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3ACV07: The Day The Earth Stood Stupid
First UK airing: Sky One, 8:30pm, 11-3-01
"Dewey, you fool! Your decimal
system has played right into my hands!"
Oof, an episode featuring Moby Dick, which thanks
to the literature section of my American Studies degree (more
than a decade ago -- aaagh! I'm getting old!) is my least
favourite novel of all time! Luckily, Futurama
was taking the piss, so I could handle it. I'm impressed that
Fry knew the names of the characters, though. He must have had
it forced on him too!
Because Sky's scheduling has gone a bit wonky, I didn't
even know which episode this was going to be, until the appearance
of flying space brains at the beginning gave it away. It wasn't
the greatest show ever, but unlike most plot-heavy episodes,
'Stupid' kept the jokes coming along with the exposition, so
the overall level of comedy was quite high. Most of the best
stuff was at the beginning, though -- I loved, loved, loved
the hypno-toad. This could have been because its hypnosis sound
effect was the Millennium Falcon's engines on continuous loop.
(I'm a geek, I pick up on such things.) Or maybe it really was
hypnotic. All hail the hypno-toad! The cat attack was fun too.
I'm a cat person, definitely, but let's face it, cats are as
evil as humans!
And then, for a very short time, Fry was the most
intelligent person on the planet. I'm surprised this wasn't remarked
on within the show! In fact, the way he defeated the Big Brain
was almost too clever for him, although to be fair he has shown
the odd glimmer of intelligence under pressure in the past. Or
maybe he's still got some residual worminess. Either way, destroying
the villain by trapping it in what was essentially a fanfic ("A
crummy world of plot holes and spelling errors!") was inspired.
Given the low quality of fanfic in general, Fry's work was probably
at least as good as the infamous Steven Ratliff. (Check out numerous
MST3K treatments of his work here
-- you'll be glad you did, because they're hilarious.) Notice
how Fry wrote himself into the story as the love of Leela's life,
though? I still think there's hope.
Elsewhere in the show, we had the first (brief) glimpse
of a non-robotic CGI character, as Leela was being flown to Nibbler's
homeworld. BTW, was it just me, or did Nibbler's ship look a
lot like the mini-saucer that got blown up at the end of The
Thing? The revelation about Nibbler's true nature was quite cool,
but it does mean that you have to look at all his past appearances
in a new light. (And I thought Dr Bashir turning out to be a
Changeling was enough trouble.) No doubt anal-retentive types
(hmm, you know any?) will now go back through old episodes looking
for clues and/or continuity errors. And it still doesn't explain
his shadow in 1999 back in 1ACV01...
That now brings Fry's city/world/universe-saving total
up to three ('A Big Piece Of Garbage', 'When Aliens Attack' and
this). Maybe some day he'll get the respect he deserves...
Rating: 
Whaddya know? It really was
80% entertainment by volume!
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