Space Pilot 3000

"Space Pilot 3000" was the first episode of Futurama of the first season. It aired on 28 March, 1999 on FOX. It starred Leonard Nimoy and Dick Clark in Head Jars. It is considered significant in the canon of Futurama, because it explains how Philip J. Fry gets to year 3000 in the first place, and throughout the episode sets several fundamentals that will later set the exact setting for the show entirely.

Act I: "Here's to another lousy millenium!"
Pizza delivery boy Philip J. Fry hates his life; he has to deliver a pizza without pay, his girlfriend dumps him, and his bike is stolen, and it all happens on New Year's Eve of 2000. The pizza goes to someone named "I. C. Wiener" in a cryogenics lab, where Fry soon realises that it was a prank call. He sits down and drinks one of the beers, toasting to "another lousy millenium." The bell tolls midnight and he unenthusiastically blows a noise maker when it knocks back in his face, causing him to fall backwards into a cryogenics tube. The tube sets itself for a thousand years and Fry is frozen. As he lies in wait for the next thousand years, the city of New York changes&mdash;it is destroyed by a group of mysterious spaceships. It is rebuilt into primitive Medieval-era castles, only to be destroyed again by more ships. By the time Fry awakens, he sees that New York has become an extremely futuristic metropolis and immediately deduces that he is in the future. He realizes that he will never see his friends, family and girlfriend again...and he couldn't be any happier. The Opening Sequence rolls.

Act II: "Strip naked and get on the probulator!"
Fry is greeted by two workers at the lab&mdash;one of them gives an extremely melodramatic greeting ("Welcome to the world of tomorrow!"). He is escorted to the Fate Assignment Officer's Office where he meets Leela, a beautiful woman with a huge eye in the center of her face, who explains that it is December 31, 2999.

A DNA scan reveals that he has only living relative in this time period: his many times great nephew Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth. Fry begins looking forward to his life in the future until Leela assigns him a permanent career as a delivery boy. Fry refuses to be a delivery boy again, but Leela says that everyone&mdash;even herself&mdash;has do do a job whether they like it or not, coining the phrase, "You gotta do what you gotta do." She tries to implant a chip that will label Fry a delivery boy forever, but Fry runs away. Leela ends up falling into one of the cryogenic tubes during the ensuing chase, which sets itself for 1000 years much like Fry's tube. Fry prepares to leave frozen there but, out of the goodness in his heart, decides to reset the tube to unthaw her in 5 minutes before he leaves the lab.

After witnessing the wonders of the city and how it has changed, he decides to call his descendant Farnsworth. He gets in line for what he thinks is a phone booth and meets a robot named Bender waiting in line. It turns out the phone booth is actually a Suicide Booth, and that Bender is eagerly awaiting his death, but they both manage to avoid death. Having failed at suicide again, Bender invites Fry to get drunk with him at a bar. Fry finds out that Bender wants to kill himself because of his programming as a girder-bender for Suicide Booths. Fry convinces Bender to abandon his plans at suicide and the two become friends when Leela finds them.

Act III: "Welcome to the head museum."
Fry and Bender duck into the Head Museum to hide and are greeted by Leonard Nimoy's head. Leela, along with two police officers Smitty and URL, finds the group in the museum, where Fry accidentally bumps into the shelves, knocking Richard Nixon's head down and provoking him to attack. Smitty and URL begin to use excessive force on Fry, but Leela tries to convince them to stop. After the officers insult her appearance (she actually took offense to a statement about her nose instead of her eye), and Leela knocks them out, prompting Fry and Bender to run for it. Leela demands to know why the officers would beat Fry like that&mdash;they explain that it's their job, saying "[they] gotta do what [they] gotta do."

Fry and Bender lock themselves in a room from Leela. Fry notices that there is a barred window and that Bender can bend the bars so they can escape, but Bender is unable to comply, saying he is only programmed to bend for construction. Fry, however, convinces him to break free from his dependency on his programming, and Bender manages to bend the bars apart, reaching the epiphany of bending whatever, whenever, and whoever he pleases. They go deep underground to the ruins of Old New York, where Fry realizes that he has lost everything he left behind in the past. Leela once again catches up with them, but Fry decides to give in to his fate as a delivery boy. But instead of implanting the carreer chip, Leela sympathizes his lonliness, saying that her parents abandoned her as a baby, thus giving her an unclear perspective of her heritage. She removes her own chip, thus quitting her job, and thanks Fry for helping her realize the nonsensicality of the quote "You gotta do what you gotta do," much like he did for Bender.

Act IV: "We have you partially surrounded!"
Since all three have quit their jobs, Fry, Bender, and Leela realize that they are now fugitives of the law, so they hide at Planet Express where Fry's nephew Professor Farnsworth lives. After confirming his connection to Fry for himself, the Professor shows them his intergalactic spaceship. The building is then (partially) surrounded by the police, so they use the ship to escape. While they take off, the police open fire&mdash;but the bell tolls the year 3000, and the ship cannot be seen through the fireworks. Fry, Bender and Leela begin to ponder their lives as they are now unemployed until the Professor decides to hire them for an interplanetary delivery service he founded to fund his work. He even kept the career chips of his old crew as they had apparently been devoured by a space wasp (in actuality they had been stung to death by space bees). Fry is assigned to be a delivery boy...and he couldn't be happier.

Trivia

 * The first shot of New New York was also the first 3D sequence in the show, and an experiment of sorts.
 * Leela is officer 1BDI ("one beady eye")
 * The script changed many times, but it was seen as important to end the cold opening in the future.
 * An early version of the script featured Fry being sold at an auction to the professor for spare organs.
 * Another early version had Fry as a night watchman at the (1999) cryogenics lab.
 * Fry was to be the captain of the ship.
 * He may also have been an army man.
 * A removed scene featured flashbacks of important parts of Fry's life; Birth, College, etc.
 * Such long scenes caused them to have two hours worth of material.
 * The Statue of Liberty was going to be robotic.
 * Even though the show is supposed to begin in our time (1999), it is still in the future. (It premiered in March, showing December in the show.)
 * The ship of the game Monkey Fracas Jr., at the start of the show, is the Planet Express' ship.
 * There are two heads of Grover Cleveland on the presidents' rack, with Harrison in the middle.
 * This episode is the highest rated Pilot episode in the history of the Fox Broadcasting Company.
 * URL says he going to "get 24th century on his ass"; "get 24th century" has the same meaning as "get medieval." And partway through Fry's suspension, say the 24th century, there was a medieval-type period, with New York rebuilt as castles before being destroyed again and rebuilt as the futuristic city.
 * Bender takes Fry to hide inside the Head Museum saying, "It's Free on Tuesdays." 31 December 2999 will, in fact, be a Tuesday.
 * During the countdown scene at the end of the episode (in the year 2999), France is shown, yet the inhabitants there use the English language instead of French. It is assumed that French in the future is a dead language; this idea is supported in a later episode where Professor Farnsworth invents a universal translator that can only translate into "an incomprehensible dead language".
 * The places in the first countdown scene appear in this order: New York; Paris, France; Rome, Italy; Cairo, Egypt; Greece; China; India; a tribal village in Africa; Tokyo, Japan; and the entire Earth.
 * All the people in line before Fry select the "quick and painless" method of killing themselves.
 * If one looks closely at Leela's computer screen, it actually reveals that Fry's full name is "Phillip J. Fry", which becomes an established fact in (however, his name is spelled with two L's instead of one). His blood type is said to be 'B'.
 * The tube Fry falls in is number 40.
 * This episode was named #14 on IGN's list of Top 25 Futurama Episodes.

Quotes

 * Fry: Space, it seems to go on forever. But then you get to the end and the gorilla starts throwin' barrels at you.
 * Leela: I'm sure this must be very upsetting for you. Fry: Y'know, I guess it should be but, actually, I'm glad. I had nothing to live for in my old life. I was broke, I had a humiliating job and I was beginning to suspect my girlfriend might be cheating on me. Leela: Well, at least here you'll be treated with dignity. Now strip naked and get on the probulator.
 * Bender: Bite my shiny metal ass! Fry: It doesn't look so shiny to me. Bender: Shinier than yours, meatbag.

Continuity

 * Bender believes a phone booth is a Suicide Booth, similar to what Fry did.
 * Leela's (lacking) depth perception is mentioned again.
 * Leela's single eye is explained.
 * The shadow under the desk Fry sits at is explained.
 * More information about the Professor's old crew is revealed.
 * It is revealed that Bender is the one who destroyed New York the first time.
 * Bender visits a suicide booth again and even does the coin-on-a-string trick again.
 * The shadow under the desk Fry sits at is explained.
 * More information about the Professor's old crew is revealed.
 * It is revealed that Bender is the one who destroyed New York the first time.
 * Bender visits a suicide booth again and even does the coin-on-a-string trick again.
 * It is revealed that Bender is the one who destroyed New York the first time.
 * Bender visits a suicide booth again and even does the coin-on-a-string trick again.
 * Bender visits a suicide booth again and even does the coin-on-a-string trick again.

Allusions

 * A sign on the street says "AKBAR." Admiral Akbar is a character in Star Wars. Though it is more likely to be a reference to Akbar, a character in Matt Groening's "Life in Hell" comic strip, and it is the name of the Simpsons font.
 * One of the billboards in the future shows Angelyne, a real-life busty female entertainer that has billboards hanging around the Los Angeles area. In the cartoon billboard, she's hooked up to some sort of respirator.
 * According to Groening, the inspiration for the suicide booth was the 1937 Donald Duck cartoon, "Modern Inventions", in which the Duck is faced with—and nearly killed several times by—various push button gadgets in a Museum of the Future.
 * Fry's outfit is based on James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause.
 * In addition to the setting, part of the original concept for the show was that there would be a lot of advanced technology similar to that seen in Star Trek, but it would be constantly malfunctioning. The automatic doors at Applied Cryogenics resemble those in Star Trek: The Original Series; however, they malfunction when Fry remarks on this similarity.
 * The introduction is reminiscent of Star Trek intros in TOS and TNG ("Space: The Final Frontier..." becomes "Space: It seems to go on and on forever...") and has similar music and voice-over.
 * Leonard "Spock" Nimoy says that he no longer does the Vulcan Salute, 'Live Long and Prosper'.
 * The rows of jars containing heads, with the one jar containing Nimoy's head in front to greet people, is reminiscent of the original series Star Trek episode "Return To Tomorrow", where the alien minds were preserved in glowing spheres, with Sargon in the one sphere in front.
 * The relationship formed between Fry and Bender in this episode has been compared to the relationship between Will Robinson and the robot in Lost in Space.
 * When Fry walks out of the lab, an ad on a taxi behind him reads "Got Protoplasm?", a reference to the series of "Got Milk?" advertising slogans.
 * Another running gag of the series is Bender's fondness for Olde Fortran malt liquor, named after Olde English 800 malt liquor and the programming language Fortran. The drink was first introduced in this episode and became so closely associated with the character that he was featured with a bottle in both the Rocket USA wind-up toy and the action figure released by Moore Action Collectibles.
 * In the earliest glimpse of the future while Fry is frozen in the cryonic chamber, time is seen passing outside the window until reaching the year 3000. This scene was inspired by a similar scene in the film The Time Machine based on H.G. Wells' novel.
 * When Fry awakens in the year 2999, he is greeted with Terry's catchphrase "Welcome to the world of tomorrow." The scene is a joke at the expense of Futurama's namesake, the Futurama ride at the 1939 World's Fair whose tag line was "The World of Tomorrow".
 * There's a Ralph Wiggum-like character when Fry rides the tube.
 * When Fry is going through the transport tubes, he passes by a three-eyed fish - which is Blinky, from the Simpsons.
 * The film Sleeper has much the same premise as this episode. Also, the suicide booth's are similar to Sleeper's Orgasmatron.
 * The cryogenic chamber may be a reference to Red Dwarf. The main character Lister is punished by being put in a cryogenic chamber for 15 years, except something goes wrong and everyone dies on the ship due to a fatal radiation leak. Lister is left for 3 million years until the ships computer decides that the radiation level is safe enough for him to be released.
 * The person who uses the tube system before Fry says "Radio City Mutant Hall", a reference to Radio City Music Hall - but his original line was "JFK Junior Airport", a reference to the John F. Kennedy International Airport. The line was changed after the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. (though it can still be heard in the animatic).
 * When Fry and Bender hide in the Head Museum, Matt Groening's head can be seen next to Barbra Streisand's.
 * Mystery Science Theater 3000is referenced as the number "3000" is written on the moon. It looks like the MST3K logo, a planet with the name on it.  It's even in the same font.
 * Fry is playing a video game called Monkey Fracas Jr. at the pizza place, narrating it as he plays. The game starts out as a space shooter similar to Asteroids, Gradius and/or Defender, then approaches a Saturn-like planet at the end of the level. At that point, the planet breaks in half, and an ape resembling Donkey Kong emerges. The ape throws barrels at the spaceship and destroys it. The game's name itself is a parody of Donkey Kong, Jr.
 * The gag of Fry & Bender hiding with their heads looking through shelves and being disguised by lots of other heads is from Young Frankenstein.
 * The police use sticks that resemble the Lightsaber from Star Wars. Unlike their Star Wars counterparts, they are blunt weapons (like nightsticks/batons), rather than superheated blades.
 * When the policemen are beating Fry with their lightsaber clubs Leela says: "There is no need to use force" as a reference to The Force in Star Wars.
 * New New York is set out like Coruscant (mostly in the Opening sequence). The Planet Express Ship entry, in the opening sequence, seems to be a parody of the Millennium Falcon's entrance into Cloud City in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back.
 * A guy on a jet bike is wearing a helmet like Leia wore in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi on the Speeder bike.
 * People have chips implanted in their hands like in Babylon 5.
 * Back to the Future references: Fry's character is based on Marty McFly, Fry shows a little kid how to play a video game, like Marty (in Back to the Future Part II), and when Fry runs out of the building to begin with, and looks around at New New York, like in Part II.
 * When they go underground to the old New York is like Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
 * The countdown to the millennium occurred at the same time all over the world is like Doctor Who (1996 film).
 * The underground old New York City is similar to the slums underneath the city plates in Midgar in Final Fantasy VII.
 * Suicide Booths are taken directly from one of Sheckley's novels, Immortality, Inc.
 * Implanting a 'fate chip' in the palm of your right hand is from Logan's Run.

Goofs

 * When Leela calls for backup, her wristlojackimator is on the wrong wrist.
 * Bender breaks two bars from the window when they are trapped in the cellar. In the next shot, he holds the bars, but they have re-appeared back in the window.
 * The crowds in Paris at the New Year's countdowns for 1999/2000 and 2999/3000 are identical.
 * It's dark outside in New York at midnight when Fry is frozen, but a long shot of the planet actually shows the eastern half of the United States as being in sunlight.
 * Fry wasn't frozen for exactly 1000 years, as he was frozen at mid-night in 1999 but was un-frozen during the day in 2999
 * Since New New York was built on top of Old New York, the building the cryogenic lab was in should have been underground as well.

Alien Language Sightings
Time:10:27

Location: Slurm advertisement in O'Zorgnax's Pub

Language: AL1

Translation: DRINK

Time:

Location: Aliens counting down to 3000

Language: AL1

Translation: "6" and "7"

Time:15:26

Location: Graffiti in alleyway

Language: AL1

Translation: VENUSIANS GO HOME (Image)

Characters
As this is the first episode, every appearance is a debut appearance. (in alphabetical order)
 * 20th Century kid
 * Bender
 * Bike thief
 * Dick Clark's head
 * Fry
 * Ipgee
 * Leonard Nimoy
 * Lou
 * Michelle
 * Mr. Panucci
 * Nibbler (unofficial)
 * Number 9 Man
 * Poster Guy
 * Professor Farnsworth
 * Richard Nixon's head
 * Terry
 * Leela
 * Smitty and Url

Episode Credits

 * Writers
 * David X. Cohen
 * Matt Groening
 * Voices
 * Billy West
 * Katey Sagal
 * John DiMaggio
 * Tress MacNeille
 * Dave Herman
 * Kath Soucie
 * Special Guests
 * Dick Clark
 * Leonard Nimoy
 * DVD Commentary
 * David X. Cohen
 * Gregg Vanzo
 * John DiMaggio
 * Matt Groening
 * Rich Moore