Yesterday ’s Futurama discover Dr. Zoidberg and the Professor ’s secret history , a shocking tale involving murder treaty , foreign Yetis , and some perfectly guiltless covert biological weapons research . It also play up just how tricky continuity can be on a show like Futurama .
“ Tip of the Zoidberg ” follows two parallel storylines , both centered on the hitherto largely unexplored relationship between Professor Farnsworth and Doctor Zoidberg . One story scud back to 2927 to show their first encounter , as Mom sends them on a mission of dubious legality to enamor a Tritonian yeti and take out its born poisons . The deputation goes wrong when the Professor and Mom ’s Marines get taint with hypermalaria , an incurable computer virus native to the methane swamps of Triton that can kill straightaway … or remain dormant for decades .
Decades into the future , the Planet Express Crew get particularly butchered in Dr. Zoidberg ’s latest series of botched operations . They demand the Professor fire Zoidberg , but he refuses to for rationality that he refuse to discuss . afterward , the Professor bring out to Zoidberg that he is finally exhibit the symptoms of hypermalaria , and it is clock time for Zoidberg to make respectable on a hope he made all those years ago : he must kill the Professor . Zoidberg concord , but he proves just as unsound at assassination as he is at being a Dr. . The gang decides to take on the job , but then Zoidberg create a shocking , yeti - related discovery .
Futurama has always had a fairly at large approach to continuity – if a particular story or even a particular joke demands we learn something major about a case ’s past that we did n’t know before and does n’t needs fit with what we did have intercourse , then so be it . Between this episode and “ Möbius Dick ” a few week back , we ’re learning an awful lot about Zoidberg that seems at least superficially to jar with his late story – he ’s evidently well over 90 years old , he ’s on a first name foundation with Mom , and he ’s secretly the Professor ’s best Quaker .
Now , none of that is unimaginable to harmonise with what we ’ve see before – the main instalment I have a hard time making fit with what we ’ve learned this season is “ Why Must I Be A Crustacean in Love ? ” , as it now appears Zoidberg did n’t generate to his place major planet to mate until he was well into his 70s or 80s , but I presuppose his species might just have centuries - retentive lifetime . ( Hell , the denouement of that installment seems a snatch hard to match with the existence of elderly lobsters in other episodes , but what the hey . )
There ’s also , I think , a question of the episode ’s larger reality . Previous episode have discover some serious levels of bodily maim – Fry has variously lost his arm , both hands , and his headland , and that ’s just what I can recall from memory board – and everyone seems to bounce back just fine . And as zany as the whole opening Zoidberg mutilation successiveness was ( though I was n’t a huge sports fan of Fry ’s various cartoon - inspired unwellness ) , at a certain point in time it seems to ask a bit too much of one ’s break of disbelief . At least when Fry and Hermes got decapitated , it seemed like more than an vexation , you recognize ?
I suspect I ’m being a fleck too harsh here , and perhaps I ’m slice these preeminence too fine . Indeed , it may not even be mediocre to liken the logical system of one specific instalment – or even one specific scene – to that of another . But this episode left me a mo cold , and I think part of it is that this does n’t quite feel like the Futurama universe I ’ve come to know over the last decennium . I do n’t have in mind that in a nostalgic sense either . I just have in mind that a globe depicted here strikes me , on some instinctual stage , as off , somehow .
Since this is a comedy show , in the goal , the jokes should be able to scoop that feeling . The thing is , I would n’t consider this one of the show ’s especially funny episodes . This is an episode driven more by story and emotion – any of the episode that have parallel storytelling tend to fall into that class – as well as some truly spectacular visuals . The Murdolator is a unfeignedly larger-than-life Rube Goldberg car , another fine example of the gorgeous animation that ’s been seen during the show ’s run on Comedy Central .
But I keep going back to the story , which really is meant to be the crux of this episode , and I ca n’t quite get into it . On a certain degree , I think my lovemaking and knowledge of the show might be working against me a little – for case , I could n’t quite put away the fact that the Professor should be 90 years honest-to-god in the 2927 sequences , and I feel like he probably should have been depicted as a bit older . That ’s utterly a wasted nitpick , but it ’s the form of thing that juts out when the history as a whole feel basically aside from what we ’ve amount to jazz about Dr. Zoidberg and the Professor .
As I ’ve said , there ’s a perfectly decent contention to be made that these critiques are illegitimate , that I need to set aside any preceding expectations and just rivet on what is presented in this particular episode . Indeed , I actually think that ’s probably right , at least in the case of the surgery sequence – the laws of physics are flexible in Futurama to allow for something so completely out there . But I struggle with that logic when apply to the emotional story , because for that to work I have to handle about the Professor and Zoidberg , and surely that must to some extent calculate on my previous experiences with them in other episodes .
What I ’m saying , essentially , is that “ Tip of the Zoidberg ” did n’t really work for me , and yet I sense like it really should have . This instalment leave me moth-eaten , but I doubt that that will be a universal reaction – hell , I really hope it is n’t , because I reckon there ’s a lot here to delight , particularly on the liveliness front . Maybe I just need a bit more meter to wrap my nous around the thought of Dr. Zoidberg as a centenarian who may or may not be Mom ’s secret lover . To be fair , that ’s not the sort of affair that ’s easily comprehended .
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