Space Pilot 3000

"Space Pilot 3000"
Futurama episode
Episode no.	Season one
Directed by	Rich Moore, Gregg Vanzo
Written by	David X. Cohen, Matt Groening
Original air dates	March 28, 1999
Episode features
Opening cartoon	Little Buck Cheeser by MGM (1937)

"Space Pilot 3000" is the first episode of Futurama's first season. It originally aired in North America on March 28, 1999.

Plot

Six seconds before the year 2000, New York pizza delivery boy Philip J. Fry delivers a pizza to a prank I.C. Wiener and is accidentally cryogenically frozen. He is defrosted in New New York City one thousand years later, on December 31, 2999. After defrosting, he is brought to fate assignment officer 1BDI Turanga Leela.

Permanently assigned the career of delivery boy, Fry flees the cryogenics facility into the city, with Leela in pursuit. While trying to track down his multiply-great-nephew, Professor Hubert Farnsworth, Fry befriends a suicidal robot named Bender, meets the disembodied head of Leonard Nimoy, and discovers the ruins of old New York.

Leela abandons her job in the cryogenics facility, and joins Fry and Bender as a job deserter. The three find Professor Hubert Farnsworth, and he hires them as the new space ship crew for his package delivery service.

Quotes

• Fry: "Space. It seems to go on and on forever. But then you get to the end and a gorilla starts throwing barrels at you."

• Fry: My God, it's the future. My parents, my coworkers, my girlfriend... I'll never see any of them again. (pause) Yahoo!

• Suicide Booth: "Please select mode of death - quick and painless, or slow and horrible."

Fry: "Yeah, I'd like to place a collect call?"
Suicide Booth: "You have selected slow and horrible."

• Leela's Boss: "Well, that's your job, whether you like it or not. And it's my job to make you do your job, whether I like it or not. Which I do. Very much. Now get to work!"

• Prof. Farnsworth: "Who are you?"

Fry: "I'm your dear old uncle Fry."
Prof. Farnsworth: "I don't have an uncle Fry!"
Bender: "You do now."

• Nixon: "That's it, you just made my list."

References

• Donkey Kong - Fry is playing a spaceshooter at the pizza place, narrating it as he plays, and then at the end of the level, Saturn breaks in half, and an ape resembling Donkey Kong emerges. The ape throws barrels at the spaceship and destroys it.
• Star Trek - Fry's narrative is similar to the narrative that typically appears in Star Trek.

Notes and Trivia

• At one point in the show, before Fry falls into the freezer, there is a seen of the wall behind him where one can notice a strange shadow. Many fans believe this shadow belongs to Nibbler, which would imply the assertion made in The Why of Fry about him pushing Fry into the freezer was always a part of the creators' plans.