Spoiler: A flight to remember

[on:]

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in this episode.. hope you havent noticed... well when the zapper speaks to the crowd befoe they start boarding the ship.. there is a moment when they show the crowd and there on the left you can see the bald no.9 guy that first appears in the last movie!!! i noticed after i had seen the movie.. hope its not something that old for you

[Reply #1 on:]

DUN DUN DUNNN!

Yeah, it has been discussed to death.

http://theinfosphere.org/Number_9_Man

[Reply #2 on:]

ok thanks! i dont know my stats sorry :P well i cant delete the topic so it has to stay here

[Reply #3 on:]

To be fair, posts relating to the #9 guy have been, at best, infrequent (at least on PEEL) and, much like this one was probably destined to be, are usually answered by a single response (usually a post containing searchable info or a link). Even after the story of ItWGY came to light there wasn't a huge increase in #9 guy discussion.

So unless you already knew that he was a "named" character you may well have not thought to go looking for him on Futurama info sites. Most of what I knew about him (prior to ItWGY) was from listening to the DVD commentaries.

Given that Futurama has been out for ten years now, there are many interesting facts, quirks, and goofs that at least a few people have observed, raised for general discussion, commented on, and recorded on some site or other. And unless any new related material comes to light, they are often never mentioned again until they are 'rediscovered' by a later generation of Futurama fan.

E.g.
 
Intended but never implimented:

• The number 9 guy -- A strata of society (ranking below fully human but above sewer mutants) occupied by mindless drones in white robes with numbers instead of names. <The one known example was reused in ItWGY>
• Deluxor -- A 'better' version of Bender made from high-priced materials (like solid gold or exotic woods) that Bender was jealous of. <Aspects of this idea were reused with Robot X-1, the golden Bender from The Farnsworth Parabox, and the wooden Bender in Obsoletely Fabulous>
• Pocket Pal -- A robot the size of an AA battery that could explain 30th century 'facts' to Fry (and hence the viewing audience). <The design was reused in BwaBB where some of them are thrown at the anomoly and explode.>

Started but later abandoned or greatly de-emphasized:

• Career chips -- Once the initial 'joke' was known their existance tended to stifle comedic possibilities rather than create them.
• Suicide booths -- As the show matured I think they ran out of suicide jokes that they could justifiably include in a script.
• Cubert -- Initially intended as a smart-arsed (wise-cracking?) child character who would point out all the flaws and impossibilities both in the Physics of Futurama and in the episode's plot/story. He was going to be universally hated by the others and a not-infrequent target of their physical violence. Basically, he wasn't funny in this role and on-going abuse of him made the others look bad. He was toned down, intriduced much later than originally intended, and even then only used when a child was required.

Started, followed through, but occasionally forgotten about:

• Extinction of the rat -- By the year 3000 owls had taken over the ecological niche that the now extinct rat had filled 1000 years before. Except where they forgot and drew rats in the background anyway.
• Loss of the 'wheel' -- At some point prior to 3000 the technology associated with the wheel had been lost. Though they still have tracked 'vehicles' (the Crushinator), coasters (the pi-KEA robot from Less than a Hero), plus cogs and rotating disks in various forms. What we also occasionally see are the wheeled vehicles that they forgot should not exist.

[Reply #4 on:]

Mm, that's a pretty interesting list. I've got a couple others:

Intended but never implemented:

As I've mentioned to a couple of people, I seem to remember having read once that a subplot of Bender's composite metals corroding or "melting" was going to be used in ITWGY. I have no idea what happened to that. It was supposed to be dealing with something about the issue of him aging, but they obviously abandoned it.    Probably in favor of the Fanny subplot.

Started but later abandoned or greatly de-emphasized:

In addition, the Professor 'being in his pajamas' thing.

Also,

Robot X-1

It's Robot 1-X

Basically, he wasn't funny in this role

I disagree.. I rather thought he was.     : /

[Reply #5 on:]

   Mm, that's a pretty interesting list. I've got a couple others:

   As I've mentioned to a couple of people, I seem to remember having read once that a subplot of Bender's composite metals corroding or "melting" was going to be used in ITWGY. I have no idea what happened to that. It was supposed to be dealing with something about the issue of him aging, but they obviously abandoned it.    Probably in favor of the Fanny subplot.

OMG. I'd completely forgotten about that! But considering how old Bender must have been at the end of BBS (all those 'extra' benders who come out of the PE building's basement at the end of BBS are time-duplicates of the 'our' Bender, each one represents 'our' Bender as he was at the end of a different treasure retrieval time-journey). Thus 'our' Bender has lived through all of those trips sequentially and while going back in time probably didn't effect his age, waiting the 1000 (or more) years for the 31st century to roll around each time adds up to him experiancing the passage of a large number of years. So if, say, there were 1000 trips that averaged 1200 years (i.e. his 'average' destination was 1800 AD, roughly halfway between the date of the Mona Lisa and now) then Bender is 1.2 million years old.

So if a 1+ million year old metallic robot *wasn't* subject to the 'liquifying' effects of VERY old metal but something in ItWGY *was*going to be, I conclude the ageing required must be *much* greater than a million years. The only thing in ItWGY on that kind of time frame is the green chee and/or the violet dwarf star. Although pretty much every thing in our solar system is over 4 billion (4 thousand million) years old and 4000 probably qualifies as "much" greater than 1, so maybe Leo Wong was going to dig up something. Who knows.

Started but later abandoned or greatly de-emphasized:

      Robot X-1

   It's Robot 1-X

Meh. X-1, 1-X. What's the difference? 

      Basically, he wasn't funny in this role

   I disagree.. I rather thought he was.     : /

But the Cubert that we first see is 24 episodes in and he as already been initially written into and subsequently cut from several episodes. So there has been an initial (i.e. pre-series one) concept, several attempts to impliment him, an equal number of rejections, plus plenty of time to evaluate both how the program's direction has changed since it started and how well some of those as yet unimplimented initial ideas still fit the current direction, before he ever makes the final cut of an episode. Therefore what we see in Clone of My Own may bear very little resemblence to his initial concept.

[Reply #6 on:]

Ah, okay, I see what you're saying. Still, even with that alteration in concept though, myriad people are still intensely annoyed by him.  It always kind of befuddled me why so many dislike him so much.
I thought he fulfilled his function in an amusing manner.

I'd completely forgotten about that!

So did just about everyone, apparently.

I haven't seen it brought up at all.

[Reply #7 on:]

That's an impressive list, hobbitboy; I bow to your nerdy excellence.

Pocket Pal -- A robot the size of an AA battery that could explain 30th century 'facts' to Fry (and hence the viewing audience). <The design was reused in BwaBB where some of them are thrown at the anomoly and explode.>

Didn't the guy who tried to mug Fry and Leela in "Less Than Hero" also have a Pocket Pal? Or am I remembering that wrong?

Ah, okay, I see what you're saying. Still, even with that alteration in concept though, myriad people are still intensely annoyed by him.  It always kind of befuddled me why so many dislike him so much.
I thought he fulfilled his function in an amusing manner.

Eh, I think he's a funny character--mostly because of the contempt he elicits from everyone else. But I do think that including him in numerous episodes where he served to piss everyone off would've gotten old; as it happened, I thought the writers utilized Cubert (and Dwight, actually) well.

[Reply #8 on:]

   Didn't the guy who tried to mug Fry and Leela in "Less Than Hero" also have a Pocket Pal? Or am I remembering that wrong?

On the commentary I think Matt Groening says something about that little robot (Andy?) being as close as they came (during the run of the series) to using Pocket Pal.

[Reply #9 on:]

The number 9 guy -- A strata of society (ranking below fully human but above sewer mutants) occupied by mindless drones in white robes with numbers instead of names. <The one known example was reused in ItWGY>

He he, hobbitboy you've got some encyclopaedical knowledge of these things, but don't you be so sure about _white_ robes. As they were initially green ones
Always wanted to say something about that guy... He was sort of intriguing me from the very beginning of Futurama...

[Reply #10 on:]

The no9 guy has appeared in loads of episodes. I saw him before I saw ITWGY.

[Reply #11 on:]

I know, I was talking about SP3K.

[Reply #12 on:]

no.9 guy is, in short, an enigma.

[Reply #13 on:]

• Loss of the 'wheel' -- At some point prior to 3000 the technology associated with the wheel had been lost. Though they still have tracked 'vehicles' (the Crushinator), coasters (the pi-KEA robot from Less than a Hero), plus cogs and rotating disks in various forms. What we also occasionally see are the wheeled vehicles that they forgot should not exist.

Wheeled robots make the occasional appearance... and we see a wheeled vehicle in a prominent role in the very second episode... the lunar rover ride. The writers did a fairly inconsistent job with a lot of the concepts that they pushed out initially, and the series had a pretty rapid evolution from the drawing board to screen, so it's not surprising that some of the concepts were dropped entirely.

I'm kinda sad that some of those ideas never got made as episodes, because they seem promising premises to push the planet express people into perils that would please audiences. Sorry, I got carried away with the alliteration there.

I lost the thread of my initial thought, so I'll just say this: the show most certainly would have some life left in it if renewed.