Fear of a Bot Planet
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"'Fear of a Bot Planet" is the 5th episode in season 1 of Futurama. It originally aired in North America on April 20, 1999.
Plot
While attending a New New York Yankees blernsball game at Madison Cube Garden, the crew is called back to the office for a delivery mission. The delivery is to Chapek 9, a planet inhabited by human-hating robots, so Bender is assigned the duty of performing the actual delivery.
Upon arriving at the planet, a resentful Bender is lowered to the surface using the ship's winch. Fry and Leela receive a rushed message from Bender, who has been captured by the robot separatists for being a human sympathizer. Fry and Leela disguise themselves as robots, and infiltrate the robot society.
After hiding out in a robot movie theater, Fry and Leela blend in with the crowd at the opening ceremonies of the daily human hunt. There they discover Bender is alive and playing the robots' prejudice for his own benefit.
Fry and Leela reunite with Bender during the hunt in an abandoned robot porn shop, but he refuses their offer of rescue. Before Fry and Leela can leave, the other robots arrive and they are placed on trial for being human. After being sentenced to a life of tedious work, they are dropped through a trap door, where they meet the five The Robot Elders. The Robot Elders command Bender to kill Fry and Leela, but he refuses.
The Robot Elders reveal that humans are just being used as a scapegoat to distract the populace, and that many of the supposed special powers humans have that robots fear are in fact made up. Fry threatens to breathe fire on the robot elders, throwing them into a state of confusion. The crew escapes, and is pursued by a horde of robots. As the crew escapes on the winch, Bender remembers that he never actually delivered the package. The package falls to the ground, and the robots are showered in much-needed lug nuts.
Quotes
- Fry: I don't get this. Is blernsball exactly the same as baseball?
Prof. Farnsworth: Baseball? God forbid.
Leela: Face it Fry, baseball was as boring as mom and apple pie. That's why they jazzed it up.
Fry: Boring? Baseball wasn't... so they finally jazzed it up. - Bender: Admit it, you all think robots are just machines built by humans to make their lives easier.
Fry: Well, aren't they?
Bender: I've never made anyone's life easier, and you know it. - Leela: Look, I understand these robots hate humans, but how do they feel about humanoid aliens? Professor: They're not fans.
- Robot guards: Administer the test. Which of the following would you most prefer?
(A) A Puppy
(B) A pretty flower from your sweetie... or
(C) A large, properly-formatted data file? Choose!
(Leela and Fry confer)
Fry: Is the puppy mechanical in any way?
Robot guards: No. It is the bad kind of puppy.
Leela: Then we'll go with that data file.
Robot guards: Correct! The flower would also have been acceptable. You may pass. - Fry: Wow, the 3-D's great! Leela: (Moving the 3-D glasses left and right over her one eye) Mine's not working.
- Leela: Try to stay with the crowd so no one notices how crummy you look.
Robot: That was uncalled for.
Fry: I'm over here.
Characters
Characters who make their first appearances in this episode are:- The Robot Elders
Future Products
Future products in this episode are:Future Gadgets
Future gadgets which appear in this episode:- The Ceremonial Kill-a-ma-jig
References
- The title comes from the album Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy
- The robot-populated planet of Chapek 9 is named after Karel Čapek, a Czech writer who coined the term "robot"
- When Fry and Leela are initially discovered, the discovering robot cries the shriek from the movie Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and later heard the well-known phrase "Intruder alert!" from the 1980 video game Berzerk about humans fighting robots.
- The horn that sounded the hunt for humans was the sound an old Apple Macintosh made when it was turned on.
- The construction robots Fry and Leela talk to build with Tetris blocks
- The movie posters at the robot movie theater are:
- * Barbot Streisand in Yentltron (a parody of Barbra Streisand and Yentl)
- * Buff Bot the Human Slayer (a parody of Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
- * I Was a Teenage Human (a parody of I Was a Teenage Werewolf)
- * It Came From Planet Earth (a parody of It Came From Outer Space)
- A billboard on Chapek 9 parodies the Got Milk? advertising campaign with a sign reading "Got Milk? Then you're a human and must be killed"
- When Fry and Leela are walked towards the robot city, frys reflection in Leelas helmet briefly resembles the drawing style of Family Guy
| Preceded by: Love's Labours Lost in Space | Futurama episodes | Followed by: A Fishful of Dollars |
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