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Futurama Returns
GrumpySimon writes "Good news everyone!
Straight from a one-eyed alien's mouth - 13 new episodes of Futurama have been confirmed by Katey Sagal on Craig Ferguson's Late Late Show. All the original actors have signed up too."
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I love the smell of Slurm in the morning - it smells like ... walrus!
While I applaud it, I remember the resurrection of Ren & Stimpy and how it just wasn't quite the same anymore. The making of a popular series can often rest on the frenzy of creating the episodes and the chemistry of those at work on it. Add an interruption, time for other projects and influences, what will become of pulling the team back together? Will it be the same, or will it be like, "well, Bender saying, 'bite my shiny metal asee' doesn't totally suck, but it's just, you know, different now."
Other news in the It's About Time Department:
In other good news, finally on DVD, Yellowbeard! Arr! July 27 for USA & Canada or July 10 for UK No word yet on extras, like Group Madness, the documentary of making of the film.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
All thirteen episodes will come in a suppository!
Complete with New shinier, easily bitable metal ass.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
Hip, hip, huzzah! Hip, hip, huzzah! Hip, ah screw it.
Sweet Zombie Jesus!!!!
They've been VERY naughty this year. Now they must be trying to make up before Xmas.
Ryan Fenton
Cuz the actors never get it wrong.
P.S. I feel like it's some futurama reference that my CAPTCHA was "breeder." Is Slashdot trying to say something about the human race?
I wonder if this will affect the 4 movies that are currently being planned. Ride the Walrus!
HYPNOTOAD LIVES!!!!
I disagree.
-Richard M. Nixon's head
The problem is that everyone thinks they have a sense of humor, even when they don't.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Does this make me happy?
Is the space pope reptilian?
In Soviet Russia, backwards is everything.
Dude - It's just a cartoon.
Noone's really saying that Futurama is better than Dr Who, but that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. Plot? No way. Funny? Absolutely! More importantly, it's just entertaining.
That's something I love about these kind of shows. You don't need to make the investment to watch them. I hate it that I can't watch a lot of "running plot" shows because I know I'm going to miss a bunch of them. With Futurama/Simpsons, I can just watch them if I'm free.
It's funny simply becuase it is. I enjoy the more scientific humour of the show. Things like winning by a quantum difference (I know I'm misquoting this) being responded with things like: "No fair! You changed the result by measuring it" It adds a humour for the physicist in me. Regards, Alunduil
In a nutshell, shows like Simpsons, Family Guy, The Critic, and Futurama make me laugh, and greatly entertain me for their 30 minute duration. Okay, there's a dud episode every now and then, but for the most part they're really fun. And funny. There have been a few scenes from these that would just make me laugh a few days later when I would think about it, for instance.
The fact that it bothers you that Lisa's mental acuity isn't entirely consistent from one episode to the next sort of implies you're greatly outside the demographic they're looking for, in which case I'd suggest stick with the shows that really make you happy. I watch these shows for their comedic value, not for a consistent basis upon which to do a comparative literary analysis.
Similarly, there are shows that other people love that I can't stand at all (eg Everybody Loves Raymond). it's all your own personal tastes. Regarding not liking the Simpsons, my Mom cannot get into the Simpsons either. She's tried and either doesn't get the jokes or just doesn't think they're funny whatsoever.
That said, at the end of your post you mention other shows that are 'really funny'. Can you give an example? I'm not trolling you either, just curious what you find funny.
You apparently didn't watch much of Futurama, in that case. Time actually did advance over the course of the show, starting in 3000 and ending in 3004. Relationships between characters also changed over time.
As for why Futurama is popular.. you may not find it funny, but a lot of people do. I, for one, like that there's a lot of geek jokes in there. One that I can think of off the top of my head was that there were a pair of books in the background of one scene labeled P and NP.
We'll I'm sure they'll post a dupe to make up for it.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Maybe its just me, but I don't get why there is always one guy who feels the need to ask questions like this, or alternatively state that he hates a particular obscure thing. Its not like anyone is trying to shove Futurama down someone's throat. It is like going to a Star Trek convention and standing around saying, "You know, I really don't understand the appeal of this show!" There are a ton of shows on TV that are not Futurama - why not go watch one of them instead of commenting here to the effect that you don't like Futurama?
Hell, there are a ton of other Slashdot articles you could be commenting on. Perhaps you could have found one that interested you. But no, you had to click on the Futurama article just so you could post a comment musing about the lack of appeal Futurama has for you.
It kind of reminds me of people who love Windows and hate the Macintosh. OK, your favorite computer platform has 90+ percent of the market, so why go seek out places online where Mac people congregate and try to rain on their parade? They have less than 5% of the market. Leave them alone. Hell, I've seen people go onto Atari ST forums and say ridiculous things to the effect that the Atari ST is long dead and ST enthusiasts should just move on and get a Windows PC. Was that you?
When you see a kid playing with a balloon, do you have an uncontrollable urge to go and stick a pin in it?
There are a lot of things that do not appeal to everyone. Sane people ignore them. Personally I have no interest in Chritianity. That doesn't mean I show up to church every Sunday and say, "You know, I just don't understand the appeal...could you explain it to me?" It would be gouche and idiotic to do so.
"Not trolling"? Bite my shiny metal ass!
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Perhaps I'll breed some kind of albino shouting gorilla...
and brannigans antics
Maybe it's just me but, I don't get why futurama is popular.
Because it's not about you.
"My God...it's full of trolls!"
Actually... I find the container labelled "Condensed Milt" much more interesting, and very disturbing.
Milt, for the non-biologists, is the sperm and seminal fluid of fish.
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
First Family Guy, then Futurama. Where's Firefly?
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
My reply was in response to the GP's post suggesting Phil Hartman was one of the actors who worked on Futurama. He wasn't.
The character Zapp Branigan was written for him, but he died before they started production, so Billy West took the part instead and happen to play the character in a similar way to Phil Hartman's audition.
Okay, so all of the original actors have signed up. But what I'd like to know is if all of the original writers have signed up.
Professor: Good news everyone. While Fox's quality programming is out of our reach, Comedy Control has decided to take us for some new episodes.
Fry: Don't you mean Comedy Central?
Leela: No, Comedy Control. Comedy was outlawed in the year 2045, during the Great War with the Neptutians. Comedy Control comes around and kills everyone involved with animated shows.
Except Jurassic Bark. You can only watch that once unless you have no heart.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Futurama does indeed have long-term plot elements, more so than most live action television shows (and at least comparable with Doctor Who and its Daleks and Cybermen). Generally the plot centers around Fry.
- Fry and the Brains (and the Nibblonians)
During the series it transpires that Fry is the only human being capable of resisting the psionic attacks of the Brains, a group of free-flying brain beings that want to take over/destroy the universe. Fry's brain waves are different from other peoples because Fry, as a result of events in the episode "Roswell that Ends Well", is his own grandfather.
In the first encounter with the Brains Fry is abducted by Nibbler, who is not only Leela's pet, but also an agent of the ancient and stupendously powerful Nibblonians (which explains why he was the only one of his kind on the planet where he was found). Nibbler explains Fry's abnormality and assists him in fending off the Brains' attack on earth. After Fry succeeds Nibbler wipes Fry's memory (everyone else was too stupefied by the Brains to remember what happened) and resumes his life as Leela's pet.
Later, in The Why of Fry, we learn that Fry was not frozen by accident. In fact Fry was brought into the future by Nibbler, whose much younger self was present on New Years' Eve '99, and who gave Fry the nudge that tipped him backwards into the cryogenic chamber. In this episode Fry is press ganged into service to destroy the Brains' ultimate project, a device that will acquire all knowledge in the universe and then destroy the universe to prevent its knowledge from becoming outdated.
Once Fry is inside the Mega-Brain and has activated the bomb with which he is to destroy it, the Brains reveal what Nibbler did to Fry and offer Fry a choice - he can stay there, blow up the Mega Brain and vanish along with it due to the failure of his escape scooter, or he can let the Mega Brain catapult him back in time to the space-time nexus centred on his own fall into the cryochamber.
Fry elects to travel back, and in fact initially prevents Nibbler from knocking him into the tube, until Nibbler persuades him that he should sacrifice himself and fulfill his predestined mission, because...
- Fry Loves Leela
Fry has an unrequited passion for Leela throughout most of the series. In a sense there is a lack of follow through here, because they do pull kind of a "will they/won't they?" thing, but Fry does succeed in communicating the depth of his feelings at times, and when he wins the devil's hands and uses them to make a holophoner opera in Leela's honour Leela realises that Fry has a depth of character and feeling that is concealed by his physical and social clumsiness.
- Leela and Her Parents
As someone else mentioned here, Leela's parent enter the series late in the piece and stick around. In fact I was surprised that nobody responded to the "straight from the alien's mouth" in the article by pointing out that Leela, as we discover when her parents emerge, is not an alien but a mutant, whose xenolinguist parents left her at an orphanage with a note in an invented alien script, so that she would be taken for an alien and avoid the apartheid-style restrictions places on mutants. This is a major shift for Leela both in the sense that earlier episodes made much of her search for her species and homeworld, and in that at least two episodes towards the end of the series are heavily concerned with her relationship with her newfound parents.
- Amy and Kif
Amy, the engineering student from Mars, and Kif, Zapp Brannigan's XO, fall in love early in the series and their developing romance is the subject of multiple episodes throughout subsequent seasons.
i'm sure there are other examples of long-term continuity that have slipped my mind, but really nobody could accuse Futurama of forgeting its past.
Dude, why would you want to stick a pin in a kid?
Stirring defence of Futurama and the Simpsons there. But I think you're pretty much wrong in everything you say. To respond to your three main points:
1. The characters in the Simpsons are surprisingly consistent; the clearly distinct characters and their traits are one of the shows great strengths. Lisa is BOTH intelligent AND a member of the archetypal working class family; these are not mutually exclusive, and the show is subtle enough to deal with this.
2. Futurama IS better than Dr Who whichever way you spin it (allowing for taste), and its PLOTS are amongst its great strengths. When you compare the Simpsons to Futurama, one thing that is very apparent is that Futurama has much more comprehensive, less formulaic, better written storylines. The episodes, and the series, feature an internal logic which is stronger than the Simpsons, or indeed almost any other comedy other than Seinfeld or Arrested Development.
In many cases the humour is directly derived from the strength of the plot. For example, Fry travels back in time and becomes his own grandfather. As a result, he is unique in the universe, and his uniqueness ties in to the whole Nibblonian vs Brains subplot. Similarly, Leela's origins story is tightly woven throughout the various episodes and across the series. I know for a fact that Groening, Cohen and co set out to write lengthy thematic arcs which in some cases spanned series 1-4 inclusive.
If you think it's a plot-less cartoon with jokes, you're not really watching it.
3. Well, this basically explains why you think what you think. I agree to the extent that each episode of Futurama is self-contained. However, they are also intricately linked with other episodes, and you miss a lot of important context and detail from some episodes if you treat them as a one-off 'adventure'.
Try watching Futurama, in order, from start to finish. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Read Pynchon.
Holy crap! I can't believe it-- someone was actually watching Craig Ferguson!
it costs 1-2 million dollars to produce each episode of Futurama. We could debate whether they could raise that kind of money over the internet..
also, your model doesn't work for new shows.. if your model was in place before Futurama, it would have never been created.. people won't donate to a show they've never heard of and have no idea if they'll even like it.
Help me take back Slashdot. When did 'News for Nerds' become 'FUD and Conspiracy Theories for Extremist Nutjobs'?
I see...
Um... Promise me you aren't one of the writers on the new series.
If we can hit that bull's-eye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Idealy this would happen: There is an official Futurama web-site, they say they want a new season, they need US $ X to produce it. They sell shares on their website or through ebay using a dutch auction in order to finance the project. Geeks buy them. They make the episodes. They realase them on the internet in a non DRM format and using bittorrent so they don't have to pay for bandwith. People pay a small amount of money to download the .torrent file. If they want to pirate it anyway nothing will stop them so why bother with protection. Many people download that great show, the benefits are given to the shareholders. Everyone is happy.
You bitch needlessly. All the tools you need are but a few hundred dollars away!
1) Registering a domain name and getting cheap-ass hosting costs less than a few hundred dollars per year.
2) You can put a link to your project on your slashdot sig and get surprising amounts of attention that way.
3) You only need to come up with an idea for a show, and recruit some star talent. Really, you're on your way already, since you have a business plan that's pretty detailed!
Unless you aren't serious about your business plan. Maybe you wouldn't know a real business plan if it kicked you in the nards. Maybe the idea of actually doing anything outside your mother's basement scares you. In which case, your post is just so much whining and incoherent noise on a populate public blog. There's lots of that already.
The proof of whether or not you have a good idea is in your ability to make it reality. Otherwise, it's just so much hot air, and thanks to global warming, we have more than enough of that.
But, I suggest you give it a try. You'll either succeed, or learn lots about how the world around you works - either way, you win, and win BIG.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Dude, why would you want to stick a pin in a kid?
;)
Spoken as someone who has never tried it. Geesh.
Ha ha ha ha... oh wait, you're serious... Let me laugh even harder!
As long as they don't try too hard like Family Guy is doing. I have to say, Family Guy these days is boring as anything. First three seasons were mint, but what they're coming out with now is total crap. Previously it was edgy, but funny. Now they just go for offensive for the sake of offensive. The plots are horrible, and just aren't trying.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Most shows have some kind of continuity and Futurama does. Sure they'll be a bit random and break rules at times (take that Bender is made of 40% of Zinc, 40% of Titanium and 40% of Dolomite- 120% for those of you who are reading this early in the morning), but in general unlike the Simpsons, the show progresses. The characters age, have different birthdays, refer to events in the past. You'll also notice the love between Fry and Leela developing. Take the later episodes like 'The Sting' where Fry takes a giant bee for Leela, and the many loving things they do that continues to bring them closer, as well as the same thing on the Amy side.
PS: best episode ever: Jurassic Bark.... poor Seymour the dog.
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
it costs 1-2 million dollars to produce each episode of Futurama
That's because some episodes are painstakingly drawn before a live audience!
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.