Transcript:Commentary:Fear of a Bot Planet


 * Note: One question mark in bold (?) means that the speaker was not identified by the transcriber.
 * Note: Three question marks (???) means that the word in proximity to the question marks is a suggested word, but not necessarily correctly identified, or if there is no word near the question mark (a space away is not near), then no suggested word was provided.

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-MG God I love this cold opening. This is a good one. And didn't think it was gonna work. "Nah, that won't work", but it turned out great. Hi, this is Matt Groening.

-GV Gregg Vanzo.

-JD I'm John DiMaggio, I play Bender and bunch of other voices and stuff.

-DXC David Cohen, executive producer, head writer.

-RM And Rich Moore, supervising director.

-DXC Who picks these little cartoon clips that go on?

-RM Actually, you guys send a bunch of them over to us.

-DXC We do?

-RM Yeah. Frank Orwen??? sends a whole bunch of 'em. And Scott Vanzo, our director of 3D animation, and I go through the clips to pick out what will fit in less than two seconds.

-MG So it takes longer to explain than actual do.

-RM I could go on!

-JD Glorx, 3:16.

-DXC Blernsball, the name "blernsball" actually came out of a joke the writers had-- we were working so hard at this point in this history of the series-- this early on, that we didn't have enough days in the week to write the show - we were writing seven days a week. So I putted up a schedule that included "blernsday" as an eight day, so we would have time to get the job done. That's where this came out.

-MG The original name for this show was not "Futurama", by the way. There was a long long list of possible names, the only two I remember which were resoundly rejected, by everyone concerned with it; "Doomsville" was my number one choice. And my number two choice -- and I don't even know why I thought this was a good idea for a name -- somehow, "Aloha, Mars" struck me and that was also not pertucalarly --

-DXC That could be used for an episode, maybe.

Oh boy.

-RM I just got that.

-DXC Pinball reference there. We have a couple of pinball machine at the office. See where our inspiration comes from.

-? The ??? light??? cycle.

-JD I have no idea what's going on in this game; it's great. Are there actually any rules to Blernsball that are definate?

-DXC It started to evolve a little now that we've seen it again now that we've seen it in some future episodes, but overall I think the goal is to keep it just outside of the realm of understandablility.

-MG Sort of like baseball.

-DXC Exactly.

-MG When I was a kid, I was obsessed by robots. I-- I loved them and I was totally in fear of them, 'cause the thing about a robot--

-? ???

-MG Yeah, because you can't reason with a robot. You know, if they wanna kill you, you cannot talk them out of it. I learnt this from television and the movies. I had a collection of toy robots. And I would watch them at night from my bed.

-JD Ah, did they scare you?

-MG 'cause they moved! Just a little bit, you know...

-DXC That cleaning robot, that cleaned up the bottle, Bender threw down a minute ago. Originally, it appeared in the pilot, but was taken out as the show was too long.

Chapek! Anyone know where that came from?

-? ??? Chapek, right?

-DXC The robot expert is correct.

-MG Who coined the term "robot".

-DXC I believe that's right.

-MG In his play were are you are or usm??? rosam??? universal robots. That's a really book, called "War with the Nudes".

-DXC That's another good name for an episode.

Part of the inspiration for this episode was a story by one of my favourite authors, Standardsaw??? Limlesh???, comedy science fiction author, he's had a really funny short story wrote, which I don't remember the name of, in which some-- a human crashes into a planet habitted by robots and has to hide in the bushes eating berries at night. Sounds funny, doesn't it?

-MG You know what, actually, you're a ???. David, stop. The fact is that this show is full of references to literarry science-fiction, it's not just-- it's not just rip-offs of Star Trek and Star Wars. Like everything else, you know.

-DXC It's rip-offs of--

-MG Standardsaw??? Lim! Carl Chapek and--

-DXC In the standardssaw lim story, it turned out that all of the terrifying robots were other people who had crash landed and had disguised themselves as robots so they wouldn't be target. It later turned out that there were no robots on the planet. Oh, I just ruined it for anyone who goes out to read it.

-RM I like the wind blowing in the hair as the look down on the planet, great.

Our stock-static.

-GV Looks??? ??? than that.

-MG My older brother, Mark, dressed up like that once when I was a kid.

-? He scared the hell--

-MG He scared the hell out of me.

-JD He's doing the robot.

-MG ???, that was good animation. Good acting.

-DXC Really neat planetscape here.

-MG I like those robots, we should bring those back.

-DXC They transform in a minute, also.

-JD Is that Phil LaMarr's voice picthed down a little bit?

-DXC You know, it's so electronical processed, that I can't remember who did them.

-MG I think that's Phil.

-DXC That's Maurice--

-JD That's Maurice, and he doesn't have to pitch it then. Nice.

-RM There's that 3D animation.

-JD Oh yeah!

-DXC Here's a classic 3D shot coming up.

-RM There they are.

-JD Look at them! [tongue wrobble] Great, aargh.

-DXC Tetris, anyone?

We're going to see Bender's magician outfitting again 3 years from the point of this episode. Took a while to come back.

-MG But they do have garbage cans...

-JD I never smoked in the bathroom at highschool.

-RM We had an actual smoking section back when kids could smoke.

-MG Is that true?

-RM Yeah, we had a section at the north end of my high school where we used to smoke at.

-GV Yeah, we did that too.

-RM Between classes.

-MG That was designated?

-JD Designated smoking area, you're caught smoking anywhere else, you would--

-RM Horrible ???

-JD That's right. God bless the 80s.

-DXC That's Tom Kenny.

-JD Yeah, it is Tom Kenny.

-DXC He's first appearance in Futurama, I think.

-JD A wonderful actor, very funny. A cast member on Mr Show, if you will.

Scared, Matt?

-DXC That's a reference to the second body snatchers movie, the one with Leonord Nimoy. It's the sound they made.

-JD That's robotone, right?

-DXC Beserk.

-JD Beserk.

-DXC Same era. Great video game from the 80s.

-MG This is a good scene.

-JD Maurice LaMarche.

-RM I remember this, we used to do the space mutant from The Simpsons.

-JD I think I play the space mutant here.

-DXC Your best performance, ever.

-JD I think it is.

-DXC Here it comes.

-JD Yeah, that is me.

-DXC That's really funny animation.

-? Ah, the classic 3D ???.

-JD Dave Herman.

-MG Billy West talking to himself.

-JD Yeah, all three of those robots. Actually, Fry's not a robot. I'm sorry. But he still scared the hell out of me, Matt!

-DXC That's Maurice.

-MG That's Maurice LaMarche. This show would have frigthen me, as kid. Robby the Robot scared the hell out of me, you know. As I recall, for the crew, we made t-shirts with Bender's saying, "death to humans" and didn't you get to task for that?

-DXC I think it was one of the other writers, Lou ??? was in the supermarket wearing his "death to humans"-shirt and another customer came up to him and said "how can you wear that horrible shirt?"

-JD Well, they're not watching the show, aren't they?

-DXC That crazy position his arm is in.

Macintosh startup sound.

We went through a huge list of possible baits that humans would like, most of them had wipe cream and sprinkles and stuff. We decided that the combination of butter and free was the ultimate bait for a human.

-MG Aw. I don't know what to say.

-RM Yeah.

-GV Getting caught up in this.

-JD I cried a tear. "... went gold".

-DXC One thing all planets have in common is their tracking of record sets.

-GV Hall of Justice.

-DXC We ought to get some sort of payment from Apple Computer company, there's another Macintosh there. Giving him a lot of free screen time.

I've seen that one too many times, while working on a script to a term paper. Not that there's anything wrong with the Apple computer corporation

Matt Greoning has always been a big fan of trap doors in my experience.

-MG I am also frighten of them. We're taking all this stuff that's ???nite for me and you know, working on my own fears.

-? Trap doors with robots at the bottom.

-JD I will say this, my friends still say to me, "[robot elder voice] Silence! Silence! Silence!"

Yeah, just having a sip of beer at the bar and they're talking, "[robot elder voice] Silence!"

-MG A lot hooded cloaks in science-fiction.

-RM Robots in hooded cloaks...

-JD I see a morning star, is it like a glaceglean??? arm on that as well?

-? A plus 2.

-JD Oh a +2 glaceslesharm??? ???.

-MG What the hell are you talking about?

-JD Doungouns and Dragons.

-MG Oh.

-JD It's okay, shake it off.

It just smashes!

My best attempt to-- at a famous fictional boxer.

-GV/RM? So this would be one of the running away endings?

-MG Yeah.

-DXC That manourvre??? there, made it very hard. Or was it a real banora????

-? Hopping and logging to kleshmar music.

-JD I love this one.

-DXC The last one is the best--

-JD The last one is the best.

-DXC Bender can cut another character's throat and still be likeable somehow. You know you have a good character when they can get away with that.

-JD Unbelievable.

-RM Yes, that's the first appearance of Tom Kenny, yes it is.

-MG Oh boy.

-RM Any theme song with chimes, sad to think that most of these people are dead now. They were great.

-JD [Randy] Hey, it's 30th Century Fox again! -->