to popular belief, people do not instantly freeze in space nor do they implode due to the pressure difference.
 * Professor Farnsworth complains that the grieving relatives will ask for a refund without the stone monument. The monument is actually made of ivory.
 * This could be due to the Professors senility.
 * Kif does not appear at the memorial despite being Amy's Fonfon ru.
 * Kif may have been too far away from Earth in the Nimbus to get back in time on short notice. Keep in mind that the memorial service was a set date for the first crew and not changed even though the Professor added the current crew to the service. Leela had to go through the Bermuda tetrahedron, not around it, just to try to make it back on time due to the delay of the carvers remaking the monument. Additionally Leela says she had to fly the space whale through space and time in order to arrive at the service on time.
 * At the memorial service, the professor says he intended to unveil a stone memorial, but earlier when Leela ordered a new one to be made because of a grammatical error, they use ivory.

Characters

 * Debut: Amelia Earhart
 * Dr. Amy Wong
 * Bender Bending Rodríguez
 * Debut: Candy
 * Debut: Charlie
 * Dwight Conrad
 * Emperor Grog
 * Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
 * Debut: Möbius Dick
 * Debut: The Fourth Doctor
 * Philip J. Fry
 * Hermes Conrad
 * Inez Wong
 * LaBarbara Conrad
 * Debut: Lando Tucker
 * Debut: Lando Tucker, Jr.
 * Turanga Leela
 * Leo Wong
 * Debut: Lifter
 * Debut: Mrs. Tucker
 * The paper-hatted salesman
 * Scruffy
 * Debut: Sparky, the invisible elf
 * Turanga Morris
 * Turanga Munda
 * Dr. John A. Zoidberg