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3ACV19: Roswell That Ends Well
First UK airing: Sky One, 7:00pm, 24-3-02
"That's no flying saucer -- that's
my ass!"
Futurama's back. That's
good. It's the last-ever season (unless you count the 'virtual'
season five). That's bad. Fox's haphazard scheduling in the States
means Sky will catch up very quickly and run out of episodes
again. That's very bad.
But still, Futurama's
back!
It's been quite a surprise that Futurama
hadn't done a time-travel episode until now ('Time Keeps On Slippin''
doesn't really count, since they didn't *actually* travel...),
but they made a good fist of it, keeping the technobabble to
a minimum (something that scuppered 'TKOS') and working in plenty
of jokes. The only problem is with the setting they chose. Sending
a sci-fi crew back through time to 1947 Roswell, New Mexico,
where one of their number is revealed to be the Roswell alien...
it's a great idea. So great, in fact, that Deep Space Nine did
it in 1995, in the episode 'Little Green Men' (which also happened
to be a comedy). DS9, Dark Skies, Roswell and now Futurama...
the timelines are getting crowded around that little town!
So no points at all for originality, and despite revealing
the twisted truth about Fry's (and the Professor's) family history
the show had no lasting repercussions, but 'Roswell' was still
a pretty funny episode, and it's the first time in TV sci-fi
that I can remember the 'grandfather paradox' being addressed
so squarely. The answer the show came up with didn't hold water,
but then, that's the whole point -- it's a paradox, guh! Fry's
attempts to keep his grandfather from harm produced some decent
laughs (loved the pile of rusty bayonets, as well as Fry reassuring
his 'dad' by shouting at Enos's bollocks) and his line "But
existing is basically all I do!" was inspired. I know people
like that. In fact, I work with a lot of them. Fry also almost
turned into Leo Wong with his insistence on someone fathering
grandchildren -- and funnily enough, both are voiced by the same
guy!
There was a load of freeze-frame fun to be had as
well, not least the appearance of the Star Trek logo on the table
at the malt shop, as well as grafitti of a fighter plane attacking
a UFO by the phone. There were also plenty of gags for conspiracy
and UFO nuts to pick up on. (Historical sidenote: before becoming
a bigshot movie magazine editor, I paid my dues on a magazine
called 'Alien Encounters' -- hey, it was a career move! -- so
I know all the details about the Roswell incident, however much
I'd like to forget them and replace them with something more
useful. Futurama actually got more
details right than some allegedly 'factual' shows I've seen on
the subject! But I digress.) The show also had a huge amount
of 'just for this episode' CG -- I can't imagine there'll be
many opportunities to amortise the cost of creating all-CGI jeeps,
tanks and P-51 fighters in future episodes!
Apart from more than we wanted to discover about Zoidberg's
anatomy, the show also told us that it's still 3002 (according
to the ship's chronograph, this episode took place about a month
after 'TKOS' -- how's that for a nerdy deduction?) and included
some neat gadgets, like the Professor's hover-Barcalounger. I
suppose we should be thankful that Fry didn't get his all-purpose
spray mixed up with Amy's from 'When Aliens Attack'...
Rating: 
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